Led by Lucas Raymond, Robby Fabbri and Patrick Kane, the Red Wings’ power play has clicked into efficient form as of late. As games become more important in a playoff race, these extra goals are a crucial boost to the offense.
Led by Lucas Raymond, Robby Fabbri and Patrick Kane, the Red Wings’ power play has clicked into efficient form as of late. As games become more important in a playoff race, these extra goals are a crucial boost to the offense.
Sometimes these past few games, it has seemed like the Detroit Red Wings need a miracle. With eight losses in the past 10 games leading to a precarious position in the playoff hunt, they need anything and everything to go their way.
If there’s been such a saving grace for the Red Wings as of late, it’s the power play, a unit that came up clutch with a momentum-sparking goal against Columbus on Tuesday. Over the past eight games, the unit is clicking at a 28.5% rate. If you took that and compared it to the rest of the league, it would rank second. The six power play goals in that eight game span account for 30% of their offense. If you thought Detroit was struggling now, imagine where it would be without that power play success.
Hidden in that success is a newfound recipe for success. The Red Wings have struck gold with a power play trio of Robby Fabbri, Patrick Kane and Lucas Raymond, who account for five of those power play goals in this recent hot streak.
“As like me, Fabs (Fabbri) and Lucas, we can kind of work some plays as like a little triangle unit there,” Kane said. “And we found Lucas in the slot a bunch of times to score some goals.”
Kane’s right, Detroit has found Raymond wide open as of late. In a breakout stretch of a breakout season, Raymond accounts for all four power play goals over the past five games. If Raymond’s success in leading the offense lately has drawn so much attention, the method of his March madness has slipped through the cracks. He’s been nearly unstoppable on the power play during this stretch, giving his team a pulse under the most stress-inducing of circumstances.
Such success comes down to execution, but it also comes down to creativity. Whereas a power play allows a good unit to follow a structured plan to share the puck on the perimeter and find a lane to shoot through, the unit also has to be creative in diagnosing weaknesses in the opposing penalty kill.
That ability to read and react has become even more important with a lot of NHL teams implementing the diamond formation to on their kills, which creates excess pressure on the perimeter in exchange for some softer spots inside the structure. By reading such schemes — and finding Raymond in those soft spots down low — the Red Wings have been able to cash in on the power play more often than not. Without Raymond’s ability to get loose in dangerous territory, these goals would not exist.
But they also wouldn’t exist without Kane and Fabbri’s combined playmaking to cycle the puck around pressure. Raymond wouldn’t have scored his goal against the Blue Jackets without Kane making a deft pass to Fabbri by the goal line, and Fabbri moving it to Raymond at the net for the goal.
“It’s just, again, getting those hands lined up together,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. “There’s a lot of different things. Obviously, Patrick (Kane) is a world class half wall power play guy. He will be creative with his approach at times, but you still need those direct set plays for some success. And that helped us last night. Having the hands available, lefty to a lefty to a righty, in the back of the net. Most power plays when they’re humming, they’re playing within structure with a little room for some creativity.”
Kane added his perspective with a lot of praise for Raymond: “He’s been really good in there. I mean, he moves so well, and he finds the open space. He knows whether to be low or high, and he’s really been productive in that spot. But I mean, it’s about all options. It’s not just him, it’s using the point to shoot to try and create some space. Obviously we look at the seam a lot too, and you always want to be a shooting threat yourself. So just go through all the options and take what’s given.”
Therein lies the success of the Red Wings’ power play as of late — it’s making the right reads to find open shooters. That doesn’t make success automatic — they’ve missed the net entirely or otherwise missed their chances a lot during this power play hot streak. However, they’ve put themselves in good standing by making the right reads.
Some of the recent power play streak might owe itself to the confidence with which the unit is operating. It’s a bit of a feedback loop, but the unit believes it can score at this rate and that leads to more trust in its instincts. And hey, it helps when one of those instincts is to feed the hot hand in Raymond.
“I think it’s been somewhat productive throughout the year since I’ve been here,” Kane said. “Just sometimes you go through streaks where you're scoring a lot and sometimes you go through times where you’re not scoring as much. But I think as long as all the options are there and you feel confident in the group and what you can create 5-on-4, then you’re gonna get your opportunities, you’re gonna get your chances whether you put them in or not.”
Power play success builds a foundation for Detroit’s offense in this stretch, but that doesn’t mean it’s been successful at turning this surge into wins. It has only scored one power play goal in a win — Raymond’s first goal against the Blue Jackets. In a key stretch of the season for a playoff race that’s increasingly coming down to the wire, the power play nonetheless serves as a little extra wind beneath their Red Wings.
If Detroit can maintain its scintillating power play down the stretch, that would serve as a major advantage toward reaching the playoffs. Even maintaining some measure of its success could be huge.
As long as Raymond, Kane and Fabbri keep clicking like this, the Red Wings’ power play could continue to be a significant boost.
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