Ehlers….
Reply With QuoteAnd perfect timing, Friday’s Athletic article had this excerpt:
“The case for Ehlers on the first unit
Winnipeg scored once on seven power play opportunities against Columbus and didn’t score on any of their three five-on-three attempts. (Connor’s five-on-four goal was scored just as a two-man advantage ended.)
Instead of taking over the game with the man advantage, Winnipeg exercised its tired old trope of losing the opening faceoff, struggling to establish control in the offensive zone and failing to open up the penalty kill with assertive movement. The Jets’ second unit, with Nikolaj Ehlers leading the zone entry charge, generated the same number of shot attempts as the first unit did — in less than half the ice time.
By the numbers, Winnipeg has the league’s 16th best power play. That’s an average number which should put some of the grief into context but Winnipeg is held back in some obvious ways. The Jets have the 29th highest faceoff percentage on the power play. Unsurprisingly, going back into their own zone to get the puck hurts the Jets’ shot rates: Winnipeg generates the 23rd most shots per minute of power play time. In a world where every shot was equally dangerous, Winnipeg’s power play would struggle just by spending less time set up and in formation.
The trade deadline could help the Jets out in the form of a Ryan O’Reilly or a Jonathan Toews but I’d argue that both of those players are second unit power play threats on the Jets. Ideally, you’d like Dubois (50 percent) and Scheifele (43.2 percent) to improve their individual numbers — or get more help from their wingers. Teams should win well over 50 percent of their power play faceoffs — like Adam Lowry (57.5 percent) does on the second unit. Even if you think of each faceoff as a single puck battle in a game with hundreds of them, thus diminishing their importance, faceoffs on special teams lead directly to 15-20 second swings in possession during the game’s most dangerous times.
If Winnipeg is going to continue to be one of the league’s worst power play faceoff teams, then it had better be great at gaining the zone after losing the initial draw. That’s Ehlers’ forte, even on a team that boasts Scheifele, Connor, Dubois and other speedsters.
Instead, Ehlers played 2:11 with the man advantage, roughly one-third the time awarded to the top unit. Ehlers is third on the team in terms of points per minute of power play time (trailing Connor and team leader Morrissey) and I think there’s a case for him to take minutes from Wheeler or Dubois — or simply for the second unit to get more of the workload.
“We’ve got to change some personnel up,” Bowness told reporters in Columbus after Thursday’s game. Asked why Ehlers was 11th in ice time among Jets skaters on Thursday, Bowness referenced special teams.
“He’s not on the first (power play) unit. They were out there a lot and he doesn’t kill penalties. It’s got nothing to do with injuries. We were trying to get him out there, but there were just too many penalties to get a regular flow of our lines.”
Ehlers says he’s 100 percent healthy and so does his head coach. I have patience for him to find his game at five-on-five after all the time he missed (although his steal to set up Wheeler’s goal against Seattle shows a high level of effectiveness). He’s been effective enough on the power play to earn more time.”
Originally Posted by Belexus75
