Special Teams Rankings

Note: This was written March 25, 2009, and so all numbers used reflected those at that date.


While only slightly related, this photo was too good to pass up.

Every broadcast I’ve watched, whenever there is a power play opportunity, the announcers always see fit to point out the offending team’s penalty kill ranking and/or percentage in comparison to the beneficiary’s stats in the power play department. Games can be won on these “special teams,” as well as be lost – failing to kill a penalty for the entire game is one such example, and failing to score on the power play in a close game is another.

And yet, there is a lack of an overall ranking system that uses both the penalty kill and power play stats to determine a team’s overall effectiveness at special teams. There could be a team that has a shut-down defense that rarely lets a goal through, but an absolutely anemic offense that can’t score goals for beans (and no, this is not a thinly-veiled reference to a certain Northwest Division team, just an extreme example that happens to be similar). How would they rate? What about a team that is exactly the opposite, that can score goals all day and yet has a horrible defense/goaltending situation? And that kind of curiosity has led me to create this.

Star-divide

The only stat I use for this ranking system is the percentage effectiveness of each special team, and no extra variables like short-handed goals are calculated into this (it would take far too much work and math). The baseline percentage is 100%, meaning that the team is basically even in goals they have scored and goals they have allowed on special teams. Anything below that means that special teams are hurting them, while anything above means that it is helping. Pretty simple, right? So here are the numbers

 

Power Play

Penalty Kill

 
  Team League PP % Rk PK % Rk Overall %
1 San Jose 2 23.5 3 83.6 5 107.1
2 Minnesota 21 19.4 14 86.8 2 106.2
3 Philadelphia 7 22.5 4 83.1 6 105.6
4 Boston 3 22.4 5 82.4 12 104.8
5 Detroit 1 26.3 1 77.9 26 104.2
6 Washington 5 24.3 2 79.9 20 104.2
7 Buffalo 20 21.0 7 82.6 8 103.6
8 Calgary 6 19.3 15 84.0 3 103.3
9 St. Louis 19 20.6 9 82.4 10 103.0
10 Los Angeles 25 20.1 11 82.9 7 103.0
11 Anaheim 17 22.0 6 80.8 18 102.8
12 NY Rangers 12 14.4 29 87.5 1 101.9
13 Chicago 8 20.8 8 80.8 17 101.6
14 Ottawa 23 19.1 16 81.4 16 100.5
15 NY Islanders 30 17.5 20 82.4 11 99.9
16 New Jersey 4 19.9 12 79.9 21 99.8
17 Montreal 14 17.3 21 81.8 13 99.1
18 Vancouver 9 18.6 18 80.3 19 98.9
19 Pittsburgh 11 16.9 22 81.5 15 98.4
20 Nashville 18 14.5 28 83.9 4 98.4
21 Florida 15 15.3 26 82.6 9 97.9
22 Tampa Bay 29 18.6 17 79.1 24 97.7
23 Carolina 10 17.6 19 79.2 23 96.8
24 Atlanta 27 20.3 10 75.7 30 96.0
25 Toronto 22 19.6 13 75.8 29 95.4
26 Colorado 28 16.3 24 79.0 25 95.3
27 Dallas 24 15.4 25 79.2 22 94.6
28 Columbus 13 12.5 30 81.7 14 94.2
29 Edmonton 16 16.8 23 76.7 28 93.5
30 Phoenix 26 14.8 27 76.9 27 91.7

 

Unsurprisingly, San Jose is on top with both the power play and penalty kill in the top five, allowing them to have the best overall special teams situation. Minnesota as second is surprising, although their special teams percentage is held up by their extremely stingy penalty kill. It is a similar occurance with Detroit – they have a horrible penalty kill, but their potent power play makes up for their defensive and goaltending lapses.

This data also reveals a bit about a team’s play overall. The Islanders’s position at 15th in the league for special teams – achieving almost a 100 – suggests that their woes mainly come at even strength, while Columbus’s surprisingly horrible position suggests that their even strength play is what is keeping them in the playoffs picture.

It is a trend, though, that the better teams in the league have better special teams than those that are tanking for Tavares. Not a completely new revelation, but the numbers themselves are still something to think about when watching some of these teams play.