1. High-danger offense<\/p>\n
Jordan Staal<\/a> has emerged as the front-runner for the Conn Smythe Trophy<\/a>, the annual award given to the most valuable player to his team in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He has tied the NHL record for longest goal streak in a Stanley Cup Final (five games), becoming the fifth player ever to accomplish that feat; the others were Yvan Cournoyer<\/a> (1973), Jean Beliveau<\/a> (1956), Maurice Richard<\/a> (1951) and Cyclone Taylor<\/a> (1918).<\/p>\n Staal, who\u2019s the Hurricanes captain and won the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009, leads the Cup Final series in both high-danger goals (five) and high-danger shots on goal (13). Staal, who\u2019s 37 years old and has been a versatile third-liner for much of his 14 seasons with Carolina, has not had a five-game goal streak since 2007, when he was 18 years old and playing for the Penguins.<\/p>\n Staal\u2019s versatility has allowed him to fit in seamlessly on a new line with Seth Jarvis<\/a> and Nikolaj Ehlers<\/a> and also be a difference-maker on the first power-play unit against the Vegas Golden Knights in the Cup Final. He scored two goals in Game 4 at Vegas, both coming from high-danger zones, and became the third-oldest player (37 years, 272 days) to record a multigoal game in the Cup Final (others: Mark Recchi<\/a> at 43 years, 125 days in 2011; Igor Larionov<\/a>\u00a0at 41 years, 187 days in 2002). Seven of Staal\u2019s eight goals this postseason have been high-danger goals, and five of his six goals in the Cup Final have been high-danger goals.<\/p>\n NHL EDGE IQ insights: Staal leads all players in scoring chances (18) through the first five games of the Stanley Cup Final. Scoring chances are defined as inferenced shot attempts with a \u201cProjected Goal Rate\u201d (PGR) greater than or equal to 5.0 percent; inferenced shot attempts exclude those taken from outside of 60 feet, beyond the goal line and on an empty net.<\/p>\n Of those 18 scoring chances, four resulted in a goal, nine forced Golden Knights goalie Carter Hart to make a save, and the other five were either blocked (four) or missed the net (one).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. High-danger offense Jordan Staal has emerged as the front-runner for the Conn Smythe Trophy, the annual award…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-732934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}