Prequel to the Sequel

Five observations from the Western Conference Final that tie into the Florida/Edmonton rematch

This is going to be a brief review of Dallas/Edmonton because the Stanley Cup Final starts tonight and I know everyone only has so much spare time in their lives to read about a series that finished a week ago. I didn’t see much of this series live with most of my focus going to the Hurricanes, but there were a lot of things that caught my eye when tracking it over the past few days. The Western Conference was a gauntlet in both divisions and every series had a “clash of the titans” feel to it with all the star power in each series. The Oilers/Stars matchup was no different and was probably the best example of it.

Five Observations From The West

McDavid had his best playoff series since 2017

This was Connor McDavid’s best performance in a series that I’ve tracked. I haven’t been consistent with tracking the playoffs since A3Z started (2016), but in the runs where the Oilers have gone deep, this was the best he has been on a per-game level.

Applying some context to how McDavid played, this was the most scoring chances he produced at five-on-five per 60 minutes and his highest Microstat Game Score (which takes into account zone entries, exits, forecheck pressures and high-danger passes). The closest he has come recently was his first round series against the Kings back in 2021, which Edmonton won in seven games with McDavid posting a Game Score of 3.7 in the closer. In this series, he posted three games with a Game Score above 3 and his “worst” was 1.79 showing in Game 5, which is a great game for an average first liner for context. A superstar performance like this will nuke almost any team.

What he did in this series goes hand-in-hand with what went wrong for Dallas. Any coach will tell you the gameplan against McDavid is to not let him get behind you. Not that you want his line skating circles around you in the offensive zone, but you will gladly trade those off for breakaways, odd-man rushes and jailbreak plays where he splits the defense. This is where the series went off the rails for the Stars. McDavid basically did what he wanted once he got the puck this series, carrying the puck in on 95% of his zone entries, creating 17 scoring chances off those carry-ins, exiting the zone with possession 93% of the time on 26 attempts and creating 28 shots off the rush along with 13 scoring chances. He was also getting offense in all phases of the game, which is loosely related to Dallas’ issues with finishing in Games 3 & 4.

The Stars had a strong territorial advantage in Game 3, which I’ll get into in more detail later, but they couldn’t solve Stuart Skinner and Edmonton struck gold when they could go the other way.

Not scoring on their chances & getting burned on the counter-attacks is one thing. Where Dallas kept getting poached was on the follow-ups when they could keep the puck in. Edmonton wasn’t really concerned with getting hemmed in off failed exits & sort of kept chipping it to another layer to start a puck-battle, which would eventually result in a turnover high in the zone where they could start attacking with speed & numbers. This was the shift right after Bouchard’s goal and the Stars tried to get something going with Robertson & Rantanen together. It’s a line that can pin you in & go to work from behind the net. They also don’t have a lot of speed and that ended up being more of a problem with how they were getting beat to pucks and eventually needing to get back to stop what ended up being a 3-on-1.

Transition is where the Stars got killed & McDavid was the one leading the charge. An interesting side-note here is that his worst recent playoff performance was in last year’s Final against Florida, whom they have a rematch with. McDavid had to play a lot of half-rink hockey that series, especially in Game 7 so it was tougher for him to break the game open like this even if he did have the puck in the offensive zone a lot. Dallas went with a different approach of trying to hem his line in & it backfired. If Skinner played a little worse the story might be different, but that ties into the next observations.

Dallas adjusting to “playoff hockey”

I mention every post-season that the league Carry-in% usually goes down in the playoffs. The only year it didn’t was the 2021-22 post-season that was dominated by the Colorado Avalanche & Tampa Bay Lightning. That Avs squad is the only one that maintained their carry-heavy, controlled style of play in a long post-season run. This season, everyone has dropped down a peg. This series featured two of the top teams in the league at Controlled Entry% in the regular season.

Edmonton’s Playoff Carry% dropped to 48%, which is the highest among playoff teams post-second round while Dallas dropped all the way to 38% with a 41% Controlled Entry Rate this series. So one team has been able to maintain their identity to a degree while the other is playing completely different than they did in the regular season. This is taking into account the facelift Dallas had around the trade deadline & their injury issues, but it is worth mentioning that they also had a porous rush defense in the regular season, giving up the third most shots off the rush per 60 minutes in the regular season & were a bottom-five team in giving up shots off defensive zone exits & counter-attacks. The right side of their defense was always a question & while I think there’s probably more at play here, it did carry over to the post-season. The problem was their transition game didn’t carry over at all. Which ties into where they lost control of this series.

The Nightmare in Edmonton

Dallas had the worst thing that could happen to you in the playoffs, dominating the scoring chance battle and losing in a blowout. If it happens once you can scrap it as long as you still have a chance to tie the series, the problem was it happened again. They didn’t control the chances as much, but neither team scored a five-on-five goal in this game and it continued what was a disturbing trend for the Stars with their lack of finishing.

A majority of Dallas’ offense came off the forecheck in these two games. It’s not necessarily a bad thing even if shots off the rush have a slightly higher shooting percentage. You figure it would catch up to the Oilers from just a pure-volume standpoint. That’s the risk you take when you’re dealing 1-2 samples, though. The pendulum swings wildly in one direction or the other. For the Stars, they got the ass-end of it and what probably made it worse was Edmonton’s counter-strikes the other way. They outshot the Stars off the rush and that’s usually the equalizer when you have a massive territorial advantage like they did.

So how unlucky were they in this game? Reviewing some of the chances it’s easy to nitpick where they could have done better but you would also figure they would get more than one past Skinner based on how many looks they were getting.

So a few things stuck out to me. There are a couple rush looks here but nothing was clean. The only one I remember off the top of my head was Duchene walking around Perry & getting a look from the slot that Skinner gloved down. The rest are deflections with some form of disruption from the Oilers defense, which was a recurring problem because Edmonton seemed to get back into position to get a stick or a body on any of the Stars attempted chances.

As far as the in-zone offense goes, it’s a lot of patient & deliberate plays that could work if you make a perfect shot. It’s very hard to execute that in today’s NHL even with the arsenal of shooters Dallas has. They worked hard behind the net to get a couple looks & Robertson had a few that definitely could have gone in. There were others that got denied from one of their guys getting boxed out in front of the net or not being able to locate the puck. Rantanen & Robertson also seemed to have negative chemistry together because the two were standing in the same spot to receive a pass or retrieve a puck regularly. They read off eachother when they could play off the rush, but working in tight spaces seemed to be an issue. Compare that to goal line look Robertson got at from Dadonov at the end of the video & it’s a much more dangerous shot from a similar location because he could just fire it instead of having to settle the play down.

This is where I wonder if Dallas having to play outside of their element hurt them. Their transition game was such a big part of their DNA in the regular season & they rarely got to play with that type of connection at all in this series. I might be overblowing it because this has been going on all playoffs for them instead of just this series, but it seemed like they had to be perfect with everything to score unless Edmonton gave them a gift.

Duchene’s Hard Luck Series, Passing vs. Playmaking

I have spent too much of my writing career talking about Matt Duchene and I don’t foresee that changing considering he just had an 82-point season followed by a playoff run where scored only one goal. He’s also an unrestricted free agent yet again and I honestly have no idea what his stock is right now. He was at his best and worst in Nashville while he’s had two solid regular seasons in Dallas followed by a playoff run that mimicked his Nashville season where he had the worst numbers of his career.

To make matters worse, he was one of the few guys on Dallas consistently creating offense.

Now, when a player has a stat-line like this and gets blanked I’m usually the first guy to stick up for him because….I mean c’mon. You can argue for chance quality and whatnot and I don’t want to spend too much time reviewing film because I usually come away with the same observations. Some of them he could have done better and others he was unlucky. The one thing going against him & mos tof hte Stars is how one-dimensional & the Stars were with how they craeted chances. They usually had one guy shooting & another setting them up with no one really acting as a dual threat. It makes sense when you see how often they resorted to rebounds, goal-line plays and deflections. Duchene & Marchment were the only ones doing that from a shot-volume standpoint, but this also illustrates the difference between passing & playmaking. This sequence in the second period of Game 4 does a good job of it, as well.

Duchene did a good job of finding open teammates and making quick reads to get something to the net & when you do that you’re naturally going to get more chances. The offense usually happened quick but Edmonton also did a good job of stopping it before their defense broke down, resulting in some Grade B chances but not a lot of big, high percentage plays. This was better than what most of the Stars were doing but it’s also to see why the results went so against Duchene & his line in a short series.

The Open West

Keeping an eye on the Final, something really interesting I noticed is most of the better teams at exiting the zone with possession are in the Western Conference. Florida did a great job of stifling things in the first three rounds, but they haven’t played a team like the Oilers yet. Likewise, the Oilers haven’t faced a team with a forecheck like the Panthers either, so this is going to be a real style clash. It also shows that there’s no right or wrong way to have playoff success & it’s more about building around your roster.

Still, the skew in distrubition here is kind of crazy to look at.

Of the top 15 teams, nine of them are from the Western Conference & the Oilers played two of them in the first two rounds. Oddly enough, Dallas was the one team that bunked this trend, with their Exit with Possession Rate being among the lowest in the league. It also wasn’t a major issue for Dallas this series with how much of this series was playing in the Edmonton zone or the neutral zone, but the breakout game for the Oilers was a big strength.

These stats are for the entire playoffs, available at allthreezones.com

There is always a McDavivd shaped asterisk next to any transition stats for the Oilers, but their individual numbers from their defensemen and centers are all solid across the board. Brett Kulak and Troy Stecher were the only players who fell into the turnover-prone category with the latter making up for it with solid puck-moving stats. Bouchard has been dymamite all playoffs long and Klingberg has done a great job in that second-pair spot alongside Jake Walman.

Both guys are doing an excellent job of getting to pucks & moving them to the second level. They’re also the ones I would look for in this matchup against Florida because their forecheck is going to be hell to deal with compared to what they’ve seen so far. See if they can survive those second & third chances on the keep-ins that will inevitably happen. Darnell Nurse & Brett Kulak are also a little sketchy because while Nurse is playing a simple game now,w hich makes him less turnover-prone, but also a threat to get hemmed in because neither guy is going to try make a breakout pass even if there’s no pressure. The Oilers will have to hope the top of their roster and their centers can cover up for this, as they have through three rounds.

Closing Notes

Dallas just ran into a better team with an elite player firing on all cylinders. It’s not going to be their final kick at the can because they have some of the key pieces in place (assuming this Robertson trade stuff is just nonsense). They’ll just have to fill out the middle of the roster. The pipeline from Cedar Park to Dallas has been pretty good in recent years so they have that going for them.

The Cup Final rematch should be a good one. McDavid’s playing better than he was last year & Draisaitl isn’t playing through an injury but this Panthers squad also looks stronger & deeper than they did last year, so I’m expecting another seven-gamer.