The best teams in any sport take advantage of any little opportunity that they find.

In hockey, the power play is the most blatant advantage that a team can get. It’s at least a couple of minutes where you’re playing with one more player than the other team, and it’s a situation that needs to be capitalized upon as much as possible.

For the Phantoms, much of the problem surrounding the team this season has come on the power play. Up and down the roster, players agree that they have to be better when they have that distinct advantage of being a player up on the other team. Through its first 28 games, Lehigh Valley has enjoyed the added advantage of having at least one additional player on 109 occasions. The 12 goals that they’ve scored in those situations work out to just an 11% success rate on power plays, the fourth lowest in all of the AHL. To put it in perspective, the league middle of the pack in terms of success on the power play is 18%.

“We’ve got to get ourselves in a spot where our power play is winning games for us,” head coach Scott Gordon said after a recent game, providing a bit of an understatement on where the team stands in terms of power play success.

Unfortunately, things have gotten even worse for the team, as it has seen its average shrink from a 12.5% success rate just a couple of weeks ago. That fall included an 0-for-7 effort on power plays in a game against Springfield in the first week of December. Back then, the team was ranked 25th in the league and is now 28th.

The power play – or lack thereof – has given opponents a sniff of momentum when the Phantoms can’t take advantage of playing with the upperhand. Some of it points to a mental issue where players know that the team struggles in those situations and tend to tense up and try to be too perfect on power plays. Then, there’s the idea of having weak execution in key spots, or possibly a lack of chemistry among the players on the power play unit.

Figuring out the problem is the first step in fixing it, but finding the cause has been an elusive search for answers.

“Obviously, we know there’s a problem, but identifying the cause and figuring out how to fix it is the hard part,” said Gordon. “I do think that we sometimes put too much pressure on ourselves and simply relaxing would help, but there’s more to it than that. We just don’t seem to be able to stay aggressive in those situations, and it’s hurting us.”

Another problem arises when the Phantoms have to shift into penalty-killing mode. The team gives up goals in 23% of the chances that other teams have when they have a one-man advantage. The only team in the AHL with worse penalty killing numbers are the San Jose Barracudas, who have allowed goals in 24.5% of their short-handed situations this season. The league norm is around 19%.

“That’s the other part of it, in that we can’t stop the other teams from taking advantage of those situations, so it really puts us behind the eight-ball,” said Gordon. “Fortunately, we’re not called for too many penalties, or it could be even more problematic for us, but it’s something that good teams learn to do, is to be successful on both ends of the power play.”

TOLL MONEY ... Nicolas Aube-Kubel and Carsen Twarynski were both recalled by the Flyers on Sunday. The 23-year-old Aube-Kubel has four goals and three assists in 25 games with the Phantoms this season. Aube-Kubel played in nine games with the Flyers last season, and is making his first NHL appearance of the season with this recall. Twarynski, 22, has had two previous stints with Philadelphia this season and scored his first NHL goal on Oct. 12 against Vancouer.

SINKING FEELING ... The Phantoms are 3-7-0-0 in their last 10 games, and have sunk to sixth place in the eight-team Atlantic Division. They stand 12 points behind Hartford and Providence, who are tied atop the division. The Phantoms split a home-and-home series with Hartford over the weekend, and then fell in Hershey on Sunday to finish their three-in-three weekend. Lehigh Valley has back-to-back games in Charlotte this coming weekend, and a game in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on Dec. 27, before returning to the PPL Center against Utica on Dec. 28.