There was only one game in the NHL last night. Despite winning the puck possession battle handily, the Isles lost this one – a strange turn of fate for a team that has won so far in the playoffs despite poor possession numbers.

After the triple OT game that ended with more than 200 Corsi, this game seemed tame. The teams combined for 112 all-situations Corsi. No Corsi was more important than this one:

No shot is a bad shot, especially in OT.

Before we get to the chart, here’s the bullets on how to read the graphs:

A couple of notes on reading the charts:

the Corsi differential is based on 5v5 play and is score-adjusted, as per war-on-ice.

players at the top (with bars extending to the right) posted positive differentials (good)

players at the bottom (and to the left) posted negative differentials (bad)

the colour of each bar represents the player’s time on ice (see legend at the bottom)

each players individual Corsi For attempts are included in parentheses a player with a strong C +/- but a (0) for iCF didn’t directly contribute to his strong showing. a player with a weak C +/- but a strong iCF score (i.e. greater than 5) may have been hindered by linemates. Maybe.

like any reasonable person, I don’t believe that Corsi is everything. But it’s a very important part of the everything.

On to the game chart…

Boychuk was the game’s best, logged big ice time, and registered a game-high 8 iCF. Prince, Tavares, and Okposo were strong and the Isles dominated the positive side of the game chart.

It’s worth noting that some skaters who regularly sink to the bottom posted reasonable Corsi differentials in this game – Martin, Clutterbuck, and Bailey were all pluses and that’s uncommon.

The Lightning dominated the negative portion of the graph. Hedman had his worst game of the playoffs in terms of puck possession. Callahan, Sustr, Coburn, and Namestnikov joined Hedman in the negatives. The bottom-11 were all Lightning skaters.

Yet, one shot from Garrison was enough to put the Isles in a major hole. The Isles have gotten away with poor puck possession so far. They had good puck possession tonight and weren’t rewarded for it.

So it goes.

Lightning lead 3-1.

Read more…

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NHL Playoffs Game Charts – Wednesday, May 4th

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