Lane Lambert is building a new PK

"Leafs ranked 23rd in PK last season."

I had to look into this, because I read that and made my PK/PP percentage face – I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed you used that – and thought, but wasn't that just Ilya Samsonov sucking all the life out of the team?

"Just" I had to make my just face at myself. If you use the word "just" you are telling me what you want to be true and sliding right over the how and the why. Samsonov was the 10th worst goalie shorthanded last year by Goals Saved Over Expected, and Martin Jones was 12th worst. Solved! My knee jerked in the right direction and obviously the Leafs just don't know how to look up one thing to try to win an argument on the internet.

What if it's more complicated, though?

The Leafs have been using the same basic PK system for years. It's sometimes called the "power kill" and sometimes given a name based on the triangle shape of the defending players. Lots of other teams use it. The most extensive research I've seen into it was when the Blue Jackets used it some years back. PWHL Toronto and Team Canada Women use it. The Bruins and the Hurricanes have employed it regularly as have the Devils, and you can bet the Devils will again this year.

Video explainer:

Text explainer:

https://members.thecoachessite.com/article/explained-wedge-penalty-kill-formation

What makes the triangle or wedge shape into a power kill is that the forward out at the top of the formation sweeps back and forth to dictate where the opponents can pass, but he also has a high chance of picking up the puck and taking off. The rush chances against that the Leafs have always used are carefully calibrated to be low risk – the player stops skating shy of the net so he doesn't end up out of control and on his butt in the corner. The point is to eat the clock by controlling the puck without limiting the ability to get back into position. The point is not to score shorthanded goals.

So far, we have no actual idea what Lambert's going to do with the PK, so while that's what the Leafs have done for years under Sheldon Keefe, we can only look at how successful they've been, so a quick rundown:

I used Fenwick Against here because it's the base form of shots Expected Goals is built on. All data from Evolving Hockey. So, what I see is that the Leafs have sometimes had an actual goals against rate better than Expected, but relative to the league as a whole, they are always worse, and the numbers from last year are not unprecedented since 2019-2020 seems similar. They actually did save better than expected last year, and that was Joe Woll in 30% of the TOI putting up spectacular and almost certainly unrepeatable numbers.

The reason the Leafs can drop down the ranking list while still saving a bit above expected is that there's always teams doing a little or a lot better. The overall goaltending might improve this year shorthanded which makes getting a good goals against rate easier, but that's a cure, not prevention for the disease.

The disease to be prevented here blares right out on that little chart – the horrible shot rate against last season. The Leafs weren't outstanding at shot rate against last year at five-on-five either, they ranked 12th, and 16th at Expected Goals Against.

I keep hearing Brad Treliving at his opening presser saying that the problem is we can't keep it out of our net. And yeah, that is the problem. Obsess over forward lines all you like, but the shot rates must improve and the defending itself has to improve. Specifically with the shorthanded problem, I lean very heavily towards "this is a personnel problem" not "this is a system problem" and the reason for that is the obvious success of this PK system whenever the shot rate against was reasonable. The Leafs tend to spend a lot less time shorthanded than most of the NHL, so worrying about being the best at the PK seems like a low return on investment activity. You want to be good, not invest resources in trying to be superlative.

One thing that stood out in the text-based explanation of this PK structure is that it requires some speed and skill from the players even when in position in the defensive zone. The more aggressive you make it, it follows, the more you're relying on the speed of the forwards to get back in position after they rag the puck for a while.

In a world where Easton Cowan and Fraser Minten are fully fledged NHL players, along with Matt Knies, Mitch Marner, David Kämpf, Bobby McMann and maybe William Nylander you can really run this system. Easton Cowan is better than Marner at this. By a lot. Fraser Minten is better than Kämpf.

But for this season, if the list of forwards is a little light on speed and smarts, then a different system might be good – again, not that I know if they are going to a different formation or just a less aggressive triangle system.

If you want one villain to wear the black hat on last year's PK, it is TJ Brodie. He was on the ice for 55% of the Leafs PK time and he had the worst Fenwick Against of anyone other than the very lightly used Pontus Holmberg. The only big-minute player who was any good at all was Simon Benoit.

I think the badness was a group effort, and it was mostly the same problem the Leafs had in all situations. Brodie wasn't getting the puck out of the zone, and Mitch Marner was a negative in all the puck moving areas he normally excels at.

The trouble with the Leafs has always been it's made of people. And last year there was a lot of wrong people playing big PK time. If Lane Lambert can maximize the value of a new set of people, then that's ideal.

Bottom line with the PK and their play as a whole: if they don't have the puck more, they won't win often enough for success to be in their grasp.