Over the past few years, the Calgary Flames power play units have seen their ups and downs. But one thing that’s been a consistent bright spot for the club has been their penalty kill.

Since 2019, the Flames’ PK has ranged from pretty good to elite. And while the Flames roster has seen some substantial changes over the past couple of seasons with some veterans departing, the consistency of key PK personnel has led to consistent performances by those units.

Let’s delve into what we can expect from the PK this coming season.

The Flames tend to operate their penalty kill with two primary forward pairs and two defensive pairs, throwing in a third forward pair near the end of the kill in order to generate some counter-punch push-back up the ice.

The two forward pairs project as Mikael Backlund/Kevin Rooney and Yegor Sharangovich/Blake Coleman. (Sometimes Rooney and Coleman get swapped, though.) The two defensive pairings look like Rasmus Andersson/Kevin Bahl and MacKenzie Weegar/Daniil Miromanov. Late on kills, the Flames have tended to put Martin Pospisil and Jonathan Huberdeau out as forwards for the counter-punch.

Brad Larsen is the assistant coach responsible for the PK this season. The PK groups have tended to be grouped together during multiple pre-season outings, so we have a bit more confidence in our PK projects than we do for the PP.

Last season the penalty kill was run by Dan Lambert.

As with the power play, the PK’s units shifted around a little bit over the season. The forward pairings were Backlund/Rooney (or Elias Lindholm) and Sharangovich/Coleman. The defensive pairings were Noah Hanifin/Chris Tanev (the top pair before both were traded), Weegar/Andersson (initially secondary, then became the top pair after the trades), and Brayden Pachal and rotating partners (as the secondary pairing after the trades).

Even with the churn of personnel due to trades, the PK performed well overall.

In terms of underlying numbers, last season was a bit of a step back for the PK and the group was propped up a bit by strong goaltending. In terms of expected goals against per 60, they were 19th (8.39) in 2023-24, 2nd (6.71) in 2022-23 and 2nd (5.70) in 2021-22. From a success rate perspective, they’ve finished 9th (80.8%) in 2023-24, 5th (82.6%) in 2022-23 and 6th (83.2%) in 2021-22.

The Flames have had a PK success rate of 80% or more, and been in the top half of league in penalty killing, in each of the past five seasons. Even with the team entering their rebuilding phase, based on the quality of the personnel involved, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect them to remain in the top half of league kills (and kill at least 80% of opposition PPs) this coming season.

The PK has given the team a chance to win games pretty consistently over the past five years. That should continue in 2024-25.