With about a week's worth of regular season action left I wanted to take a moment for what has become an annual tradition over here in Frozen Tool Forensics. We are using our regular season stats to look forward to playoff leagues and see if we can predict some unlikely playoff heroes. This all started back when I wrote the Wild West column. I saw a column from Rick Roos on playoff heroes. He looked at players who were performing better in the playoffs than in their previous regular season and attempted to figure out if it was predictive of future performance. I decided to go the other way to look at if there was anything in the season data that we could use to predict which players might be poised to be this year's unlikely playoff hero for our playoff pools. It has been going on for several years now, and while certainty isn't a fool-proof method, it does highlight players more likely to improve their point per game numbers in the playoffs than picking a low rostered second or third line player at random – but more on the criteria in a minute.

First up, why do we care? Well in most playoff pools managers tend to go deep on a couple of teams that they think will go further in the playoffs, the rationale being a second/third line guy on a team that plays 25 games is going to be better than a top line guy that plays only five. Having a method to prioritize those middle six skaters and finding the diamond in the rough on your selected teams is important.

The below paragraph is an excerpt from that original article and basically sums up what all of the playoff heroes had in common:

"An unlikely playoff hero played 60+ games in the regular season. The player was averaging between .4 and .7 points per game, was shooting around two shots a game, with a least a shooting percentage of 9%, getting somewhere between 1:00 and 2:15 minutes on the power play, and skating between 13:00 and 17:00 minutes of total time on ice. The data points can fluctuate slightly depending on the situation, and players might miss one point by a little, but this is the general target. Perhaps the single most important factor though is that they play for a team that is likely to get at least 17 games during the playoffs."

The idea is that an unlikely hero is a player that is already doing a little something with the opportunity they are being given (to demonstrate some competence, value in the coach's eyes, etc.), but has room for growth. That growth could be either in deployment (increases in power play time, or total time on ice), or in favorable spikes of luck (team/personal shooting percentage, IPP etc.). A player who is already spiking a high shooting percentage or getting massive deployment isn't likely to see a sudden, relatively unanticipated increase in value.

The most important factor for overall value is that the player plays for a team that at least reaches the conference finals. Not only does that idea follow the "more games equal more points" idea, but it also gives more opportunities for that breakout which maybe doesn't come until round two. So, first things first: pick the teams you think are going to make the conference finals and use that to prioritize the list below.

The full list this year comprises 17 players this year (I was a little bit flexible with shooting percentage since that bouncing around can be such a factor for increased value) so picking your teams is an important exercise. For the purposes of this article, I have looked at various playoff projections and selected the four teams with the highest likelihood to make their conference finals according to those sources. From the West we have Dallas, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Vegas. From the East we have New York (Rangers), Carolina, Toronto, and Florida. This leaves us with eight players.

I wanted to briefly touch on two of them: Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi.

Tyler Bertuzzi is a good example of exactly the kind of thing we are talking about. Things were shaken up a bit with Mitch Marner being out and Bertuzzi (plus Max Domi) having the opportunity to play with Auston Matthews. Over a 26-game stretch starting on February 17th he has put up 22 points in 25 games and a rise in time on ice. He has seen over half of his team's power-play time 17 times, and over 20 minutes of total ice time three times. 

Anthony Mantha hasn't been getting quite that deployment but put up seven points in seven games from March 23^rd to April 7th. He went on a similar bender back in Washington with ten points in nine games in February. To go on this run in Vegas, the team has scored 10 goals on 52 shots while he has been on the ice (almost a 20 percent team shooting percentage). While it is an example of something that is not entirely sustainable it is exactly the kind of thing you are looking for from depth playoff adds.

For the full list I have also included all teams locked into a playoff spot plus Washington, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and the New York Islanders who are as of this writing still in contention of a playoff spot.

That is all for this week.

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