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There is an advantage to examining the playoffs from the mountain top of statistics rather than the valley of the games themselves. The view is much clearer.
The most visible factors of post-season success are team quality and goaltending. Regular-season success is the best predictor of success in the playoffs. Goaltending is the biggest potential perturbation of the predictive power of the regular season. A hot goaltender can hijack a series. The final factor is grit — an ability to play both at a high energy level and within oneself. Grit is difficult to identify before the post season and therefore a major force of randomness in playoff results.
Each of these factors has emerged in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
Detroit Red Wings
The Wings entered the Stanley Cup tournament as the team with the top record during the regular season. But they have been there so many times recently. And their detractors will point out that they have no recent Cups.
Very few analysts have called Detroit the team to beat this year. Their recent history of playoff 'failure' has been blamed on a lack of grit. However, the untold story is that the road to the Stanley Cup final has been through Joe Louis Arena for some time.
Last season they bowed to the eventual Cup winners, the Ducks, only after a terrific tussle in the third round. They provided tougher competition for Anaheim than did the Senators in the finals, outscoring the Ducks 17-16 and losing three one-goal games including two in overtime. Perhaps they were out-gritted, but only by the grittiest team in the 2007 tournament.
In the 2006 spring tournament, they bowed out in the first round. But, again, the loss was to a Stanley Cup finalist — the surprising Edmonton Oilers. In 2004, the story was similar. This time it was a second-round exit to a Cup finalist, the Calgary Flames. In 2003, they dropped out in the opening round to the then-Mighty Ducks who also went on to be finalists.
Oh, and in 2002 the Red Wings went all the way.
This is a profile of arguably the finest team in the NHL over the past five seasons. They remain my favourite to win the Stanley Cup.
Dallas Stars
Marty Turco looks like he may be the goaltender most likely to perturb. The veteran netminder has elevated his game substantially from the regular season, outgunning Anaheim's J-S Giguerre in Round 1 and then besting Vezina Trophy finalist Evgeni Nabokov to carry the Stars into the conference final. His save percentage of .929 trails that of Detroit's Chris Osgood (.937) and the Penguins' Marc-Andre Fleury (.938). But he has been carrying his team more so than the other two (goal support average of 2.63 versus 4.11 for Osgood and 3.41 for Fleury).
Detroit, the Stars' third-round opponent, has an unsettled situation in goal. Osgood has been good but Hasek is waiting in the wings. It has been a very long time since a Stanley Cup finalist had a goalie platoon.
Dallas looked very good against the Sharks, a team whose regular-season success suggested that they were a conference finalist. And, prior to that, the Stars were the team to dismiss the defending champions. In both series they opened with two road wins and then prevailed in six games. I think that defines grit.
Philadelphia Flyers
Philadelphia is the deepest seed (No. 6) to make it to the conference final. Recent NHL history has been populated with success from such darkhorses. In 2006, Edmonton conquered the West from the eighth seed. Calgary performed the same feat in 2004 and the Mighty Ducks won the west in 2003 from the seventh seed. The Carolina Hurricanes were the best in the East in 2002 having started with the relative advantage of that special third seed but they had the seventh-best record in the conference.
The deep-seed darkhorse benefits from low expectations. The Flyers have looked cool, calm and collected - and, I might add, well-coached. The opening round saw them dispatch one of the NHL's hottest teams. In Round 2, they dispatched the top seed in the East looking like the better prepared team. It looked gritty to me.
Success in the Montreal series may also have been due to goaltending. The story in the press was the Carey Price meltdown. Although Philadelphia goaltender Martin Biron has the lowest save percentage of the surviving starters, his performance against the Habs was critical to the Flyers' success.
Pittsburgh Penguins
What is the Penguins relative advantage over the Flyers — goal scoring or prevention? With Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin on board and a youngster in goal you might be inclined to pick scoring. But Philadelphia outscored Pittsburgh in the regular season (245 versus 240). The Penguins earned the second seed in the East by being a surprisingly strong defensive team, allowing 212 goals (Philadelphia allowed 225).
The stealth goaltender of the 2008 Stanley Cup tournament is Fleury. His limited regular-season playing time (35 games) was a consequence of injury. His .921 regular-season save percentage is the highest of the other final four netminders — Biron (.918), Osgood (.914) and Turco (.909). And he leads all goaltenders in post-season save percentage (.938). People forget that he was a No. 1 draft pick. This season his play has reflected that pedigree.
It was hard to evaluate Pittsburgh in the opening when they easily dispatched the Senators, a team that only made the playoffs because of their performance over the first 20% of the season. But the Penguins' performance in the conference semi-final was impressive. They made short work of the Rangers, a team that impressed in the opening round against the perennially tough Devils. So far, it looks like Pittsburgh has more talent than grit, but in the endless scuffle between the two, talent usually prevails.
Which means that the most likely final sees the Penguins opening at the Joe Louis Arena.
