After a boatload of goals in the first two rounds of the NHL playoffs, goaltending and defense took over to start the conference finals.
In last week's Stat Pack, I gave credit to the NHL's four conference finalists for their impressive goal-scoring prowess.
As a reminder, these were their production rates through the first two rounds:
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How quickly times have changed.
With the first five games of the conference finals now in the books, we've only seen a team manage more than three goals once in this round. In Game 1 in the West, Brett Howden's OT-winner gave the Golden Knights a 4-3 win over the Stars.
Meanwhile, in the East, both teams combined couldn't exceed three goals in Games 2 and 3. After eking out a 2-1 overtime win on Saturday, the Florida Panthers logged only a single power-play tally from Sam Reinhart on Monday night. But that was enough to move the underdog Cats just a single game away from their first Stanley Cup final appearance since 1996.
All told, we've had only 21 goals scored so far in Round 3. That's an average of just 2.1 goals per team per game.
Sergei Bobrovsky's record-setting tour de force for the Panthers is making the headlines, and deservedly so. While recording his first career playoff shutout on Monday and improving his post-season record to 10-2, the 34-year-old also broke a 63-year-old feat.
With 135 saves through the first three games of a conference final or Stanley Cup semifinal, he eclipsed the old mark of 125 set by Toronto's Johnny Bower in 1960 — when the NHL had only six teams and two playoff rounds.
By a different measure, evolving-hockey.com had Bobrovsky saving another 2.38 goals above expected in his shutout win on Monday — a night where the Hurricanes outshot the Panthers 32-17 and dominated in all the possession categories, including nearly 78 percent of the expected goals share at 5-on-5, per naturalstattrick.com.
Evolving Hockey now has Bobrovsky at 19.76 goals saved above expected in his 13 playoff games — with Igor Shesterkin sitting second this year at 9.77 despite having played only seven games.
On Monday, Bobrovsky exceeded Andrei Vasilevskiy's performance in the 2021 playoffs when he won his second Stanley Cup (17.33 GSAx). And for the entire period of Evolving Hockey's data, which goes back to the 2007-08 season, there's only one goalie with a higher number. Last year, Shesterkin hit 23.21 GSAx in 20 games.
But while Bobrovsky has been otherworldly, three of the other four goalies who have seen ice in this round have also played very well. In any other year, they'd be earning accolades of their own.
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Jake Oettinger's 887:24 played in the post-season leads all goalies, which brings up the question of whether he's beginning to tire. But Bobrovsky has had a more difficult workload. He has faced 42 more shots than Oettinger despite having played two fewer games and more than 50 fewer minutes.
In both of their earlier series, Oettinger and the Stars lost Game 1 and were behind 2-1 before coming back to win. Their current 2-0 hole, obviously, is tougher to dig out of, but this is also the first series where Dallas hasn't had home-ice advantage.
In order for Pete DeBoer to vanquish his former employer, the Stars will need to win at least one game in Vegas. But first, they have to take care of business on home ice on Tuesday.
Here's a look at how the overall game landscape has changed in this round so far, working off data by Alison Lukan from Root Sports from earlier in the playoffs.
Goals Per Game
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Power Plays Per Game
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Power-Play Goals Per Game
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It's interesting to see that the rate of power plays has actually gone up a bit after dipping in Round 2. Power-play scoring is also up just a hair. Teams are still executing at almost the same rate with the man advantage; it's 5-on-5 play where they've been shooting blanks.
That has been the difference in the last two games in the East. Carolina gave up just three goals on 30 shorthanded situations in the first two rounds for a phenomenal kill rate of 90 percent. In addition, the Hurricanes scored four shorthanded goals, so their net penalty-kill rate was actually better than perfect, at 103.3 percent.
This round, they started with a perfect 3-for-3 penalty kill in the Game 1 marathon while scoring two power-play goals themselves. But Carolina has been foiled on seven power-play opportunities in the last two games and also given up power-play goals in back-to-back games for the first time since March 17 and 18.
Florida's power play is 2-for-7 in the last two games, or 28.6 percent. And those two goals have accounted for two-thirds of the Panthers' scoring in those two games — enough, in each case, to eke out the all-important win.