Should teams consider dumping the puck in directly on the goalie on the power play?

A tactical wormhole thanks to my friend Prashanth Iyer with commentary from NHL voices.

I’ve been in a bit of a hockey tactical wormhole the past two weeks.

It started on Feb. 15, when my Expected by Whom? co-host Prashanth Iyer texted me with the following ideology.

“I’m wondering if more teams should consider dumping the puck in on the goalie to force a faceoff on the power play.”

The concept here is that instead of teams trying to enter the zone in a traditional sense on the power play, they’d quickly dump or shoot the puck on net and try to force a whistle and an immediate offensive zone faceoff.

In theory it could be a valuable tool for a team that struggles on power play entries.

Trading the typical 10 to 12 seconds it takes to get setup and generate a shot for a quicker opportunity off the offensive zone faceoff. An average NHL team wins close to 55 percent of their offensive zone faceoffs on the power play. So while it’s still a weighted coin flip, it’s also an opportunity to create a quicker and more sustained chance in the zone with an extra skater.

I took this idea and brought it up to close to a dozen NHL players, coaches, and scouts.

There responses included a mix of intrigue and defensiveness about the ideology.

Dallas Stars coach Pete DeBoer was defensive, but receptive, for example. He went back and checked with the Stars video coaches mid conversation and informed me that the Stars typical enter the zone successfully on 67 percent of their power play entries, according to the data they have access too.

DeBoer also noted this was third-best in the NHL and that a team target for a good game on power play entries is 80 percent. A so-called bad game is converting around 60 percent on entries.

DeBoer also wasn’t completely dismissive of the idea, he acknowledged it could be a tool at some point, but wasn’t really sold on it.

Detroit Red Wings defender Jeff Petry, who has played on both special teams units in his career, was willing to hear this out and started thinking about the pros-and-cons of both.

At the end Petry gave me the ideal segue to quote him in this story.

“I’d have to see the numbers I guess to talk about it more.”

And we have some numbers. We don’t have access to the numbers that the Stars use, for example, and their example of success is based more on entry with possession as opposed to taking a shot.

Using data from Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones Project, Prashanth went and created the viz for which teams actually have success creating a power play shot of an entry.

(I will repeat: It should be noted, that this a different stat than the one DeBoer mentioned. While the Stars coach was talking about a successful entry, this is talking about a successful entry that leads to a setup and shot.)

This season, for example, the Vancouver Canucks have been the best in the league. The Buffalo Sabres have been the worst.

The Canucks, and Quinn Hughes, have been dynamic this season on the power play. The Tampa Bay Lightning, with a trio of future Hockey Hall of Famers, have always been good and clean on entries. After them, only the Florida Panthers and Nashville Predators are setting up an actual shot on goal on more than 50 percent of their entries.

For a larger sample size, Prashanth also pulled the data dating back to 2021. Unsurprisingly the Lightning lead the league in shots off entries, while the Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalanche, two of the NHL’s best power play units in that time, rank second and third.

The Montreal Canadiens have been the NHL’s worst overall at this since 2021, but it should also be noted there has been improvement this season.

At the same time, faceoff success rate on the power play has remained pretty consistent across the league.

Here it is dating back to 2006, data from NHL.com and chart again courtesy of Prashanth.

So, in theory, if a team is able to dump the puck in on the goalie and force a freeze, there could be a statistical advantage to the traditional approach.

I asked Colorado Avalanche defender Cale Makar about how it could work, schematically speaking.

Makar said he really didn’t think it would be in the best interest of how the Avalanche run their power play, but that it could be a tool as long as the forwards/forecheckers on the power play are taking the proper routes.

That was a constant theme in my conversations about this. Are the forwards and forecheckers going to do enough to make sure the goalie actually freezes the puck?

“They would have to get in the goalies face right away, it would have to be really well designed,” one NHL scout told me. “Like, the F1 is having to go straight to the goalie, and if the timing isn’t right, you could just be giving up possession for an easy exit to the other team right away.”

I spoke to two NHL goalies about this, one shot the idea down right away, the other was a bit more receptive.

“I think think goalies in general are conservative in general now, they are so often making the safest, smartest play, aside from a handful of guys — whom I sure you can guess — the play is going to be to freeze that puck,” the one goalie said. “So yeah, I could see you getting those faceoffs.”

The other goalie, who I would also consider a more conservative puck handler, countered.

“It’s not a hard play to make and adjust to, as long as it doesn’t get caught in your equipment or something like that, it’s a quick, short pass to your defender to get it out,” they said. “And some goalies would just rip it back down to the other end of the ice themselves.”

Some goalies would, but not many.

For example, one thing someone brought up to me on this was how you’d never employ this strategy against New York Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin, who loves to fling stretch passes.

But Shesterkin is the exception to the rule. As of Friday, Shesterkin had attempted 29 stretch passes, the most in the NHL by a huge margin. According to Mike Kelly at Sportlogic, Joel Hofer (12 stretch passes), and Jakob Markstrom (10) are second and third in the league.

I reached out to Mike to ask how many goalies in total have attempted stretch passes this season, and he said 51 have tried at least one in the NHL this season and only 25 have attempted five or more. (For point of reference, as of this morning 92 goalies have played at least one NHL game this season.)

So you’d avoid it against the confident, swaggy puckhandling goalies. But in general, most teams don’t have a goalie that wants to risk shooting the puck the length of the ice.

One of my theories going into this was the impact of ego on the ideology of just dumping the puck on the goalie as opposed to attempting a traditional entry.

And I found some of that, there were quite a few responses that essentially echoed, “well, why don’t we just work on getting better on entries?” when asked about this schematic approach.

There was also some pushback about the entertainment value of all this. This approach would lead to more whistles, and hockey is much more exciting when the refs are silent as possible.

Those who thought about it deeply, considered the power play dump-in on the goalie as a tool, but one you’d use occasionally to get things going or throw off the other team.

If a power play entry was struggling for example, this could be a way to maybe break out of a funk.

One of the things that I would argue, and I’ve chatted about with Prashanth on, is how this could actually make some of the most elite entry teams even more dangerous at times.

Think about it as the equivalent to the quarterback run-pass option in football. The rest of the unit is essentially doing the same thing off the snap, it’s up to the QB to read the play and make the best decision.

This is what you’d be asking of your puck carrier on the entry, likely the player typically receiving the drop pass, to read the penalty killers and either proceed with a traditional carry or shoot-in on the goalie for a whistle.

There’s also a potential element of surprise for the goalie, the longer drives from the neutral zone have more time to dip and knuckle. And pucks that dip and knuckle are often held more by a goalie, just because they are awkward to quickly transfer to a handle or pass to a defender.

In conclusion, if you could call this one, it’s a tool that should be further explored. Hopefully by a team at a high enough level where our only data point isn’t me trying to convince my beer league team to try this on Wednesday night.