It has been a pretty wild start to playoff matchups. Those story lines are being covered pretty extensively elsewhere and we will be reviewing from a fantasy perspective at a later time so expect some playoff content once some of the rounds have wrapped. For now, we are going to take a look back over the fantasy playoff period at the players who best served us (and maybe a few who didn't).

There are some complicating factors here when trying to run this kind of analysis. For one, not all fantasy leagues start on the same date, and clearly don't all end on the same date. For the purposes of this review though we are going to look at a month's worth of data starting on March 13. The 13th is the Monday that a lot of leagues started their playoffs, and we will be going through the end of the season. Even if the dates are not exactly what your league experienced, there should be enough overlap for the trends to hold true.

Secondly, leagues all use different scoring categories. For the purposes of this analysis, I am relying on the basic Yahoo scoring system, which includes plus/minus (unfortunately) and blocks. Obviously if your league counts different categories, there will be variations in specific player values.

To get the data I pulled two different reporting periods of the Multicategory Report. I have one running from March 13 to the end of the season and one running from the beginning of the season until March 13. The Multicat report gives us access to all of the categories used in Yahoo's standard scoring metrics (goals, assists, plus/minus, power-play points, shots, and blocks).

So without further ado, here were your playoff MVPs this season.

Shocking right? Standout performances from the best players in the world.

What is slightly more interesting is players who really came through in an unexpected way. To look at this I compared a player's fantasy production per game during the playoff window to their production for the rest of the season.

This list provides us with a lot more to work with.

Mackenzie Weegar headlines a number of Calgary players that were pushing the last few weeks to snag a playoff spot. As a team the ultimately fell short, but Weegar finally was hitting his stride in the way many were expecting him to at the beginning of the season. His point pace slowed at the end, but he had a great run and definitely won some weeks between March 16 and April 2, when he put up ten points in nine games.

Matt Boldy and Marcus Johansson go together here because Matt Boldy was scorching hot to carry the Wild when Kirill Kaprizov went down to injury. He put up 21 points in 15 games, dragging Johansson alongside him. Boldy was likely not available in many leagues, but Johansson was, and anyone who picked him up heading into their playoffs was certainly rewarded. He put up 15 points in his 14 games during that span.

The Blues provided a lot of value down the stretch. A lot of castoffs were given prime deployment and produced. Guys like Sammy Blais and Jakub Vrana come to mind in particular. Blais cooled down at the end with only two points in his final seven games, but prior to that he put up eleven points in eight games. Vrana, who didn't make the list because he didn't really play to start the season, had a very similar trend with nine points in nine games to start the playoffs, but slowed down over the last two weeks.

Evan Bouchard was perhaps the most predictable of this bunch. When Tyson Barrie was shipped off to Nashville, it was assumed that Bouchard would take the top power-play role and flourish. Guess what? It happened. Bouchard put up 19 points in his final 19 games with eight points coming on the power play. Hard not to get excited about next year for him.

But of course, we won't spend the entire time reveling in the success stories. We also need some scapegoats for our playoff woes. This is the list of those players who dropped the ball the most for us during the playoffs.

Mats Zuccarello was hurt pretty dramatically by losing linemate Kaprizov. He finished with a 70-point pace on the season, but only put up five points over his final 13 games, really hurting managers who had been relying on him.

A lot of the Sabres sort of fall into the category (with the exception of Casey Mittelstadt). Rasmus Dahlin finished the season on a 77-point pace, and was doing significantly better for much of the season. Unfortunately, an ill-timed slump with two points in his first eight games of the fantasy playoffs likely crushed managers dreams. He picked it up a bit at the end, though most likely too little too late for most playoff schedules.

A lot seemed to catch up with Bo Horvat all at once. He had been running hot with a high shooting percentage, then he moved teams, and then Mathew Barzal went out injured, and then his shooting percentage cratered. The combination resulted in three points between February 28 and April 2, a sequence of 15 games. Prior to that he had been on an 86-point pace but the dry spell dropped him all the way down to a 73-point pace on the season.

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