Looking at Some of the Power Play Adjustments the Dallas Stars Made Last Year

Neil Graham and Glen Gulutzan will have a choice to make

Hockey is such a fluid game that it can be tough to talk about specific strategies. Most teams, like the Dallas Stars, talk extensively about what to do in certain situations, because you always need a contingency plan.

You can talk about a “system” all day long, but inevitably, you will face situations where players are going to have to make reads and make choices. Penalty killers will have to judge when to attack the puck carrier and when to stay in a shooting or passing lane, and that becomes even more complicated if one of your players didn’t track well coming back down the ice in transition.

But on the power play, you have more space to work with. Thus, you can exert more control. And that’s where the Stars showed a couple of different ways to approach things last year, as they changed not only personnel (as we’ve covered) but also some of their overall approaches to the man-advantage as the year went on.

Those changes make it much more fascinating as we try to guess what approach they’ll start next year with, particularly after they’ve replaced both the head coach and the power play coach with new blood.

The Stars will have options, but what kind of options are we talking about? Well, to get an idea of the foundation of the Stars’ power play last year, let’s start by looking at a power play goal in Boston on October 24. (Warning: lots of videos and some screenshots ahead.)