When a team in the National Lacrosse League goes on the power play, the typical outcome is a goal. In 2013 the power play success rate across the league was 51.4 percent on 712 total attempts; so far this season, the league is at exactly 50 percent success rate on 184 power plays.
With such high risks associated with taking penalties, getting into frequent penalty trouble can easily be the difference between winning and losing. The top three teams for most penalty kill situations in 2013 had a combined record of 22-26; the three teams with the fewest short-handed situations were a combined 28-20.
The reality is that even if you have a high success rate for killing penalties, if you wind up short-handed enough, it’ll eventually bite you. The Toronto Rock had the best penalty kill unit in the NLL in 2013, killing 62.5 percent of their short-handed situations, but that still means that if they had a bad game and gave up 10 power play opportunities to the opposition, chances are they’d also be giving up four goals.
Happily for the Rock, they also played very disciplined lacrosse, giving up the second-fewest power play chances in the league (64).
If you’re on the other end of the scale, things aren’t quite so good. The Calgary Roughnecks were short-handed more than any other team in the NLL last year, 107 times. They posted the third-worst penalty kill success rate (44.9 percent) and, not surprisingly, gave up the most penalty kill goals against (59).
In spite of the deficit this put the Roughnecks in, they were scoring goals like they were going out of style last year and, as often as not, were able to simply out-gun opponents most nights.
You might say that this problem has been Calgary’s undoing for a few years now. In spite of having a game in hand on the Philadelphia Wings and two on the Colorado Mammoth, the 2-2 Roughnecks currently have the most penalty kill situations of any team in the NLL (32) and led the league in that unfortunate category in 2013 and 2012 as well.
When the Roughnecks last won the Champion’s Cup, they did it with disciplined play, recording the 11th fewest penalty minutes in the league (256). Since then, things have been going the wrong direction and, perhaps not surprisingly, they haven’t made it back to the finals.
By contrast, the Rochester Knighthawks in 2012 gave up the second-fewest short-handed situations (81) and, although their effectiveness on the penalty kill was the second worst in the NLL (45.7 percent), that translated into exactly middle of the pack—fifth—in total penalty kill goals allowed (44), putting them in a good position to win the Champion’s Cup. Last year, they were in the middle of the pack for number of penalty kills (76) and had the second best penalty kill percentage (57.9), helping lead them to a second-straight Champion’s Cup.
As this season wears on, it may become apparent that the shortened bench is beginning to play a factor in penalty kill success rates, particularly among the worst offenders. If your defense is out there constantly, working extra hard to keep those penalty kill goals from piling up, they may not have a lot left in the tank at the end of games to do much of anything and this could leave teams even more vulnerable than before.
The bottom line is simple: taking too many penalties leads to losses and undisciplined play will cost you sooner or later.
Probably sooner.
