Analytics with Alison: What's Behind the Kraken's Power Play Success?

A part of the Kraken's game that has drawn attention lately (for all the right reasons) is the power play. After getting two goals with the man advantage in the second game of the season, this part of Seattle's special teams went cold. In the first 12 games of the year, the Kraken scored three times in 26 attempts including a span of seven games without a power-play goal (each of those games included power play opportunities).

But then the calendar turned to November. Four games into a new month, the Kraken scored a power-play goal in Las Vegas. Then, in the nine games that followed, Seattle scored with the man advantage seven times and was held off the scoresheet in just three games, (one being Dec. 29 in Buffalo when Seattle did not have a power play opportunity).

What goes into that kind of turnaround?
"Some of that (is that) chemistry is really important," Dave Hakstol said. "Just systematically getting pieces down, whether it's on a (penalty kill) or on the power play, it's important to be able to go out there and play fast without too much thought process. But still have that comfortability where you know what your line mates are doing, what your teammates are doing on the ice. That's part of it.
"The other piece as we get to this point of the year is just about execution, right? And being able to go out and execute at an important time."
This makes sense, right? Of course, players should be getting more comfortable with one another and finding ways to connect more effectively. But can we measure that in any way other than goals and see if something really changed?
Let's dig in.
If we split this young season into two chunks by games played, the Nov. 9 date becomes a nice demarcation point. Up to and including that date, all but one team had played at least 10 games, and since then, all teams have played 8 except for three (excluding teams with schedule postponements). With those two ranges in mind, we pulled data for 5-on-4 play from EvolvingHockey.com for each portion of the season to date.
Here's what we found.

What we see is that the Kraken are shooting the puck more overall and creating more dangerous chances, with the biggest rate of increase coming in shots that are on target. That kind of improvement hints that chemistry can manifest in measurable ways!
There's one last thing that is important to look at and that is shooting percentage. We can definitely be confident that improvement is happening on the power play because of the numbers we just looked at - underlying behaviors ARE getting better and that's our best predictor of success. But, that may not mean that goals always come at the same pace as they are right now.
During the first 11 games, the Kraken's power play shooting percentage was just 5.2% - that is well below the league average power play shooting percentage this season (12.5%). That difference indicates a degree of luck that was NOT working in the Kraken's favor. And this is what "regression" is all about. When a measure is far away from average, it will eventually work its way closer to average. So, for Seattle, that shooting percentage was always bound to improve.
Similarly, in the latest 11 games, the Kraken's power play is finishing at a rate of 22.13%, so there's some over-correction (regression) coming to again get closer to that average number. For what it's worth, on the season as a whole, the Kraken's power play shooting percentage is 10.63%, so while there's still probably going to be some ebbs and flows, on the season as a whole the total production is almost right.
There are even more things we can examine, of course: how quickly is the Kraken getting into their power play formation or have their zone entries become more effective? Those will be fun topics for another day. But for now, we can see that when it comes to the power play clicking, the team is getting some puck luck, but they are also improving the underlying play that leads to more success.