New Hockey Term – Power Kill

Note: I had to wait for the hockey season to be complete before posting this, so that I didn’t jinx our team.

For those who don’t watch hockey here are two real terms in hockey:

Power Play – Where one team receives a penalty that places at least one of their players in the penalty box giving the other team at least a one man advantage.

Penalty Kill – Where one team receives a penalty that places at least one of their players in the penalty box which now requires them to kill off the penalty with at least a one man disadvantage.

My boyfriend and I are huge Cincinnati Cyclones fans (ECHL hockey = Double A baseball) and are season ticket holders.

While Coach Weber is one of the best coaches I have ever seen in any sport, it appears that our seasons always start off working on defense first including the penalty kill, then passing, then scripted plays, and then finally the power play.

This seems to be a great formula as the first season we made it to the division playoffs, won the Kelly Cup the second year, made it to the final four last year, and this year we won the Kelly Cup once again.

But…it has been extremely painful to watch our power plays this year, but I will admit during the playoffs the guys have been doing better and the Power Play has come through when we really needed it. Our team captain even said the power play is the team’s achilles heel. For example, we can barely get the puck to stay into the offensive zone in the alloted standard 2 minute minor penalty.

And then when we do get the puck in the offensive zone, there is a ton of passing, fighting against the boards for the puck, and a lot of clearing by the opposing team. There are very, very, very few shots on goal, and as most hockey fans know, if you don’t shoot the puck at the goal, you have an extremely slim chance of scoring.

So, this season when our power play percentage dropped below 16%, my boyfriend and I came up with a new hockey term…the Power Kill. It sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Please note that you don’t want your team to have a great power kill.

A Power Kill is where one team receives a penalty that places at least one of their players in the penalty box giving the other team at least a one man advantage, but our team likes to play on an even field or even one man down, so we don’t take advantage of the Power Play and instead choose to chase a cleared puck down the ice and then “pretend” to have difficulty in getting the puck into the offensive zone.

Our power kill percentage at one point was 84.7%. Sounds great doesn’t it? Much better than a Power Play percentage of 15.3%.

What is really interesting is during some of this time, the Cyclones were leading the league in Penalty Kills (early in the season) as well as leading the league in short-handed goals (the whole season).

We’d see the team have a really bad power play, turnaround and get a penalty, and then score on a the penalty kill with a short-handed goal. We fans saw a lot more short-handed goals than power play goals. Btw, to us fans, it is extremely exciting to see a short-handed goal scored.

Hence, the reason for the new term. We fans have figured out that our team does not like to have the one man advantage and would rather show how good they are at hockey by scoring with a one man disadvantage.

I have to say that even with the new term, I would much rather score on a power play than have a power kill. By the end of January, coach Weber did it again. He made some changes on the power play and what do you know we scored two power play goals in a game and only had one pesky power kill rear its ugly head in the last game. And when that occured…everyone in our section started to laugh and said to each other “The Power Kill is back!”. Unfortunately until the playoffs, we saw more Power Kills than Power Plays.

Please note that I am merely sharing my humor. I do not mean to hurt anyone’s feelings by this post. I do know the real hockey terms, and I enjoy watching the Cincinnati Cyclones play.

I love Coach Weber and enjoy watching our players grow. I don’t really enjoy losing the players to the AHL as I get used to seeing them and knowing what they can do, but that is a part of ECHL hockey and I am excited for them to have a chance to show off their talents in the next higher league.

I think Coach Weber has a great formula, and while I would love to keep him here; I hope that he gets his chance in either the AHL or NHL. Given the record he has amassed over the past 4 years, I think he has a great chance at moving up.

After winning the championship again this season, who needs a good power play anyway?