Back in June we ran a continuation of a series that had started when I was writing the Wild West column. We were looking at Unlikely Playoff Heroes. The idea was to try and figure out who might be players outside of the stars to target for your second tier of draft picks. These are guys who have potential to break out in a short sample like the playoffs, but are still flying under the radar a bit. The criteria for picking was based on some research I did at the start of this series and was inspired by an old Rick Roos article. It basically goes like this:

"An unlikely playoff hero should have played 60+ games in the regular season. The player should be averaging between .4 and .7 points per game, should be shooting around two shots a game, with a least a shoot percentage of 9%, be getting somewhere between 1:00 and 2:15 minutes on the power play, and skating between 13:00 and 17:00 minutes of total time on ice. The data points can fluctuate slightly depending on situation, and players might miss one point by a little, but this is the general target. Perhaps the single most important factor though is that they play for a team that is likely to get about 17 games during the playoffs."

Again the idea here is to find players who have some room to increase their opportunity in a new situation like the playoffs.

The list of players who met that criteria at the beginning of the playoffs is below (the data is their regular season performance).

Name	Pos	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	PTS/GP	PPP	PPTOI	TOI	SOG	SHT %
TANNER PEARSON	L	VAN	69	21	24	45	0.65	10	1:35	16:31	164	12.80%
KASPERI KAPANEN	R	TOR	69	13	23	36	0.52	3	1:15	15:47	121	10.74%
JARED MCCANN	C	PIT	66	14	21	35	0.53	6	1:41	15:15	150	9.33%
PAVEL BUCHNEVICH	R	NYR	68	16	30	46	0.68	9	2:18	16:56	148	10.81%
FILIP CHYTIL	C	NYR	60	14	9	23	0.38	3	1:17	14:50	114	12.28%
CALLE JARNKROK	C	NSH	64	15	19	34	0.53	9	1:48	15:56	136	11.03%
VIKTOR ARVIDSSON	R	NSH	57	15	13	28	0.49	8	2:28	16:12	127	11.81%
NICK SUZUKI	C	MTL	71	13	28	41	0.58	14	2:10	15:59	138	9.42%
FRANK VATRANO	C	FLA	69	16	18	34	0.49	2	1:27	15:01	162	9.88%
TYLER ENNIS	C	EDM	70	16	21	37	0.53	10	2:09	14:43	159	10.06%
CHARLIE COYLE	C	BOS	70	16	21	37	0.53	5	1:52	16:47	145	11.03%

For this week I would like to return to this list and see how our potential playoff heroes performed.

One immediate observation from the above list is that there are no players from Dallas or from Tampa. Not having anyone from the final doesn't really bode well for the list. In fact there isn't anyone on this list who made the conference finals either. That really doesn't bode well for the list because the most consistent factor in players who outperformed their regular season numbers is that they played at least 17 games. Basically that means that none of the players who met our time-on-ice and shooting requirements played on teams that performed exceptionally well in the playoffs.

Below we have a list of the player's actual playoff performances.

Name	Pos	Age	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	PTS/GP	PPP	PPTOI	%PP	TOI	SOG
TANNER PEARSON	L	28	VAN	17	4	4	8	0.47	1	1:50	27.2	17:19	37
NICK SUZUKI	C	21	MTL	10	4	3	7	0.7	2	2:47	51.4	19:11	27
CHARLIE COYLE	C	28	BOS	12	3	2	5	0.42	2	2:47	44.2	18:37	30
VIKTOR ARVIDSSON	R	27	NSH	4	3	0	3	0.75	1	3:09	54.8	16:26	16
TYLER ENNIS	C	30	EDM	3	1	1	2	0.67	0	0:32	8.5	10:50	4
KASPERI KAPANEN	R	24	PIT	5	0	2	2	0.4	0	1:09	26.5	16:18	9
JARED MCCANN	C	24	PIT	3	0	1	1	0.33	1	2:52	33.8	12:53	1
CALLE JARNKROK	C	29	NSH	4	1	0	1	0.25	0	2:14	38.7	13:01	6
FRANK VATRANO	C	26	FLA	2	0	0	0	0	0	0:20	15.5	9:57	3
FILIP CHYTIL	C	21	NYR	3	0	0	0	0	0	2:49	34.8	15:17	5
PAVEL BUCHNEVICH	R	25	NYR	3	0	0	0	0	0	4:12	51.9	18:06	5

So right off the bat we notice a couple of things. Only one player (Tanner Pearson) got 17 games, and only three players played ten or more. The vast majority of this list played five or less. We can also see that no one blew it out of the water. The highest point pace was .75 points per game (Viktor Arvidsson), and only three players were at .67 points per game or higher. The majority were well below a half-point-per-game pace.

The only player on this list that really played a reasonable number of games (10) and had a reasonable point pace (.7) was Nick Suzuki.

We can look at this another way too. How did their playoff pace compare to their regular season pace? Part of the story with these players is that their playoff pace should exceed their regular season pace, so their playoff success is supposed to be surprising.

Name	Pos	Team	GP	PPG Change
VIKTOR ARVIDSSON	R	NSH	4	0.26
TYLER ENNIS	C	EDM	3	0.14
NICK SUZUKI	C	MTL	10	0.12
CHARLIE COYLE	C	BOS	12	-0.11
KASPERI KAPANEN	R	TOR	5	-0.12
TANNER PEARSON	L	VAN	17	-0.18
JARED MCCANN	C	PIT	3	-0.2
CALLE JARNKROK	C	NSH	4	-0.28
FILIP CHYTIL	C	NYR	3	-0.38
FRANK VATRANO	C	FLA	2	-0.49
PAVEL BUCHNEVICH	R	NYR	3	-0.68

In this case there are only three players whose point pace during the playoffs exceeded their point pace during the regular season (Viktor Arvidsson, Tyler Ennis, and Nick Suzuki). Of those three, only Suzuki played more than four games and would likely have been worth an add to your team.

So how did Suzuki do it?

Regular Season

Name

Pos

Team

GP

G

A

PTS

PTS/GP

PPP

PPTOI

%PP

TOI

SOG

SHT %

NICK SUZUKI

C

MTL

71

13

28

41

0.58

14

2:10

48.5

15:59

138

9.42%

Playoffs

Name

Pos

Team

GP

G

A

PTS

PTS/GP

PPP

PPTOI

%PP

TOI

SOG

SHT%

NICK SUZUKI

C

MTL

10

4

3

7

0.7

2

2:47

51.4

19:11

27

14.8%

In exactly the way our theory predicted. He saw pretty large increases in total time on ice (increasing more than three minutes), shooting percentages (up almost five percent) and in power-play time (up about 35 seconds). He swapped around his linemates too, though it isn't entirely clear that it was the quality of linemates that did it in this case. He went from playing with Max Domi and Artturi Lehkonen for the majority of his shifts in the regular season to Jonathan Drouin and Joel Armia during the playoffs. 

For additional reference here are some players who weren't flagged by the initial criteria, but are less-owned players who were putting up less than .7 points per game during the regular season who saw bumps during the playoffs.

Name	Pos	Age	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	PPG Playoff	PPG Season	PPG Change
JOSH BAILEY	R	30	NYI	22	2	18	20	0.91	0.63	0.28
DOMINIK KUBALIK	L	25	CHI	9	4	4	8	0.89	0.68	0.21
KEVIN HAYES	C	28	PHI	16	4	9	13	0.81	0.59	0.22
SAM BENNETT	C	24	CGY	10	5	3	8	0.8	0.23	0.57
JONATHAN DROUIN	L	25	MTL	10	1	6	7	0.7	0.56	0.14
NICK SUZUKI	C	21	MTL	10	4	3	7	0.7	0.58	0.12

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: Analyzing the teams in the Stanley Cup Final

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

Frozen Tools Forensics: Playoff scoring leaders and superstar defencemen