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How the Flames and Wranglers both revamped their power plays and doubled their scoring in November
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Photo credit: David Moll/Calgary Wranglers
Ryan Pike
Dec 10, 2024, 12:00 ESTUpdated: Dec 10, 2024, 00:30 EST
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One of the most fun things about being managing editor at FlamesNation is that I often get questions from readers that make me go “I don’t have the perfect answer for your question, let me noodle on this for a bit.”
Case in point: I got a question from somebody in this week’s mailbag – a query about why we haven’t seen Tyson Barrie a lot lately – that got my mind running, and made me notice a really interesting trend for the power plays of both the Calgary Flames and Calgary Wranglers.
At about the same time, but for what seem to be completely independent (but similar) reasons, both teams changed their power play schemes. And they’ve both ended up roughly doubling their previous scoring rate as a result.
Let’s dive into what exactly happened.

The Wranglers

The Wranglers, like the Flames, trended towards one stacked power play unit and one that was a bit less top-heavy for much of the season. The results were kinda so-so, with a couple hot streaks but generally mixed results – they scored on 14.6% of their power plays prior to Nov. 10.
The re-shuffling of the AHL power play units dates back to mid-November, and was seemingly in response to a three-game stretch where the Wranglers went 0-for-11 on the man advantage and lost two of three games. The final straw seemed to be an 8-3 clobbering by the Henderson Silver Knights on Nov. 9.
For the rematch on Nov. 11, the Wranglers trotted out two balanced groups:
  • Unit 1: Jakob Pelletier – Rory Kerins – Adam Klapka – William Strömgren – Jeremie Poirier
  • Unit 2: Sam Honzek – Sam Morton – Walker Duehr – Martin Frk – Hunter Brzustewicz
Moving Strömgren, previously a second unit fixture, onto the top unit was probably the one “big” change. The personnel changes the Wranglers have seen in their forward group – Dryden Hunt’s return from the NHL, Klapka’s call-up and return, and Duehr and Pelletier’s call-ups to the NHL – have led to some tweaks in this structure, but the balanced philosophy has seemingly remained.
For this weekend’s set of games with Tucson, here were the power play units:
  • Unit 1: Hunt – Kerins – Klapka – Strömgren – Poirier
  • Unit 2: Honzek – Morton – Frk – Jonathan Aspirot – Brzustewicz
Since the change in approach on Nov. 10, the Wranglers are 9-for-31 on the man advantage – a 29.0% success rate, roughly double their prior rate. They scored power play goals in four straight games after making the change.
Morton was asked about the power play’s potency following Saturday’s win over Tucson.
“I think just switching it up and doing a box plus one, a spread unit,” said Morton. “That way we have two separate units and they’ve got to change how they kill. So we’ve got guys that can make plays no matter what we’re doing, but I think just switching it up definitely helps.”
He added another thought after a follow-up question about the duelling units.
“I think it helps to have some competition between them,” said Morton. “It pushes each unit to be better and it builds momentum. So for twice the time, right? If you have two units going a minute each, that’s great.”

The Flames

The Flames were stuck in a power play rut to begin the season. They, too, trended towards more of a heavy first unit… and it didn’t work out great. They converted on 14.6% of their power plays and were among the NHL’s most drab outfits.
So for their Nov. 14 home game against Nashville they made a simple tweak: veteran Nazem Kadri was moved to the second unit, while sophomore Connor Zary was moved to the first unit. That produced the following groups:
  • Unit 1: Jonathan Huberdeau – Yegor Sharangovich – Connor Zary – Matt Coronato – MacKenzie Weegar
  • Unit 2: Mikael Backlund – Martin Pospisil – Nazem Kadri – Andrei Kuzmenko – Rasmus Andersson
Prior to this swap, the Flames had Kadri on the first unit and the second unit, when it got on, was also in a bit of a churn. Pospisil was infrequently on the man advantage, depending on if Barrie was dressed or not. But since the tweaks were made to the units, the Flames have kept things pretty consistent, aside from Coleman subbing in during Kuzmenko’s two-game healthy scratch absence.
(Since Barrie’s a power play specialist and the units are working well, they’ve been able to get longer looks at Joel Hanley and Jake Bean in the lineup as a consequence.)
Since Nov. 14, the Flames have gone 10-for-34 on the power play, a 29.4% success rate – sixth-best in the NHL.
Following the Flames’ Nov. 23 win over Minnesota, Flames head coach Ryan Huska was asked about the power play’s resurgence.
“We tried to put some different people on both units so we can create a little bit of competition there,” said Huska. “So if somebody goes and scores, they’re going to go and go again. And a lot of those players, they want to be on the ice for the minute and a half to start a power play. So I think that competition’s been good. But I also think they’ve just done a much better job of moving the puck quickly. And they’re not over-complicating right now. They’re just fast with their puck moving and they’re putting pucks to the net as well.”
Both teams had similar issues. Both teams, seemingly independently, looked at similar solutions. And both teams have had a lot of success since adopting those solutions. We’ll see if both clubs can maintain their success on the power play moving forward.

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