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A possible cure for NHL's power woes
Whatever happened to the power play? There has been a power outage in the NHL over the past several years, and the brownout is severe enough that the league should do something about it. The numbers tell the story. Twenty years ago NHL teams scored on 21.9 percent of their power-play chances. A great power play, like that of the 1979-80 Montreal Canadiens, scored 29.2 percent of the time. A bad power play had a success rate between 16-20 percent. Those percentages stayed roughly the same throughout the 1980s, when the league was made up of 21 teams. The 1988-89 Pittsburgh Penguins, led by Mario Lemieux, set an NHL record with 119 power-play goals in 80 games -- an average of 1.5 per contest. The power play was a weapon. Want to hold, mug and tackle Mario? Try it, and suffer the consequences. Then came the doleful '90s, an era of overexpansion under commissioner Gary Bettman that has led to the current problem of a league-wide dilution of talent. By 1995-96, with new franchises in Anaheim, Florida, San Jose, Tampa Bay and Ottawa and the league's ranks bloated to 26 teams, the success rate on power plays was down to 17.9 percent. Only four teams were able to score on more than 20 percent of their man-advantage situations that season, a level which a few years earlier was considered unacceptable if a coach expected to keep his job. Now, five years later, the NHL is an elephantine entity of 30 teams. Anyone looking for concrete evidence of talent dilution need go no further than the 2000-2001 power-play statistics, where the average success rate has dropped to a woeful 16 percent. That's less than one power-play goal every six chances. The Minnesota Wild, which may be the most tedious team in the history of hockey, bring up the rear with an 8.8-percent success rate. Just like clockwork, the Wild scores once every 11 man-advantage situations. Even the top power play in the NHL, which belongs to the Colorado Avalanche, has scored less than one goal a game, a 22.3-percent success rate. Twenty years ago, that was about the league average. Of course, talent dilution is but one of the reasons for the power-play slowdown. The penalty killing is more sophisticated. The defenders are bigger, faster, more mobile. The goaltenders are bigger and armed with equipment that is both lighter and bulkier, enabling them to cover more of the net. If Bettman and the league fathers had been smart enough to enlarge the ice surface over the last decade, so all new NHL stadiums were fitted with Olympic-sized rinks, none of this would have mattered. Not as much, anyway. But they weren't. The result is the league's skill players -- the guys who make a power play go and who put fannies in the seats -- don't have room to work their magic. Hockey's Baryshnikovs are being asked to dance in a closet. So something has to be done. Sadly, the league has shown little appetite for changing the size of the ice. So, to increase power-play scoring and up the level of excitement, it's time to tinker with the rules. The Boston Globe's Kevin Dupont has come up with the best idea I've heard. It is, quite simply, to forbid penalty killers from icing the puck. If they do so, automatic icing is called and a faceoff in the offensive zone ensues. And no changing of personnel would be allowed during the stoppage of play. This one simple rule change obviously would increase power-play scoring, by making it tougher for the defending team to get the puck out of its own zone, which would lead to more turnovers and chances. It also would increase shorthanded goals. Instead of just whipping the puck down the ice, the four penalty killers would actually have to stickhandle and pass and make plays, which almost certainly would lead to defensive lapses on the part of the power-play unit. It would mean more action at both ends of the ice. Which, as anyone who's watched a Wild game can tell you, the NHL definitely needs. E.M. Swift is a Sports Illustrated senior writer and a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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