This week we are moving on to the Eastern Conference in our playoff round up, so that means the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Ottawa Senators, and Pittsburgh Penguins. The first-round teams from the Western Conference were covered here.

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, or especially in the case of free agents, who might not be viewed as valuable to their current team. 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 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.

And now 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 percent as overtime games can add significant time to a player's overall count without changing that player's real deployment opportunity. 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, all of it from Frozen Tools. 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 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.

Boston played six games against Buffalo with only one game going to overtime. In terms of point production, the entire team performed worse during this series than at the end of the regular season. In deployment though there was one clear riser: Pavel Zacha. Zacha had already been on the rise at the end of the regular season, and while he didn't score more points, he did see an additional two minutes a night of ice time, and a small increase in power-play share. Add to that a very effective fourth quarter and a career high point pace, and Zacha really has been putting in the work for his fantasy managers. On the flip side is Viktor Arvidsson, Zacha's running mate for our regular season sample, who saw his time cut by three and a half minutes. He averaged only 11:21 a night by the end of the series (though that was impacted by an injury in Game 4, he still lost ice time in the three full games he played). That really isn't what you want to see from a guy who was a point per game at the end of the season. Arvidsson is a free agent this summer and his 64-point regular season pace was a little bit of a mirage, so he will need good deployment to keep it up. The fact that he couldn't be trusted in the playoff matchup is going to be a mark against him.

Ottawa lost in four games with one going to double overtime. Given the small sample and that one went to double overtime we have a lot of players who saw increased average ice time. Claude Giroux and Shane Pinto had the largest increases in total time on ice and power-play deployment but certainly did not translate that into more scoring. In fact, there is no one on the roster who scored better during the playoffs than the end of the regular season, which is what happens when you put up five goals over four games. Outside of those two names though there isn't much to report. The depth saw small decreases in time and the only other notable name is Dylan Cozens who seems to have lost out on a chunk of power-play time (essentially to Shane Pinto). That is something that could certainly bear watching but given the very small sample here it is hard to read into it too much.

Pittsburgh was ousted by their in-state rival Philadelphia Flyers in six games with only one overtime needed. Pittsburgh wasn't expected to make the playoffs so this was kind of all gravy at this point. In keeping with some of the other top-heavy teams it was very much the top unit who benefited, so we are looking at increases from Sidney Crosby, Rickard Rakell, plus defencemen Kris Letang, and Erik Karlsson. There really isn't too much to read into there. Newcomers Anthony Mantha and Egor Chinakhov unfortunately saw their stocks drop a bit. Both were revelations this year in Pittsburgh, putting up their best seasons in years (or ever). Of the two, Mantha's losses were much more significant, so we have to wonder about the future of the 31-year-old UFA. Chinakhov saw a drop in overall ice time as well, but given he is 25 and an RFA this summer it is much more likely that he finds a role with the team next year.

Tampa lost in seven games, with three of them going to overtime. Even so we have about 13 players who saw less overall ice time on average than during the end of the regular season. Brandon Hagel was by far the biggest winner, getting onto the top power play and adding about five minutes of overall ice time on average. He has historically not been on that top unit, likely in an attempt to spread out the offence, and we shall see if this is an indication of things to come, or just a moment in time. As we might imagine, if Hagel is increasing his time someone is losing it, and in this case the losses are to both Oliver Bjorkstrand and Corey Perry. Bjorkstrand hasn't been particularly relevant in Tampa, except for the fact that he was spending a lot of time on the top unit and getting some production that way. If this is a sign that he is no longer going to be there his remaining value definitely takes a big hit. Both he and Perry are UFAs this summer so not being able to keep their power-play roles isn't a good sign.

That is all for this week.

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