Senators power play still struggling on home ice

We’ll get to the possible Cory Clouston Curse momentarily.

For now, let’s look at the latest evidence of the Ottawa Senators’ woeful power play production at Canadian Tire Centre.

On Thursday, a single power play goal against the Detroit Red Wings would have turned Daniel Alfredsson’s sweater retirement party into a victory party for the 20,011 fans in the building.

The Sens came up empty on a 1:16 stretch with a 5-on-3 advantage during the second period, getting just one shot on Red Wings rookie goalie Jared Coreau.

That was unacceptable, and allowed the Red Wings to hang around long enough to deliver a 3-2 overtime victory.

The Senators are 8-for-64 with the man advantage at Canadian Tire Centre, a 12.5 per cent success rate that ranks 28th in the NHL on home ice. That’s bad.

The silver lining is the Senators have been impressive with the man advantage on the road, clicking on 11 of 51 chances, a 21.6 per cent success rate which ranks 10th in the league.

A team should be considerably better on the power play at home. The energy of a home crowd can often force opponents into mistakes. Home teams enjoy the last change, creating favourable matchups. There may be subtle differences in the boards or ice conditions, opposition teams are unfamiliar with.

So maybe this home versus away power play thing is just a single-season statistical anomaly. It’s not a blip on the radar. As bizarre as it seems, year after year, the Senators have consistently been poor on the power play at home but productive everywhere else.

Last season, they ranked 26th at home (15.5 per cent) and 13th away (18.2 per cent).

In 2013-14, they cashed in on a mere 11.8 per cent of opportunities at Canadian Tire Centre (30th), while converting on 25 per cent away (second in the NHL).

The trend holds true in the 2012-13 and 2011-12 seasons.

“I saw that our road percentage was higher this year, but I didn’t realize it was that way for the last couple of years,” Mike Hoffman said. “I don’t think there is (any explanation this year), because we’re not doing anything different. It’s the same players, same strategy, same setup that we do at home that we do on the road. Maybe it’s just a fluke. Sometimes you get on a streak ... But usually, over the course of a season, the numbers will even out a bit.”

Over the course of five seasons? Is it something in the air? Is it something on the ice? Or, perhaps, for the conspiracy theorists out there, does it have something to do with Clouston being shown the door after the 2011 season?

Paul MacLean, Dave Cameron and, now, Guy Boucher have been unable to find consistent answers at home. Boucher, who helped orchestrate strong power plays in Tampa, is still searching for consistent answers here.

Boucher says he’s always reinforcing the idea of shooting again and again — in all situations.

“What you see on the power play is what you see 5-on-5,” he said. “You see guys wide open in the slot with the puck and they’re still looking for something else. We’re on our way. We’re better. Some games we look really good at it. Some games, we just let it slide. We need to keep improving.”

As the Senators leave for Washington on Saturday for a game against the Capitals Sunday, an easy new year’s resolution is to improve consistency on the power play. Then again, the Senators have been in the same place for the past four years, too. kwarren@postmedia.com Twitter.com/ Citizenkwarren