Take two forwards who score at exactly the same rate at even strength. Give one of them first-unit power-play time and the other second-unit. Over a full season, the first one finishes about 16 points ahead.
That is not a projection. That is what happened last season, and it is the largest, most predictable edge on a fantasy draft board that almost nobody prices in — because power-play time is a coaching decision, it shows up in the camp line combinations in September, and it is sitting there in plain sight while everyone argues about talent.
What happens when a player's power-play time changes
The cleanest way to see it is to stop comparing players to each other and compare a player to himself. Here is every skater who played at least 40 games in both 2024-25 and 2025-26, sorted by how his power-play ice time moved:
21 players picked up a full minute or more of power-play time. They gained 12.0 points per 82 games. The 17 who lost a minute or more shed 9.3. The 277 whose role held steady moved 0.0 — nothing.
Fit a line through all 500 of them and every additional power-play minute per game is worth about 9.2 points over a season. Last season the 145 skaters with first-unit minutes (2.5 or more a game) averaged 3.23, and the 195 with second-unit minutes (0.8 to 2.5) averaged 1.58. That 1.65-minute gap is the swing in the opening line.
Is it really the power play, or just better players getting promoted?
Fair question, and the honest answer is: mostly the power play, but not entirely.
Of the 9.2 points per minute, 5.9 arrive as actual power-play points. The other 3.3 show up at even strength — which makes sense, because a coach who moves you to the top unit is usually also moving you up the lineup and giving you better linemates. Roughly 36% of the gain is that second effect rather than the power play itself.
For a fantasy manager that distinction barely matters — the points count either way, and both follow the same promotion. But it does mean you should read a power-play promotion as a signal about a player's whole role, not just his special-teams minutes.
The cross-check, using completely different math: group last season's skaters by their even-strength scoring rate, then compare totals within each group.
Same production at five-on-five, and the first-unit players finish well ahead in every band — by 16 points on average. The within-player math said 15. Two different methods, the same answer, which is why the number at the top of this page is 16 and not something more precise than the evidence supports.
Who has the first unit in 2026-27
Camp line combinations list each team's first power-play unit, five skaters on nearly every team. Across the 29 teams that have posted units so far, 142 of the skaters we project for 55 or more games are on one. CAR, PHI and VGK have not posted units yet, so their skaters are left out of this table and the lists below that depend on it.
The minutes column is what each group actually played last season, and the camp units line up with it: 2.94 a game for this year's first unit, 1.63 for the second.
Look at the last column. At even strength, first-unit skaters project for 41.0 points and second-unit skaters for 28.3 — 45% more, because good players do tend to get the job. The blowout is in the middle column: 18.6 power-play points against 7.3, 2.6 times as many. For a first-unit forward projected for 55 points or more, 32% of the total comes on the power play, and the drop to no power play at all is a cliff, not a slope.
The players most exposed to one coaching decision
These are the skaters whose fantasy value depends most heavily on keeping a job that can be taken away in October.
7 of the top 12 are defensemen, and that is the single most useful thing on this page for anyone drafting a blue line. A defenseman who quarterbacks the first unit is a fantasy asset. A defenseman who does not is a collection of blocked shots. Moritz Seider projects for 55 points and 51% of them come on the power play — he is not a 55-point defenseman, he is a 27-point defenseman with a very good job.
Draft them, but know what you are buying. If the job moves in November, a big share of the value moves with it.
The players who do not need it
The mirror image, and a genuinely underrated category: producers who get most of their points at even strength, so a power-play demotion costs them the least.
Brandon Hagel is the extreme case — 77 projected points with only 15% of them coming on the power play, even though he is on the first unit in camp. Losing every power-play minute would cost him 11 points and leave him at 65. In a league where half your roster is one line-juggle away from a bad month, that is worth something the rankings do not show.
One promotion away
And the list to actually act on. These are the best even-strength producers who are not on a first unit in camp and did not play first-unit minutes last season either. If any of them get promoted — in October, after the first slump — the math above says roughly 16 points follow, and more for someone starting from almost no power-play time.
Aliaksei Protas leads it: 52 projected points at even strength, more than the average first-unit skater manages, after 0.48 power-play minutes a game last season. He does not need the promotion to be useful. He needs it to be a problem for your league.
How to use this on draft day
Three things, in order of how much they will change your picks.
Check the power-play unit before you check the ranking. Two players a round apart on your board can be 16 points apart on power-play time alone. Every team page's Lines tab shows its camp units, and the full projections carry every skater's projected power-play points.
Discount the exposed, especially on defense. A defenseman getting 44% of his points on the power play, the average for the 7 above, is a fine pick at his price and a disaster one round early. The defense board has the full blue line if you want to sort it yourself.
Keep the waiting list. Power-play jobs turn over constantly — 38 of the 500 skaters in the first table moved by a full minute from 2024-25 to 2025-26. The players above are the ones where a promotion is worth the most, and they are usually available late. The 2026-27 draft kit has the rest of the boards.
Where these numbers come from
The historical half is box scores: power-play goals and assists from every 2024-25 and 2025-26 regular-season game, and power-play ice time from the shift data, for every skater with at least 40 games in both seasons. No model is involved in that half — it is what happened.
The 2026-27 half has two parts. Power-play roles are the units in each team's camp line combinations. Projected points are our fantasy projection, which builds each skater's power-play points from his own scoring rates, his projected ice time and his team's scoring environment. Power-play roles change, sometimes in the first week of the season, and when they do this page is out of date until the next rebuild.