Who Has the Most Dangerous Power Play in the NHL Right Now?

Two minutes. That’s all it takes. The right team, the right power play, and a single penalty call can swing a playoff series. Right now, with ten days left in the regular season, the gap between the league’s best 5-on-4 units and the rest of the field is as stark as it’s been in years. If you’re betting on who’s going to abuse referees in the playoffs, the answer isn’t complicated — but it is more nuanced than the raw numbers suggest.

The Efficiency King: Edmonton Oilers (29.7%)

Nobody converts better. The Connor McDavid power play is the most efficient in the NHL at 29.7%, and it’s not particularly close. What makes Edmonton terrifying isn’t just the percentage — it’s who is involved.

McDavid leads the entire league in power play assists with 36, which is five more than the next closest player. Leon Draisaitl is the net-front presence and one of the most dangerous slot threats in hockey, with 16 PP goals on the season. Evan Bouchard runs the blue line with a shot teams can’t cheat against, because if you shade too far toward him, McDavid walks in on the half-wall and makes you regret it.

The Oilers PP1 is essentially a game of misdirection run by the two best players at their positions. McDavid moves, Draisaitl moves, everyone else adjusts — and goalies are left trying to track a puck that keeps appearing in places it shouldn’t be. A 29.7% conversion rate is elite. The league average sits around 19%. Edmonton is operating on a different plane.

Their weakness, if you can call it that, is that PP2 is mortal. This unit leans hard on McDavid and Draisaitl to shoulder the damage, and when the opposition’s top penalty killers are locked in against them, they can be shut down for a stretch. In seven-game series, that matters.

The Volume Monster: Dallas Stars (~29–30%, 67 PP Goals)

Here’s the case for Dallas being the more dangerous unit: 67 power play goals, the most in the NHL by a comfortable margin.

Efficiency and volume usually trade off — the more opportunities you get, the harder it is to sustain a high conversion rate. The Stars have managed to do both. Their 5-on-4 transformation this season is directly connected to Glen Gulutzan, the former Oilers assistant they hired to run their special teams. He took what worked in Edmonton and built something that might actually be better for a playoff context, because Dallas creates more chances rather than just converting the chances they get.

The centerpiece of the story is Wyatt Johnston. He has 25 power play goals on the season — the most in the NHL, and it’s not close. The next closest player is at 18. On March 22, Johnston scored his 23rd PP goal to break the Stars’ franchise single-season power play record set by Dino Ciccarelli in 1987. Fourteen of his 25 goals have come from directly in front of the net. That’s not luck. That’s positioning, timing, and the nerve to stand in traffic every single night.

Miro Heiskanen quarterbacks PP1 from the point, Mikko Rantanen and Matt Duchene provide the skill depth, and Johnston finds the dirty areas. This unit is built for playoff hockey — it doesn’t require a generational player to engineer every chance. It requires competence and execution at every position, and Dallas has that across all five spots.

The Dark Horse: Minnesota Wild (~24.9%)

Minnesota’s power play is criminally underrated in this conversation. At 24.9%, they’re third in the league and have scored 61 PP goals — but the more interesting story is how they’re doing it.

Kirill Kaprizov is the offensive driver everyone knows about, but the Wild have quietly built something unusual: a power play with multiple legitimate quarterbacks, including 19-year-old rookie defenseman Zeev Buium, who has emerged as one of the most efficient point options in the league during his stretches on the ice. The Wild have experimented with a five-forward setup with Matt Boldy at the blue line — it’s unconventional and it works because Boldy is dangerous enough as a shooter that he can’t be ignored.

The depth here is what makes Minnesota genuinely scary in the playoffs. If you load up your PK to stop the Kaprizov-Buium combination, Boldy punishes you. If you split your focus, Kaprizov makes you pay. There is no clean read against this unit.

Carolina’s Turnaround

It would be wrong to talk about power play storylines this season without mentioning the Carolina Hurricanes, who went from worst to relevant in this category. Carolina opened 2-for-29 on the power play through their first eight games — 6.9%, dead last in the league — before Nikolaj Ehlers found his footing in the system and Seth Jarvis quietly put together 20 power play points across 64 appearances.

The Hurricanes are currently around 24.7%, fifth in the league. The fact that they’re here after that start is a testament to how dangerous their personnel actually is when the system is working. They’re not necessarily a top-three power play — but they’re one worth respecting heading into April.

What This Means for the Playoffs

Penalty kill quality matters enormously in playoff hockey — arguably more than power play quality, because conservative referees swallow their whistles in close games. But the teams at the top of the power play leaderboard tend to be there for a reason: they have elite players who can generate from controlled situations, and elite players are elite in every circumstance.

Edmonton’s edge is McDavid and Draisaitl. That edge doesn’t disappear in May. Dallas’s edge is system depth and Johnston’s relentless net-front work — that also doesn’t disappear. Both units have structural advantages that aren’t fluky, which is why both teams should be considered dangerous regardless of seeding.

The real question is which team gets the power play opportunities when it matters. That comes down to zone entries, shot volume, and drawing calls in tight-checking series. Minnesota and Carolina are built to generate those opportunities through speed and puck possession. Edmonton and Dallas are built to execute once they have them.

Right now, all four are capable of ending a series on a single 5-on-4. That’s not something you can say about most playoff fields.

Who do you think has the most dangerous power play heading into the playoffs? Drop your take in the comments or find me on social media — I want to know if I’m underrating anyone.