The thought, Rickard Rakell acknowledges, had entered his mind.
Almost as soon as it'd be erased.
"I had to shoot," as he'd recall for me late Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena, this after the Penguins' 2-1 preseason loss to the Red Wings. "Or, whatever I was going to do, I had to do it fast. And I had to be thinking about the net or somewhere else down low."
That, my friends, succinctly summarizes the new power play.
Rakell would score his side's lone goal ...
RAK CITY!!! π¨ pic.twitter.com/Ysl4Z2Mx9C
β Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 2, 2024
... although it didn't come on the power play, which would wind up an all-too-painfully-familiar 0 for 5 despite 10 shots on Detroit's Ville Husso and 9:08 total time with the man-advantage.
And even the postgame assessments sounded familiar.
βI thought it looked good," Mike Sullivan replied when I broached the power play. "We had a couple moments where it was a struggle but, for the most part, I thought it looked really good. They had a lot of looks. The puckβs moving, they're changing the point of attack, they're attacking the low ice, and they're creating a lot of opportunities off it. The speed on the entries is noticeable. When they come to that kind of speed on the entries, it's hard to stop. I think they're making progress. They didn't score, but they could've had a handful.β
Mm-hm.
Funny thing, though: He's right. Because what's been seen to date of this "quick-strike" power play, as Sullivan's termed it after it was templated this summer by him and his new assistant coach, David Quinn, hasn't carried over the slightest similarity to the season-long slog that pretty much undid the Penguins in 2023-24.
And I'll support that with a handful of visual examples based on my talks with Sullivan and almost everyone associated with the top power-play unit, as well as, most important, what'd be witnessed in this, the second preseason game in which Sullivan deployed most of his aces.
Let's start with the start ...
β DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) October 2, 2024
... because no power play starts without a setup. And few setups occur smoothly without a sharp zone entry, ideally one that doesn't forfeit possession of the puck.
Remember all those sloooooooowwwww skates through the neutral zone last season? And then the figurative clothesline awaiting the Penguins' inevitable turnover as they'd plod toward the attacking blue line? Or the hopeless dump that'd be turned right back out by the goaltender?
Well, that up there's what it looks like when a living legend's streaking up ice instead. There are three Red Wings back and, even so, all three keep backing up at the sight of Sidney Crosby at all-out steam. They back up so far, actually, that there's ample time/space for Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust to tic-tac-toe the puck back to Sid for a chance off the same rush.
And speaking of the rush ...
β DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) October 2, 2024
... there's no penalty for producing power-play goals without setting up at all. As Sullivan aptly put it earlier in training camp, power plays are "still hockey."
In the above scene, it's Sid soaring through the neutral zone again, this time fed by Kris Letang and sparked further upon gaining the zone by Geno's momentum-preserving pass right back to him. From there, Sid could spin, plant himself somewhere and wait for everyone else to get where they're supposed to be. Or, he can do what he did, and that's to go right back to Rakell for an immediate -- and dangerous -- chance.
Sullivan and Quinn have stressed, all through camp, that quantity matters as much as quality on the power play. If PP1's on the rink for a minute-plus aiming for high-level hockey artistry, they'll get maybe one crack and chug off. Whereas, if they focus on both volume and retrieval -- chasing the puck down after an attempted play's been quashed -- they could provide more opportunities for all that skill to convert.
Here's one of Sid's attempts through the Detroit box getting rejected ...
β DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) October 2, 2024
... to which he simply collects and continues. No pause. No reset. Just keep pushing.
It's worth noting, too, that Letang operates from atop the umbrella formation that both he and injured Erik Karlsson have long loved, while apparently staying aware that Sullivan and Quinn want to see the Penguins use both sides of the rink to stretch out the penalty-killing box of opponents that, like the Red Wings, keep such boxes compact.
And, as Letang would tell me, it isn't just about the sides. Or even mostly about the sides.
"It's a different look," he'd say. "Obviously, there are areas of the ice I think we didn't utilize last season as well as we used to in the past. We played more at the top last season and, now, we want to use more of the bottom of the ice to set up the top. We have tons of skilled guys in the low ice, and I think we have to utilize that."
Yep. This is the big one. This is the biggest change of all, "the low ice" that Sullivan cited.
There wasn't anything sillier about last season's power play than watching the point men go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, seemingly waiting for Patric Hornqvist to magically burst out of the tunnel and stick his butt in the goaltender's face. Except that there'd never be any net-front presence, nor anything close. So the point shot would be seen and stopped with ease. No rebounds. No redirects. No sweat.
This base power play, as it's been described to me, flips that script:
β’ It puts the puck on the stick of the two most important players, Sid and Geno, and it challenges them to penetrate the box with passes or, better yet, penetrate the goaltender with shots. But also, as Letang stated, to have "the bottom of the ice set up the top."
Kinda like this:
β DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) October 2, 2024
β’ The point man atop the umbrella's the conductor, but he, too, can use his wand to shoot. If Letang/Karlsson don't like what they see, they're to release first, think later.
β’ And everyone else, whether it's Rakell or Rust or Michael Bunting or Drew O'Connor, are there to make mayhem inside and at the bottom of that box, another stark departure from the recent past. They're not fixed. They're in motion, even up high if that's what it takes to pry open passing/shooting lanes within that box.
"Everything has to go through," is how Rakell elaborated for me. "The puck goes through, people go through ... everything has to go through. We have to fight for that space in the middle."
β’ All the while, the puck doesn't stop. Yet another stark departure.
Count the touches in a span of the same number of seconds, while also recognizing all the motion, all the support and, just for the heck of it, Husso's glove hand ...
β DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) October 2, 2024
... then count the days -- the Rangers arrive in a week -- until it's all put to a real test.
β’ Thanks for reading my hockey coverage.
β’ And to everyone who listens to my Daily Shot of Penguins podcast year-round:
