How much have special teams cost the Calgary Flames?

Roughly a quarter into the season, the Calgary Flames have the worst special teams in the NHL. With a success rate of 8.4%, their powerplay is the indisputably the worst; their penalty kill, a 72.7% affair, is ranked 29th. 

The two teams near them in ineptitude? The Ottawa Senators have the NHL’s second worst powerplay, but the third best penalty kill; the Chicago Blackhawks, meanwhile, have the worst penalty kill in the league, but rank 14th on the powerplay.

No – the Flames are truly in a league of their own when it comes to terrible special teams, on both sides of the puck. And it’s reasonable to presume this has cost the 8-12-1 club its fair share of wins.

But how many? This we can’t measure for certain, obviously; we don’t know if that one extra powerplay goal or one extra successful penalty kill truly would have gotten them a win. But we can, at the very least, see how many times a complete failure on special teams has cost them – and how much better off they might have been if their special teams were even just average.

For the record, that means a powerplay success rate of 17.5% (the Edmonton Oilers, 15th in the NHL, more than double the Flames’) and a penalty kill success rate of 83.3% (more than 10% than the Flames currently).

By my quick count, there are eight games the Flames have lost this season that can be blamed on really poor special teams efforts.

Here, I’ve broken them down in terms of what kind of goals the Flames’ opponent scored (even strength, powerplay, shorthanded), what kind of goals the Flames scored, and how successful both teams were on the powerplay.

Through these eight games, the Flames have had 27 powerplay opportunities. They have scored on zero of their attempts. The first four of these games took place in October, while the latter four have been in November, so this has been an ongoing problem.

When we discount empty netters, five of these were one-goal games – Edmonton, St. Louis, Washington, Dallas, and Chicago – indicating that just one successful conversion on the powerplay would have gotten the Flames at least a point, and the chance to battle for two.

That’s asking for a powerplay success rate of five out of 17, or 29% – a little high for just about any team. Three out of 17, however, would be about 17.6% – or average. That would be entirely reasonable to expect, especially considering in two of these games the Flames had five powerplay chances each.

Those extra three points would see the Flames with 20, or just about in a playoff spot. And that’s assuming three overtime losses – if they had gone on to win those three games, they would have 23 points, which would be good to be tied for the top of the Pacific Division.

Conversely, in those same five games, if the Flames had stopped just one extra powerplay goal, they would have been tie games anyway, so the penalty kill takes some of the blame, too. This stretch sees them surrender 14 powerplay goals on 31 kills, or a successful kill rate of 55%; with five extra goals stopped, we’d be looking at a success rate of 71% – still not good, because that’s roughly where the Flames are now as a whole, but again, that’s a lot of points left on the table.

And those are just the games when a single goal could have made the difference – to say nothing of the particularly special disaster the most recent Sabres game was. The Anaheim game was another particularly poor showing for the penalty kill.

We’re a quarter of the way through the season, so there is still a ton of games to be played. But as things stand right now, it’s entirely reasonable to point fingers at both special teams. Right now, they’re the difference between being a bottom of the barrel team, or a top team in the division.

It isn’t fair to just cherrypick the games in which special teams have cost the Flames. Let’s take a look at the games where they’ve actually won because of them, too.

The Flames have their powerplay and penalty kill to thank for their win against Chicago. They have their penalty kill to thank for their win against San Jose, particularly as they got into penalty trouble early that game and managed to hold off the attack.

I’m hesitant to include a game in which the Flames went one-for-six on the powerplay as a “this was a good game for special teams”; however, it was a 1-0 game in which the Flames were a +1 in the special teams battle, so they kind of did win them that game – even it was more tense an outcome than it really had any right to be.

These are three games in which the Flames won the special teams battle. That’s 14% of their season so far, compared to the 38% of it that has been ruined by poor special teams.

There have been a couple of games this season in which the Flames put up a pretty bad special teams effort, but went on to win the game anyway.

Neither Buffalo nor Calgary displayed great special teams in their first game against each other, but the Sabres’ one powerplay goal – on one fewer attempt – was enough to get them a point as the game went into overtime, something the Flames would have only been so lucky to have in their eight losses detailed above.

As for the Ottawa game, the Flames were losing until the Senators had to switch out for a rookie goaltender. And they couldn’t even score a powerplay goal on him. That’s not exactly a sign of prowess.

The Flames have also occasionally had very good special teams, and still fallen.

Remember the season opener? What good times we had back then, when the powerplay got off to a decent start and the penalty kill was rocking. The Flames got killed at even strength, but man, we had hope. What a world.

Meanwhile, the Flames’ penalty kill outperformed the Canucks’ – and hey, it got them a pity point. Again, looking at the list of eight losses above, any pity points from those today could have made a big difference.

And then sometimes, special teams have been completely irrelevant. One team has been so dominant at even strength – in three cases the opponent, in three the Flames – that the game was well out of hand enough that better or worse special teams wouldn’t have really made much of a difference either way. That, or neither team was really able to do much with them.