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If there was one problem area for head coach Paul MacLean in his first year with the Ottawa Senators organization, it was the collective lack of discipline that the team exhibited through the majority of the regular season.
As a unit, the Ottawa Senators were hit with 510:18 minutes of short-handed hockey last year, good for twenty-eighth in the National Hockey League. Only the Philadelphia Flyers and Montreal Canadiens were penalized more in terms of raw TOI.
Making matters worse, the Ottawa Senators didn't exactly draw a ton of power-play time, at least relative to how often they were on the kill. The -71:39 TOI was twenty-seventh worst in the National Hockey League, with only the Edmonton Oilers, Colorado Avalanche, and Dallas Stars trailing them in that department. Note that all three of these teams finished well outside of the playoff race.
For Ottawa, the penalty woes ran pretty deep. Playing short-handed hockey simply isn't a recipe for success, especially for a club that finished just 20th in the National Hockey League with an 80.6% kill rate. The lack of discipline and often constant parade to the penalty box not only eliminated their strength -- that is, goal scoring -- but exploited their own weakness in limiting scoring opportunities and goals against. The Ottawa Senators -- collectively -- were a bit shaky defensively, and playing five-on-four -- or worse -- often compounded the problem.
The latter is the obvious reason why this team won just forty-one games. I say
just because there's plenty of reason to believe this club should've been a few wins better in a more-disciplined season, and that addresses the former point -- one that speaks to the clubs ability to dominate on the power play and at even strength.
Effectiveness of man advantage units do hold importance, and here, the Ottawa Senators -- like most playoff teams -- did quite well. Ottawa finished 11th in the National Hockey League with an 18.1% conversion rate.
Their play at even strength, though, is where Ottawa quietly shined. While some media types fawn and obsess over specialty unit play, the real key to success remains in even strength hockey, where teams on average spend forty-eight of sixty game minutes.. That's not to say an abhorrent unit can't sideline an entire season (
cc: Columbus Blue Jackets PK), but that largely, wins and losses come from the ownership of five-on-five hockey.
Don't take my word for it -- rather, glance at some of the best even strength hockey teams on a year-to-year basis, and note how regularly they finish and finish well when it comes to the regular season and playoffs.
Of the ten highest scoring teams at even strength, nine(!) finished in the post-season. Ottawa(178) finished sandwiched between Chicago(186) and Philadelphia(175). Only the Tampa Bay Lightning were unfortunate enough to miss game eighty-three, and as alluded to with the sub-note on Columbus, a lot of that had to do with one miserable aspect of the game -- keeping pucks out of their own net.
Although you may have expected such a coefficient or correlation, replacing goals for with shots for per sixty minutes yields similar results. The Ottawa Senators finished fifth in this category at 31.7 per game -- joining eight other playoff teams in the top-ten. Again, there was just one exception to the rule with the Colorado Avalanche at 31.0(8th).
Of the ten best teams at preventing goals at even strength, nine(!) finished in the post-season. The Ottawa Senators were slightly sub-par here at 162, joining only the Chicago Blackhawks as a playoff team that did not finish in the top-half of the league in goals against at even strength. Your lone exception here? The Minnesota Wild -- your polar opposite of the above-referenced Tampa Bay Lightning. The Wild couldn't score at all, and as such, missed the cut.
Bring it all together, and you have the top thirteen teams(+0.2 and up) in the National Hockey League at even strength -- including the Ottawa Senators(+0.2 5v5 +/- // 60) -- winning the majority of their hockey games.
What you have here is the National Hockey League divided right down the middle -- teams that play well at even strength, and teams that do not. Relying solely on specialty units to carry clubs is a pretty suicidal approach, and the numbers certainly back up my initial claim.
Following the loss of penalty magnets in Zenon Konopka, Matt Carkner, and Nick Foligno, the Ottawa Senators should almost automatically be a more disciplined team next season, and considering their +16 goal differential at even strength last year, that's a positive development. The Ottawa Senators -- a puck-possession team that wants to skate all two-hundred feet in control -- need to continue emphasizing clean, penalty-free play, giving types like Jason Spezza, Erik Karlsson, Daniel Alfredsson, et al. the opportunity to create scoring chances, and subsequently, score goals.
Reading through, one would almost certainly suggest that such simplistic ideology -- take less penalties, win more games -- could apply to every team in the NHL. For the most part, that's true. The emphasis here, though, is the kind of substantial leap the Ottawa Senators -- relative to their counterparts around the league -- could make. As one of the league's most penalized teams last year, a cleaner brand of hockey could create a far more impactful dent in the win percentage column in 2012-2013.
The alternative -- shoring up the penalty kill -- is another area worth addressing, but the importance of such a unit would be marginalized if a team wasn't forced to play down a man regularly.
Many teams played through last season running positive penalty differentials, yet finished with around the same kind of win/loss output as the often-undermanned Ottawa Senators. Flip the script, and Ottawa could piece together a season more impressive than the first one in Paul MacLean's already-laudable tenure.
Back with more tomorrow.
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