The Tape: Proper penalty kill

The Avs penalty kill has been a mess lately but you wouldn’t know it from the Sharks game.  The Avs have a bottom ten PK in the NHL but managed to suppress San Jose effectively through four minutes of 5 on 4 play. While some of that can certainly be credited to the Sharks ineptitude the Avs can use this as a building block. On this iteration of The Tape, we look at what worked on the Avs penalty kill.

1. Make saves. The Avs did a fantastic job limiting the Sharks shots to the perimeter throughout the game but at the end of the day, your goaltender needs to be your best penalty killer. By default, someone is always going to be open when a team is down a man so when a pass inevitably gives someone some open space the goalie is going to have to make a stop. Here Grubauer tracks the pass across and gets fully square to Burns as he is walking in leaving little to shoot at and then control the rebound and push it safely to the corner.

2. Clean clears. Even against the Sharks, this was one the Avs struggled to do consistently but the contrast of when the Avs get possession and can send the puck the length of the ice compared to a failed clear is night and day. It’s a difference of 20 wasted seconds. Three clean clears and half of the kill is spent without any danger at all. On both examples, you’ll notice two key factors: elevating the puck and sending it up the middle. Rimming the puck around the boards on the ice is both too predictable and too easy to stop. Creativity is encouraged in getting the puck out of the zone.

3. Strong blue line. You’ll start to notice that the best penalty kill is one that never lets the offense get set up in the first place. The Avs like to run one forechecking forward on the PK that forces action out of the other team. When you combine this with stacking the other three killers on the blue line it can create a log jam that is tough to break. By slowing the offense down through the neutral zone you don’t need to sag off and surrender the blue line for free. A smart step up can force a team to reset their breakout entirely or in some cases even lead to a shorthanded break.

4. Puck management. While sending the puck down the ice is never the wrong decision on the PK, when you have the time and space to hang on to it a bit longer it is usually a good idea. A player can take another 10-15 seconds off the clock and allow his teammates to get a clean change simply by skating a lap with the puck. In the clip below Calvert is in a 2 on 2 situation where odds of a quality opportunity coming to fruition are low. He opts to just carry the puck in behind the net and eat it, killing time instead of giving up a potential turnover.

5. Keeping the puck to the perimeter. When the opposing team inevitably gets into the zone and set up the main goal is to limit the quality of the opportunity. The Avs have struggled a lot with letting pucks through the center of the ice but against the Sharks, it wasn’t happening. The clip below showcases some of the Avs issues with clearing the puck but they make up for it by preventing the Sharks from getting off the edges of the offensive zone.

6. Faceoffs. One nitpick here, on a night where the Avs dominated the faceoff circle even leading to multiple goals, they lost every single one on the penalty kill. Winning the initial faceoff regularly leads to an immediate clear and takes a bunch of time off the clock right away. No clip for this one since the Avs failed to accomplish it.