Week 3 Special Teams Goals Above Average Rankings

Kyle Connor leads the Winnipeg Jets with 4 Power Play goals. Image by Jenn G

Estimated 3 minute read

Week 3 of the NHL season is in the books and it’s not even November. It truly feels like the Stanley Cup finals just wrapped up.

This is a weekly look at teams’ performances on the power play and penalty kill, with shorties counting for and against each squad.

For Week 1 and 2’s article, click here. If you missed the offseason primer, here’s a link to that.

This week, some trends began reverting to where we’d expect them to land.

Because of where the averages have moved to, the rounding this week is to .5 instead of a whole number.

The Jets wrested sole control of 1st from the Stars with an all around dominant week. This week’s biggest riser was Vegas. The Golden Knights jumped from 12th to 2nd, moving from 1 goal above average to 5. The Oilers remained all alone in last place, combining bad penalty killing and poor power play performance. Utah Hockey Club free fell from 19th to 28th after a week of poor performance.

The Lightning showed some life on the power play and scored 2 shorthanded goals, good enough to move from 26th to 20th. Their ascend was hampered by 4 power play goals allowed, bringing their efficiency to 71%.

The Bruins continue to spend the most time on the kill and power play in the NHL, having 38th man advantages (2nd to New Jersey) and 40 penalties to kill (1st in the league). The Bruins have a league average PK unit, but have given up the 5th most goals because of how often they’ve been on the ice.

The Aves and Devils continue to absolutely mash on the PP. Colorado sports an absurd 37.9% score rate and New Jersey has converted their league leading 40 power plays into 12 goals. The most efficient team is Ottawa, with a 40% power play percentage. New Jersey has had 10 more chances to score, which gives them a boost in volume over the Senators.

The Flyers are worth keeping an eye on. Truly dreadful last season on the power play, Philadelphia stands at 2.5 goals scored above average 3 weeks into the season and are already more than 1/4 to their entire PP output from last season. Unfortunately they do sit in last place in the Metropolitan Division to this point.

Below click to view the rankings as a whole in either a Google Sheet or a PDF format.