The 16th ranked PP% this year is the Seattle Kraken at 21.2%. We're second worst at 14.3% above only the Flyers at 12.7% (lol). We've had 36 PP goals so far in 252 opportunities. The league average in the same number of opportunities would have 252 x 0.212 = 53 goals in that same spread.
Do you think the additional 17 goals we would have with a league average powerplay would make a difference in the standings? How many more points would we have? I'm sure you can comb through all the games and find 1 goal losses where we had tons of opportunities and find enough standings points to comfortably secure us the WC2 or even Metro 3 spot. So I did!
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Glancing through this spreadsheet I wanted to find every instance of a 1 goal loss where we had 2 or more powerplay opportunities and scored on zero of them. Here's the list:
11/22 NYR 0-1 L - 0 PPG 5 PPO
11/24 BUF 2-3 L - 0 PPG 2 PPO
11/28 NSH 2-3 OTL - 0 PPG 2 PPO
12/02 PHI 3-4 OTL - 0 PPG 5 PPO
12/04 PHI 1-2 OTL - 0 PPG 3 PPO
01/11 VAN 3-4 OTL - 0 PPG 4 PPO
01/13 CAR 2-3 OTL - 0 PPG 4 PPO
02/10 WPG 1-2 L - 0 PPG 3 PPO
02/20 NYI 4-5 OTL - 0 PPG 3 PPO
03/24 COL 4-5 OTL - 0 PPG 2 PPO
03/30 CBJ 3-4 OTL - 0 PPG 2 PPO
04/08 TOR 2-3 OTL - 0 PPG 5 PPO
That's 9 OTLs and 3 regulation Ls that could have been turned into 2 points if we scored one measly PPG. 15 standings points. Now there's no guarantee that those 17 additional goals came within these 12 critical games. 17/82 is about one additional goal every 5 games. So I'm sure it would flip about 1/5th of those games into wins. This also doesn't account for one goal losses where the other team scored an empty netter.
That's it. I didn't really have any other point other than showing how many points we've pissed away with our anemic PP. I'd go out on a limb and say we'd probably have about 5 more standings points if we had a simply league average power play.