This week we are returning with part three of our playoff series review. In the last two articles we covered the teams that were eliminated in the first round. This week we are going to look at teams who were eliminated in the second round: the Minnesota Wild, Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres, and Philadelphia Flyers.
Like with all playoff action we are still dealing with some small sample sizes, but these teams got at least four wins under their belt, advanced to the second round, and played two different teams. It just means we might take this data a little bit more seriously than the first round data.
As a reminder: for this article we are going to look at these four teams and focus on things that have changed. It is such a small sample size that we are not going to read too much into point paces etc.. but instead look at how players were utilized in these win-or-go-home series and if that change resulted in anything different on the score sheet or in the underlying numbers. Doing so might give us a bit of insight into how teams are viewing certain players and who might be primed for a different role next season compared to this one. This is also the playoffs so to some extent we would assume that a team’s top players see a bit of an increase while some depth players might fall off a bit.
But on to the process. We will be looking at deployment and specifically both percentage of time on the power-play and total time on ice. We will be using percent when possible as overtime games can add significant time to a player’s overall count without changing that player’s real deployment opportunity. In order to get this data, we will be running a Big Board report for the playoffs and comparing that to a second custom Big Board report for the last two months of the regular season. That comparison will tell us which players have gained or lost time between these two samples. Essentially, we are looking at four data points from two different time periods. We have basic scoring data (points per game, and shots per game), then basic time on ice data (percent of the power-play, and total time on ice). In addition we will also be looking a bit at the contract status for players for a clue as to what changes might be in the works for over the off season.
Anaheim played 12 games through their playoff journey with two of them going to overtime. In terms of power-play time, there really wasn’t that much difference between the two samples. The second power play got maybe slightly more time during the playoffs, but really nothing too dramatic. In terms of regular ice time, Jackson Lacombe and Jacob Trouba saw the biggest increases, but again that isn’t really noteworthy. In terms of losses, we are really looking at Chris Kreider, Ryan Poehling, and Mason McTavish who lost the most. Kreider was still seeing time with Leo Carlsson at even strength and on the power play, which is definitely where you want to be, but McTavish being down again from the end of regular season is not a good sign. He had already dropped from almost 17 minutes a night down to 13 but then dropped again in the playoffs. He is under contract for a while yet, so hopefully can turn things around, but this does not bode well for the immediate future. The defensive situation in Anaheim is going to be interesting this off season. Trouba is 32, Radko Gudas and John Carlson are 36, and all three are UFAs. Olen Zellweger, Pavel Mintyukov, and Tyson Hinds are all 23 and under and RFAs. Zellweger and Mintyukov have some pedigree, but have been inconsistently utilized, and neither that prominently during the playoffs.
Buffalo played 13 games with two going to overtime. The biggest winner in Buffalo was Zach Benson and it wasn’t particularly close. He added over two minutes of overall time on ice, and skated over 40% of the team’s power play ice time. He was on a line with Tage Thompson and Josh Norris, and what looks like a top power play with Tage, and a few other young potential stars. He is an RFA this summer and based on how he was used, seems likely due for a decent contract. The bottom of the roster is a little less clear. There are a lot of players who didn’t suit up for the entire playoff run. Depth players like Jordan Greenway lost out on time across the board, but in terms of potentially relevant players, both Norris and Zucker lost on power-play time. Zucker is interesting as he held a top power-play spot for most of the last two seasons, but seems to have been bumped in favor of some young talent during the playoffs. Most of his value came from that power-play deployment so that is certainly something to watch going into next season.
Minnesota played 11 games against the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche with three going to overtime. There were some large shifts in total time on ice for Minnesota, but by and large predictable ones. The top six forwards and top defence pairs saw a pretty sizeable increase while the depth saw an overall loss of time on ice. The most notable gain was Ryan Hartman, who not only got to center Kirill Kaprizov, but also replaced Joel Eriksson Ek on the top power play. It didn’t actually help his production though, and he has always been kind of a hit and miss sort of player, so I don’t think there is too much to read into this.
Philadelphia played 10 games with three going to overtime. There were not a lot of winners in Philly. Some depth increased their time on ice (Rasmus Ristolainen and Sean Couturier), but generally deployment either didn’t change that much, or changed for the worse. The clearest example of that is definitely Matvei Michkov. Michkov had been averaging about 15 minutes a night for most of the season, which was down from the 2024-25 season, and definitely not what managers were hoping for. In the playoffs he dropped even more, down to fewer than 12 minutes a night and to only 34 percent of the team’s power play. There are certainly rumors already about his fitness and effort in Philly, and this performance certainly does nothing to quiet them.
That is all for this week.
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