In this week's Eastern Edge, we'll contrast player production between the regular season and playoffs. In particular, we'll focus on three players that are still battling it out in the 2021 postseason: Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Mathew Barzal and Alex Killorn.

Jean-Gabriel Pageau

During the regular season, Jean-Gabriel Pageau posted 28 points in 54 games, or 0.52 points per game. Through 13 games in this year's playoffs, he's tallied 13 points. He's skating over 18 minutes per game in the playoffs – a significant increase from the 16 minutes and 47 seconds he averaged during the regular season.  The extra ice time coincides with more shots per game as he's managed 2.2 in the playoffs after posting 1.5 in the regular season. Pageau's postseason production is all the more impressive when you consider his deployment. He sports an offensive zone faceoff percentage of just 35-percent at even strength. In other words, only a small portion (35-percent) of his shifts begin with offensive zone faceoffs, while a much larger portion (65-percent) of his shifts begin with defensive- or neutral-zone faceoffs. To give you some perspective, his fellow centers Brock Nelson and Mathew Barzal are seeing deployment that's much more conducive to scoring, with offensive zone faceoff percentages of 49-percent and 79-percent, respectively. It's certainly good for the team that Pageau can put up numbers despite playing a defensive role, but this deployment won't make it easy for him to contribute at such a high level over a larger sample – especially as we look ahead to the 2021-2022 campaign.

Mathew Barzal

At this point, I think it's important to highlight that in each of his three years as head coach in New York, Barry Trotz has changed deployment strategies between the regular season and playoffs. To explain what I mean, we can compare Mathew Barzal's offensive zone faceoff percentage between the regular season and playoffs. During the 2018-2019 campaign, 63-percent of Barzal's 'shift-starting' even-strength faceoffs were in the offensive zone. During the playoffs, that percentage jumped up to 77-percent. We saw the exact same trend during the 2019-2020 campaign, when Barzal's offensive zone faceoff percentage jumped up from 61-percent during the regular season to 77-percent in the playoffs. The pattern continues this year, with a similar increase from 61-percent to 79-percent. Although he's seen more favourable deployment during the playoffs, Barzal's postseason production has actually been worse than his regular season production over the past two years. He posted 0.82 points per game during the regular season and has 0.77 points per game during this year's playoffs. Last year, he had 0.88 points per game during the regular season and 0.77 points per game during the playoffs. This may be explained by the different style of play we see in the playoffs compared to the regular season. In other words, seeing more starts in the offensive zone is always good, but it may have less of an impact on production during the playoffs when opponents play tighter defense. I think Barzal would have a higher offensive ceiling if the favourable deployment he saw in the playoffs also extended to the regular season. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem likely as long as Barry Trotz remains head coach.

Alex Killorn

After posting an impressive 59-point pace last year, Alex Killorn tallied a more modest 48-point pace during the 2021 regular season. Some regression was to be expected as he scored on 20-percent of his shots of his shots last season – a shooting percentage which is almost double what we've come to expect from him. Although he took a step back between this season and the last, he's stepped his game up in this year's playoffs. Through 12 games in the 2021 postseason, Killorn has an impressive 13 points. Seven of those points were tallied with the man advantage as he's benefitted from playing on the team's top power-play unit alongside superstars Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, and Victor Hedman. Tampa leads all playoff teams with a 42-percent success rate on the power play, converting on 16 of their 38 opportunities so far. With Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov both missing large stretches due to injury during the regular season, it's been a while since we've seen Tampa's power play at full strength. As a result, this is the first time we've really seen the kind of numbers that Killorn can put up as a prominent piece of Tampa's star-studded power play. Unfortunately, the upcoming expansion draft is going to change the landscape of the league and Killorn could find himself in new surroundings soon. If he's not playing in Tampa next season, the player that takes his spot on the team's top power-play unit could see a big boost in fantasy value.