On Tuesday, the Blackhawks made head coach Jeremy Colliton's two-year extension official. His contract will run through the 2022-23 season.
Chicago's power play was an on-again, off-again issue prior to Jeremy landing behind the bench on Nov. 6 of 2018, and one that often drew giant red flags given the firepower the Blackhawks still possess.
It saw a surge in production early under Colliton, but again dropped as the Hawks finished last year's regular season with the fourth worst man advantage, converting at 15.2%.
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Here's how the power play units have looked at training camp with the season opener being tomorrow in Tampa Bay against the Lightning, the defending Stanley Cup champs:
Unit 1: Patrick Kane, Dylan Strome, Alex DeBrincat, Andrew Shaw, Adam Boqvist
Unit 2: Dominik Kubalik, Lucas Wallmark, Brandon Pirri, Pius Suter; Duncan Keith
On the latest episode of the Blackhawks Talk Podcast, Colliton dove into what makes Chicago's power play go stagnant and how he and the Hawks can bring it back to life this year and keep it consistent.
NHL
"A lot of it is shooting percentage, and hockey's random sometimes," Colliton said on the podcast. "It depends what analytics you want to use, but if you compare the chances we created, the quality of chances we created last year to the amount we created when we had our hot streak my first year, it was pretty close. A lot of it is conversion. When you look at your power play, you got to try to separate that out somewhat because to some extent, you can't control it. Post and in and post and out, you can't let that push you in the wrong direction as far as where you're moving. You're trying to create volume, you're trying to create quality on the power play. Certainly we're not happy. We know we need to get better there and that forms what we're trying to do: we're trying to have two units that have different dimensions, different things that the killers on the opposite teams need to prepare for.
"A couple keys: we need to move more, we need to be more active, can't be static. If you have a puck, if it's on your stick, it's off your stick or if you can't move the puck, you need to move yourself and force the (opposition penalty) kill to make reads, and the passing lanes, the shooting lanes need to change. And the second thing is, do shoot it. Shoot and converge.
"Edmonton had a fantastic power play last year and you think, 'Well it's (Connor) McDavid, it's (Leon) Draisaitl and (Ryan) Nugent-Hopkins and of course they did, but the thing you need to... of course we looked at it because we were playing them in the first round, we had to prepare for it. They just find a way to get the puck in there. They almost pass it to the goalie and then four guys converge. They have some skill, no question, so when they come up with that rebound, the puck's in the net or it's one more play to the backside and it's in, but ultimately, the puck needs to go to the net and then we have to converge and we have to win those second pucks, those rebounds, those battles and that's often what the great power plays do."