Special Teams [Stats!]

Something that caught my eye a few days ago was that shorthanded goals aren't factored into a team's PP and PK percentages. This doesn't make a lot of sense.

Imagine the following two imaginary teams, Chemmy's Crusaders, and PPP's Punchingbags:

My team is clearly better on the power play, right?

What if I told you that Chemmy's Crusaders gave up 15 short handed goals, while PPP's Punchingbags only gave up 2? Clearly that changes things. In a sport like hockey, the fact is that it doesn't matter how many goals you score, it matters how many more goals you score than your opponent (a fact not lost on Leafs fans).

Subtracting a team's SHGA from the PPG, and subtracting a team's SHGF from the PK goals allowed gives us a clearer picture of what a team's special teams do. This is really simple, why is it not more common to factor in shorthanded goals for and shorthanded goals against into power play and penalty kill percentages? Our example teams' stat lines now look like this:

A similarly obvious approach to the penalty kill follows:

Here's a list of that data for the NHL currently.

Power Play:

Penalty Kill:

Like I said, this isn't exactly rocket science, just a little clearer view on special team's in this blogger's humble opinion.