The NHL's best powerplay (right now)

Workshop 144: Vegas Golden Knights PP1

In last week’s video workshop, I discussed the thought process behind building an effective powerplay.

What Powerplay Coaches Think About

Today, we’re going to look at a real-life example.

Note: I was originally planning on making this a narrated video breakdown, but after recording a PP-specific episode of the PDOcast, I’ve lost my voice!

The Vegas Golden Knights are currently the class of the NHL in terms of 5v4 play. According to Natural Stat Trick, VGK leads the league in expected goals per hour and ranks third in actual goals, not far behind NYR and COL.

Here’s what VGK’s top unit, the one doing most of the damage, looks like.

• Point man: VGK27 Shea Theodore

• Right flank/one-timer threat: VGK95 Victor Olofsson/VGK16 Pavel Dorofeyev

• Bumper/secondary netfront presence: VGK48 Tomas Hertl

• Left flank/quarterback: VGK9 Jack Eichel

• Primary netfront presence/bumper: VGK61 Mark Stone

Here’s another way to understand VGK’s 1-3-1 OZ set.

Eichel, Theodore and Olofsson are the exterior players whose jobs are to establish possession, move the puck outside the PK coverage and, eventually, set up a kill shot. Vegas’ exterior players don’t typically rotate with each other, but for other teams this could be a viable option in order to create a different look. Eichel is an all-world puck carrier, passer and shooter. Theodore moves smoothly atop the blueline and is an occasional shot threat. Olofsson and Dorofeyev are relatively less involved, which allows them to get lost and hammer one-timers from the flank or pick up rebounds near the back post.

Hertl and Stone are the interior players who do much of the heavy lifting to win loose pucks (scrambled draws, rebounds, missed passes), screen the goalie and create contested shots from in-tight. On VGK’s top unit, both inside players rotate freely depending on what side the puck is on and who’s best postured to win a potential retrieval race. When the puck is on the left, Stone moves to the goal line to set up a one-touch play to Hertl in the slot (as shown above). When the puck is on the right, Hertl becomes the setup guy for Stone.

Here’s how the pieces fit together dynamically.