Round 2 starts with even less margin for error than Round 1. Three of the four series are only one or two games old. The fourth — Carolina-Philadelphia — is already 3-0. The trick at this stage of the second round is harder than it sounds: separating what is actually structural from what is a goalie quirk, a special-teams swing, or a single bad shift.

The data set covers all eight Round 2 games through Wednesday, May 7, including Carolina’s Game 3 win in Philadelphia.

There are no shot maps yet. We have coordinates and we will use them, but with one- and two-game series, location-based heat maps invite more confidence than the data supports. When location matters in this column, it stays in the text.

Data from NHL API.

EAST

Carolina Hurricanes vs. Philadelphia Flyers — Hurricanes lead 3-0

Carolina has not been shy about being Carolina. Through three games, they have outshot Philadelphia 95-74, taken more attempts in every distance bucket, and scored 10 goals to Philadelphia’s three, and they have done it without a single forward dominating the box score. The leaderboard reads more like a roster check than a top-line summary (goals-assists-points): Jackson Blake 1-3-4, Nikolaj Ehlers 2-1-3, Andrei Svechnikov 1-2-3, Jordan Staal 1-2-3, Logan Stankoven 2-0-2.

The five-on-five layer is just as flat. Svechnikov, Stankoven, Ehlers, and Seth Jarvis are all running between 65% and 68% Corsi-for through the series – none of them have a bad night. Stankoven leads with 11 shots in three games, producing two goals — identical shot volume to Sean Couturier on the other side, with twice the conversion. Their three top D-point producers — Mike Reilly, Shayne Gostisbehere, and K’Andre Miller — each have two assists, and the rotation is unusually clean: Jaccob Slavin + Jalen Chatfield and Sean Walker + K'Andre Miller have been on the ice for four Carolina goals each, splitting deployment almost evenly through nine games.

Frederik Andersen has been the kind of goalie series flatten around. He’s at .959 across three starts, +85 points above his weighted regular-season baseline. Broken out by distance, he’s at .952 in tight, .909 from the slot, .958 from the high zone, and a perfect 18-of-18 from the perimeter. There is no zone where Andersen is leaking. That is the cleanest goalie profile of the round.

Now, Philadelphia. The volume is there — Couturier has 22 shots in nine playoff games and one goal — but the conversion isn’t. Across both rounds combined, Philadelphia has scored 19 goals from 15 different players, with only four players on multiple goals, all tied at two: Travis Sanheim, Jamie Drysdale, Trevor Zegras, and Porter Martone, giving us two defensemen in the multi-goal group. The highest-volume forward in the lineup is shooting 4.5%.

Defensemen are carrying 33% of Philadelphia’s points in this series, with Drysdale the only Flyers defenseman to score. That is not a problem on its own; it becomes a problem when you look at the workload involved. Sanheim is logging 26:29 a night (+2:16 vs his regular-season pace), Rasmus Ristolainen 24:07 (+2:44), Cam York 23:59 (+1:26). The Flyers are leaning on their blue line for transition, point production, and shutdown minutes — and not getting forward production to balance it.

Dan Vladar is not the obvious problem in any one zone. He’s at .895 across three starts, 11 points below his RS baseline. The damage is not from the perimeter (30 of 30 saved) or even close in (.842, three goals on 19 shots). It’s the slot bucket — 15 to 30 feet — where he is at .764, four goals on seventeen shots. That is the zone where Carolina’s lateral attack has been finding seams.

The cleanest one-line summary: Carolina’s worst qualified skater is at 47% Corsi-for. Philadelphia’s best is at 50%. Carolina’s bottom does not drop. Philadelphia’s top does not rise. That, more than the goal differential, is the structural reason this series is one-sided.

Buffalo Sabres vs. Montreal Canadiens — Sabres lead 1-0

One game is one game. Resist the temptation to draw a structural read.

But the shape of Game 1 is worth noting because it does not match the result. Montreal outshot Buffalo 28-16. Montreal had eleven shots on goal from the high slot to Buffalo’s four. Lane Hutson played 26:42 (+2:55 vs his RS workload), and Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Ivan Demidov all posted between 67% and 73% Corsi-for. The territorial verdict was Montreal’s.

Buffalo won 4-2 because of three things: power-play conversion (2-for-3 vs Montreal’s 1-for-2), Alex Lyon at .929 with everything but the in-tight bucket clean, and Jakub Dobes giving up two goals from beyond 30 feet. Dobes was .500 in the high-slot bucket (four shots, two goals) and .666 in tight. Lyon faced the same six in-tight shots and gave up the same two goals — so the difference between the goalies in this game was not the close range, it was the high-slot. Lyon stopped 11 of 11 from there. Dobes stopped 2 of 4.

The on-ice splits add the most interesting wrinkle. Buffalo’s fourth line — Jordan Greenway, Beck Malenstyn, Tyson Kozak — got on the scoreboard, and Bowen Byram was on the ice for three of the four Sabres goals. Alex Tuch (19:16) and Tage Thompson (18:28) were not on the ice for any of the four goals their team scored. The depth carried Game 1.

For Montreal, Lane Hutson was on the ice for three of four goals against, and Mike Matheson for two of four. Montreal's defensemen did not hold up to the excellent depth from Buffalo. Matheson and Hutson are also two of Montreal’s three most-deployed defensemen, so being on for everything is partly a function of usage — but it’s still a number worth circling.

Take everything from this preliminary. Game 2 is Friday. If the pattern repeats, the read becomes: Buffalo’s bottom six is producing more than its top six, and Montreal’s top pair is losing a leverage battle to the Greenway line. If Game 2 inverts, the read changes.

WEST

Colorado Avalanche vs. Minnesota Wild — Avalanche lead 2-0

This is the chaos series: Twenty-two goals in two games, both goalies under .825 in at least one distance bucket, and Colorado is ahead 2-0 in spite of allowing 14 Minnesota shots from inside thirty feet.

The reason Minnesota is down is not the play. The Wild are at 52.6% qualified-pool Corsi-for, two points clear of Colorado’s 48.5%. Kirill Kaprizov, Quinn Hughes, Matt Boldy, and Mats Zuccarello are all between 63% and 67%. The top of the Minnesota lineup has been the better unit on the ice.

The reason Minnesota is down is two players who are not on the ice. Joel Eriksson Ek (19-32-51 in 70 regular-season games, 19.1 minutes a night) and Jonas Brodin (4-14-18 in 62 games, 20.3 minutes a night) have not appeared in either Round 2 game. Eriksson Ek’s absence shows up across the forward depth chart; Brodin’s absence has hit the back end.

The way Minnesota has tried to absorb the Brodin gap is by leaning on Brock Faber. Faber is logging 27:01 a night, +2:20 vs his RS workload. Quinn Hughes is at 28:32. The two of them have been on the ice for 50% of Minnesota’s goals for, and 43% of Colorado’s goals against. Jared Spurgeon (19:03) and Jake Middleton (17:25) are taking essentially their RS minutes; both are −4 in two games, and if you want to point at the structural bleed, it is the second pair, not the top.

Jesper Wallstedt‘s numbers tell the rest. He’s at .810 across one start, with the damage almost entirely from the top of the circles: eighteen shots faced from 30-45 feet, seven goals, .611 save percentage. Filip Gustavsson took the other start and was at .818 over a smaller sample. Together they are 106 points below the team’s RS baseline goalie pool.

Colorado’s offense has been a defenseman story as much as a forward story. Five of Colorado’s 14 goals have come from the blue line — Cale Makar (2), Devon Toews (1), Sam Malinski (1), and Nick Blankenburg (1). That is 36% from defense, the highest share of any team in the round. Toews is logging 25:30 a night, +3:08 vs his RS workload, with four points. Brent Burns and Brett Kulak have been the most-deployed Colorado pair, on the ice for five Colorado goals.

Kulak deserves a single-paragraph footnote. He’s been on for 8/14 Colorado goals (57%) and 6/8 Minnesota goals (75%) — by far the most-leveraged skater in the series. His Corsi-for, though, is only 41.8%. So, the goal share is mostly about being on the ice when things happen, not about driving them. That distinction matters in projection, less in the moment.

Nathan MacKinnon has six points (2-4-6) but is logging 20:36 a night — 1:39 below his RS workload. Cale Makar is even more notable: 20:38 per game, −4:12 vs RS. Two goals despite the workload reduction. Read that as Colorado managing minutes intentionally because they are still ahead, not as a structural change.

The honest version of this series is that Minnesota has played the better five-on-five hockey and is trailing 2-0 anyway. Without Eriksson Ek to anchor the middle and Brodin to balance the back end, the parts that should matter most — special teams (0-for-5 vs 3-for-7), goaltending in the high slot — are all slipping in Colorado’s direction.

Anaheim Ducks vs. Vegas Golden Knights — series tied 1-1

Vegas won Game 1 by a 3-1 margin. Anaheim won Game 2 by a 3-1 score. The headline result is a split. The under-the-hood result is that Anaheim has played the better hockey both nights.

Anaheim has outshot Vegas 62-44 across the series and out-attempted them in every distance bucket. Their top line is the more dramatic part of the story: Troy Terry, Chris Kreider, Leo Carlsson, and Cutter Gauthier are all between 74% and 80% Corsi-for. That is a run rate that does not usually survive contact with the second round, but it has so far. Carlsson scored his first goal in Game 2 and added a takeaway and a block while logging 21:03 both nights — identical time on ice both games, four shots on goal both games. The change in Game 2 was finishing, not volume.

The reason the series is even is a two-part answer. Carter Hart is at .951 through two starts, +60 points above his RS baseline, and clean across all four distance buckets I sliced. And Anaheim is 0-for-9 on the power play. Lukas Dostal has been almost as good (.930, +42 points), with his only flaw being three goals in tight on eight shots. Outside the crease he is at .967.

Vegas’s structural hole is on the back end. Brayden McNabb is at 29.9% Corsi-for on 23:47 a night, by far the worst rate for any defenseman logging that workload in the round. Cole Smith, Keegan Kolesar, and Nic Dowd round out the bottom four for Vegas — all sub-30%. The top of the lineup (Jack Eichel 20:01, Mark Stone 18:30, Mitch Marner 17:21) has been competitive but not dominant. Marner is logging 2:35 below his regular-season workload, which is a coaching choice worth tracking — Vegas has been using their depth to keep Marner from running into the Carlsson line.

Both teams have scored 100% of their goals from forwards through two games. Vegas’ only power-play goal of the series came in Game 2 — the game they lost — which is the kind of detail that will look odd in retrospect if Anaheim takes this in five.

The series projects forward to depend on whether Hart can keep stealing games and whether Anaheim’s power play can convert one of the next four-to-six chances. The territorial part has already been settled.

What we’ve learned so far

Carolina is the only team whose territorial dominance matches its scoreline. Top four forwards 65-68% Corsi-for, two D pairs splitting deployment evenly, Andersen .959 with no zone leak. The path is structural, not lucky.

Two teams are tied or losing despite winning the play. Minnesota and Anaheim both have qualified-pool Corsi-for above 50%, but Minnesota’s top forwards are also on the ice for half of Colorado’s goals, and Anaheim’s power play is 0-for-9. The fix in Minnesota is partly a roster issue (Eriksson Ek, Brodin); the fix in Anaheim is special-teams math.

Goalies are still painting most of the differentials. Andersen +85 points vs his RS baseline, Hart +60, Dostal +42, Lyon +22. Wallstedt is −106 below the Wild’s baseline goalie pool — and the high-slot bucket is where almost all of it is concentrated. In short two-game samples, +60 to +85 from a starter is the difference between a series being competitive and a series being one-sided.

Defensemen are over-indexed in goal production. Colorado’s blue line has 36% of its goals. Philadelphia’s has 33%. Carolina’s three D-points-leaders are quietly running the offensive zone for the line that gets the credit. The teams trailing in their series — Minnesota and Philadelphia — are also the teams whose D-point share looks the most like a dependency rather than a feature.

Depth lines have been key in three of the four series. Buffalo scored four times in Game 1 and neither Tage Thompson nor Alex Tuch were on the ice for any of them. Anaheim’s Sennecke was on the ice for two of four. Only Carolina has a clearly leveraged top trio (Aho/Svechnikov/Jarvis) and even that is “tied with most of the lineup” rather than “running away with it.” If you are looking for a single early read on Round 2, it is that depth — not stars – have a big hand in the wins.

What has not been tested yet is how much of Round 2 is luck and how much is structure. We will have a clearer answer by the weekend.