NHL power play defensemen live in the most exposed patch of ice on the man advantage. Every penalty killer can see them. Every shooting lane seems crowded. One bad touch can send the puck 180 feet in the wrong direction. For clarity, this analysis covers the actual 2025–26 NHL season and its real post-trade rosters, not a fantasy league or simulation.
Evan Bouchard handles that pressure with a weapon everyone inside the building knows is coming. He slides into space above Edmonton’s circles, raises his stick and threatens the “Bouch Bomb” before the penalty kill can decide whether to challenge him or protect Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl below. Quinn Hughes creates a completely different problem. He keeps moving, changing his feet and attack angle until defenders turn their hips in the wrong direction. Miro Heiskanen works with less theater, quietly moving a few feet sideways before threading the puck into a seam that did not appear open a second earlier.
Those contrasting styles powered three of the NHL’s best units in 2025-26.
Edmonton finished first at 30.6 percent, Dallas followed at 28.6 percent, and Minnesota ranked third at 25.2 percent. Carolina and the New York Rangers rounded out the top five. NHL.com’s July 17 review of the season also showed how heavily each unit leaned on a defenseman at the top.
Watch those quarterbacks closely, and raw point totals only tell half the story.
The point man no longer stands at the point
The old image of a power-play defenseman feels almost frozen in place: receive the puck at the blue line, wind up and fire through traffic.
Today’s best quarterbacks rarely give penalty killers that kind of comfort.
An elite man-advantage unit now demands movement before the shot ever arrives. The defenseman walks the line, drops toward the circles, switches sides and changes the angle of the next pass. Sometimes he moves the puck instantly. Other times he holds it just long enough to force the highest penalty killer into a choice.
That choice drives the possession.
Step toward the point, and a seam may open underneath. Stay packed around the slot, and the defenseman gains room to shoot or walk downhill. Cheat toward one flank, and the weak side suddenly becomes available.
The league’s five most efficient units in 2025-26 all had blue-line quarterbacks capable of creating those dilemmas. Their methods, however, looked nothing alike.
Evan Bouchard makes the penalty kill respect violence
Edmonton’s power play starts with fear at the top
Bouchard does not need to hide his greatest weapon.
Everyone knows about the shot.
NHL EDGE tracked Bouchard at a 98.08 mph hardest shot during the 2025-26 season as of late January, with his average shot speed sitting in the 95th percentile among defensemen. By season’s end, he had recorded 51 attempts at 90 mph or faster, second-most in the league behind Darren Raddysh.
That threat changes Edmonton’s geometry before Bouchard even shoots.
Picture the puck moving from McDavid along the half wall back toward the blue line. The high penalty killer has only a heartbeat to react. Charge Bouchard, and McDavid gets another touch against a defense that has started to stretch. Sink toward Draisaitl and the net front, and Bouchard can step into open ice with his hands already separated for the shot.
His “Bouch Bomb” also carries enough force to create offense without beating the goalie cleanly. Screens, deflections and rebounds become part of the equation. NHL.com’s Dan Rosen has reported that Bouchard himself has focused on combining that velocity with better placement, turning the slap shot into something more precise than a pure blast.
Edmonton’s numbers reflected the pressure. The Oilers converted 30.6 percent of their opportunities, comfortably the league’s best mark. Bouchard collected 33 power-play points, including seven goals and 26 assists, finishing second among NHL defensemen in man-advantage scoring.
Yet his value stretches beyond those 33 points.
Sitting atop Edmonton’s formation, Bouchard acts as both safety valve and loaded cannon. McDavid and Draisaitl may command the first glance from a penalty kill, but Bouchard punishes anyone who forgets about the ice behind them.
Miro Heiskanen wins with three feet of open ice
Dallas turns patience into a shooting lane
Dallas built the league’s second-ranked man advantage around a different kind of threat.
Heiskanen does not need to scare defenders with the same raw velocity as Bouchard. Instead, he moves them.
Watch his feet after the puck reaches him. Rather than immediately returning it to a flank, Heiskanen often drifts laterally across the blue line. Those few strides matter. A penalty killer adjusts his stick. Another defender slides toward the slot. Suddenly, the original passing lane has disappeared and a better one has replaced it.
Dallas had plenty of finishers waiting for those openings.
The Stars’ main unit featured Wyatt Johnston, Jason Robertson, Mikko Rantanen and Roope Hintz with Heiskanen above them. Rantanen had joined Dallas in March 2025 and signed an eight-year extension, so he entered the 2025-26 season as a full member of the Stars rather than a deadline rental.
Johnston then produced a remarkable season on the man advantage. His 27 power-play goals led the NHL, seven more than second-place Pavel Dorofeyev, and set a franchise single-season record.
That total looks extraordinary because it was extraordinary.
Heiskanen helped feed the machine with 28 power-play points, 26 of them assists. Dallas finished at 28.6 percent, up sharply from 22.0 percent the season before.
He does much of his best work before the scoring pass.
A small lateral glide changes the shooting angle. One shoulder turn can suggest a pass to Robertson before the puck travels elsewhere. When the penalty kill begins chasing those signals, Johnston and Rantanen gain the half-second that elite scorers need.
Dallas did not simply put talented players on the ice. Heiskanen helped make their space usable.
Quinn Hughes can skate a penalty kill out of shape
Minnesota added a quarterback who refuses to stay still
Quinn Hughes entered 2025-26 as Vancouver’s captain.
By December, he was wearing a Minnesota Wild sweater.
Vancouver traded Hughes to Minnesota on December 12, 2025, for Marco Rossi, Liam Öhgren, Zeev Buium and a first-round pick.
His impact on Minnesota’s man advantage arrived almost immediately.
Hughes had already recorded 12 power-play points in 26 games with Vancouver when the trade happened. After joining the Wild, he added another 22 and finished with 34 power-play points, the most among NHL defensemen. Minnesota ended the season third in the league at 25.2 percent.
Numbers alone cannot capture what makes him so disruptive.
Hughes can open his hips toward the middle while keeping the puck outside his skates. That posture forces the high defender to respect a drive into the slot. A quick pivot can then send Hughes back across the blue line before the defender resets.
The skating data supports what the eye sees.
NHL EDGE recorded Hughes with 174 bursts above 20 mph during 2025-26, fourth-most among defensemen. He also ranked second among defensemen in total distance skated on the power play at 44.59 miles.
That constant motion gave Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy something priceless: cleaner attacking windows.
Instead of asking Minnesota’s flank shooters to crack a settled box from stationary positions, Hughes could move the box first. A defender’s feet turn. A stick leaves a lane. Kaprizov suddenly sees the seam.
Hughes manufactures the opening before the pass arrives.
Shayne Gostisbehere keeps Carolina’s attack connected
Quick decisions matter more than owning the puck
Carolina did not ask Shayne Gostisbehere to dominate every possession.
The Hurricanes asked him to keep everything moving.
Their first unit commonly paired Gostisbehere with Nikolaj Ehlers, Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho and Seth Jarvis. Rather than funneling every sequence through one star, Carolina spread the production across the group.
That balance worked.
The Hurricanes jumped from 18.7 percent in 2024-25 to 24.9 percent in 2025-26, the fourth-best conversion rate in the NHL. Ehlers and Svechnikov each finished with 29 power-play points, while Aho added 27. Gostisbehere contributed 18, including six goals.
His job at the top required quick reads more than prolonged puck possession.
Gostisbehere can catch a pass already prepared to move it again. That rhythm matters against aggressive penalty kills. Every extra stickhandle gives four defenders another fraction of a second to recover their shape.
His broader possession numbers also underline how comfortable Carolina looked with him controlling offensive territory. NHL EDGE later noted that Gostisbehere led the league in offensive-zone time percentage at 51.3 percent during the 2025-26 regular season.
Carolina’s attack therefore carried a different personality from Edmonton’s.
Bouchard can frighten a penalty kill backward. Gostisbehere keeps pulling it sideways until someone loses coverage.
Adam Fox makes hesitation feel dangerous
The Rangers quarterback wins with patience
Most players on the man advantage feel pressure to act before the defense closes.
Adam Fox often makes the defense move first.
New York’s first unit usually featured Fox behind Mika Zibanejad, J.T. Miller, Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck. Miller had returned to the Rangers in January 2025 and was named captain before the 2025-26 season, removing any ambiguity about his place on the roster.
Fox’s game brings less physical intimidation than Bouchard’s and less continuous motion than Hughes’s.
His weapon is timing.
He receives the puck and lets the first defensive reaction happen. A shoulder fake suggests one flank. His eyes hold a defender for another instant. Then the pass goes somewhere else.
While many quarterbacks hurry when pressure approaches, Fox often creates by refusing to rush.
Despite playing only 55 games, he produced 24 power-play points. Zibanejad led the Rangers with 35, and New York finished fifth in the NHL at 24.7 percent after ranking 28th one season earlier.
The improvement captures why point play cannot be reduced to slap shots.
A dangerous power play needs someone who recognizes which defender has become impatient. Fox excels at waiting for that mistake.
The playoff pressure test
Regular-season efficiency gives a quarterback room to establish habits.
The playoffs attack those habits.
Dallas and Minnesota offered a vivid example during their 2026 first-round series. Both entered the postseason with top-three power plays. Through four games, however, Dallas had outscored Minnesota 8-3 on the man advantage. The Stars went 8-for-19, while Dallas’ penalty kill erased 14 of Minnesota’s first 15 opportunities after the Wild scored twice in Game 1.
Nothing about Hughes’ skating suddenly disappeared.
Heiskanen did not discover a new passing skill in April.
Instead, a playoff series compresses information. Opponents study the same entries, pressure points and preferred seams for days. A penalty kill that sees Hughes repeatedly can adjust where its highest forward meets him. Dallas can recognize Minnesota’s first option before the puck crosses the blue line.
The quarterback then has to counter the counter.
That makes postseason power-play success a different test from piling up regular-season points. The best blue-liners must change the picture without abandoning what made the unit dangerous in the first place.
Five quarterbacks and five different answers
There is no single blueprint for running the point.
Bouchard weaponizes fear. His shot can force a defender several feet higher than he wants to play.
Heiskanen manipulates smaller spaces. A short lateral move can change the passing lane for four teammates at once.
Hughes attacks with his skates. He keeps moving until the penalty kill begins reacting to him instead of the puck.
Gostisbehere connects Carolina’s layers through quick decisions, while Fox turns patience into deception.
Each style worked inside one of the five most efficient units of 2025-26.
That matters because a great power play does not need its defenseman to become its leading scorer. It needs him to shape the possession. Sometimes that means pounding a puck toward the net. On another shift, the most valuable play may be a three-foot glide across the blue line that moves a defender’s stick six inches.
The point man sees everything from above the formation, but he cannot merely observe it.
He has to bend it.
When the puck slides back toward the blue line and four penalty killers tighten around the slot, that next touch can change the entire possession. Bouchard may load the cannon. Hughes may cut sideways. Heiskanen may wait for one defender’s feet to cross.
Different players. Different solutions.
The best quarterbacks make the penalty kill guess wrong before anyone in the building realizes a choice had to be made.
READ MORE: Net-Front Presence: How NHL Forwards Turn Traffic Into Power-Play Goals
FAQs
Q1. Who had the NHL’s best power play in 2025-26?
A. Edmonton led the league at 30.6 percent. Dallas finished second at 28.6 percent, while Minnesota ranked third at 25.2 percent.
Q2. Which defenseman had the most power-play points in 2025-26?
A. Quinn Hughes finished with 34 power-play points, the most among NHL defensemen. Evan Bouchard followed with 33.
Q3. What makes Evan Bouchard so dangerous on the power play?
A. Bouchard’s heavy shot forces penalty killers to challenge him high. That creates more space for Edmonton’s attackers closer to the net.
Q4. Why is Quinn Hughes effective as a power-play quarterback?
A. Hughes uses skating, pivots and lateral movement to pull defenders out of position. Those movements create cleaner passing lanes for his teammates.
Q5. How many power-play goals did Wyatt Johnston score in 2025-26?
Johnston scored 27 power-play goals, the most in the NHL and a Dallas franchise record.
