It is time for what has become an annual tradition over here in Frozen Tools. We are using our regular season stats to see if we can predict some unlikely playoff heroes. This all started back when I wrote the Wild West column. I saw a column from Rick Roos on playoff heroes. He looked at players who were performing better in the playoffs than in their previous regular season and attempted to figure out if it was predictive of future performance. I decided to go the other way to look at if there was anything in the seasonal data that we could use to predict which players might be poised to be this year's unlikely playoff hero for our playoff pools. It has been going on for several years now, and while certainty isn't a fool proof method, it does give better results than picking a low rostered second- or third-line player at random – but more on the criteria in a minute.

First up, why do we care? Well in most playoff pools managers tend to go deep on a couple of teams that they think will go further in the playoffs, the rationale being a second/third line guy on a team that plays 25 games is going to be better than a top line guy that plays only five. That means finding the diamond in the rough on your selected teams is certainly important.

So, this week on Frozen Tool Forensics: 2022 Playoff Heroes

The below paragraph is an excerpt from that original article and basically sums up what all of the playoff heros had in common.

" An unlikely playoff hero played 60+ games in the regular season. The player was averaging between .4 and .7 points per game, was shooting around two shots a game, with a least a shooting percentage of 9%, 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 the 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 at least 17 games during the playoffs."

The idea is that an unlikely hero is a player that is already doing a little something with the opportunity they are being given (to demonstrate some competence, value in the coach's eyes, etc.), but has room for growth. That growth could be either in deployment (power play time, or total time on ice), or in favorable spikes of luck (team/personal shooting percentage, IPP etc.). A player who is already spiking a high shooting percentage or getting massive deployment isn't likely to see a sudden, relatively unanticipated increase in value. For this season the items above serve as rough filters to get us looking at the right kinds of players, but for instance I was a little looser on save percentage. So as long as it was under 13 percent I included the player.

The most important factor for overall value though is that the player plays for a team that at least reaches the conference finals. First things first: pick the teams you think are going to make the conference finals and use that to prioritize the list below.

The full list this year comprises some 35 players so picking your teams is an important exercise. For the purposes of this article, I have looked at various playoff projections and selected the top four teams with the highest likelihood to make the conference finals according to those sources. From the West we have Colorado, Calgary, Minnesota, and Edmonton. From the East we have Florida, Toronto, Carolina, and Boston. I have included the full list at the bottom of the article in case you would prefer to focus on other teams.

For context all data was pulled on 4/21 with teams still having games left to play.

Frederick Gaudreau has been bouncing around the lineup quite a bit, but has been excellent when skating with Kevin Fiala and Matt Boldy. He is there again, and that line has been producing to end the season. He currently has eight points in his last five games. The two areas of concern are his shot rate and his power-play time. In the last three games he has gotten about a third of his team's power-play time, which isn't great, but he has put up 10 shots which is. Obviously, we are looking for players with some room for growth and Gaudreau definitely ticks those boxes, while still managing some really strong streaks over the course of the season.

Calle Jarnkrok and Mikael Backlund are an interesting duo. Backlund is currently getting the better deployment, on the second line with Tyler Toffoli and Andrew Mangiapane, plus he is shooting more. His shooting percentage is very low though so if he were to just get a few good bounces there his production would be much improved. Jarnkrok currently sits on a third line, but that line with Blake Coleman and Dillon Dube is starting to give off serious third line Tampa vibes (which incidentally also contained Blake Coleman). If Calgary deploys that line in a similar way, his time on ice could jump during a playoff run which would certainly support his shot count and points numbers.

Jesse Puljujarvi's stock has fallen. There was a brief period of time where he was getting strong deployment and starting to produce, but he has only one point in his last seven games and hasn't seen more than 50 percent of the power-play time since February 11th. He was playing with Connor McDavid and Evander Kane in Edmonton's most recent game, which is a positive, but deployment in Edmonton isn't something that often sticks around. I think that is something that makes him interesting though. He is definitely a bit of a wild card with Evander Kane, Zach Hyman, and Kailer Yamamoto currently with higher stock, but as the final member of the top six with definite room to grow he might be worth a swing.

Last note here; Artturi Lehkonen has been getting top-line, top power-play deployment. This is fantastic news for him. He has been playing well and has six points in his last five games. He is normally the type of player we would love to jump at recommending, but the other caution here is that this production is based on an already unsustainable bump. His top-line, top power-play status is because Colorado was playing without Mikko Rantanen (illness) and Gabriel Landeskog (surgery) who are both expected back for the playoffs. He is on our list because his season long numbers make him a good candidate to take advantage of exactly this kind of change (which is the whole point of this exercise), but his stock may be a bit inflated going into these drafts because of his current deployment, which could very well be worse by the time the playoffs roll around.

The rest of the list is included below. It also includes LA, Dallas, Vancouver, and Vegas as of the time of this writing there are still spots up for grabs in the West.

That is all for this week

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