It is no secret that an area where the Seattle Kraken have an opportunity to improve this season is their power play. That’s not to say it was horrible all last season – Seattle ranked 21st in the league – but isolating just playoff teams, they ranked 14th out of the 16 teams that qualified for the postseason. We recently posted a breakdown on how the team looks to improve the power play by starting off with a different look this season.
To get a better understanding of how the power play performed last season, I spent some time digging into the numbers and wanted to share my findings.
Pre-Burakovsky/Post-Burakovsky
There is a commonly cited theory that the Seattle Kraken power play took a huge hit when Andre Burakovsky went down with a season-ending groin injury in 2022-23. Let’s look at the numbers.
With a 0.9 percent drop in production after the injury, that theory might have merit. The fact of the matter, though, is that power play percentages drop later in the season.
At the time of the injury, Burakovsky led the team in power-play points with 14 and was second among forwards with 126:37 of power-play ice-time. Losing a weapon like Burakovsky was significant, but I do not think the team will improve drastically this season just because Burakovsky is back. The Kraken do need to make other tweaks, as Darren laid out in his article last week.
Power-play possession
There were times last season where it felt the power play was spending a disproportionate amount of time on the power play outside of the offensive zone. Some of this sentiment was driven by low face-off percentages with the manpower advantage. A common scenario was that the Kraken would start a power play with an offensive-zone face-off. They would lose the draw and possession, and the opposing team would clear the puck out of the zone, killing 10 to 15 seconds of the Kraken power play.
Although not a perfect proxy for possession, the Kraken were second to last in power-play face-off percentage last season.
The other area where the Kraken appeared to struggle without Burakovsky was offensive-zone entries. I am unaware of publicly available (a.k.a. “free”) data on zone entries, but one thing we can evaluate is the rate of shot attempts on a power play. Again, it’s not perfect for analyzing offensive-zone possession time, but it is a very good proxy, since the more often you have the puck in the offensive zone, the more likely you will have a shot attempt.
To show my work, I counted all the shot attempts (shots, blocked shots, missed shots) on a power play then divided by a team’s total power play to get shot attempts per power-play second. To make the number more relatable, I multiplied the shot attempts per power play second by 120 seconds. That gets us a shot attempt rate per two minutes, the usual length of a power play.
Using the shot attempts rate by power play time, we can see that the Kraken did have an issue with possession on the power play last season. The Kraken ranked 25th and last amongst playoff teams in generating shots per two minutes of power play time. We do not know the root cause of this issue, but it is probably a combination of face-off percentage on the power play, zone entries, and maintaining possession in the offensive zone. This shot attempt rate is something we will keep an eye on in the coming season.
Dry spells
During training camp last week, coach Dave Hakstol called out droughts and a lack of consistency that hurt the power play last season.
I certainly remember the Kraken going through dry spells, but I have always thought that is part of the cyclical nature of a hockey season. This is another area to focus on this season. Are the dry spells shorter and less frequent? Let’s hope so.
Who is getting the PP time?
Finally, I wanted to look at who was getting the power-play ice time and identify any potential changes for the upcoming season. To do that, I wanted to look at how the power-play time changed over the season, particularly before and after the Burakovsky injury.
The table shows that Eeli Tolvanen and Yanni Gourde picked up the extra time when Burakovsky went down in early February. With Burakovsky starting this season healthy, you can anticipate his power-play time to come back, but Tolvanen should remain on the power play with the departure of Daniel Sprong in the offseason. Sprong was on the ice for 40 percent of the Kraken’s power play when he was in the lineup.
Power play outlook
Without any substantial personnel changes to the Seattle Kraken roster this offseason, the changes will need to come from within. Getting Burakovsky back to start the season will certainly help, but the team will need to create different looks and options if it expects improvement in production. The Kraken’s new approach has showed promise in preseason. Will it carry over to the regular season?
Two months into the 2022-23 NHL season there was a national media narrative going around that the Kraken’s early season success was driven by an unsustainable shooting percentage and that it was just a matter of time before they would drop toward the bottom of the Pacific Division. That scenario never played out, and the Kraken finished the season with 100 points in the standings. Seattle ultimately turned out the second-highest shooting percentage in the league at 11.6 percent, behind only the Edmonton Oilers.
One would think the 82 regular-season games and 14 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs would have been enough of a sample size to recognize the Kraken were not lucky, they were good. However, this offseason, the concept of a shooting percentage regression is starting to bleed into the conversation again. We could just dismiss this criticism as somebody viewing the team from afar, but I thought the best thing to do was dig into the numbers myself.
Power play contributions
The first thing I thought about is if the Kraken’s high shooting percentage is being propped up by a disproportionate number of power-play goals. The theory here is that because teams have a higher shooting percentage on the power play, a disproportionate number of goals on the power play could have inflated the Kraken’s shooting percentage to the rest of the league.
That was not the case last season…
Seattle had the fourth-lowest percentage of its goals scored on the power play. This was driven by a lower-than-average number of power-play opportunities and poor power-play conversion by the Kraken. They were ranked 21st in the league in both opportunities and conversion. The Kraken’s shooting percentage on the power play was close to league average, thus not inflating their overall shooting percentage. Conversely, Edmonton had the highest shooting percentage on the power play across the league.
The below visual also illustrates that the Kraken had the highest shooting percentage at even strength.
The Kraken’s high shooting percentage is not being propped up by the power play.
Their strength was their depth
The story of the 2022-23 Seattle Kraken was that their strength was their depth. I have often described the Kraken as a team with three second lines and one third line.
With that context, my theory is that the Kraken’s high shooting percentage is attributed to the fact their third and fourth lines are better than most team’s third and fourth lines. Therefore, we did not see a drop-off in shooting percentages that most other teams in the league had deeper in their lineups.
To investigate that theory, I would need to classify all players into where they fit in their respective lineup. Since depth charts are subjective and can often change throughout the year, that is next to impossible to come up with a clear rule around defining lines for all 32 teams. Instead, I am ranking the players with the most minutes played for the team and then bucketing them into groups of three for the forwards and groups of two for the defensemen.
As such, these are not “lines” in the traditional sense, but more tiers of contributions by minutes. For example, the first group for the Kraken is Alex Wennberg, Jordan Eberle, and Yanni Gourde because those three forwards logged the most minutes for the Kraken, even though Wennberg played most with Jaden Schwartz and Oliver Bjorkstrand throughout the season. It is not perfect, but it is a fair proxy for overall contribution when comparing across teams.
Forwards shooting percentage
This might be stating the obvious, but forwards generally have a higher shooting percentage and log more shots compared to defensemen, so it is important that we evaluate them separately. When we look at each group based on their total minutes played for their team, Seattle’s first forward group ranked as one of the lowest in the league for shooting percentage. But, as you can see below, the Kraken ranked in the top seven for shooting percentage for all other forward groups.
This would support the claim that the depth of this team is its strength, and therefore contributed to its relatively high shooting percentage.
For more context, this is how the groupings played out using the logic explained above.
Note that Eeli Tolvanen, who was acquired on waivers halfway through the season, did not have enough time on ice for the Kraken to make it into Seattle’s top 12 for time played. Tolvanen ranked second in shooting percentage behind Jared McCann for players with over 10 games for the Kraken.
Defensemen shooting percentages
On the defensive side, the Kraken’s top two pairs rank in the top four in shooting percentage.
The defensive contribution pairs align to the actual depth chart pairs for most of the season.
Individual skater shooting percentages
Another area we should evaluate is which Seattle Kraken players had a shooting percentage in 2022-23 that was above their three-year-average shooting percentage. Was this a case where most of the players were shooting above their average? Or was the team constructed of a collection of better shooters compared to other teams?
Here is how the individual shooting percentages break down against players’ three-year averages, with the blue bars representing shooting percentages above a player’s three-year average and the orange bars representing shooting percentages below.
Of the forward group, six players had higher than their three-year average, while six players had below their average. On defense, four out of the six defensemen had above-average shooting percentages. Attempting to be objective, it is conceivable and probably likely Jared McCann, Schwartz, and Tolvanen will see a regression in their shooting percentages, but conversely, it would be equally likely that Bjorkstrand, Andre Burakovsky, and Gourde see improvements in that category. In Bjorkstrand’s case, he seems positioned to improve his shooting percentage. Remember, he took some time getting used to his new team and was ice cold early in the season, only to hit his stride in the second half of the year.
On the blue line, it is likely that Jamie Oleksiak and Justin Schultz see regressions as well, but keep in mind they only accounted for 3.7 percent and 6.6 percent of the Kraken shots respectively. So, a drop in their shooting percentages won’t impact the team’s overall shooting percentage compared to a drop in Eberle’s, for example, who accounted for 11.7 percent of the Kraken’s shots on his own.
Kraken departures
Most Kraken fans might have noticed that the fourth group of forwards in the table above is made up exclusively of players that are no longer with the Kraken. Ryan Donato (CHI), Morgan Geekie (BOS), and Daniel Sprong (DET) have all signed with other teams this offseason. On the surface, that is a significant number of goals to replace in the lineup.
Let us put aside the shooting percentages for a moment. Collectively, the three departing forwards had 44 goals, and the Kraken will need to replace a good portion of those goals to replicate last season’s success. A full season from Burakovsky should add 10 goals, and the new addition of Kailer Yamamoto should add at least 10 goals as well. The remaining 20-goal gap will need to be filled by a mix of Shane Wright, John Hayden, Kole Lind, Tye Kartye, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. Who of those five players draw into the lineup is probably the biggest question heading into the season, with Lind and Kartye being the most natural goal scorers of the group. It is also still a question if AHL success for players like Lind and Kartye can translate to the NHL for a full season.
Yamamoto’s 10.3 percent shooting percentage last season is lower than all three of the Kraken departures, but his career shooting percentage is 13.9 percent, so we should anticipate a rebound. The other players looking to crack the lineup are less predictable, since most of them have limited NHL experience.
Wrapping it up
When you hear people talking about a shooting regression from the Kraken, take it with a grain of salt. If it does happen, it will most likely be driven by the departure of the Kraken’s fourth line of Donato, Geekie, and Sprong. All three of them are good shooters, and it was reflected in the numbers. Yamamoto should be able to replace one of them, and the Kraken hope to get a full season of Burakovsky and Tolvanen, both of whom have above-average shots that will offset some of the loss of the other two fourth-line players.
With these extra few days between Rounds 2 and 3 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, we thought it would be fun to look at the data behind the scoring to see how it compares to previous playoff years. Let’s take a look.
Playoff scoring versus the regular season
The first thing we wanted to look at is how this season’s playoff goal scoring compared to the regular season and previous years.
For a long time, we heard that scoring in the playoffs was far more difficult when compared to the regular season, but for the second year in a row, playoff scoring seems to be even with or slightly higher than regular-season scoring. However, when we think about it a bit more, we realize the playoff averages only include goals scored from the theoretical 16 best teams in the league, since half the teams don’t qualify. So, if we look at just the playoff teams’ goals in the playoffs versus regular season, we do see that scoring is lower in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Here is a breakdown of how each team’s scoring changed from the regular season to the playoffs on a per-game basis. Seattle scored 3.14 goals per game in the playoffs, down from 3.52 during the regular season.
Playoff goals by game situation
One aspect of this year’s playoffs that is getting a lot of attention is the number of power-play goals being scored. But we looked into it, and it seems to be in line with the last six Stanley Cup Playoff years.
A lot of the narrative could be driven by the Edmonton Oilers, who finished their playoffs with 41 percent of their goals coming from the power play.
Unsurprisingly, only 11 percent of Seattle’s goals came from the power play.
Margin of victory
Another item we wanted to consider is the average margin of victory in the playoffs.
Anecdotally, it has felt like there has been a significant number of blowouts in these playoffs, but the margin of victory is lower than it was last season. It might be more impactful to look at the distribution.
When comparing to last year, it seems like there have not been as many blowouts this year, but what is interesting to look at is that for playoff years in 2019, 2020, and 2021, there were more one-goal games than this year.
I hope this gives you some more insight on goal scoring in the playoffs and adds context to the comments we hear during the television broadcasts. If you have any questions or have an area you want me to dig into, let me know in the comments section.
Now that we are through the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I thought it would be fun to look at the data behind the rosters and try to evaluate how they were built.
Player acquisition type
NHL Entry Draft, free agency, trades, and waiver wire acquisitions are all the various ways a team can build a roster. To build a contender, you need to use every tool at your disposal. Let’s look at how the 16 playoff teams built their rosters.
There is an adage in hockey that to be successful, you need to build your team through the draft, but three teams (Florida, Seattle, and Vegas) of the eight that are still alive in the Stanley Cup Playoffs have less than 15 percent of their rosters constructed through the draft.
It’s interesting to see the Dallas Stars have the highest percentage of players that were acquired via the NHL Entry Draft, being that they are facing the Kraken in the second round who have the lowest percentage of players from the draft. From the Seattle perspective, that is expected due to the team only having two entry drafts under its belt.
To add some context around the roster composition, we should look at which players are scoring each team’s goals by acquisition type.
Generally speaking, more goals are scored by players that were acquired via the draft compared to players acquired in other ways. The big outlier here is the Florida Panthers. 70 percent of the Panthers’ goals this postseason have come from players acquired via trade. Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, and Brandon Montour have 19 combined goals in the playoffs heading into Game 2 of their series against Toronto.
Here is a look at the average contributions this playoff by acquisition type:
Draft rounds
Regardless of the acquisition type, it is also fun to look at how many players each team has from each draft round.
As one would expect, players that were selected in the first-round account for the highest percentage of drafted players on the rosters. Vegas is the lone exception, as they have notoriously traded away a lot of their prospects (Cody Glass, Nick Suzuki, Erik Brannstrom, and Peyton Krebs) over the years to acquire players in their prime and give themselves a chance to win now.
Roster ages
The average age of a team is also an appealing data point to evaluate.
Boston was the oldest team to make the playoffs, with New Jersey being the youngest. It is also interesting to see that most teams have an elder statesman (over 35 years old), but the Kraken, Rangers, and Devils do not.
Height and weight of NHL playoff rosters
Here is a quick peek at the height and weight of all Stanley Cup Playoff teams.
It is important to point out that this aggregated view is not a weighted (no pun intended) average of minutes played and could be a little misleading when it comes to which players are logging the most minutes and how it could relate to the team height and weight.
Here is a look at the player detail behind the weight of the players:
How about the Big Rig, Jamie Oleksiak, weighing in at 257 pounds? Amazing to see how tight the Kraken are weight-wise, compared to other teams. I don’t think that is an advantage or disadvantage, just interesting to see the range compared to the other teams.
Roster breakdown by nationality
Finally, we will take a look at the nationality of the players on Stanley Cup Playoff rosters.
Vegas is the most Canadian team to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season. Is that because of the “snowbird” connection? Perhaps.
This was a very simple view at evaluating the rosters, but we hope it gives you a different perspective when watching this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. If you have questions about the data or some additional angles you would like me to consider, let me know in the comments section.
With the kickoff of the NHL season this week, it is a good time to breakdown the 2022-23 schedule. Here, we drill into who is logging the most frequent flier miles, which teams have the most back-to-back games, and which teams will appear on the most national television games.
Travel distance
Comparing 2021-22 to 2022-23 is not a fair comparable due to the impacts COVID had on the schedule, with several games being postponed and rescheduled throughout the season. If you were to compare this year’s schedule to last year’s planned schedule, though, the median travel for last year would have been slightly less due to the condensed nature of last season.
Here is how travel distances for the 2022-23 season stacks up by team.
The Pacific Division teams tend to have the most travel miles in a season, so it is no surprise to see those teams around the top. The Florida Panthers are the only non-Pacific team in the top seven this season.
Here is how the travel miles split out by division.
Based on that perspective, the schedule looks encouraging for Seattle, considering the Kraken will travel less than five division rivals.
Number of road trips
Travel distance is one aspect of evaluating the challenges of a team’s schedule, but the quantity of road trips is another variable to consider. Here is the breakdown of the number of road trips by team.
The Kraken are tied for having the third fewest road trips this year. Here is how their road trip and homestands break down throughout the year.
Of course, having fewer road trips also means longer trips at times, so is that better for Seattle? That’s hard to say.
Back-to-back games
Last year, the Kraken played 13 sets of back-to-back games. When playing in the second of back-to-back’s, they accrued just six points, or 23 percent of the points available in those games. In all other games, they accumulated 43 percent of the points available. Playing back-to-back games was a challenge for the Kraken last season. As a whole, the league will see fewer back-to-back games now that the NHL calendar is on a more traditional schedule post-COVID.
It is nice to see the Kraken will play the second fewest back-to-back games in 2022-23.
Bonus content: NHL national TV schedule breakdown
While we are talking about schedules, let us take a quick peek at the NHL national TV schedule for this year.
As the graph shows, there are plans for 14 more nationally televised NHL games this season than there were last season. Note that the 2021-22 numbers were based on preseason reported schedule that was eventually impacted by COVID cancelations and rescheduled games.
Here is how this season breaks down by network.
TNT, which has the rights to broadcast the Stanley Cup Final this season, added 12 more games compared to last season. ESPN added 10 more games to the flagship network and five games to ABC. The ESPN+/Hulu exclusive scheduled games are down to 53 from 75 in 2021-22.
NHL TV schedule by team
The 10 nationally televised Kraken games for 2022-23 is down from 13 games in 2021-22. If you want to mark your calendars for those games, here is the list.
The real season begins this week. Enjoy the games!
One of the biggest challenges the Seattle Kraken had last year was scoring goals. The Kraken ranked 28th in the league with only 213 goals scored for the entire 2021-22 season. A key component of this challenge was the lack of opportunity and success on the power play. In this edition of Data Dump, we are going to explore the information we have around Seattle’s struggles with the manpower advantage last season and how the team is addressing the issue.
Power play opportunity
The Kraken had the third fewest power play goals in the league last year with just 32 such markers. This ranked ahead of only the Philadelphia Flyers (30) and Arizona Coyotes (28). There are two components that go into logging power play goals, number of power play opportunities and power play percentage. Let us look at those two numbers from last season.
As you can see, the Kraken were toward the bottom of the heap in power plays drawn (opportunities) and power play percentage (execution). These two statistics are not necessarily correlated. Toronto ranked 21st in number of power play opportunities but first in power play percentage. Similarly, Philadelphia ranked 16th in opportunities but last in power play execution.
Power play trends
One explanation could attribute the lack of execution on the power play to the unfamiliarity the players had with each other in Seattle’s inaugural season. Unfortunately, when we look at the power play over the season, it ebbed and flowed but never showed a consistent improvement.
Drawing penalties
As we mentioned above, part of the reason for Seattle’s low power-play goals output is due to the lack of opportunities. To get opportunities, you need players that draw penalties, so let us look at who drew penalties for the Kraken last season.
One encouraging item that stands out is that the players that drew the most penalties on the 2021-22 Seattle Kraken remain on the team for the 2022-23 season. We can take the analysis one step further by looking at the players by minutes played versus the number of drawn penalties from last season. Plus, we can overlay the new Kraken players to get a more complete picture for this season.
In addition to Oliver Bjorkstrand and Andre Burakovsky posting above-average numbers in drawing penalties, we also believe Matty Beniers could be one of the team leaders in penalties drawn this coming season based on what we have seen during the preseason. His numbers from last year hint at this.
Deployment changes
Getting more chances on the power play is one thing, but the team will need to take advantage of those opportunities. We know changes on the power play are coming, but before we get into that, here are the power play minute leaders from last season.
We already know the power play time taken by Mark Giordano, Calle Jarnkrok, and Marcus Johansson will need to be replaced.
Based on coach Dave Hakstol’s deployment during the preseason, we anticipate the changes to be more significant than just filling the vacancies left by those three players. The first power play unit is solid on paper, with Justin Schultz, Alex Wennberg, and the Killer B’s of Beniers, Bjorkstrand, and Burakovsky. The unit has not been remarkable during the preseason, but there have been moments where you can tell it will be just a matter of time before they really start clicking.
The second power play unit is still a work in progress, but looking at the remaining players on the roster, we like the options. Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, Vince Dunn, and Yanni Gourde feels like the right combo to start the season with Shane Wright and Ryan Donato as options to slide in with those players.
Do not expect instant success when the season starts. Chemistry amongst players takes time, and when you consider the new faces on that first unit, we need to be patient for these players to develop that chemistry.
Improved Kraken power play will be critical
The Kraken will need to see improvements in multiple aspects of their game to expect a different outcome in season two. Behind goaltending, power play opportunities and production could be huge in deciding if Seattle plays meaningful games in March.
We think this chart sums up nicely the relationship between success on the power play and postseason aspirations.
