The criteria most clubs use when deciding which players are chosen to skate on their power play is pretty standard. First off, grab your two or three best offensive forwards and find them roles that best suit their unique skill sets. Find a D-man with offensive talent, who you also trust to defend at least a little. After all, anytime you have all your offence-first guys out there, there’s going to be some breakdowns. Then you dangle the remaining spots – a solid handful between PP1 and PP2 – to the rest of the team, preach that “power-play time is earned not given and whoever shows us they deserve it, will get it.”



Obviously this is a generalization – some teams just happen to be so stacked there’s no room for the less skilled players to earn a spot, while the opposite exists as well.



But the thread that binds all these different groupings is the theme from coaches that “just because you’re on the power play...