NHL Stat Pack: Key Numbers from Day 1 of the Playoffs
The opening night of the Stanley Cup playoffs thrilled the NHL world. Carol Schram looks at the stats that stood out from the first day.
The 2023 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs are underway, and Day 1 did not disappoint — especially if you're a night owl.
The two top teams from the Eastern Conference served up tidy wins in their opening games, whetting our appetite for a pair of thrillers out West.
Here are a handful of statistical takeaways from the first night of the NHL post-season. Whether they're trends or outliers remains to be seen.
Four Games, 15 Periods
Welcome back, sudden-death overtime.
Two of the four games on opening night were not settled after 60 minutes — and both were the later starts.
Fans in Edmonton stayed up till 11:30 p.m. local time to watch their Oilers surrender home-ice advantage thanks to Alex Iafallo's game-winning goal at 9:19 into the first overtime period.
And after an opening puck drop of 8:50 p.m. Central Time in Dallas, Ryan Hartman stole Game 1 for the Minnesota Wild at 12:20 of double overtime, ending that night at exactly 1 a.m.
Last year, all four games on opening night were settled in regulation. Day 2 delivered a memorable sudden-death classic, though — Louis Domingue's spicy pork and broccoli-fuelled triple-overtime win for the Pittsburgh Penguins over the New York Rangers.
The last time we saw multiple overtime games on the first night of the playoffs was on April 12, 2017. Like Monday, those games were also both in the West, and both delivered road wins.
As part of a five-game slate in 2017, Jake Allen made 51 saves, and Joel Edmundson scored the winner in the St. Louis Blues' 2-1 win over the Minnesota Wild. And Melker Karlsson delivered the dagger at 3:22 of the extra frame as the San Jose Sharks erased a 2-0 lead to grab the Game 1 win at Rogers Place in Edmonton.
The Blues went on to win their series in five games. The Oilers rebounded to take down the Sharks in six.
Scoring Is At a Premium
We expected this, right?
Even though teams averaged 3.18 goals per game in the regular season — the highest scoring output since 1993-94 (3.24) — just one of the eight squads that suited up on Monday beat that number. And the Los Angeles Kings needed 69:19 of playing time before their fourth goal of the night gave them a 1-0 series lead over the Edmonton Oilers.
At seven total goals, the Kings and Oilers scored as much as all four teams in the East put together. With the kind of team defense the Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes have been serving up all year, it's hardly a surprise that both those squads limited their opponents to just a single tally in Game 1.
How does this compare to last year?
On May 2, 2022, the Toronto Maple Leafs and St. Louis Blues shut out their opponents, and the Carolina Hurricanes limited the Boston Bruins to just one goal. But all four winning teams scored four or five goals, so the final tally was 22 goals last year (2.75 goals per team).
On Monday, we got 19, or 2.375 goals per team. And the only team to win by a multi-goal margin was Boston, beating Florida 3-1.
One Game 1 outcome was very familiar. The Kings beat the Oilers 4-3 in Edmonton last year as well, although that win came in regulation.
Special Teams Were Key
Referees tend to put their whistles away in the playoffs, but they dished out plenty of power-play opportunities on the first night.
This year, teams earned an average of 3.07 power plays per game in the regular season. Monday night, that number went up. There were 30 power plays in total, or an average of 3.75 per team per game.
Here's how those special-teams opportunities broke down:
- Hurricanes: 2-for-4; Islanders: 0-for-4
- Bruins: 1-for-2; Panthers: 0-for-2
- Kings: 2-for-6; Oilers: 1-for-3
- Wild: 1-for-4; Stars: 2-for-5
Dallas was the only team that won its special-teams battle but still lost its game. And based on their all-round stats, the Stars probably deserved a better fate. They outshot the Wild 53-48, including 26-12 after 60 minutes, and controlled 55.73 percent of expected goals at 5-on-5, per naturalstattrick.com.
Dallas also drew the only two power plays of overtime but missed master tipper Joe Pavelski something fierce after he was injured. He earned one assist and was on the ice for both of the Stars' goals, which were scored on the power play, before he left the game later in the second period after hitting his head on the ice.
And after Jake Oettinger announced himself with his otherworldly play in the first round last year, Dallas got 'goalied' by Filip Gustavsson on Monday. In his first career NHL playoff start, the 24-year-old posted a 1.30 goals-against average and a .962 save percentage for the Wild.
And that doesn't even earn him the top spot in the goalie rankings. Boston's Linus Ullmark picked up where he left off in the regular season on Monday night, allowing one goal on 32 shots for a 1.00 GAA and .969 save percentage.
Clubhouse Leaders
Here are some statistical marks to beat after Day 1:
- Points: Anze Kopitar (1-3-4)The Los Angeles Kings veteran captain factored in on every goal his team scored on Monday. He forced overtime when he shovelled a loose puck over the goal line with 17 seconds left in the third period in Edmonton.
- Goals: Leon Draisaitl and Adrian Kempe (2)Not surprisingly, the two leading scorers from the first night both came from the highest-scoring game. Both were first-round picks in the 2014 draft, but Draisaitl had the edge in the regular season with 52 goals, while Kempe hit a new career high with 41.More surprisingly, the Kings held Connor McDavid off the scoresheet for the first time since March 9.
- Hits: Ryan Pulock and Marcus Foligno (9)Here's the clearest sign of how the on-ice intensity ramps up in the playoffs. Two players registered nine hits on the night — and the Islanders' Ryan Pulock did that in just 60 minutes, while Minnesota's Marcus Foligno played in five periods.Three more players logged eight hits: Boston's Charlie McAvoy, Jani Hakanpaa of Dallas and Edmonton's Zach Hyman.And nearly 100 total hits were thrown in Game 1 between the Wild and Stars. The final tally was 50-42 in favor of Dallas.Over 1,310 regular-season games this year, there were 48 occasions when a player was credited with nine hits or more in a game. Arizona's Liam O'Brien logged the season high with 13 against the Chicago Blackhawks on Feb. 28, 2023.That means we saw a player throw nine hits or more about 3.7 percent of the time. On Monday, it happened twice in four games. That math is easy — it's 50 percent.
- Ice Time: Miro Heiskanen (41:42)It's not quite the insane 65:06 logged by Seth Jones in the Columbus Blue Jackets' five-overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2020 bubble in Toronto. But Heiskanen grabs the early lead in playoff ice time, on the ice for about 45 percent of the Stars' minutes in their double-overtime loss.Not surprisingly, the top 12 ice-time leaders all come from that game. Matt Dumba led the way for Minnesota at 38:31, and the top forwards on each team were Roope Hintz for Dallas (30:46) and Kirill Kaprizov for the Wild (28:39). The busiest player in the other games was the Kings' defensive workhorse, Drew Doughty. He played a somewhat tame-for-him 27:20, considering that game also went into extra time.From the 60-minute games, Florida's Brandon Montour took the ice-time crown at 27:09.