The Toronto Maple Leafs spent time after practice watching videos Sunday, Dec. 11th, 2011, videos that starred their own penalty killing units as they sought a way to improve their woeful PK. The club was sitting in 29th, second-to-last, in the league at stopping opposition power plays.
Videos long-ago became a big part of hockey and when an NHL team allows a goal every 4 penalties - they were sitting at a 74.3 rating - it seems as good a tactic as any. As they looked at the PK the Maple Leafs were sitting 6th overall in the NHL's eastern conference at 15-11-3.
Despite that winning record, while scoring 91 times this season they have allowed 94 goals; no other team that is over one game above .500 has allowed more goals than they've scored and improvement on the PK would go a long ways to preventing that stat from continuing to move in the wrong direction.
Maple Leafs PK Unit Watches Videos
PK problems have stood out more in early December after New Jersey, not a powerhouse on the PP, scored twice with the man advantage while beating the Leafs 3-2 in overtime, and Washington scored all 4 of their goals on the PP in a 4-2 win. It's not surprising after those performances that Leaf coaching staff decided it was time for a video look at their PK units.
"We've watched a lot of video today and worked on some things after practice," Leafs coach Ron Wilson told the media afterward. "I think it's just two games that have popped up and we've got to get back to what we were doing for a month (during November)."
The problems seem to be numerous, from not blocking shots, break-downs in positional play and on two occasions they were victims of unlucky bounces that went right onto the stick of opposition players. They've been getting good goaltending from Jonas Gustavsson and the recently-returned James Reimer.
Leafs Colby Armstrong Back after 23 Games
The return of another Leaf, winger Colby Armstrong, after an ankle injury had kept him out 23 games is sure to boost the PK but not immediately. Once he's got his game back he'll join Dave Steckel, Joey Crabb, Tim Connolly and Phillipe Dupuis as forwards on the PK.
"Armie's only played one game so it's hard to just say 'Boom, we're going to give you 17 or 18 minutes and a lot of penalty killing' so we've got to gradually break him in there," Wilson said. "But they'll be some different pairs and different looks in the next game."
With doubtless much of those decisions coming from having watched the video.
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