A look at some 5v5 numbers for the Lightning and the Panthers

The great thing about writing playoff previews is that, once the puck is dropped, they are meaningless. Pretty much everything that happened before a playoff series is meaningless, but we have to pay the light bill around here, and honestly, for as much as things can change in a seven-game series, there are still some overarching strengths and weaknesses teams bring into their match-up. So let’s take a look at some of the 5v5 stats for both the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers to see if there is anything we can possibly find out about the two teams.

During the regular season, the teams met three times with the Panthers prevailing twice. In their first get together, the Lightning were sluggish out of the gate and unable to battle back in a 3-2 loss. In their second meeting, who knows what the hell happened as Florida trounced the Lightning 9-2. The third match went more according to plan as Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 47 of 50 shots in a 5-3 victory. If you throw out the 9-2 game, the numbers aren’t all of that depressing for the Lightning. They played the Panthers pretty evenly for the most part.

Is it a coincidence that the game with the least amount of 5v5 time is the one that the Lightning won? Probably, especially since Andrei Vasilevskiy was really, really good that night. Still, it’s the Lightning and the Panthers, things are going to deteriorate at some point between these two, so special teams will play a factor. We’ll delve into that in another post.

While it’s always fun to see how teams did head-to-head, a three-game sample is really too small. For some reason a full season seems a bit too much as well. After all, the Lightning team we saw in March was a far cry from the one we saw in November. So there has to be a happy medium, right? Probably not, but for the sake of argument, we picked the somewhat random date of February 1st to measure some stats.

It should give us a fairly decent look at where these teams finished since it blends some “games that matter” in with how they finished down the stretch. So, the below 5v5 stats will be from February 1st, which gives us a 33-game sample from the Panthers and a 32-game sample from the Lightning. All stats are at a per-60 rate with the league ranking in parentheses.

The Lightning probably shouldn’t have scored as many goals as they did at 5v5, but when you have a team that can shoot the puck as well as they do, well, you can outscore the metrics a bit. The 10.21% was brought to you primarily by Brayden Point, who, on 60 shots on net, found the back of it an astonishing 20% of the time. Anthony Duclair had an even higher percentage at 28.57%, but on half as many shots (28). Granted he did that in only 17 games, so it’s still impressive. Those two led to 20 of the Lightning’s 69 5v5 goals over that time frame at a rate that is probably not sustainable, even in a seven-game series.

Meanwhile, the Panthers are a bit more of a volume team. They can withstand their rather paltry shooting percentage by making up for it in volume. Since February 1st they were 8th in the league in shot attempts at 64 per 60 minutes and 8th in shots on goal at 30.98/60. As their season chart shows, they like to shoot from just about everywhere except right in front of the net.

Mr. McCurdy’s lovely visual is based on the entire season, but chances the sample size we’ve been looking at for most of the numbers don’t deviate much from what we’re seeing, which is a lot of offense from the half-boards and the sides of the net. That’s not a bad plan when you have a player like Matthew Tkachuk (right side) and Sam Reinhart (left side) hanging out beside the goaltender’s crease.

The rest of the players on the ice are there to get the puck towards the net and let those two much around for deflections and rebounds hence the reason they shooting above league average from just about everywhere on the ice. Compare that to the Lightning, who have their definite focus spots:

Everywhere else (which conveniently coincides with areas Mr. Kucherov doesn’t shoot from) is at league average or below. This would be an interesting chart to see if Duclair has made any sort of impact since he likes to generate his offense from in front of the net as we can see in this graphic:

While the Lightning were fairly balanced in their forms of attack on the season generating some of their offense off of a forecheck/cycle game and some off of the rush, the Panthers rely a lot more on their forecheck to get things going. According to All Three Zones, they led the league in shots off of the forecheck/cycle. While they still generated some chances off of the rush, they struggled a bit in converting them:

Defensively, the two teams were kind of polar opposites as the Lightning defense was decent at tampering down the dangerous chances, but some sub-stellar goaltending let them down. Meanwhile, Florida had some issues protecting the dangerous spots on the ice, but their duo of Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz bailed them out.

Andrei Vasilevskiy’s numbers at 5v5 are a bit worrisome. Since February 1st, his .902 SV% ranks 50th out of goaltenders that have faced at least 150 unblocked shots. His first shot save percentage is .930% against an expected first shot save percentage of .939%. Yes, it’s pretty close, but he almost always carries a positive FSv% even when he’s struggling. His -6.94 Goals Saved Above Expected is also wildly inconsistent with what he’s posted over his career.

As troublesome as those numbers are at even strength over his last 26 appearances, it’s been the complete opposite shorthanded. He has a 6.22 GSAx with a .911 SV% and a .938 FSv% against an expected .899. No wonder the Lightning had the third-best penalty kill percentage since February 1st. Perhaps they should just keep taking penalties and wear out the Panthers’ best players by making them spend all of their time on the ice on the power play.

The Bob and Stolly Show has been the complete opposite. Despite appearing in just 12 games since February 1st, Stolarz is second in the league at 5v5 with an 11.03 GSAx while Bobrovsky is 10th at 7.25. Stolarz, the nominal back-up, is stopping .947% of his shots while is at .930%. The only good news for Lightning fans is that, if Bobrovsky struggles early, there might be a little goaltender controversy in Sunrise.

Take these numbers for what you will. Over the course of a season, the numbers fluctuate depending on the level of competition. Once a team is in the playoffs, there are no easy opponents and the teams that they are playing are a little more dedicated to blocking shots and competing for pucks. The intensity just isn’t the same.

There is still some carry over though. Teams don’t change their identity that much, and most of what a team is comes from their even strength play. While these two teams have gone about it in different ways, they’ve ended up in the same spot. Now it’s up to them to change the narrative enough to eek out the victory.