This week we are returning to our playoff series with the second part of our first-round review. Last week we covered the teams eliminated from the Western Conference: St Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche, Los Angeles Kings, and Minnesota Wild. This week we are moving on to talk about the Eastern Conference so we will be touching on Ottawa Senators, Tampa Bay Lightning, Montreal Canadiens, and New Jersey Devils.

As a reminder, for this article we are going to look at these four teams and focus on things that have changed. It is such a small sample size that we are not going to read too much into point paces etc. but instead look at how players were utilized in these win-or-go-home series and if that change resulted in anything different on the score sheet or in the underlying numbers. Doing so might give us a bit of insight into how teams are viewing certain players and who might be primed for a different role next season compared to this one. This is also the playoffs so to some extent we would assume that a team's top players see a bit of an increase while some depth players might fall off a bit.

Caveat time for all of these first-round exits: They all lost. In the first round. That means small sample sizes of course, but it also means that what the team/coach did didn't really work so there might be less motivation to build on it for next year.

But on to the process. We will be looking at deployment and specifically percentage of time on the power play, and total time on ice. We will be using percent when possible 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 Big Board report for the playoffs and comparing that to a second custom Big Board 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. Essentially, we are looking at four data points from two different time periods. We have basic scoring data (points and shots per game), then basic time on ice data (percent of the power-play, and total time on ice). In addition, we will be looking a bit at the contract status for players for a clue as to what changes might be in the works for over the off season.

Ottawa Senators

First up, Ottawa, who lost in six games to Toronto, and is a bit of an outlier here. By and large we see increases for a team's top players in the playoffs, and while that is somewhat true here (Brady Tkachuk saw a larger share of the power play and an increase in time on ice), we actually see a pretty big increase in total time on ice for what looked like a third line including Shane Pinto and Michael Amadio – they saw increases of well over two minutes a night. I might be tempted to take that with a grain of salt given Ottawa played three overtime games, but 11 of Ottawa's players saw an increase of 30 seconds or less and seven actually lost time even with these extended games.

The other big winners of overtime were on defence, where five of the six blue liners saw more time during the playoffs than the end of the regular season, which is more in alignment with the extra minutes provided by overtime games. Overall, the biggest loser here was probably Adam Gaudette. He saw just over nine minutes a night, down from almost ten to finish the regular season, but lost almost 25% of the team's power play. Some of that is players returning from being injured, and it isn't like with some of our west coast teams where forwards were getting under six minutes, but it isn't a great look, particularly with his contract up this summer. He was a surprisingly successful goal scorer this year, but this cannot help those negotiations. The biggest contract situation this summer is going to be Claude Giroux though. He also lost out on power-play time (about an 11% drop) playing on the second unit, though still lined up on the top line at even strength. At 37 years old, we will see what interest the Senators still have in his services.

Tampa Bay Lightning

Next up we have Tampa Bay who lost in five game to Florida. Here we see a much more usual delineation of time. Jake Guentzel, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, and Victor Hedman all saw big increases in their overall time on ice. Interestingly though they all lost small amounts of power-play time as the second unit saw a little more time than usual. By far the biggest winner was Gage Goncalves. He saw an increase of overall ice time of 3:15 highlighted by a 25% share increase of the team's power-play time. With four points in five games only Guentzel put up more points over this short sample. He and the four mentioned above are essentially the only players that saw more time overall, though Conor Geekie did increase his power-play share a bit. Goncalves needs a new contract, so this increased role probably bodes well for his contract negotiations. On the flip side, playoff specialist and deadline acquisition Yanni Gourde lost more than two minutes overall, lost some power-play time, and then went and signed a six-year deal. With Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand in the fold next season, the opportunities for top-six might be slim, but I am interested to see what happens with Goncalves over the offseason.

Montreal Canadiens

Montreal managed five games against Washington and the takeaway here is consistent with the expected theme: The top line/top power-play players all saw increases in overall minutes with rookie Ivan Demidov improving his role from his brief call up prior to the playoffs. The only notable player outside of the top power play is Brendan Gallagher who saw an increase in his overall time on ice and his shot rates over these five games. Unsurprisingly most of the rest of the team lost out, with the biggest names being Patrik Laine and David Savard.  Savard is typically only rostered in deep leagues interested in blocks so it's not super notable. Laine's numbers would be a little more interesting if he had played more than two games. His primary value is to the team's power play, but with the addition of Demidov, who took his spot on the power play, it will be interesting to see what happens next season. There will be some depth turnover because of contracts this summer, but really the notes here are about watching the bigger name players like Laine and Mike Matheson who have already, or are in danger of, losing out on some opportunity to young stars.

New Jersey Devils

New Jersey also lost in five games but played two multi-period overtimes. Given that we should expect to see quite a few players exceeding their regular season time on ice numbers. For the most part we do, so that isn't a terribly helpful data point here, though Cody Glass, Daniel Sprong, Thomas Tatar, and Luke Hughes all still managed to lose fairly sizeable chunks of time on ice – though like Laine above most of them also missed several of New Jersey's games. We also probably can't read too much into power-play deployment either as Jack Hughes missed the entire series, and his brother Luke only played one game. What is noteworthy though is that Seamus Casey played almost 60% of the team's power-play in the final game of the series – his only game played. I am not entirely sure what that says about the team's confidence in Dougie Hamilton who still did get 55% of the power play overall, though by the end of the series was on a second unit with Simon Nemec. It certainly wouldn't be the first time he was passed over for a deployment opportunity. Luke Hughes is the only meaningful contract up this summer as the rest are depth contributors so it isn't likely these top six and top power play considerations will be impacted by those contracts. Deployment is far more likely to be impacted by NJ being healthy, and of course any additions they attempt over the offseason.

That is all for this week.

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