With the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the rearview mirror, it’s time for one of my favorite annual traditions: digging into how playoff rosters are constructed and examining the characteristics of the players and teams that are playing for the Stanley Cup.
Player acquisition type
There are several ways to acquire players en route to building a playoff team: drafting and developing, trades, free agency, and even the waiver wire. Let’s take a look at how the 16 teams that made the playoffs this season assembled their rosters.
While the saying goes “build through the draft,” not all playoff teams follow that mantra equally. For example, Colorado, Minnesota, and Vegas relied heavily on trades, while Los Angeles boasts a roster that’s nearly 52 percent homegrown. One of the more interesting items that pops out to me is that the last two Stanley Cup champions, Vegas and Florida, have the lowest percentage of players that they drafted.
It’s also interesting to break down who is scoring goals by acquisition type.
When you take a simplistic approach and look at the average goals scored per game by acquisition type, you can see that players acquired via the draft still produce at a high rate compared to any other acquisition method. In the above chart, the exception is expansion, which is made up of just one player still on the Vegas Golden Knights, William Karlsson. He has three goals in his 10 playoff games so far (0.3 goals per game), which skews expansion into the method of acquisition scoring at the highest rate.
Draft rounds
Draft round distribution offers another lens into how playoff talent is sourced. Unsurprisingly, first-rounders make up a significant chunk of rosters, but value can also be found later.
It’s fascinating to see that 26 percent of Florida’s roster is made up of undrafted players, while only 25 percent of Tampa Bay’s roster consists of first-round draft picks.
Roster age breakdown
Youth and experience both have value in the playoffs. Here’s a look at the average age of each team:
I was surprised to see that the Washington Capitals are the youngest team remaining, while the Edmonton Oilers are the most seasoned. It’s also very interesting to see that the four youngest teams in the Eastern Conference were eliminated in the first round.
Height and weight of playoff rosters
The size of a player isn’t always an important factor in today’s NHL, but it’s still fun to examine the physical profile of each team’s playoff roster. Over the years, we’ve seen this fluctuate across the league, depending on which type of roster has won most recently (i.e., a team built on speed and skill versus a team built on size and physicality).
It’s hard to draw meaningful insights from simply looking at the average height and weight of playoff teams, but it is intriguing that the three tallest teams—Dallas, Vegas, and Washington—are still alive in the playoffs. Meanwhile, the three lightest teams—Colorado, Minnesota, and Montreal—have been eliminated.
The below visual is challenging to read, but it gives you some insight on the distribution of height and weight of the playoff rosters:
Nationalities of players
Another interesting angle to consider is where players were born. Here’s a look at the international makeup of each team’s playoff roster:
As usual, Canadian players have the highest percentage, but there’s plenty of international flavor. Colorado and Toronto have the most American-born players with 39 and 38 percent respectively. Minnesota had the highest percent of Swedish players with 23. Edmonton has the fewest number of American players with two: Trent Frederic and Ty Emberson. Edmonton is also “Canada’s team” with 67 percent of its roster being Canadian.
Cap hit snapshot
Finally, let’s talk some salary cap. The salary cap goes away in the playoffs, but if it were a thing, here’s a look at each team’s playoff roster salary cap, based on average annual values (AAV) of players who have made it into games.
This wraps up our 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs roster breakdown. If there’s another angle or stat you’d like me to dig into, feel free to drop a note in the comments or shoot me a message.
Enjoy the playoffs!