Fantasy hockey power-play units: what a PP1 role was worth

Why the power play gets its own guide

In fantasy hockey, a spot on the first power-play unit is one of the most useful roles a skater can hold. Last season the first-unit skaters in this study averaged 3:07 of power-play time a game; skaters with no unit averaged 0:15.

That role shows up twice in most leagues. Every power-play goal or assist counts as a goal or assist. In categories leagues, it also counts in the PPP category. In Parlae points scoring it earns a 0.5 bonus on top of the 2 for a goal or 1 for an assist.

To put a number on the role, the desk sorted every 2025-26 skater with at least 40 games, 612 in all, into three tiers by power-play time per game on his team.

What each tier produced in 2025-26

Source: NHL skater summary and time-on-ice reports, 2025-26 regular season, read Oct 13 2026. Points outside PPP is points per game minus PPP per game.

PP1 skaters scored 1.7 times as many points per game as PP2 skaters and 3.1 times as many as skaters with no unit. Their PPP rate, 0.28 a game, was about three times the PP2 rate.

Spread over the 84 games each team plays in 2026-27, the gap between PP1 and PP2 comes to about 29 points, and about 15 of those are power-play points. That is arithmetic on the averages, not a projection for any player.

How much of that is the role, and how much is the player

Look at the column for points outside PPP. PP1 skaters scored 0.56 points a game that were not power-play points; PP2 skaters scored 0.39. The players who held first-unit minutes were also the better scorers away from the power play.

So the role is not the whole gap. Of the 0.35 points per game between PP1 and PP2, 0.18, or 52%, came from power-play points. The rest came from everything else those players did. A third-liner moved onto PP1 should not be expected to score like a first-liner; he should be expected to gain something like the PPP part.

That part is still large for fantasy. For PP1 skaters, power-play points were a third of all points. For skaters with no unit, they were 4%.

Who led PP1 minutes

Source: NHL time-on-ice and skater summary reports, 2025-26 regular season. All 20 are PP1 under the tier rule above.

Minutes are the opportunity; what a player does with them varies. Alex Ovechkin led every PP1 skater at 4:29 a game and finished with 19 power-play points in 82 games, 0.23 a game, below the PP1 average of 0.28. Brayden Point played 3:47 a game and had 11 in 63, 0.17 a game.

At the other end, Jason Robertson had 41 power-play points in 82 games at 3:52, the most in the table. Mikko Rantanen had 34 in 64, 0.53 a game, the best rate in the table. Nikita Kucherov had 37 in 76 and the most total points, 130.

The table also shows how the role carries defensemen. Cale Makar and Evan Bouchard, both listed as D on the Parlae board, sit in the top 20 for minutes, and Bouchard had 33 power-play points.

PP roles on today's board

On the current Parlae rankings, 29 of the top 30 players carry a PP1 tag. The one without, Connor Bedard at 28th, has no unit listed yet. Near the top of a draft board, a first-unit role is close to a given; it matters most from the middle rounds down, where two players can look alike until you check their power-play time.

Units also change in October. Early this season Vasily Podkolzin's power-play time is up from 0:28 a game last season to 4:04 over 5 games, and Teuvo Teravainen's is down from 2:48 to none over 4. The ice-time risers guide tracks those moves, with the sample-size caveat they need.

What to do with this

1. Use PP1 as the tiebreaker on the wire. When two available skaters look similar, take the one on a first unit. Check power-play time on the waiver wire page before you add.
2. Expect the PPP part, not the whole gap. A skater promoted to PP1 gains power-play chances, not a new talent level. The tier gap in PPP alone was 0.18 a game last season.
3. Weigh PPP twice in categories leagues. A first-unit role feeds goals, assists and the PPP category at once. The categories rankings show how much that moves a player.