With these extra few days between Rounds 2 and 3 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, we thought it would be fun to look at the data behind the scoring to see how it compares to previous playoff years. Let’s take a look.
Playoff scoring versus the regular season
The first thing we wanted to look at is how this season’s playoff goal scoring compared to the regular season and previous years.
For a long time, we heard that scoring in the playoffs was far more difficult when compared to the regular season, but for the second year in a row, playoff scoring seems to be even with or slightly higher than regular-season scoring. However, when we think about it a bit more, we realize the playoff averages only include goals scored from the theoretical 16 best teams in the league, since half the teams don’t qualify. So, if we look at just the playoff teams’ goals in the playoffs versus regular season, we do see that scoring is lower in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Here is a breakdown of how each team’s scoring changed from the regular season to the playoffs on a per-game basis. Seattle scored 3.14 goals per game in the playoffs, down from 3.52 during the regular season.
Playoff goals by game situation
One aspect of this year’s playoffs that is getting a lot of attention is the number of power-play goals being scored. But we looked into it, and it seems to be in line with the last six Stanley Cup Playoff years.
A lot of the narrative could be driven by the Edmonton Oilers, who finished their playoffs with 41 percent of their goals coming from the power play.
Unsurprisingly, only 11 percent of Seattle’s goals came from the power play.
Margin of victory
Another item we wanted to consider is the average margin of victory in the playoffs.
Anecdotally, it has felt like there has been a significant number of blowouts in these playoffs, but the margin of victory is lower than it was last season. It might be more impactful to look at the distribution.
When comparing to last year, it seems like there have not been as many blowouts this year, but what is interesting to look at is that for playoff years in 2019, 2020, and 2021, there were more one-goal games than this year.
I hope this gives you some more insight on goal scoring in the playoffs and adds context to the comments we hear during the television broadcasts. If you have any questions or have an area you want me to dig into, let me know in the comments section.
Now that we are through the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I thought it would be fun to look at the data behind the rosters and try to evaluate how they were built.
Player acquisition type
NHL Entry Draft, free agency, trades, and waiver wire acquisitions are all the various ways a team can build a roster. To build a contender, you need to use every tool at your disposal. Let’s look at how the 16 playoff teams built their rosters.
There is an adage in hockey that to be successful, you need to build your team through the draft, but three teams (Florida, Seattle, and Vegas) of the eight that are still alive in the Stanley Cup Playoffs have less than 15 percent of their rosters constructed through the draft.
It’s interesting to see the Dallas Stars have the highest percentage of players that were acquired via the NHL Entry Draft, being that they are facing the Kraken in the second round who have the lowest percentage of players from the draft. From the Seattle perspective, that is expected due to the team only having two entry drafts under its belt.
To add some context around the roster composition, we should look at which players are scoring each team’s goals by acquisition type.
Generally speaking, more goals are scored by players that were acquired via the draft compared to players acquired in other ways. The big outlier here is the Florida Panthers. 70 percent of the Panthers’ goals this postseason have come from players acquired via trade. Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, and Brandon Montour have 19 combined goals in the playoffs heading into Game 2 of their series against Toronto.
Here is a look at the average contributions this playoff by acquisition type:
Draft rounds
Regardless of the acquisition type, it is also fun to look at how many players each team has from each draft round.
As one would expect, players that were selected in the first-round account for the highest percentage of drafted players on the rosters. Vegas is the lone exception, as they have notoriously traded away a lot of their prospects (Cody Glass, Nick Suzuki, Erik Brannstrom, and Peyton Krebs) over the years to acquire players in their prime and give themselves a chance to win now.
Roster ages
The average age of a team is also an appealing data point to evaluate.
Boston was the oldest team to make the playoffs, with New Jersey being the youngest. It is also interesting to see that most teams have an elder statesman (over 35 years old), but the Kraken, Rangers, and Devils do not.
Height and weight of NHL playoff rosters
Here is a quick peek at the height and weight of all Stanley Cup Playoff teams.
It is important to point out that this aggregated view is not a weighted (no pun intended) average of minutes played and could be a little misleading when it comes to which players are logging the most minutes and how it could relate to the team height and weight.
Here is a look at the player detail behind the weight of the players:
How about the Big Rig, Jamie Oleksiak, weighing in at 257 pounds? Amazing to see how tight the Kraken are weight-wise, compared to other teams. I don’t think that is an advantage or disadvantage, just interesting to see the range compared to the other teams.
Roster breakdown by nationality
Finally, we will take a look at the nationality of the players on Stanley Cup Playoff rosters.
Vegas is the most Canadian team to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season. Is that because of the “snowbird” connection? Perhaps.
This was a very simple view at evaluating the rosters, but we hope it gives you a different perspective when watching this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. If you have questions about the data or some additional angles you would like me to consider, let me know in the comments section.
With the kickoff of the NHL season this week, it is a good time to breakdown the 2022-23 schedule. Here, we drill into who is logging the most frequent flier miles, which teams have the most back-to-back games, and which teams will appear on the most national television games.
Travel distance
Comparing 2021-22 to 2022-23 is not a fair comparable due to the impacts COVID had on the schedule, with several games being postponed and rescheduled throughout the season. If you were to compare this year’s schedule to last year’s planned schedule, though, the median travel for last year would have been slightly less due to the condensed nature of last season.
Here is how travel distances for the 2022-23 season stacks up by team.
The Pacific Division teams tend to have the most travel miles in a season, so it is no surprise to see those teams around the top. The Florida Panthers are the only non-Pacific team in the top seven this season.
Here is how the travel miles split out by division.
Based on that perspective, the schedule looks encouraging for Seattle, considering the Kraken will travel less than five division rivals.
Number of road trips
Travel distance is one aspect of evaluating the challenges of a team’s schedule, but the quantity of road trips is another variable to consider. Here is the breakdown of the number of road trips by team.
The Kraken are tied for having the third fewest road trips this year. Here is how their road trip and homestands break down throughout the year.
Of course, having fewer road trips also means longer trips at times, so is that better for Seattle? That’s hard to say.
Back-to-back games
Last year, the Kraken played 13 sets of back-to-back games. When playing in the second of back-to-back’s, they accrued just six points, or 23 percent of the points available in those games. In all other games, they accumulated 43 percent of the points available. Playing back-to-back games was a challenge for the Kraken last season. As a whole, the league will see fewer back-to-back games now that the NHL calendar is on a more traditional schedule post-COVID.
It is nice to see the Kraken will play the second fewest back-to-back games in 2022-23.
Bonus content: NHL national TV schedule breakdown
While we are talking about schedules, let us take a quick peek at the NHL national TV schedule for this year.
As the graph shows, there are plans for 14 more nationally televised NHL games this season than there were last season. Note that the 2021-22 numbers were based on preseason reported schedule that was eventually impacted by COVID cancelations and rescheduled games.
Here is how this season breaks down by network.
TNT, which has the rights to broadcast the Stanley Cup Final this season, added 12 more games compared to last season. ESPN added 10 more games to the flagship network and five games to ABC. The ESPN+/Hulu exclusive scheduled games are down to 53 from 75 in 2021-22.
NHL TV schedule by team
The 10 nationally televised Kraken games for 2022-23 is down from 13 games in 2021-22. If you want to mark your calendars for those games, here is the list.
The real season begins this week. Enjoy the games!
One of the biggest challenges the Seattle Kraken had last year was scoring goals. The Kraken ranked 28th in the league with only 213 goals scored for the entire 2021-22 season. A key component of this challenge was the lack of opportunity and success on the power play. In this edition of Data Dump, we are going to explore the information we have around Seattle’s struggles with the manpower advantage last season and how the team is addressing the issue.
Power play opportunity
The Kraken had the third fewest power play goals in the league last year with just 32 such markers. This ranked ahead of only the Philadelphia Flyers (30) and Arizona Coyotes (28). There are two components that go into logging power play goals, number of power play opportunities and power play percentage. Let us look at those two numbers from last season.
As you can see, the Kraken were toward the bottom of the heap in power plays drawn (opportunities) and power play percentage (execution). These two statistics are not necessarily correlated. Toronto ranked 21st in number of power play opportunities but first in power play percentage. Similarly, Philadelphia ranked 16th in opportunities but last in power play execution.
Power play trends
One explanation could attribute the lack of execution on the power play to the unfamiliarity the players had with each other in Seattle’s inaugural season. Unfortunately, when we look at the power play over the season, it ebbed and flowed but never showed a consistent improvement.
Drawing penalties
As we mentioned above, part of the reason for Seattle’s low power-play goals output is due to the lack of opportunities. To get opportunities, you need players that draw penalties, so let us look at who drew penalties for the Kraken last season.
One encouraging item that stands out is that the players that drew the most penalties on the 2021-22 Seattle Kraken remain on the team for the 2022-23 season. We can take the analysis one step further by looking at the players by minutes played versus the number of drawn penalties from last season. Plus, we can overlay the new Kraken players to get a more complete picture for this season.
In addition to Oliver Bjorkstrand and Andre Burakovsky posting above-average numbers in drawing penalties, we also believe Matty Beniers could be one of the team leaders in penalties drawn this coming season based on what we have seen during the preseason. His numbers from last year hint at this.
Deployment changes
Getting more chances on the power play is one thing, but the team will need to take advantage of those opportunities. We know changes on the power play are coming, but before we get into that, here are the power play minute leaders from last season.
We already know the power play time taken by Mark Giordano, Calle Jarnkrok, and Marcus Johansson will need to be replaced.
Based on coach Dave Hakstol’s deployment during the preseason, we anticipate the changes to be more significant than just filling the vacancies left by those three players. The first power play unit is solid on paper, with Justin Schultz, Alex Wennberg, and the Killer B’s of Beniers, Bjorkstrand, and Burakovsky. The unit has not been remarkable during the preseason, but there have been moments where you can tell it will be just a matter of time before they really start clicking.
The second power play unit is still a work in progress, but looking at the remaining players on the roster, we like the options. Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, Vince Dunn, and Yanni Gourde feels like the right combo to start the season with Shane Wright and Ryan Donato as options to slide in with those players.
Do not expect instant success when the season starts. Chemistry amongst players takes time, and when you consider the new faces on that first unit, we need to be patient for these players to develop that chemistry.
Improved Kraken power play will be critical
The Kraken will need to see improvements in multiple aspects of their game to expect a different outcome in season two. Behind goaltending, power play opportunities and production could be huge in deciding if Seattle plays meaningful games in March.
We think this chart sums up nicely the relationship between success on the power play and postseason aspirations.
The final four teams are set to begin the third round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs this week, so we thought it would be fun to look at the remaining rosters for the Conference Finals to evaluate how they were built.
Player acquisition type
NHL Entry Draft, free agency, trades, and waiver wire acquisitions are all the various ways a team can build a roster. To build a contender, you need to use every tool at your disposal. Let’s look at how these teams built their rosters.
The two-time Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning have the highest percentage of players that were acquired via the NHL Entry Draft. It’s fascinating that Colorado’s percentage of drafted players is so small, especially considering that their cornerstone players – Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen, and Gabriel Landeskog – were all acquired through the draft. The variance among the teams that have a high draft percentage is a little surprising as well, being that the conventional wisdom is that successful teams are built through the draft.
To add some context around the roster composition, we should look at which players are scoring each team’s goals by acquisition type.
The second chart shows that players who are still playing for the teams that drafted them contribute a higher percentage of goals scored in the playoffs compared to the quantity of drafted players still on the roster (shown in the first chart).
This is easily explained as the higher-skilled players tend to score more, and teams are more willing to hold on to their drafted, high-scoring, skilled players (i.e., pay more money to assure they don’t reach free agency).
Note that goal scoring is a rather simple and narrow way of evaluating contributions to a team’s success, but directionally, we think this is a fair indictor on how to evaluate contributions by acquisition type.
Draft rounds
Regardless of the acquisition type, it is also fun to look at how many players each team has from each draft round.
As one would expect, players that were selected in the first round account for the highest percentage of players on the rosters. The surprising piece here was that 25 percent of the Rangers roster consists of undrafted players (Alexandar Georgiev, Barclay Goodrow, Dryden Hunt, Artemi Panarin, Kevin Rooney, and Frank Vatrano).
Roster ages
The average age of a team is also an appealing data point to evaluate.
Tampa is the oldest team in the Conference Finals, which makes sense as they have continued to trade away young prospects and draft picks at the trade deadline over the last three seasons. These moves have left their prospect cupboard rather light.
Edmonton is the second oldest team remaining, though this is being inflated by Mike Smith (40) and Duncan Keith (39).
Looking at average age of the rosters is interesting but can be a little misleading because it lacks things like ice time. Plus, having a few players on the extremes of the age range can influence a team’s average age.
Height and weight of NHL playoff rosters
Finally, we are going to take a quick peek at the height and weight of the four teams in the conference finals.
The heights are very similar with all teams having an average height within less than an inch of each other, but the weight of the players is quite different between the Western Conference teams (COL and EDM) and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Here is a look at the player detail behind the weight of the players:
In Tampa, Victor Hedman and Patrick Maroon are right around 240 pounds and are undoubtedly influencing the average weight of the team. On the other side of the spectrum, Kailer Yamamoto is listed at 153 pounds and is the lightest player across the four remaining teams.
This was a very simple view at evaluating the Conference Finals rosters, but we hope it gives you a different perspective when watching over the next two weeks. If you found this interesting, you might enjoy looking at this story, breaking down all NHL rosters from last year. If you have questions about the data or some additional angles you would like me to consider, let me know in the comments section.
We have been seeing some eye-popping goal totals in games across the NHL, so we thought it would be a good time to dig into the numbers to investigate if there has been a significant increase in goal scoring across the NHL.
Average goals scored by game
As you can see above, scoring is up to 6.30 goals per game compared to 5.9 last year. There could be several reasons for this increase.
Seattle: Adding a 32nd franchise to the league does dilute the talent across the league, which creates more mistakes and more scoring. It is pretty challenging to show the impact, but we need to acknowledge this could be a factor.
COVID: Last season and a good part of this season were disrupted by COVID. It impacted team schedules, practice days, and personnel decisions, and although players and coaches won’t typically admit it, this had to have taken a toll on teams on the ice.
Youth Movement: There are several pundits covering the league that have suggested that the next generation of goal scorers is leaving its mark on the league. Debunked.
Based on the chart above, there is not a strong connection of youth scoring and the increase on scoring across the league. Players that are 24 or younger only account for 21 percent of the goals scored across the league this year compared to 26 percent of goals last year.
Empty-Net Goals: Over the last 10 seasons, the trend is for coaches to pull goalies earlier and earlier to give themselves a chance to win. This is creating more opportunity for empty-net goals.
…And while we are here, we might as well show this chart of the number of empty-net goals against by team.
Ouch. This should be no surprise to Kraken fans who saw enough empty-net goals against to last a lifetime.
Scoring for and against by NHL team
Here is how scoring breaks down by team and how it has changed from last season.
Florida had the biggest increase in scoring year over year and is currently leading the league in average goals scored per game. If the Dallas Stars make the playoffs, they will have the lowest-scoring team in the postseason, though they are just .01 goals per game behind the Los Angeles Kings in this metric.
Conversely, this is how the scoring sizes up for goals against.
Of the NHL Stanley Cup playoff teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs are allowing the most goals per game in the league, and it will certainly be something to keep an eye on when the playoffs start next week.
Goal differential
Goal scoring is great, but are the games still competitive? No one wants to see blowouts. To get a better idea of the competitiveness of games, we can look at the average margin of victory.
On the surface, the games appear to be getting less competitive. However, when you account for the .06 increase in empty-net goals scored per game year over year, the average margin of victory would be 2.23.
Scoring outlook
Will this trend continue?
Here is one last chart that shows you the distribution of players’ goal scoring by age.
Scoring is up across the league, but it would be a stretch to say that we are entering a new boom of scoring in the league, especially considering the top 10 goal scorers are very familiar faces. Additionally, it would be hard to identify the next generation of players that will backfill guys like Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl, and Connor McDavid.
