Going into this series, I had a feeling that goaltending was going to be a deciding factor and by that, I meant that the team who got slightly better goaltending would be the one who advanced. The Penguins had a decisive edge in this department based on their regular season numbers but after Marc-Andre Fleury experienced yet another playoff meltdown, their goaltending in this series was about on par with the Islanders and that isn't a good thing. To make matters worse, the Pens had been grossly outplayed in two out of three games so the margin for error became increasingly slim as the series went on and Fleury's terrible play was magnified. It got to the point where Pittsburgh needed their goaltender to help them persevere through stretches of bad play and possibly steal a game or two for them if needed. Fleury wasn't capable of doing that this series but fortunately for the Penguins, have a very capable "back-up" goaltender in Tomas Vokoun who they can go to when Fleury has a rough patch. Bylsma wisely elected to start him in Game Five and it paid off tremendously.

The Penguins have been getting outplayed for the better part of this series and they looked very sluggish to begin Game Five. The Islanders game planned for them well and completely shut down Pittsburgh's forecheck for the first 20 minutes. They also forced a lot of neutral zone turnovers to create rushes the other way and it really helped them establish a territorial advantage to take the crowd out of the game early. While this was a good road start, the one downside of the first period for the Islanders is that they didn't score and this is where the play of Vokoun played such a huge factor. It's unfair to say that Fleury wouldn't have been able to do the same thing but the Penguins being able to get the saves they need & escape the first period with no score was a big deal.

After that first period, Pittsburgh could regroup a little bit and they opened the floodgates in the next two periods. They outchanced the Islanders 15-8 in the final 40 minutes of the game after recording only two in the entire first period and were able to coast their way to a 4-0 win. The Penguins gave Vokoun plenty of goal support and played a good defensive game towards the end but he was the main reason they survived that first period and it gave his team a chance to regroup. Again, I don't think it's fair to say that Fleury wouldn't have been able to do the same, but Pittsburgh has desperately needed good goaltending for the last four games and they got that from Vokoun.

The Charlotte Checkers season came to a disappointing end last weekend when they lost their first-round series to the Oklahoma City Barons on the heels of two blowout losses. Disappointing ending aside, it was a great season for Charlotte as the team managed to finish fourth in their conference despite using 42 different skaters and having to deal with numerous roster changes once the NHL season resumed. Developing a strong farm system is a key to success in this league and the Checkers great season should give some fans hope about the future of this organization. However, it's always tough to find out which AHL players have any future at the next level. 

There are always players who put up huge numbers at the AHL level and get fans excited about their future only for them to become nothing more than fringe guys at the next level. Carolina found this out the hard way with Zach Boychuk, who looked always performed well in the AHL but ended up not doing much at the next level and ended up being waived by three different teams this past season. You always want your prospects and farm teams to do well but it's important to remember that a player who is able to succeed at the AHL level doesn't mean he will become a full-time NHL-er. Some players have trouble adjusting to the speed and physicality of the NHL or aren't defenisvely sound enough to play a depth role, so they end up being career AHL-ers or go pro with another club.

The tough part is always sorting these players out and it's very tough to do if you can't watch every game. Usually the only way to find out if they are ready or not is to try them out at the NHL level and see how they do. Some players from the Checkers have become regulars in Carolina's lineup (Riley Nash & Drayson Bowman) while others have teetered back and forth for most of their careers (Zach Boychuk & Zac Dalpe). It's also tough to judge how a player performed at the AHL level with just statistics alone becuase the only ones produced by the league are goals, points, penalty minutes, plus/minus and shots on goal. Things such as ice-time and shot/possession data are not available to the public.

In the past, I've discussed how much luck plays a role in goal/point totals and plus/minus and how often they can change from year-to-year, so I'm always iffy with using that to judge a player's performance. Shots on goal, however, can tell you quite a bit about how well a player performed offensively in a given year since that is something he has more control over. Let's say a player gets 150 shots on goal in an 82 game season and scores on 17% of them, giving him 25 goals in a year. The next season, he has 175 shots in five fewer games but scores on 10% of them, which would give him 17-18 goals in a season. Most people will point to his goal total and say that he had a disappointing season offensively when he was actually producing more shots on goal than he did in the previous season. A lack of finishing ability would probably be pointed to as the reason for it, but I think luck has a bigger factor on one's goal total than most believe.

Given that bit of information, I went through the boxcar numbers for every Checkers player and noted who was performing the best in not only scoring, but shots on goal as well. This will give us an idea of who was creating the most offense and who could possibly be ready to make the jump to the NHL next season. To do this, we're going to look at each player's NHL shot equivalency rates which were drawn up by Stephan Cooper of Habs Eyes on the Prize. I've done this analysis in the past so if you want a refresher on what the formula is and how it is drawn up, visit this link or the Habs Eyes on the Prize article linked to earlier.

Not going to lie here, I thought the Rangers should have been able to handle the Caps at even strength fairly easily based on these two team's play in the regular season. This hasn't been happening, though as the Rangers have been outchanced 39-36 by the Caps at evens heading into tonight's game. They aren't getting dominated but they were outplayed in two out of three games and were able to scrape out an ugly win on Monday. Those kind of wins always go a long way in the playoffs, though and it gave the Rangers a chance to climb back in the series. The Rangers are also a better team than what they showed in the first three games, so this series could very well go the full distance if the Rangers could return to their level of play during the regular season. Last night, we saw just that.

The Rangers looked more like the team that many expected to see this playoffs as they had complete control of things for about 75% of the game. Their offense came back to life in recording a total of 23 scoring chances and keeping Washington's better forwards quiet for the majority of the game. They were able to do this well in Game 3, as well but didn't create much offense at even strength. This ended up being the difference maker last night as they did not allow the Caps to have much sustained zone time at all.

In addition to that, the Rangers got something they've received little of this series, which is good bounces. Their first goal came after Taylor Pyatt knocked down a bad clearing attempt from Braden Holtby and it allowed Brad Richards to eventually score on an empty net. They got another one in the third period when Carl Hagelin was able to draw Holtby out of position and quickly get the puck to Derek Stepan, who fired the puck into an empty cage for the Rangers fourth goal of the game, which ultimately ended up being the game-winner. These kinds of chances & breaks weren't happening to the Rangers in the first three games, so being able to get these bounces likely played a role in the team's confidence. The Rangers obviously can't rely on bounces to advance but they have to like their chances now that the score is tied and their team just played easily their best game of the series.

The Wild pulled a bit of a shocker on Sunday afternoon by not only defeating the Chicago Blackhawks in overtime, but also outplaying them for the majority of the game on top of that. Chicago matches up favorably to the Wild in just about every area, so many were expecting this series to be a quick one but the Wild showed in that game that they could hang tough with one of the best teams in the NHL. Chicago's response to this was to play a much more conservative game and focus completely on shutting down the Wild's offense. 

They accomplished this well on Tuesday night by holding Minnesota to only 11 total scoring chances and six at even strength, which is as much as some teams record in an entire period. The Wild had the distinct edge in zone time and puck-possession, but it didn't matter that much because Chicago scored on their first shot of the game and focused on defense the rest of the way. They weren't playing as much of an end-to-end game as they were in the first three game and were more content with settling for safer clears rather than trying to lead odd-man rushes with their breakouts. It's all they needed to do, though since they were able to score early and the Wild had virtually no offense going for them.

All Chicago has to do now is win one more game at home and they are good to go for the next round and judging from how Games 1 & 2 went, this shouldn't be too hard of a task.

"Goaltending Gongshow" would be an appropriate headline for what went down at the Nassau Coliseum last night as the Islanders were able to tie the series. The goaltending on both sides has been bad, but last night's game may have been the ultimate display of goaltending ineptitude where Evgeni Nabokov was bad and Marc-Andre Fleury was ten times worse. The "quality start" metric is what is usually used to measure goaltender performance where all a goalie has to do is post a .912 save percentage in a game to give his team a chance to win. Neither goalie was able to do this last night with Nabokov allowing four goals on 31 shots and Fleury letting in an astounding six goals on 24 shots. "Shot quality" is always the common argument against this stat but anyone who watched the game last night shouldn't even bring this up because three of the goals Fleury let in were disgusting and he had to face only 11 Islander scoring chances as a whole.

The team in front of Fleury actually looked slightly better than they did in the last two games as they were able to limit the Islanders scoring chances and control the better part of this game. That would have been good enough for a win, but all stats kind of go out the window when 25% of the shots you give up end up in the back of your net. Three of the goals Fleury let in weren't even registered as scoring chances (Strait, Okposo & the second Streit goal), so that alone should tell you what the main problem was for the Penguins. 

Fortunately for the Penguins, this is only a tied series and they are starting to look better than they did in the last two games, albeit that isn't saying much. They also have another goaltender who they can turn to in Tomas Vokoun and it wouldn't shock me if we see him in net on Thursday. Pittsburgh is at the point where they need to start the goalie who gives them the best chance to win and I'm not sure if that goalie is Fleury right now. I can't help but feel that the only reason he wasn't pulled from last night's game is because Nabokov was almost just as bad and kept the Penguins in the game.

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time then you probably know that I've been tallying and posting the Hurricanes scoring chance numbers on a game-by-game basis and now it's time to reveal the team's overall performance. However, before we get into that, let's provide some context to the team's numbers. Last week, I discussed how the Hurricanes have been a very good puck-possession team for most of the season but their scoring chance numbers had been steadily declining for the final 18 games or so. It's a weird phenomenon because scoring chances and puck-possession are usually strongly related to each other but it wasn't for the Hurricanes this season. Taking an individual look at each player's scoring chance differential will help us identify who contributed to that. I'll also post their Fenwick percentage to show how they controlled scoring chances compared to puck-possession.

In addition to that, I'm also going to post each player's individual scoring chance rate to show which players were creating the most chances. It'll be a way to identify who was creating the most offense on each line and show who could be in for a breakout season next year. Without further ado, let's take a look at the numbers.

Last week, I picked apart and analyzed the performance of the Hurricanes defense corps and talked about the reasons why they struggled. One of the conclusions I came to was that the Hurricanes had too many third-pairing defensemen on their roster and not enough guys who could handle top-four minutes without getting hammered at even strength. The other problem that some have pointed to is that their defense corps was over-populated with puck-movers and didn't have another big, physical crease-clearing defenseman to compliment Tim Gleason and make life tough for opposing forwards.

It's not a false statement, but is having a lot of defensemen who are capable of moving the puck really that big of a problem? Think of it this way, you win hockey games by being able to control possession, create offense and scoring more goals than the opposition and puck-moving defensemen can help with this. The problem with the Hurricanes set-up wasn't that they had lot of puck-movers, it was that they couldn't keep up with opposing team's top forwards (McBain & Corvo in particular) and would be third-pairing guys on a contending team. Had they signed a "crease-clearer" like Greg Zanon or kept Bryan Allen, they would have likely had the same issues because, as we saw this year, these two are nothing more than third-pairing defensemen who struggle when having to go up against more skilled forwards.

Something that was claimed to be "missed" from the Hurricanes defense this season was their willingness block shots and play tougher in their own zone. Shot blocking is a skill that I value but it's something that I feel is vastly overrated by fans and the mainstream media. Whenever a defenseman gets in the way of an opposing shot, they are usually lauded for their toughness and sacrificing their body for their team's benefit. Blocked shots are also a real-time stat that's counted for in every area and are often pointed to as a way to see which team is performing better defensively. However, blocking shots usually isn't the best way to judge defensive play.

Think of it this way, if a defenseman blocks eight shots in a game, it means that the opposing team had possession in his zone long enough to attempt at least eight shots in approximately 15-20 minutes of ice time. If the opposing team has the puck 70% of the time when this defenseman is on the ice, it doesn't say a lot of good about his defensive play because he can't keep the puck out of his zone and his one redeeming asset is that he gets in the way of shots but that can only do so much for him if he can't clear the puck or get it out of his zone cleanly. Hence why blocking a lot of shots can be a misleading measurement of defensive play.

This isn't to say that blocking shots equates to poor defensive play because there is value in blocking shots and it puts a lot less stress on the goaltenders if their defense can help them out by getting in the way of pucks. It's just that teams who are constantly trapped in their own zone and have to scramble to block shots all the time probably aren't as good of a defensive team as one that denies the opposing team space and prevents shot attempts. This is why I think the blocked shot stat kept by the NHL can be significantly improved by showing the percentage of shots a team or player blocks instead of just the total number of blocked shots.

Derek Zone of Copper & Blue and NHL Numbers unveiled a new stat last year showing each player's even strength blocked shot percentage to help us more effectively gauge the best and worst shot blockers in the NHL by looking what percentage of even strength shot attempts against they blocked. The Hurricanes lost two very good shot blockers in Bryan Allen & Jaroslav Spacek this past year and ended up dropping from 9th to 20th in the NHL in total blocked shots. However, if you look at the percentage of shots the Canes blocked, the team has actually improved.

Rangers head coach John Tortorella has stated a few times that he thinks this series is closer than some believe and that his team has played well in a few areas, specifically with generating offense. That may have been true for Game One, but the Rangers had a lot of problems the next game and the truth is that they weren't very good last night either. They were able to keep the series alive with a 4-3 win but it was a very ugly win at that, because the Caps were the team that had controlled most of the five-on-five play and this is the second game in a row where this has happened.

That being said, being able to get the win last night could serve as a turning point for New York because they are capable of playing better and now have a chance to change the landscape of this series with another win. The Caps also brought a lot of problems on themselves by getting into penalty trouble in the first two periods and basically giving the Rangers chances to take over the game. Washington has done a great job of shutting down New York's power play in the first two games, but giving them six opportunities in the first two periods is just asking for trouble and the Rangers were able to make them pay, twice in fact.

It's a rare instance that the Rangers win the special teams battle, but that becomes somewhat easier to accomplish when they get 10 minutes of power play time. Taking this & the Caps series lead into consideration, it's very good that the Rangers didn't squander this win, as ugly as it was, because any chance of them pulling off a comeback would have gone down the drain if they did. After last night, I can see this series going either way. If the Rangers come out in regular season form, then I think this can go to seven games but it might be over quickly if their play at even strength is similar to how it was in the last two games.

Both of the afternoon games yesterday followed a similar pattern. We had two 1 vs. 8 matchups with the lower seed vastly outplaying the higher ranked team and both games going to overtime. The difference between the two games is unlike the Islanders, the Wild actually got rewarded for their efforts and were able to finish off the Blackhawks in overtime to stay alive in the series. After looking outmatched in Game Two, the one silver lining I could come up with for the Wild is that the next two games would be at home and could possibly come out stronger then and this is exactly what happened as Minnesota played their best game of the series and got a well-deserved OT win. 

Not going to sugarcoat this, the Wild have been a bad team at even strength so I was a little surprise to see them outshoot the Hawks 31-24 at evens today and was even more surprised that they limited Chicago's high-powered offense to only 11 total scoring chances today. Minnesota doesn't have the best depth or a lot of offense, but they had a good game-plan for limiting Chicago's offense today. They were able to shut them down in the neutral zone, played physical against their top forwards and kept most of their shots to the outside. I'm not sure how much of it had to do with the Blackhawks not playing up to their ability (they looked flat for about 50 minutes) but the Wild were the better team yesterday and now have some hope in this series.

One of the great things about the playoffs is the sense that anything can happen. It's an overstated narrative, but it's somewhat true when you think about it. Crazy things happen in a seven-game sample size (goalies standing on their heads, certain players going through a hot streak, etc.) and the heavily favored team doesn't always win. In this Pens/Isles series, the script has been flipped a bit. The Penguins are the top-seed and heavily favored coming in but they have actually been outplayed by the the Islanders in two out of three games. It might sound strange to the casual fan, but the Penguins have had a very tough time handing with the Islanders this series and are very fortunate to be leading two games to one.

The Penguins "stunning" depth looked outmatched by the Islanders top-nine today, as they were outchanced 21-12 and recorded only eight scoring chances at even strength. I don't care how talented your lineup is, this kind of offensive production isn't going to cut it in the playoffs even if they advance out of the first round. Yet, despite having such a low offensive output, the Pens were able to beat Nabokov five times and convert on a little under half of their scoring chances. Whether you want to chalk it up to a strong power play, luck, "killer instinct," "efficiency" or brutal goaltending from Evgeni Nabokov  is up to you, but the Pens seemed to have the golden touch whenever they shot the puck today for whatever reason.

I think the Penguins are a better team than what they have shown the last couple of games, but the Islanders deserved a better outcome than what they got today since they were the better team. However, as I said earlier, the better team doesn't always win in a seven-game series and getting a win today can help give the Pens a boost for the rest of the series. They are going to need to come out a lot stronger than they did today, though because the Islanders have really been giving them a hard time.