Vancouver Canucks Top NHL Power Play List

As a general rule, special teams are critical to a team’s long-term success in the NHL. While most of the game is played 5-on-5, the teams that capitalize on those precious moments when they have the man advantage, and the teams that keep the puck out of their own net when they are short-handed, tend to be the teams that come out on top.

For that reason, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that two of the three teams that currently rank in the Top 10 both on the power play and the penalty kill are last year’s Stanley Cup finalists, the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins. Both teams currently have 66 points and sit in the No. 2 seed in their respective conferences.

Vancouver (31-15-4) has the best power play in the league, converting on 23 percent of their chances with 44 goals in 191 oppoerunities. The Sedin Twins are two of the most dangerous players in the league every time they set foot on the ice, and with the extra space that the power play provides, they tend to make teams pay.

The Canucks rank sixth in the NHL in penalty killing, killing off 85.6 percent of their opponents' potential scoring chamces when a man down. Vancouver ranks third in the NHL in offense with 3.2 goals per game and seventh in defense with 2.4 goals against per game due in large part to their league-best special teams.

Boston (32-14-2) ranks seventh in the NHL on the power play with a 19.3 percent conversion rate (33 goals on 171 power plays) and seventh in penalty killing with an 85.1 percent success rate. All-Star defensemen Zdeno Chara is one of the key reasons for Boston’s success on both sides of the ice; he logs key defensive minutes throughout the game and on the penalty kill, and is second among defensemen in power play goals this season with six.

Boston is tops in the league in goal production with 3.5 goals per game and fourth in goals against per game with 2.2.

The New York Rangers are an anomaly to the strong special teams leads to success rule this season.  New York is sixth on the power play (19.5%) and eighth on the penalty kill (84.9%), but just 20-22-7 overall. While the Islanders are great on special teams, they are the NHL’s worst team 5-on-5 with a -27 goal differential at even strength (75 goals for, 102 against).

Two teams show up in the bottom third of the league in both power play and penalty kill, the Tampa Bay Lightning (27th on the power play at 13.6%, 25th on the penalty kill at 79.9%) and the Columbus Blue Jackets (24th at 14.6%, 29th at 76.2%). Not surprisingly, Tampa Bay (22-23-4) is currently eight points out of a playoff spot while Columbus is the worst team in the NHL at 13-31-6.

The top five power plays in the NHL belong to the Canucks, Nashville Predators (22.5%), Edmonton Oilers (21.3%), Philadelphia Flyers (20.4%) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (19.7%). The top five penalty killing teams are the Montreal Canadiens (89.4%), New Jersey Devils (89.2%), New York Rangers (87.5%), Pittsburgh Penguins (87.3%), and the Los Angeles Kings (86.5%). All five of the league’s best penalty killing teams have elite netminders; as they say, your best penalty killer is your goaltender.