The finals are underway and there certainly is some buzz around this matchup. There are a lot of fun storylines too – Pat Maroon, Corey Perry, and a Tampa three-peat. Our focus for this week is going to be playoffs, but we are returning to our review of eliminated teams. Last week we looked at our first round exits in the west, and now we move east.

As a reminder, since it was 15 years ago at this point, the teams we are looking at are Boston, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Washington. Each first round on the east went fairly far, so we have seven-game samples for everyone except Washington, where we have six.

Just as a reminder we are going to focus on deployment. It is such a small sample size that we are not going to read too much into point paces, shot rates, and so on, but instead look at how players were utilized in these win-or-go-home series. Doing so might give us a bit of insight into how coaches are viewing certain players and who might be primed for a different role next season compared to this one.

Last week I gave the caveat that these trends should be taken with a grain of salt because they are still small sample sizes, and at the end of the day these teams lost. The implication being that what the team/coach did didn't really work so there will be less motivation to build on it for next year. This is still true for this article as well, though given how many teams went to Game 7 it might be slightly less true (though admittedly Boston did fire Bruce Cassidy so I suppose anything is possible).

Additional notes from last week's article.

And now on to the process. We will be looking at deployment and specifically percent of time on the power-play, at even strength, and total time on ice. We will be using percent as overtime games can add significant time to a player's overall count without changing that player's real deployment opportunity. In order to get this data we will be running a custom Time on Ice report for the playoffs and comparing that to a second custom Time on Ice report for the last two months of the regular season. That comparison will tell us which players have gained or lost time between these two samples.

 So now on to the data. First up: Total Time on Ice

Name	Pos	Age	Team	GP	%PP Playoff	%EV Playoff	%TOI Playoff	%PP Season	%EV Season	%TOI Season	%PP Change	%EV Change	%TOI Change
MARCUS PETTERSSON	D	26	PIT	7	2.1	34.3	31.7	6.6	28.9	25.5	-4.50	5.40	6.20
MIKE MATHESON	D	28	PIT	7	29.5	40.2	37.4	27.9	36	32.7	1.60	4.20	4.70
JAKE MUZZIN	D	33	TOR	7	3	37.3	35.5	0.4	33.4	30.9	2.60	3.90	4.60
T.J. OSHIE	R	35	WSH	6	66.2	28.3	32.7	63	26.3	28.3	3.20	2.00	4.40
CONOR SHEARY	R	30	WSH	6	31.2	28.3	27.8	17.1	26.1	23.9	14.10	2.20	3.90

If we read left to right we have some basic info about the player in question, then we have their playoff performance using the percent of the total team time that they were on the ice (on the power-play, at even strength, and in total). In gray we have the same categories, but for the last two months of the regular season. The far-left white columns are again the same time on ice categories, but showing the change from regular season to the playoffs.

This is a bit more what I was expecting to see in the last article. Our top five contains three defensemen. It makes sense that logically a team that is attempting to match up lines and players we would see a few D men with different amounts of ice time. For fantasy purposes though I don't think I see a lot of added value here. Mike Matheson, for example, did actually put up some excellent numbers with over 25 minutes of total ice time, over two shots, and hits per game, and six points over his seven games. The points are likely just noise, and during the season he saw just 18 minutes of ice time on average and less than 1.5 shots and hits per game. We can clearly see the benefit of the added time in his peripheral numbers, but it isn't very likely that Matheson keeps 25-plus minutes of time during the regular season as defensemen don't typically average that high of ice time across a full season.

I want to note Conor Sheary here as well, but we will spend more time on him in a minute.

First though, a quick look at players who saw less time.

Name	Pos	Age	Team	GP	%PP Playoff	%EV Playoff	%TOI Playoff	%PP Season	%EV Season	%TOI Season	%PP Change	%EV Change	%TOI Change
COLIN BLACKWELL	C	29	TOR	7	0	14.3	11.5	12.5	20.5	20	-12.50	-6.20	-8.50
CONNOR MCMICHAEL	L	21	WSH	4	0	12.8	10.3	0.9	21.2	17.8	-0.90	-8.40	-7.50
JUSTIN HOLL	D	30	TOR	5	0	27.6	26.5	1.2	33.6	32.7	-1.20	-6.00	-6.20
TRENT FREDERIC	L	24	BOS	4	0	18	14.6	2.1	22.7	20.6	-2.10	-4.70	-6.00
ILYA LYUBUSHKIN	D	28	TOR	7	0.4	27.7	22.2	0.1	30	27.3	0.30	-2.30	-5.10

A smorgasbord of names here, mostly bottom six forwards and lower pair D, which again makes a lot of sense for the playoffs. I do briefly want to mention Colin Blackwell though. This data set will include mostly his time in Toronto and doesn't highlight the value or increase he was starting to generate in Seattle before being moved at the deadline.

Blackwell had a terrible start to the season missing a lot of time with injuries. He was a bit of an exciting pick for Seattle initially though after showing a couple of flashes when he got to ride shotgun with Artemi Panarin in New York. In the second half of the season, he started to form some chemistry with Yanni Gourde and his ice time was starting to creep up. He was still only getting about 14 minutes a night but put up seven points in his final eight games as a Kraken.

Blackwell was then shipped off to Toronto for three points in 18 games and less than 11 minutes a night (about 20 percent of his team's total ice time). That role was further reduced in the playoffs to 11.5 percent. The point here is that Blackwell seems to still have some more to give, but isn't fully trusted in Toronto. He certainly isn't going to do it himself, so being buried on a deep team like Toronto is curtains on his fantasy value.

And now on to power-play deployment.

Name	Pos	Age	Team	GP	%PP Playoff	%EV Playoff	%TOI Playoff	%PP Season	%EV Season	%TOI Season	%PP Change	%EV Change	%TOI Change
CONOR SHEARY	R	30	WSH	6	31.2	28.3	27.8	17.1	26.1	23.9	14.10	2.20	3.90
HAMPUS LINDHOLM	D	28	BOS	4	36.2	37.7	35.8	27.6	36.6	36.3	8.60	1.10	-0.50
MATT GRZELCYK	D	28	BOS	5	32.5	33.7	30.3	25.2	33.8	30.6	7.30	-0.10	-0.30
CRAIG SMITH	R	32	BOS	7	34.4	21.3	19.8	30.2	24.9	23.3	4.20	-3.60	-3.50
JAKE DEBRUSK	R	25	BOS	7	35.5	28.2	28	31.5	27.9	26.8	4.00	0.30	1.20

There is also an added filter here on play off power-play percentage. I am not including anyone who increased their power-play time but still accounted for less than 30 percent of their team's time.

The biggest change here is for Conor Sheary. In this case it does seem to be a bit more of a reflection of Sheary's role as a kind of plug-and-play player. He spent time getting power-play time throughout the season, but completely lost it down the stretch, getting eight percent or less in eight of Washington's last ten games. His increase for the playoffs then is mostly about getting back on the second unit.

As teased earlier, Sheary did also see some time during the playoffs on a line with Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov. He still only put up one point in the playoffs, though. It is interesting to note, but doesn't really move the needle for me. This seems very much in line with Sheary's usual bouncing around the lineup.

So who lost the most time?

Name	Pos	Age	Team	GP	%PP Playoff	%EV Playoff	%TOI Playoff	%PP Season	%EV Season	%TOI Season	%PP Change	%EV Change	%TOI Change
TAYLOR HALL	L	30	BOS	7	51.5	27.5	26.3	66.7	26.6	27.5	-15.20	0.90	-1.20
ONDREJ KASE	R	26	TOR	7	22.9	15.7	16.6	36	17.8	19.8	-13.10	-2.10	-3.20
MARCUS JOHANSSON	L	31	WSH	6	30.2	26.6	24.5	43.3	24.8	24.5	-13.10	1.80	0.00
ERIK HAULA	C	31	BOS	7	15.6	27.8	23.3	24.3	28.3	25.8	-8.70	-0.50	-2.50
MARK GIORDANO	D	38	TOR	7	30.1	30.9	32.1	36.5	31.5	32.4	-6.40	-0.60	-0.30

I don't love this for Taylor Hall. He started the series getting over 57 percent of the time (often more than 60) on the first unit over the first four games, but over the last three games he was replaced by Jake DeBrusk and saw only about 35 percent of the power-play time after that. Obviously it was only three games, and Hall had bounced around a bit over the season, but was having a lot of success once David Pastrnak joined his line, and was a fixture on the top power-play to end the season. It seemed like maybe he had finally found some stability and production. This is just another indication that he is still the odd man out and if things need to change, Hall is the one to get the bump. There are still a couple of caveats, as we don't know exactly the status of Patrice Bergeron, or what a new coach is going to want to do for lines.

I also wanted to issue a public service announcement for Mark Giordano. His season overall deployment numbers still look quite good because he spent most of the year quarterbacking the top unit in Seattle (didn't really produce the points to go along with that though). Once he came to Toronto he lost about half of that time, typically getting about 35 percent of Toronto's power-play time. He lost even more during the playoffs, as Toronto was leaning more heavily on the first unit. With him signed now, we should expect that 30-35 percent second-unit time at best going forward and not expect a return to the time he was getting in Seattle.

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