Game three of the final wrapped up on Wednesday night with game four set to come out Friday (9/25). Both Tampa and Dallas have come to the finals with different strategies and different successes. In this week's column it is time to take a look at the runs to the finals for both teams and take a look at how the team's have performed compared to their regular seasons.

Frozen Tools Forensics: 2020 Stanley Cup Final

Quick PSA before we dig in. If you live in the US, Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day. You may not have heard, but there is a relatively contentious election scheduled to take place in November. (That was sarcasm. Everyone has heard.). Do yourself a favor and register to vote. If you are registered go ahead and check, just to make sure. If you have checked, go ahead and make a voting plan for exactly how you are going to vote in November (or earlier- early voting has already started). Democracy will thank you. And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

To make our playoff and regular season comparisons we are going to take a look at the Team Stats page from Frozen Tools (located under the stats tab). Like with the player reports it has the option to select the timeframe so we can draw both the regular season and the playoff stats for the league.

Below is an amended version of the report drawn from that page. I added a number of columns to make the stats appear on a per game level so that we can compare in-season numbers to playoff numbers, and then removed a number of columns to make it fit on the page here.

Tampa finished the shortened 2019-20 season with the third-best winning percentage after 70 games played. Dallas ranked 10th after 69 games played. Looking across the numbers there are few things that stand out between the two teams. Tampa clearly took the offensive-minded approach scoring 3.5 goals per game (ranked first in the league). Dallas was much less proficient during the seasons scoring almost a goal per game less (2.6) and ranked 28th in the league. Dallas' success definitely came in net with the second fewest goals allowed (Tampa ranked 8th overall in that stat). Neither team was particularly proficient at shot totals though. Tampa ranked 19th overall in shots for per game and Dallas ranked 23rd. Tampa fared slightly better in shots against ranking 12th overall, while Dallas ranked 18th.

To summarize these numbers, it looks like Tampa left the season scoring a ton of goals particularly efficiently, while Dallas wasn't fantastic at preventing shots, but saved most of them. In essence we had a team poised to score a lot of goals, and a team with goalies who seemed good at preventing them – a pretty classic Stanley Cup Matchup.

Let's take those same stats and take a look at each team's playoff performance compared to their regular season one.

Tampa Bay:

Tampa looks like a team running on all cylinders here. They are scoring at a slightly slower pace per game, but essentially everything else is looking great. They have won 75% of their games, tightened up defensively from the regular season, have the highest goal differential in the playoffs (tied with Colorado may they rest in peace), and have increased their total shots per game. Their power-play success has dipped a little from the regular season, but given that they have the second highest goal total (Dallas is leading), and third highest goals per game in the playoffs it doesn't seem to be hurting them. If anything, it means there is some room for goal scoring growth.

Dallas:

Dallas' regular season was all about goalies and that is still the case? Their goalies have certainly gotten the most positive press, but their team goals against per game numbers have certainly changed. Dallas is allowing a shot and a half more per game in the playoffs and letting in about a third of a goal more per game. That puts them up over three goals per game, which makes them the third-worst in the playoffs (among teams that made it out of the first round to increase sample sizes). They are also one of five teams with a negative goal differential (with a chance to improve that over the next couple of games obviously).

Dallas has also seen a jump in goal scoring (this time in a good way). They have added almost a third of a goal per game to their goal totals averaging close to three goals for a game. Unfortunately, it isn't because they are shooting more. They are also getting about the same number of power-play opportunities, but are scoring on about eight percent more of those power-plays than they were in the regular season. We have touched on this phenomenon in other articles, but Dallas' power-play, and particularly the second unit have been absolutely on fire this postseason.

They have two of the top four scoring units for the playoffs, and this list has remained remarkably consistent for a while now. It helps that some of those other teams are eliminated, but the ones in the semi-finals weren't able to overtake them. Unfortunately, those power-play points, and particularly those from the second unit, are drying up. Of the 12 power-play points that have been scored and assigned in the past week (goals and assists) Dallas players account for three of them (one goal and two assists) and have a nine percent conversion rate on the power-play.

Summary:

Tampa seems to be scoring slightly less than during the regular season, but everything else they are doing looks really positive. Dallas has been scoring more during the postseason, but everything else looks a little less good.

I also want to take a minute to highlight a player from each team that seems to embody each team's themes.

Anton Khudobin:

Khudobin has been excellent for Dallas this postseason, and particularly over the last several weeks. Starting on September 19th he won six of the prior seven games, and five of the prior six were quality starts. He only lost four times between August 16 and September 19th (with 12 wins). He had a few rough games prior to August 16th, and unfortunately has not fared well in the last two games against Tampa. Game 3 on Wednesday constituted his second really bad start over the course of the playoffs, but both of his last two games against Tampa he allowed at least three goals and had a save percentage at or below .903. Dallas has been riding Khudobin as much as their power-play scoring in their recent matchups, so they are going to need an about face in net to have a chance to even up this series.

Brayden Point:

While not technically leading his team in scoring Point is certainly stirring the drink. He has put up 28 points in 20 games, good for second in the league in playoff scoring. His pace has actually slowed a bit over his last six games (scoring only five points), but being united with Nikita Kucherov again has been a boon for both players. The one knock against Point at this stage is that he is carrying a high shooting percentage (over 19 percent). We might normally expect that to come down, but with such a small sample of games remaining it is relatively unlikely that it will regress fully.

That is all for this week. Thanks for reading.

Stay safe out there.

Want more tool talk? Check out these recent Frozen Tool Forensics Posts.

Frozen Tools Forensics: 2020-21 Season Breakouts, Playoff Edition

Frozen Tools Forensics: Playoff scoring leaders and superstar defencemen

Frozen Tools Forensics: Playoff goaltending