Florida Panthers

What the Quant Says

252 goals and 8th in creating chances at even strength at 2.68 expected goals per 60, with the 2nd-best shot-attempt share in the league.

Sam Reinhart scored 39 on an 18.3 per cent rate with 48 per cent of his shots taken from inside 20 feet — the rare high conversion rate this edition believes — and added 5 shorthanded goals. Matthew Tkachuk had 57 points in 52 games before the Four Nations injury. Sam Bennett scored 25 and took 90 penalty minutes. Aleksander Barkov had 71 points in 67.

The club finished 27th in finishing, 14.8 goals below expectation, and the largest single piece of it is Carter Verhaeghe: 242 shots — the most on the club — and 20 goals, an 8.3 per cent rate against a career mark above 13. That is roughly 12 goals on its own.

What the Scout Says

Nobody here needs the puck given to them in space, which is why this attack works in April.

Sam Reinhart arrives in the right place a half-second early and does not take a shot from 40 feet if he can take one from 20 — 48 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 is the whole of why an 18.3 per cent rate is believable. Matthew Tkachuk makes plays from below the goal line and from the wall with defenders on him, in traffic he creates himself, and there is no version of his offence that does not involve contact.

Sam Bennett is the most difficult forward in the league to remove from the paint and has better hands than the reputation allows. Carter Verhaeghe is the one genuine rush scorer, quick and arriving into space with the puck already moving, and at 183 pounds he does not win a puck anywhere. Brad Marchand reads a play a beat early and creates by anticipation now rather than by beating anybody.

Underneath, everything is checking. Anton Lundell is patient and positionally exact and slow. Eetu Luostarinen's offence is entirely a byproduct of winning pucks back in the neutral zone. Tomas Nosek scored 1 goal in 59 games and posted a 97th-percentile chance share. Mackie Samoskevich is the only forward under 24 and gets the puck off quickly.

What the Quant Says

223 goals against and 2nd in the league at even-strength expected goals against, 2.24 per 60. This is the most complete defensive structure in hockey and it is not close.

Gustav Forsling was plus-33, the best rating on the club, at 22:57 a night — and took 16 penalty minutes all season. His on-ice goals were 61-45 against an expected 64.6-54.5, so even the best defenceman here lost 18 goals to the club's finishing. Niko Mikkola is 6-6 and clears a crease by force. Aaron Ekblad posted 53.7 per cent in 56 games around a 20-game suspension. Uvis Balinskis, on the third pair, was at 54.8 per cent — the 89th percentile.

The exception is Seth Jones at 44.9 per cent, the 14th percentile, most of it accumulated in Chicago. This is the club that most reliably reduces the number of decisions a defenceman has to make, and that is precisely his problem.

What the Scout Says

Four defencemen who each solve a different problem, and a reclamation project.

Gustav Forsling escapes a forecheck by turning away from it rather than absorbing it, and the first pass is quick and almost always right — 16 penalty minutes in 1,450 five-on-five minutes is what a defenceman with reads this good takes. He is not a hitter and is rarely beaten badly enough to need to be.

Aaron Ekblad's 30 assists in 56 games is a first-pair distribution rate, and at 6-4 and 220 he clears the crease by force, which Forsling does not. Niko Mikkola is 6-6 with enormous reach, unpleasant below the goal line, and took 70 penalty minutes. Dmitry Kulikov at 34 does exactly one thing and never attempts a second, which is why the club keeps re-signing him. Uvis Balinskis does not stall a breakout and does not create anything, on a third pair with an 89th-percentile share.

Seth Jones has a genuinely good stride for 6-4 and a heavy point shot, and the decision-making under pressure has been the problem for a decade — the difficult play at the wrong moment. This is the club best equipped to reduce how often he has to make one.

What the Quant Says

Sergei Bobrovsky went 33-19-2 with a .9056 and 5 shutouts across 54 games at 36. The club's goaltending came in 3.7 goals better than the chances faced, 14th in the league.

That figure understates him and it is supposed to. Behind the 2nd-best chance suppression in hockey, a regular-season save percentage is a poor instrument; two consecutive June runs are the evidence, and the criticism that followed him for a decade — that a bad goal became a bad night — is no longer available.

Daniil Tarasov arrives from Columbus with an .8805 in 20 games. He is 6-5, athletic, and technically unfinished, which is the profile this organisation has repeatedly improved. The club needs 30 starts from him behind a 36-year-old.

What the Scout Says

A 36-year-old at the peak of a career that everybody had already written off, and a large project behind him.

Sergei Bobrovsky is 6-2 and 180 and the game is precise rather than large: square, tracking through traffic as well as any goaltender in the league, never travelling further than the puck requires. The rebound control is genuinely good and it matters behind a club that concedes few chances but concedes them from close range. What has changed since the Columbus years is temperament — he no longer carries a bad goal into anything, which was the exact criticism for a decade.

Daniil Tarasov is 6-5 and covers an enormous amount of net simply by standing in it, and the technique is unfinished: depth varying, square less often than he should be, rebounds coming off him into the slot. Those are correctable faults for a goaltender that size and four seasons in Columbus did not correct them. This organisation has a long record of doing exactly that.

What the Quant Says

2nd in the league at 7.39 expected goals per 60, over 4:53 a night. One of the two best units in hockey.

Reinhart scored 13 power-play goals, Tkachuk 11 in 52 games, Bennett 7, Barkov 9. The arrangement is the most balanced in the league: Tkachuk creating from below the goal line and the wall, Reinhart at the top of the crease and the back post, Barkov distributing, Bennett willing to stand anywhere. Ekblad and Forsling supply mobility at the line rather than a bomb.

Barkov's absence takes a distributor out of it, and it is the phase most likely to survive him intact.

What the Scout Says

The most balanced unit in the league, and it loses its distributor.

Matthew Tkachuk works from below the goal line and the wall, where his ability to make a play with a defender on him cannot be defended by a stationary box. Sam Reinhart lives at the top of the crease and the back post and scored 13 there. Sam Bennett is willing to stand wherever it hurts most. Aleksander Barkov held it and waited and found the late man.

Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling supply mobility at the line rather than a bomb, which means the unit attacks from the goal line out rather than from the point in — the reason it is 2nd in the league and the reason it is difficult to prepare for. Without Barkov the puck has to come from Tkachuk or Reinhart, and both of them are more dangerous when somebody else is drawing the box.

What the Quant Says

6th in the league at 6.62 expected goals against per 60, over 4:55 a game — the 5th-heaviest workload in the league. Very good at the job and asked to do a great deal of it.

Barkov and Eetu Luostarinen are the pairing that makes it work, and Reinhart's 5 shorthanded goals led all forwards on the club. Forsling and Mikkola take the defensive minutes.

The workload is a choice. A.J. Greer took 130 penalty minutes in nine and a half minutes a night, Sam Bennett 90, Niko Mikkola 70, Brad Marchand 64, Jonah Gadjovich 60 in 42 games. This club has decided that being unpleasant is a competitive advantage and has two Cups to argue with. Losing Barkov from the unit that pays for it is the largest hidden cost of his injury.

What the Scout Says

Excellent, heavily used, and about to be asked to do it without its best player.

Aleksander Barkov's stick is the mechanism — pucks are taken off attackers before the play develops, and the 16 penalty minutes mean the aggression costs nothing. Eetu Luostarinen forechecks a breakout at speed and wins pucks on the wall against defencemen. Sam Reinhart scored 5 shorthanded goals, the most of any forward here, from reading a careless first pass.

Gustav Forsling and Niko Mikkola take the defensive pairing, and between Forsling's gaps and Mikkola's reach very little arrives from the outside. Tomas Nosek wins the draw that starts it.

The volume is the risk. This club takes the 5th-most shorthanded minutes in the league by choice — Greer at 130 penalty minutes, Bennett at 90, Mikkola at 70 — and it has just lost the man who made that affordable.