TFTC: What's Wrong With The Dallas' Top Power Play Unit?
The top Stars unit is broken (for now). Let's figure out why.
This was written before the Minnesota game. So obviously, Dallas scored enough power play goals in one night to make this topic irrelevant. But not so fast…
To me a good power play is also a good system. The setups and the positioning should have some level of consistency. The personnel will decide the degree to which it is effective, and because of that, I think figuring out a power play’s effectiveness is pretty straight forward. There are four categories of power play teams:
The generate chances/get rewarded group (good)
The not generating chances/but gets rewarded anyway group (lucky)
The not generating chances/not rewarded for it gang (bad)
The team that doesn’t draw enough penalties to figure out what kind of group they are.
The 2023-2024 Dallas Stars somehow fall into worst possible combination of categories: the last two. They’re 29th in power play minutes per game, 23rd in shots on net per 60, and 24th in expected goals per 60. So they don’t draw penalties, and when they do, they don’t generate enough to be rewarded.
Now that we know that they’re bad, it’s worth asking why they’re bad. Before digging in, let’s cover some basics. For one, not a whole lot has changed between last year and this season. But before digging into the tape, let’s dig into the basics, starting with Dallas’ breakout, their formation, and their problems.