Start your day with some Isles PK Skinny

The Isles penalty killers have been much more successful of late -- while they allowed 2 goals to Vancouver and 2 goals to Carolina, the penalty kill came up big in the game in Dallas, and they have been perfect in 9 of their last 11 games.

A few people have tweeted me Is it Grabner? to credit for the Isles recent success.  In part, but the real PK stars have been Travis Hamonic and Cal Clutterbuck.

Check out these numbers over the last 10 games (from war-on-ice.com)  -- the numbers only refer to time shorthanded so no Tavares, etc.   Neither Hamonic nor Clutterbuck have been on-ice for an opponents PP goal in that span and they rank 4th and 5th in PK ice-time.  Grabner has only been on-ice for 1, but missed the first couple of games.

Johnny Boychuk has been on for all 4 PP goals that the Isles have allowed in this stretch; three times with Thomas Hickey.  Nikolay Kulemin has also been on ice for three opponent PP goals in the last 10 games.

Take a look at the numbers on the bottom; the Isles PK has improved despite continued poor performance in PK face-offs -- the three main face-off men have won only 18 of 51 draws (35.3%) over the ten games.

Name	Gm	TOI/Gm	GA	TOI
Ryan.Strome	10	0.7	0	7.2
Calvin.De.Haan	7	1.8	0	12.3
Travis.Hamonic	10	2.0	0	20.2
Cal.Clutterbuck	10	2.2	0	22.0
Michael.Grabner	8	1.6	1	13.1
Brian.Strait	6	1.9	1	11.3
Frans.Nielsen	10	1.8	2	18.2
Brock.Nelson	10	1.3	2	13.0
Thomas.Hickey	10	2.5	3	24.6
Nikolay.Kulemin	10	2.5	3	25.0
Johnny.Boychuk	10	3.0	4	30.1
Draws
Nielsen won 11 of 28
Nelson won 5 of 17
Strome won 2 of 6

 

Forever1940 is the nom de plume of Eric Hornick, statistician on Islander home telecasts since January 21, 1982. Visit my blog: NYISkinny.com and follow me on Twitter @ehornick