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Phil Kessel's Impact On Pittsburgh's Power Play |
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Prior to yesterday the only time we've seen Phil Kessel donning his Penguins crest was in this video:
Now for the first time we have visuals of him skating in some Penguins gear. Phil Kessel is training with Gary Roberts who tweeted out this photo yesterday:
In other Phil Kessel news Josh Yohe wrote a piece about him and the Penguins power play yesterday
It spoke about how Phil Kessel will be utilized in Mario Lemieux's old spot on the power play and how Rick Tocchet wants to utilize that option more often.
Nothing ground breaking from a logic standpoint but for years Pittsburgh has neglected that side of the ice on the power play. Given the fact that Kessel is not gun shy and will fire the puck this will impact how the oppositions diamond/box will shift when killing a penalty. When a PK unit knows a player won't shoot they can focus solely on the passing lanes. This is made even easier when the other team knows there is literally no threat on one side of the ice. The result is a lot of perimeter passing and not a lot of goal scoring IE: Penguins power play second half of 2014-15 season.
Phil Kessel is a very good passer so when teams over commit to his shooting lane he has the ability to find east/west passing seams. Guess who is on the other end of those seam passes? Only a couple generational players.
There is one more thing that I think will be great for Pittsburgh's power play and this is something I have observed watching Kessel's time in Toronto. As mentioned above Kessel does not hesitate to shoot the puck, but it isn't always shooting for the purpose of goal scoring. Like Alexander Ovechkin he has this great quick snap shot that he fires far pad/post for rebounds, skirmishes, and tip plays. If Pittsburgh were to play Sidney Crosby DOWN LOW ON THE POWER PLAY there would be a plethora of opportunities on the back door for 87 to cash in on.
Wonderful part about this idea is that Malkin is more than capable of accomplishing these same things on the other side with Hornqvist being the garbage collector on the far post. By having this symmetry and the ability to run an effective power play from both sides of the ice you create a lot of problems for the penalty killing unit.
No need to over think things as simple is better a lion's share of the time in hockey
The other alternative to this kind of setup is something I wrote about last year and it is a overload power play that morphs into an umbrella. You can find that setup
here
In that setup you have players constantly moving creating 2 on 1's both up high in the zone and down low.
If I'm the Penguins I roll with one of those two power plays and watch the goal totals soar.
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