Coyotes' PK has been dominant, but can the team find consistency?

At this point, Michael Grabner and the Arizona Coyotes are trolling the opposition - at least in one area of the game.

Last week, with the contest scoreless and a teammate in the penalty box, Grabner flung the puck at the Nashville Predators' net from just a few feet inside the offensive zone. The shot looked harmless - until it one-hopped at the hash marks. Beat clean, Pekka Rinne became the latest goalie to be victimized by the NHL's best offensive (and defensive) penalty kill.

Arizona's PK has already produced 10 goals (the next highest total is four) while humming along at a 91.7 percent clip defensively, allowing opponents to score just five times. Those numbers have resulted in an eye-catching shorthanded goal differential of plus-5 for the otherwise-middling 9-9-1 Coyotes. And considering the team bagged only two shorties in 2017-18, the recent binge may be the wackiest development of the young NHL season.

"I've played on some teams where the penalty kill is really good and you’ve had some dangerous guys who have scored off the penalty kill, but not to this pace," Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet, an NHL forward from 1994 to 2002, told theScore.

"It's given us some juice in the fact that we're hanging our hats on something," he added. "Some teams have identities. Right now, teams are playing us and they're going, 'Hey, this PK is No. 1, and if you’re not careful they can score.'"

If the Coyotes maintain their current shorthanded scoring pace - an extremely unlikely scenario given a third of their shots have gone in - they'd finish with 43 goals for the season. The all-time record of 36 is held by the Wayne Gretzky-led 1983-84 Oilers (no other team's scored more than 28), and it's safe to say the current Coyotes roster is nowhere near that Stanley Cup-winning level of talent, which only underlines the absurdity of its brilliant run.

And outside of the penalty kill, it's not all sunshine and lollipops for the .500 Coyotes. Marred by injuries to key contributors, struggling to score at five-on-five, and fifth worst with the man advantage, Tocchet's club has failed to seize the moment in the Pacific Division, which, beyond the Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks, features nothing but underwhelming clubs.

Consistently inconsistent, the Coyotes will beat the dangerous Nashville Predators or Tampa Bay Lightning one night - and look sharp doing it - but then fall to the downtrodden Detroit Red Wings or Pittsburgh Penguins a few days later.

"After a bad game, we've bounced back pretty well," Tocchet said, preferring to assess the opening stretch from a glass-half-full perspective. "Last year, especially in the first half, we'd have a couple of duds in a row, where now it's like, 'Hey, we had a bad game, let’s bounce back.' That’s the sign of a team that's coming to."

After a 70-point season in '17-18, Arizona's on pace for 82 this time around, while the typical playoff cutoff is approximately 95 points. Solid goaltending and some offense from spark plug Clayton Keller have certainly helped, but again, it's the PK keeping this team afloat heading into Wednesday's game against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Grabner, who ranks second to Boston's Brad Marchand in shorthanded goals (19) since entering the league in 2009-10, is leading the charge this season with four. His partner in crime, Brad Richardson, has three, while second-unit regulars Derek Stepan (two) and Lawson Crouse (one) have chipped in as well.

At the other end, goalies Antii Raanta and Darcy Kuemper have been lights-out behind blue-liners Niklas Hjalmarsson, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Kevin Connauton, and the recently sidelined Jason Demers.

"We have a lot of pride in killing penalties and we’re getting our chances early here and taking advantage of them," Grabner said. "Really, it’s all about not being careless with the puck."

Last season, Tocchet's first behind the Coyotes' bench, the team finished with mediocre PK numbers - 19th in kill percentage, and somewhere between 17th and 24th in each relevant advanced-stats category. Then, a few things happened: Grabner signed as a free agent, Hjalmarsson returned to full health, and Connauton slotted in for the departed Luke Schenn.

Now, the Coyotes' PK system - with those improvements in place - is working better than anyone could have imagined.

"We've been making really good reads," Tocchet said of his penalty-killing group.

"When we're applying pressure, the other guy - the weak-side guy - has been making really good reads. Sometimes you have to guess on these reads and we've been guessing right more often. Are we lucky on some of them? Maybe. But the guys have done a nice job reading it and coming out on the right side of that read."

The clip below illustrates the Coyotes' pounce mentality pretty well:

Richardson (No. 15 in red) steals the puck and quickly turns a broken possession by Vancouver's power play into an odd-man rush. Connauton (No. 44) and Grabner (No. 40) are with him, and the group scores off a rebound after a lackluster effort from the backchecking Canucks.

You'll notice that Grabner doesn't think twice about bolting north. The flying Austrian's lightning-fast anticipation makes him a constant breakaway threat, and he's made a career out of fast-break offense.

On the PK specifically, Tocchet's told Grabner to simply trust those instincts.

"I'm not going to put the shackles on him. I'd be crazy to make him robotic," Tocchet said. "I think he's a feel type of guy - knowing where the puck is, who has the puck, where the puck is going to go. I think that's a hockey IQ thing, and you have to let him do what he does.”

So, when a defenseman makes a good read on the penalty kill, Grabner's the logical first option for a breakout target. This is evident often, including in the sequence below, which involves some quick thinking from Connauton:

After picking off a pass below his own goal line, Connauton notices Philadelphia's Jordan Weal (No. 40 in orange) deep near the faceoff circle and Grabner gunning for the neutral zone. Hitting a teammate is the ideal choice here, but few possess Grabner's skating ability, so the 50-50 puck pursuit - which he wins before scoring - becomes more advantageous.

Overall, the Coyotes have shown flashes in the early going and the positivity is starting to snowball. For one, the Grabner signing (three years, $3.35 million per season) appears to be a nice piece of work by general manager John Chayka. Top center Alex Galchenyuk, injured to start the campaign, is coming along offensively. All-situations defender Jakob Chychrun is working his way back into the rotation after a long battle with his own injury. Raanta, also hurt, is close to returning ... the list is long.

But for a franchise that's starved for playoff hockey after missing out for six straight years, much more than a tremendous (potentially historic) penalty kill will be required on a game-to-game basis. And those other areas - at five-on-five and with the man advantage - must improve sooner rather than later.

"That’s been our Holy Grail," Tocchet said, pausing before finishing his thought.

"Trying to find that consistency."

John Matisz is theScore's National Hockey Writer. You can find him on Twitter @matiszjohn.

(Statistics courtesy: NaturalStatTrick.com, Hockey-Reference.com, and NHL.com)