Previews & Post-mortems

Better Late Than Never?

Balancing tracking & new dad life was a bit more challenging than I thought, as it took me some time to track all the games. I ended up finishing the first round by the time the second round was almost over so in the interest of keeping things immediate, I skipped ahead to the Conference Final & have enough time to do a brief breakdown of both series. I might go back to do the second round if there’s a demand for it, but I’m probably moving onto some off-season projects after this.

Anyway, let’s breakdown these matchups

New York - Florida

The Preview vs. What Actually Happened

Instead of the usual reviews, I wanted to look at how I predicted each series with the All Three Zones data & compare them to the actual results.

Let’s start with the preview using regular season data.

I thought this would go similar to the Carolina series for the Rangers, except they would have a tougher time keeping the puck out of their net and counter-attacking the Panthers because they’re better at getting to the net than the Hurricanes & even more stingy on defense. Still expected it to be a chess match at five-on-five with how they match up. Both teams are patient, the Rangers will eventually get their high danger looks & Florida was going to pile up some shots with how good they are at the forecheck & stacking long territorial shifts together.

How did it go?

Pretty much according to script, except Florida carried the puck in a little more than I expected. Scoring chances at five-on-five per 60 minutes were about 14-10 in favor of Florida, which was down from their regular season rate, but their strong defense withheld. The Rangers are no stranger to getting outchanced & they usually make up for it through counter-attacks & at least matching you in terms of high-percentage plays. They did that here to an extent & it’s part of the reason why this ended up being a close series on the scoreboard.

Where Florida went to work was making the Rangers pay for their inability to get out of their own zone or put any passes together. Neutral zone shots were dominated by Florida, particularly when they could intercept a clearing attempt & get back onside or force a turnover. In the previous seasons where I tracked this, rush offense that started in the neutral zone led to fewer goals compared to the defensive zone. Florida scored three of their goals here, which isn’t a lot but it’s something. Part of that is from how quickly they countered & caught the Rangers on really sloppy puck play (see Gus Forsling’s goal in Game 5) and their forwards are all pretty sharp when it comes to carrying the puck.

This is something that has been in the team’s DNA since 2020 when they broke my charts for rush offense. They could plug in any forward with an iota of skill & get them to contribute almost seamlessly. Ever since Paul Maurice took over, things have been more controlled (for lack of a better term). They dump the puck in more than most teams, but if an opportunity to strike is there, they have the horses to do it. Everyone in their top six is capable of getting up into the play or putting 2-3 passes together to enter the zone. They might not always do it, but again, the ability is there and that’s usually the key in the playoffs. Like it was with Vegas last year.

Limiting NYR’s offense was the other side of this. The Rangers scored all but three of their goals off the rush & created almost 60% of their chances this way too. They actually had some success with it early in the series, creating 21 chances off the rush in the first three games. The rest of the series? They created only 10, six of those coming in Game 6. The Rangers can be a frustrating team to play against & analyze because they aren’t great at exiting their own zone by stats. They fail a higher percentage of their exits than average & aren’t great at getting out of their zone with possession either. It’s just that they’re very hard to stop on the few times a game they do connect & they can create an odd-man rush or a breakaway out of nothing. Florida ran into this problem early in the series & then calmed things down after Game 3.

The difference maker? Pressure.

New York likes to attack off the rush at their own pace, whether that’s countering or slowing things down & attacking from 200 feet (see the first Laf goal in Game 3), they prefer to play more methodical & wait for the other team to blink before they attack. You can’t do that when you’re constantly under duress. Even when they tried to counter-attack the Panthers, they didn’t have any room.

The Rangers get a turnover off a broken stick, but Barkov gets back in time to disrupt the rush & New York has to start over again. Braden Schneider finds Zibanejad for a quick re-entry and his only option is a blank shot from the boards, which goes right back to Florida & they can go on the attack again. The other part was that Florida didn’t let up on them if there was a lull in the action, especially their top line.

I’m not sure if this was a dump-and-change or if there was a miscommunication here, but Florida quickly got a chance out of it with Miikkola making a heads up play. This is how you get an extra 2-3 chances a game and make the other team climb an uphill battle even if you’re facing a hot goalie. Florida got a lot of these shifts, especially from their top players. New York’s burned teams that played them too aggressively before, but the Panthers had the skill to back them up. It’s part of why the Zibanejad line had such a poor series. They do most of their damage off the rush and those opportunities weren’t there & when they did get them, they usually had a Panther within a stride of them, resulting in misses, blocks & fanned shots.

Even with all that, this series was mostly decided by one-goal games and NYR was still in it even if they had a lot of things go wrong. Trocheck, Lafreniere & Shesterkin did what they could but as good as they are, Florida had at least six guys playing at their best, which is hard to overcome even with elite goaltending.

Stats of the Series

• The leader in shot assists this series? Evan Rodrigues. Not who I expected either, but he is a player I’ve always liked because he does a lot of things to set the table for linemates despite not having much of a high-end skillset. He does a lot of subtle things that look like empty calorie plays (i.e. short passes & shots from the outside), but they do add up & can yields some fantastic results if you pair him with the right guys. This started to happen when they moved Tkachuk to his line with Bennett. He is one of those players who will help his teammates score even if he’s not seeing much of a reward for it in points, which is evident if you look at his on-ice Goal Rates the last 2-3 seasons.

• Jacob Trouba & Erik Gustafsson had more failed exits & defensive zone retrievals than the entire Panthers combined. Trouba in particular had 19 failed exits, which is really hard to do with how stingy I am at tracking these. This has been an issue for him the past two seasons now under two different coaches & I don’t see how it’s getting better unless there’s an overhaul. Laviolette’s tried to mask this by having them play the “clear the puck & regroup” game, but it can only take you so far when you’re turning the puck over this much.

Edmonton - Dallas

The Preview vs. What Actually Happened

I figured Edmonton would have to win this on special teams because Dallas nullifies cycles better than anyone & it’s similar to the quicksand they ran into against Vegas last year. The Stars also had some reinforcements with Wyatt Johston & Logan Stankoven playing out of their minds in the first two rounds along with the sleeping giant factor looming with Jason Robertson slumping & Roope Hintz injured. Dallas had a counter for most of Edmonton’s strengths with the elephant in the room being that their top players weren’t as good. How did it play out?

In the big picture, this is about what I expected. Dallas had the better of chances & the run of play, but it’s boosted by a lopsided Game 6 where the Oilers had an inexplicably low offensive output in a 3-1 win, recording only 13 shot attempts. The rest of the series was very close with Edmonton winning the special teams battle. The granular details are a little more interesting. Dallas should have had the advantage in defensive zone play, but Edmonton was actually the better team here. They even scored a few forecheck goals, which some of the best teams in the league have struggled to do against Dallas this year.

Dallas’ series kind of reminded me of some of the old Hurricanes playoff runs because they did a lot of things right. They forechecked well, did a great job of creating from behind the goal line & controlled most of the series at five-on-five. Every mistake they made just seemed to matter more than the three things they did right because Edmonton’s top players are collectively on a major heater right now. Maybe it’s Connor McDavid shooting more? He had 16 scoring chances at five-on-five in this series alone after having 15 for his entire playoff run last year, he also led the team in chance setups, unsurprisingly. This isn’t even getting into what he did on the power play, pretty much winning Edmonton the series on his own in Game 6 with his goal & an assist. Even outside of that, this might have been the most heliocentric type of game I have ever seen, at least in the modern playoffs (especially in an elmination game).

Anything the Oilers did in this game revolved around McDavid and hey, sometimes you need a game like that to get to the next level. I doubt Edmonton wants to see a repeat of it in the next week, though. I hate the whole “this team deserved better” talk in the playoffs because someone has to loose, but this Dallas team had a lot going for it this year. They were getting superstar level type of play from a second year forward, Heiskanen went two rounds without being on the ice for a goal against & they had home ice advantage heading into this series. The playoffs are cruel like that, though.

Stats of the Series

• Kris Knoblauch’s decision to put Phillip Broberg in the lineup after not seeing any game action for months was a ballsy move that paid off. The goal in Game 4 shocked everybody, but how was his game outside of that? In terms of things you want a puck-moving defenseman to do, he passeed the first test. 11 of his 19 defensive zone retrievals led to controlled exits for the Oilers & he only had four turnovers. Going by rate stats, this puts him at the top of the Oilers blue line. Small sample size warning here, but you live & die by this stuff in the playoffs & it covered up a major issue for Edmonton. Interested to see if he keeps it up against the Panthers forecheck.

• Wyatt Johnston’s Conn Smythe campaign comes to an end. Goal-scoring surges happen all the time in the playoffs, but the rate this kid created scoring chances at was insane. In the two rounds I tracked, Johnston created 38 scoring chances, not counting the 11 he also setup. The next closest player had 22 (Barkov). He had a great regular season & is usually a high shot/chance volume player with a nose for the net, but this run was something else. He was a monster in that Vegas series & had another strong showing against Edmonton.