After having two goals disallowed – one because the puck had hit the netting, another for a hand pass off a face-off – Patrick Maroon batted home a rebound for Tampa Bay that would stand as the game-winner in the 2-0 clincher. It gave his team the 4-0 series sweep, and a trip to the Conference Final for the third straight season, fourth time in five years, and sixth time in the last decade. Not only have the Lightning been the best team in the league for a long time now, it seems Maroon can do no wrong when it comes to the postseason.

Game 4 was a tough game for the Panthers given how well they played. They largely out-skated and out-chanced Tampa Bay from the opening faceoff to the final whistle, but sometimes the other team has Andrei Vasilevskiy posting shutouts of nearly 50 saves in regulation (49, to be exact). He was probably the big difference-maker for the Lightning in this series, and play like this certainly makes the prospects of a Stanley Cup three-peat seem more likely.

Where Florida goes from here is a question for another day. Significant chunks of this team are under contract for next year, it'll just be a matter of what they do with a couple free agents. They could easily have a very good team again in 2022-23.

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Though the Los Angeles Kings were bounced in seven games in the first round, it's hard not to see this season as a success for the franchise. A rebuilding/re-tooling team reaching the postseason early in the process can put a lot of pressure on players and coaches (I'm thinking of Toronto over the last six years or so). It can also give some much needed experience and that is one thing that cannot be replicated for younger players. Giving them the opportunity to see what it really takes to make it through an entire season, followed by a deep Cup run, can be a great thing.

One issue with being bounced so early is that it's tough to really parse what players got from the postseason run, at least statistically. But I was looking through some shot rate leaders so far in the 2022 NHL Playoffs and one name stood out from the guys in the top-10 by shot attempts per 60 minutes: Arthur Kaliyev.

The 20-year-old forward has had a pretty good start to his NHL career. He had just 15 goals in 81 regular season games, but he did that skating 12:40 a night. Because he's not playing a lot, his rates look good: 0.88 goals/60 minutes (per Natural Stat Trick), 0.97 individual expected goals/60, and 18.23 shot attempts per 60 minutes. Across the league, that goal rate puts him inside the 55^th percentile of the league (a second-line rate), the ixG rate is inside the 75^th percentile (a first-line rate), and the shot attempts is near the 95^th percentile, in the same range as names like Mikko Rantanen, Evander Kane, Brady Tkachuk, and Kirill Kaprizov. Finishing has been an issue, sitting at just 7.7% conversion for his career.

That last point is what we should focus on a bit here. Kaliyev spent most of the 2021-22 season in Los Angeles's bottom-6, and quite often on the fourth line. The Kings had six players finish with a higher on-ice expected goals rate at 5-on-5 than Kaliyev's (2.8) and five of the six were on the team's top two lines. The other was Brendan Lemieux, who often played with Kaliyev, and also played just 50 games. The point here is that the team's bottom-6, unsurprisingly, struggled to create a lot of quality offence when compared to the top two lines. In turn, Kaliyev's shot rate far exceeded his quality, and that didn't lead to a lot of goals. Ice time is one factor, but line mates are certainly another. Not that he was playing with flat-out bad players – I'll leave that up to the reader – but one quote about hockey that I heard several years ago, and a lightbulb went on immediately: a player will never play harder minutes than when playing with bad line mates. In other words, players are usually better off playing tough competition but with much better line mates than easy competition further down the lineup.

But seeing the young man shoot as much as he does is a good thing. His release is something that has been his calling card since he came onto the radars of scouts, teams, and fantasy owners alike. It's his shooting that has long been the reason for excitement here. The finishing, though, isn't all on him. He can do part of the lifting, but he needs his teammates to help. It's why his heat map for finishing, from Hockey Viz, is so interesting. He does well far out from the net, relative to league averages, but not near as well closer to the net:

This was actually a persistent problem for a lot of Kings players. Adrian Kempe has a heat map that doesn't match this, but isn't too dissimilar, either. Alex Iafallo's is just a giant blob of blue – below-average finishing – in the slot but good from the tops of the circles. Viktor Arvidsson had a lot of trouble finishing as well, with a heat map looking very similar to Iafallo's. Anecdotally, this seems to be a problem all through the Kings lineup, which could be a big problem for Kaliyev's fantasy value. I do think he's going to have value in points-only leagues, or non-banger leagues, but it's whether he's a 20- or 25-goal scorer or a 30- or 35-goal scorer. Los Angeles is a team that has had trouble scoring even going back to their Cup days and their 7% team 5-on-5 shooting percentage was the worst in the league. They are back to generating a lot of offence, but not generating a lot of goals. There is a distinction between the two, and it's the difference between a good and a great fantasy season.

This is the concern about Kaliyev's fantasy value for the next couple years. Yes, it'd be great if he's playing 16-17 minutes a night next year, in the team's top-6 and top PP unit. But if these finishing issues persist, all that additional ice time and improved line mates will not make as much a difference as we may like to think.  

What, exactly, is the issue is a good question. My first instinct is to believe that the injuries on the blue line played a big factor. We know that defencemen getting involved in the offence be it through transition play, or adding layers to a rush, or any other number of ways, is crucial in the modern NHL. Los Angeles saw the following injury issues pop up:

• Olli Maatta missed 16 games
• Mikey Anderson missed 25 games
• Drew Doughty missed over half the season
• Alex Edler missed half the season
• Matt Roy missed 15 games

Those are basically all their top defencemen missing at least double-digit games, and they missed 140 contests altogether. It pushed a lot of younger guys into more prominent roles, and it's a wonder if any of that hurt the team's finishing. I guess we'll find out in 2022-23, supposing they stay healthy.

All told, Kaliyev is a player whose future I'm very excited about. I think he can become a perennial 30-goal scorer, but it's a wonder when (if?) the Kings' issues with actually scoring get solved. Is it related to personnel, injuries, some combination of the two, or was it just an unlucky year? We'll find out next season, but anyone with Kaliyev on their roster should hang onto him.

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It isn't a perfect one-to-one comparison, and I'm not saying they're similar players, but Kaliyev gives me some Denis Gurianov vibes. Gurianov was a player who was lauded as a prospect/rookie for his shot. It was what always stood out about him, and I thought Gurianov would be a huge fantasy success in relatively short order. It hasn't worked out that way.

This is the issue with liking Kaliyev moving forward. He needs to develop the skills that can elevate the play of his line mates, along with maintaining that elite shot. Being good in transition, being a better playmaker, locking down the defensive zone, those things that help everyone else are necessary for him to take the next step as a fantasy option. I would argue that Gurianov has struggled a lot on the defensive side of the puck, and that's why his coach won't give him prime, or heavy, minutes. That is the path Kaliyev could potentially follow, and it’d be one without much fantasy value on the other side.

The Kings' winger is still very young and saying he will or won't be a certain type of player is far too early for a determination. There are avenues to being a huge impact player, or not. I'm a believer in his talent and his ability to improve, though.  

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On the topic of young players who shoot a lot, it's hard not to be very impressed with Seth Jarvis this postseason. He's in the top-20 for shot rate in the playoffs, not far behind names like Filip Forsberg and Alex Ovechkin. He has helped elevate the play of Sebastian Aho (and vice-versa), and it may not be a stretch to say he's helped save their Cup run. Aho hasn't really looked great in his limited time away from Jarvis and those two seemed to have developed some very good chemistry. The question becomes: what does next year look like?

Andrei Svechnikov and Teuvo Teravainen will each be around for a couple more years, at least. Martin Necas is an RFA and will be back, then there's Max Domi and what his next deal might look like. There are a lot of good scoring wingers here and that might cut into Jarvis's upside. At the same time, the team was using Svech in a PP1 role by his second season and Jarvis could be along the same timeline. We'll find out next year, but there is 30-goal upside with Jarvis, just like there is with Kaliyev, and he likely has a better scoring environment, too. Just things to keep in mind for draft season in September.