This week we are returning with part three of our playoff series review. In the last two articles we covered the teams that were eliminated in the first round (East here and West here). This week we are going to take a look at teams who were eliminated in the second round. This means Toronto, Washington, Vegas, and Winnipeg.

Like with all playoff action we are still dealing with some small sample sizes, but these teams got at least four wins under their belt, advanced to the second round, and played two different teams. It just means we might take this data a little bit more seriously than the first-round data.

As a reminder, we are looking at these four teams and focusing on things that have changed. It is such a small sample size that we are not going to read too much into point things like point paces, 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.

But on to the process. We will be looking at deployment and specifically percent of time on the power-play, and total time on ice. We will be using the percentage of available ice time 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 per game, and shots per game), then basic time on ice data (percent of the power-play, and total time on ice). In addition, we will also 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.

Toronto Maple Leafs

The Maple Leafs took the Panthers to seven games, after beating the Senators in six so most of the squad saw 13 games over the course of the playoffs. While there was only one overtime game against the Panthers, there were three in Ottawa. Max Pacioretty also joined for the playoffs though wasn't in the lineup for the final regular season sample. Even with all of that there doesn't really seem much of a difference here. We do have a few players with slightly bigger roles, and by and large it is the players we would expect with top forwards Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies leading the way. The folks that lost the most ice time were Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Nicholas Robertson. Robertson in particular seems out of favor as he was healthy scratched for quite a few games, only suiting up for three, and lost out on the most significant power-play share as well. Given his contract is also up, I would normally say this likely spells doom for his time in Toronto, but there are so many things up in the air right now. There are concerns about this core, and with John Tavares and Mitch Marner in need of contracts, plus Knies, Pacioretty, Robertson, and several other depth players, so anything could happen this summer. We will have to wait for the dust to settle a bit to really be able to read into anyone's situation.

Washington Capitals

Next up is the Washington who played a total of 10 games, taking care of Montreal in five, before losing in five to Carolina. With only two overtime games in their playoff portfolio, we can't attribute too much of any change to the extra frames. The biggest gains were on defense. Essentially the top four all saw a big increase in time on ice, while the bottom two lost out quite a bit. The biggest winner was Jakob Chychrun who managed to add 25.5% of the team's power-play time. It looks like Washington ended the playoffs with him and John Carlson on two different units, with Chychrun's getting more time (Alex Ovechkin was still on both). Aliaksei Protas, Connor McMichael, and Tom Wilson saw the biggest gains for the forwards. This is great news for Washington, since this core was excellent during the regular season, and are all under contract for at least one more year. Pierre-Luc Dubois and Taylor Raddysh are the worst off for forwards. PLD lost almost 35% of the team's power-play, while Raddysh almost 20%. Raddysh is also in need of a contract so it looks like he is in a bit of danger here. Most of the rest of the contracts that are up for Washington are from the depth as well. Overall, this playoff series is good news for the Chychrun and the top six in Washington but raises some questions about the future of some of the depth.

Vegas Golden Knights

Vegas played 11 games (six versus Minnesota and five against Edmonton) with four overtime contests. So far, no team has leaned on a player more in the playoffs than Vegas leaned on Jack Eichel. He put on an additional four minutes compared to the regular season – with the vast majority at even strength. Mark Stone is next on the list, so there isn't too much we can do with this. Vegas wanted its top players to be top players. It gets more interesting after that though. William Karlsson saw a pretty big jump in ice time but lost out on a ton of power-play time. Victor Olofsson gained a big chunk of power-play time, but at best managed to keep his overall time steady. Reilly Smith also lost out on power-play time. It kind of looks like Jack Eichel spent time on both power-play units and Vegas did some rotating to figure out what was going to work on any given day. Stone, Olofsson, and Pavel Dorofeyev also missed games during the course of the playoffs as well. Far be it from me to understand how Vegas will manage things going forward but Smith and Olofsson are due for contracts over the summer and don't seem to have particularly enamored themselves with the coaches during this run.

Winnipeg Jets

Finally, let's turn to Winnipeg. They played 13 games (seven versus St. Louis and six versus Dallas) with two overtimes. Winnipeg bucks the trend here in a lot of ways. Two of the players who lost the most time during the playoffs were Mark Scheifele and Josh Morrissey, and three of the players that gained the most time were Haydn Fleury, Alex Iafallo, and Dylan Samberg (who were generally depth options). Josh Morrissey lost almost five minutes on average, but if you look at the game log a big chunk of that is two games where he was injured. Even so if we take out those games altogether, he still lost over a minute on average. He was heavily used on the power play, and averaged over 23 minutes a night so I don't think we can read too much into it. It is a similar story for Scheifele who left a game early, which accounts for most of the time missed. On the flip side, Iafallo wasn't high in the lineup, but does look like was on a second power play and playing shorthanded to add some overall time.

Winnipeg has eight contracts up this summer. The guys on the highest end of the time on ice gains were Samberg, Fleury, Morgan Barron, and Nikolaj Ehlers. On the downside are Mason Appleton and Brandon Tanev. With this number of contracts and the injuries impacting the deployment data it is a little bit hard to read into things too much, but it does make me question Appleton and Tanev's potential future here.

That is all for this week.

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