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Q: Why are the Penguins consistently average on the power play? They have tons of top-end talent and still do not play well with the man-advantage. Is it the coaching? After all, they have changed power-play personnel and moved people around and the results do not change. That leaves (assistant coach) Mike Yeo as the only constant. Why is it they continue to try new people instead of just letting a different assistant coach run the power play? Yeo obviously is not suited for this job. I am just wondering what it will take to either get the power play going as it should, or what it will take to finally replace Mike Yeo as the power-play coach.

Peter, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

MOLINARI: Your e-mail is representative of many submitted to the Q&A in rcent weeks, but at least one thing has changed since yours actually arrived. It is neither fair nor accurate to describe the Penguins' power play as average. At this point, having gone 0-for-23 with the extra man in the past six games, it can't even dream of being average. For the record, it was the fifth-worst in the NHL before last night's games, with a conversion rate of just 14.3 percent.

Losing guys like Sergei Gonchar and Evgeni Malkin have contributed to its recent troubles, of course -- those who believe Alex Goligoski's development have rendered Gonchar obsolete might want to re-think that, in light of how the power play has looked without its quarterback -- but the power play hasn't performed to expectations for much of this season.

While there have been tactical adjustments and personnel changes, the Penguins still haven't gotten into a rhythm with the extra man. Even the finest power plays run hot and cold, so slumps are inevitable, but the Penguins haven't hit a stretch yet where they're more than moderately warm. They've scored power-play goals in three consecutive games once, and done it in back-to-back games one other time. That's not acceptable for a team that has the talent found on their No. 1 unit, at least when it's intact.

Nonetheless, the belief here is that stripping Yeo of his power-play duties -- let alone removing him from the coaching staff, as more than a few readers have suggested -- would be more a case of singling out a scapegoat for a problem than finding a solution for it. Two head coaches, Michel Therrien and Dan Bylsma, have deemed him worthy of handling those responsibilities, so they obviously do not believe he is solely to blame for the power play's lack of productivity.

Injuries don't leave the Penguins with many personnel options now, but it would be nice to see them reduce the power play to its fundamentals, to try to generate goals by sending as many pucks and people to the net as possible. That not only would help to compensate for the loss of creativity stemmed from injuries to people like Gonchar and Malkin, but simply getting a goal or two -- no matter how it is scored -- could restore some confidence to the guys on the power play, and that might go a long way toward restoring the unit's equilibrium.

Trying to score blue-collar goals isn't necessarily the most natural thing for guys who have exceptional abilities, but the Penguins are far past the point where they can be concerned about style points because pretty goals don't count for any more than ugly ones.

The catch is that, of course, is that if the point men aren't capable of consistently getting pucks past the penalty-killers -- and avoiding sticks and skates and legs is a whole lot tougher than it might look from the seats or on TV -- it won't matter if the Penguins have guys in front to set screens and capitalize on deflections and rebounds, which is part of the reason the losses of Gonchar and Letang are so significant.

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