Maple Leafs Power Play Ranked 25th. Fixing It Is the Season.

The Maple Leafs power play converted at 16.8 per cent last season, 25th in the NHL. The penalty kill finished at 83.5 per cent, fifth. That split is the most underrated fact about Toronto's 2026-27 season, because it means the club's single largest performance gap is also its cheapest one to close — no trade required, no cap space needed, no rookie exceeding expectations. Just a unit that was among the league's best two years ago getting back to something near average.

How the Maple Leafs power play fell apart

This was not a slow decline. In 2024-25 Toronto ran at 24.8 per cent with the man advantage, among the best units in hockey. A season later it was 16.8 per cent and 25th. Teams do not usually lose eight percentage points in a year without something structural breaking.

The early months were worse than the final number. Through the first stretch of the season Toronto's conversion rate sat near the bottom of the league — in the 12 to 13 per cent range, at points dead last — and the club fired assistant coach Marc Savard in-season after a 5-1 loss to Dallas. In-season analysis pointed at two things at once: a shooting percentage that had collapsed from around 17 per cent to roughly 11, and a unit that ranked in the bottom third of the league in shot attempts at five-on-four. The first is variance. The second is design.

That distinction matters for what happens next. If the entire problem were finishing luck, you would expect a natural rebound with no intervention. But a power play that does not shoot enough does not get to wait for luck. It has to be rebuilt, and that is what Toronto spent the summer doing — mostly through the coaching staff rather than the roster.

Daniel Alfredsson is the actual power-play move

Jim Hiller's staff came together in early July, and the name that mattered most for special teams was Daniel Alfredsson as associate coach. Alfredsson ran Ottawa's power play last season, a consistent top-10 unit that operated around 24 per cent and finished eighth overall. John Gruden joined as an assistant after three seasons behind the Marlies bench, culminating in a Calder Cup, with Brad Werenka also on staff and Curtis Sanford handling goaltending.

There is a second layer here that is easy to miss. Hiller himself ran Toronto's power play during his previous stint as an assistant with the club in the Mike Babcock years. This is a head coach who has done the job, hiring an associate who just did it well somewhere else. Whatever else is uncertain about the Hiller hire — and plenty is, given how far outside the rumour mill it came — the special-teams credentials are not the questionable part.

We covered the coaching hires when they were announced. Two months later, with the roster essentially set, that hire looks like the most consequential thing Toronto did to its offence outside of drafting first overall.

The personnel is better than the results suggested

Toronto did not need to import power-play talent, which is fortunate, because it could not have afforded to. What it needed was the right pieces arranged properly.

Darren Raddysh is the most obvious addition. Signed to an eight-year deal after arriving from Tampa Bay, he led the entire NHL in shot attempts of 90 miles per hour or faster with 97 — nearly double the next-closest player. A power play that ranked in the bottom third in shot volume just added the league's hardest-shooting point man. That is not a subtle fit.

Then there is Gavin McKenna. The first overall pick is a distributor by profile, and the half-wall on a first unit is the single best place on an NHL rink for an 18-year-old playmaker to be useful immediately — puck on his stick, time to survey, no requirement to win a defensive-zone battle first. We have argued for McKenna on PP1 from opening night, and the coaching change makes it likelier, not less.

The rest is familiar. Auston Matthews in his office at the top of the circle. William Nylander on the opposite flank. Matthew Knies, coming off 23 goals and 66 points in 79 games, as the net-front presence who is genuinely willing to stand there. On paper that is a top-10 unit. On the ice last season it was 25th, which is the entire point.

What five percentage points is actually worth

Here is the arithmetic, with the assumption stated openly so you can adjust it. A typical NHL team draws somewhere in the range of 230 to 250 power-play opportunities over a full season. At that volume, one percentage point of conversion is worth roughly two and a half goals. Move from 16.8 per cent to a merely league-average 20 or 21 per cent and Toronto gains something in the neighbourhood of eight to 10 goals. Get back to the 24.8 per cent of two seasons ago and it is closer to 20.

An 84-game schedule adds opportunities to that base, which nudges the number up further. Twenty goals is not a rounding error for a team that finished 32-36-14 with 78 points. Using the rough conventional exchange rate of goals to standings points, that is a difference measured in multiple wins — and it costs nothing but coaching and deployment.

Compare that to the alternatives. Adding a scoring forward capable of producing 20 additional goals would cost a first-round pick Toronto does not have and cap space it is already over. The contracts page shows a club sitting roughly $2.75 million above the $104 million upper limit before it has iced a lineup. The power play is the only meaningful upgrade available for free.

The penalty kill is the part not to break

The other half of the special-teams ledger deserves its own attention, mostly as a warning. Toronto's penalty kill finished fifth in the league at 83.5 per cent. That was, quietly, one of the few genuinely good things about a 78-point season, and it happened on a roster that has since turned over substantially through the bottom six.

Colton Sissons, Teddy Blueger, Nick Paul and Brandon Duhaime all arrived with penalty-killing on the job description, so the raw materials are there. The risk is structural: new coach, new system, new personnel, all installed in a compressed camp with only four preseason games under the new collective bargaining agreement. Special teams take repetitions, and the schedule has fewer of them available than in any recent September.

There is one deployment question worth resolving early. Matthews has historically taken short-handed minutes, and there is a strong argument he should take none at all this season — protecting a player coming off March knee surgery on a unit that already ranked fifth without needing him. We laid that case out in our look at his penalty-kill usage, and the bottom-six additions make it easier to execute than it would have been a year ago.

Special teams versus the five-on-five problem

None of this means the power play is Toronto's only issue. The club allowed 299 goals last season, and the five-on-five defensive structure Hiller is installing is the larger project. But it is also the slower one — systems take months to take hold, and the personnel changes on the blue line come with real uncertainty given Chris Tanev's clearance is still pending.

Special teams move faster. A power play can be fixed in six weeks with better entries, more shot volume and a distributor who forces penalty killers to respect the pass. That makes it the most likely source of early-season improvement, which matters enormously for a team whose fan base and, frankly, whose coach cannot afford a 4-8-2 October. We wrote about the five-on-five repair job separately — the two projects are complementary, not competing.

What's next

Watch the first unit at camp. The composition of PP1 in the opening week of practice will tell you more about Toronto's offensive plan than any line rush. Specifically: whether McKenna is on it from day one, whether Raddysh or Morgan Rielly quarterbacks, and whether Knies is genuinely committed to the net front rather than rotated through it.

Then watch the four preseason games — two against Montreal starting Sept. 19, two against Ottawa including a home date Sept. 23 — for shot volume rather than conversion. Small samples of goals mean nothing. Attempts per two minutes of power-play time mean quite a lot, and it is the number that separates a unit that got unlucky from one that was actually broken.

Our expectation: Toronto's power play finishes 2026-27 between 21 and 23 per cent. That would be a top-12 unit, roughly 12 to 15 goals better than last season, and the largest single reason the club is in the playoff race in March. If it does not happen, no amount of five-on-five structure saves this season, and the questions land on a coaching staff that was hired specifically to fix it.