In the spirit of the holidays, we’re looking at what might be on certain teams' wish lists at this point in the season. Obviously everyone probably is asking for a clean bill of health in general, plus fewer postponed games and complications that come with the current environment. But aside from that, we want to look at some strengths and weaknesses to see what they could want — realistic or unrealistic — moving forward in to 2022.
Vegas Golden Knights: A true penalty kill
We’re taking inspiration from Jeff Marek here, who proposed a ‘true penalty kill’ on the 32 Thoughts podcast. Instead of teams just ‘enduring’ two minutes of shots against, he suggested teams effectively kill a penalty off when they score.
The Golden Knights would benefit from this shift in rules seeing as they’re one of the best at creating offece while on the penalty kill. Their success runs deeper than their league-leading six shorthanded goals for; below the surface, their expected goal rate of 1.37 per 60 minutes shorthanded ranks fourth. That season-wide number includes games where they were without some of their best two-way forwards like Mark Stone and William Karlsson.
While the Golden Knights have been among the league’s best in creating offence while down a player, they haven’t suppressed it as well, conceding 1.99 expected goals against per 60 landing them 29th in that defensive metric. And their goaltending hasn’t been perfect behind that workload either. Both contribute to a 77.5 per cent efficiency on the PK. Some early season struggles and injuries played into that as well — since Stone’s return, which really signified the ‘end’ of their early season injury woes, the team has tightened up in their own end. Still, they wouldn’t have to be as worried about their own zone if they could just end penalties with a shorthanded goal for.
New Jersey Devils: The ability to decline a power play
Whether with the current system for penalty killing, or Marek’s ‘true’ method, the Devils probably wish they could just decline the option to go on the man-advantage. With a true penalty kill, they’d really be in trouble as they’ve allowed a league-leading six shorthanded goals for — five of which have come over the past month while their power play has only delivered four goals for.