How Sustainable is the Red Wings Penalty Kill Improvement?

Since Todd McLellan's arrival, the Red Wings have pointed to two marked improvements to help fuel their ongoing four-game winning streak: an increased feeling of confidence and a more successful penalty kill.

It's hardly a leap to link those two ideas together.  As goaltender Alex Lyon pointed out yesterday, "It's a bad feeling when you get a man in the box, and you feel uncomfortable, so I think we've put a lot of emphasis on that and brought a lot of attention around that, and it's been good."

With that said, empirically, Detroit's improvement in that area has been marginal: 68.8% before the coaching change, versus 76.9% after.  That's not insignificant, but it still suggests a PK unit that is not exactly thriving, from which the question begs: Just how much has the Red Wings' penalty kill improved and how sustainable is that improvement?

If we use some more advanced stats than just outcomes, the picture is similar.  Per Natural Stat Trick, Detroit conceded 11.85 actual goals-per-60 and 8.38 expected goals-per-60 on the PK; since, they've dropped the actual goals against to 7.69-per-60, but the xG figure has actually climbed to 8.89.  Obviously, the second sample size is much smaller than the first, but those numbers

When asked by The Hockey News this morning about what he's liked about the PK's growth since his takeover, McLellan pointed to the number of trips to the box, saying, "I like the fact that we haven't had to penalty kill a lot.  That allows us an opportunity to gain some confidence when we're out there.  We only need to kill one or two in a night, and we get it done, we feel good...But if you're killing seven or eight, odds are you're gonna get stung a little bit, and now it creates a little bit of a potential doubt factor."  Here again, the numbers affirm this assertion, but not radically.  Under Lalonde, Detroit had to kill 3.0 power plays again.  Under McLellan, that figure has fallen to 2.6.

McLellan also said he's seen growth in "the clarification of responsibilities and jobs" for his PK unit, adding, "The way we explain it, it's not necessarily two forwards and two defensemen.  It's certain pieces, and we've given names to those pieces, and each one of them understands—or I hope they understand—their roles.  For the most part, they've played them well."

Perhaps that sense of understanding will manifest in the xG numbers catching up to the improved results, with both eventually trending in the right direction.  And again, it's worth pointing out that five games (one of which did not really allow the new coach to make substantive changes, given that he'd only met his team that day) is not a big sample when it comes to any xG analysis.  However, it's also not hard to make the (statistical) case that the penalty kill is a site where we can localize potential instability in the "new coach bump" Detroit has enjoyed under McLellan.  I spoke to this dynamic further in the featured video above.

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