What Is a Power Play in Hockey? Explained

The 2022-23 Edmonton Oilers scored on 32.4 percent of their power plays, the best single-season rate in NHL history. That one number captures why teams pour so much practice time into the man advantage: a good power play can swing a game, a series, even a season. So what is a power play in hockey, how do the different man-advantage situations work, and what is the penalty kill trying to do on the other side? Here is the whole system through one idea: The Man-Advantage Math.

A power play happens when one team has more skaters on the ice than the other because an opponent is serving a penalty in the box. For two minutes, or sometimes more, one side gets to attack five-on-four while the short-handed team scrambles to survive. Almost every NHL game is decided in these windows, which is why "special teams" is hockey shorthand for the power play and penalty kill together.

One number shows the ceiling of a great power play, and the other names the situation that produces the cleanest scoring chance in the sport.

What a Power Play in Hockey Means

When a player commits a penalty, he goes to the penalty box and his team must play short a skater until the penalty expires. The team with the full complement now has the power play, a temporary numerical edge it uses to set up in the offensive zone and pepper the net. The simplest version is five skaters against four, since most penalties remove one player at a time. The advantage lasts as long as the penalty does, which is where the math starts to matter.

The power play exists because penalties have to cost something. If breaking a rule only sent a player to the box with no further consequence, there would be little reason not to hook, trip or slash whenever it helped. The man advantage turns every penalty into a genuine threat, and a team that takes too many trips to the box usually pays for it on the scoreboard. Our guide to penalty minutes breaks down exactly which infractions send a player away and for how long.

The Man-Advantage Math: 5-on-4, 5-on-3 and More

Not every advantage carries the same weight. A two-minute minor is the standard penalty, and it ends the instant the power-play team scores, sending the penalized player back out. A five-minute major, given for the most serious infractions, is different: it runs the full five minutes no matter how many goals the other team scores, so a team can give up two or three on a single major. A double minor counts as two minors back to back, for four minutes total.

When a team takes a second penalty while already short-handed, the edge becomes five-on-three, a two-man advantage that is the closest thing to a free look in hockey. There is also a quirk before the whistle even blows: on a delayed penalty, when the team about to be penalized does not have the puck, play continues until they touch it, so the other team often pulls its goalie for a sixth attacker and an extra beat of pressure. Every one of these situations is the same idea in different sizes, the math of one team having more bodies than the other.

The Penalty Kill

The flip side of the power play is the penalty kill, the job of the short-handed team. Killing a penalty means defending for two minutes a skater down, blocking shots, clearing the puck and running out the clock. A team on the penalty kill is also allowed to ice the puck without a whistle, the one time a team may deliberately ice it for relief, which lets defenders fire it the length of the rink to buy a breather. Our icing explainer covers that exception in full.

A penalty kill is not purely defensive, either. A short-handed team can still score, and a goal scored while down a skater is called a shorthanded goal, one of the biggest momentum swings in the game. Coaches treat both halves of special teams as the difference between winning and losing.

Special teams are so important. We won so many games throughout the playoffs and regular season on special teams: power play, penalty kill have been really good.

— Kris Knoblauch, then Edmonton Oilers head coach, NHL.com

Reading PP% and PK%

Two numbers tell you how good a team's special teams are. Power-play percentage, or PP%, is simply power-play goals divided by power-play opportunities; a rate in the low 20s is solid, and anything above 25 percent is elite. Penalty-kill percentage, or PK%, measures how often a team kills off the penalties it takes, with the best units living in the mid-80s. Add the two together and you get a quick read on whether a team wins the special-teams battle.

The ceiling for a power play is that 2022-23 Oilers team, whose 32.4 percent shattered the previous record of 31.9 percent set by the 1977-78 Montreal Canadiens, the first benchmark since the NHL began tracking the stat in 1977. Those rates are why coaches guard their special teams so fiercely.

Our special teams have been a difference maker for us this year in the playoffs, and they have to continue to be.

— Pete DeBoer, then Dallas Stars head coach, NHL.com

Special teams sit at the center of how games are won. The same thread runs through how zone entries are policed by offside, how overtime is decided, what the plus/minus stat does and does not count, how standings and tiebreakers stack up, and even how long a hockey game really runs once the penalties pile up.

Sources and Reporting

• Power play (sporting term): man-advantage definition, minor and major rules
• Guinness World Records: 2022-23 Oilers record (32.4%, 89/275), 1977-78 Montreal mark
• NHL.com: Kris Knoblauch on special teams
• NHL.com: Pete DeBoer on special teams

The Verdict: The Man-Advantage Math

So the next time a penalty is called and a team sets up with the extra skater, you will know exactly what is at stake. A power play is a man advantage that lasts as long as the penalty, a minor dies the moment a goal goes in while a major never does, a five-on-three is the golden chance, and the penalty kill fights all of it a skater down. The Man-Advantage Math is the quiet engine of special teams, and it is where seasons like the 2022-23 Oilers' are made.