Tampa Bay Lightning

What the Quant Says

290 goals, and the process underneath is nearly as good as the total. 6th in the league in even-strength expected goals per 60, 3rd in shot-attempt share at 53.3 per cent — and 18.3 goals above expectation in finishing, third, which is the part that will not repeat.

Nikita Kucherov put up 130 points at 33 and was plus-43. Jake Guentzel scored 38 goals and 88 points taking 59 per cent of his shots from inside 20 feet. Brandon Hagel scored 36 and was plus-34 at the 97th percentile. Anthony Cirelli added 52 points from a median of 15 feet at the 88th; Brayden Point 50 taking 60 per cent from inside 20.

The shot profiles are the tell: this is a club whose best forwards all shoot from close, which is the quality that travels into a playoff series when open ice disappears.

What the Scout Says

2 of the finest offensive players of the era and a supporting cast that does the hard parts. Nikita Kucherov manipulates a defence until the wrong man has committed and then the puck is in the net; he avoids contact entirely and wins by being somewhere else, and his 50 penalty minutes are almost all frustration. Jake Guentzel gets to the crease by timing the play and accepts what happens when he arrives — he is not strong and does not win battles by force, and the penalty minutes are high and the games missed are not, which is the whole description of him.

Brayden Point wins pucks by being early and gets to the interior on quickness, and it has cost him games most seasons. Brandon Hagel is the engine — quickest to everything, and 58 penalty minutes of genuine engagement. What makes this attack unusual is the depth beneath it: Anthony Cirelli scores like a top-6 forward from a checking role because his shot selection is exact; Gage Goncalves forechecks properly and goes to the interior, which is why his chart looks the way it does; Pontus Holmberg is a positional forward whose results are far better than his point total suggests. There is no passenger above the fourth line.

What the Quant Says

6th in the league in even-strength expected goals against at 2.38 per 60, and only 231 goals conceded — third-fewest in hockey.

J.J. Moser was plus-41 at the 90th percentile across 1,427 minutes, the second-best plus-minus in the league. Charle-Edouard D'Astous — undrafted, 28, a rookie — posted the 90th percentile and took 112 penalty minutes. Erik Cernak is 230 pounds at the 78th. Ryan McDonagh, in his 1,058th game at 37, took 6 penalty minutes in 48 appearances. Victor Hedman is 35 and still here.

Darren Raddysh has gone to Toronto. Everything else is intact, and every regular defenceman finished above the 70th percentile.

What the Scout Says

2 great players in decline and a set of cheap, hard men who have made the decline survivable. Victor Hedman's passing is intact and was always the best part of him, and the skating has slowed a great deal and the recovery step is gone. Ryan McDonagh's first pass is quick and the reads are why he is still taking 19 minutes on a contender at 37, and he still clears his crease. Both have missed a great deal of hockey.

What has made that tolerable is who the club found underneath. Erik Cernak is 6-4 and clears his crease violently, defends the net front better than almost anyone, and carries the injury record that comes with playing that way. Emil Lilleberg clears, blocks and fights when required. Charle-Edouard D'Astous was undrafted, spent his twenties in the minors and in Europe, and arrived at 28 playing like a top-pair defenceman. J.J. Moser is the mover — intelligent, mobile, and using his stick constantly because he cannot use his body, which is where a high penalty rate on a small defenceman comes from. John Carlson brings the heaviest point shot left in the league and defends by having the puck, which at 23 minutes a night is a bet the club has chosen to make.

What the Quant Says

Exactly neutral, which on this team is enough. Andrei Vasilevskiy took 58 games and stopped .911; Jonas Johansson 25 at .8836; Dennis Hildeby arrives having stopped .9124 across 20.

Collectively Tampa's goaltending came in 0.6 goals worse than the chances faced, seventeenth — dead median. In front of the sixth-best defensive structure in the league that produces the third-fewest goals against in hockey without the goaltender having to be exceptional, which is the healthiest possible arrangement. Hildeby at 24 gives the club a genuine second option for the first time in years.

What the Scout Says

The most settled position on the roster. Andrei Vasilevskiy handles the puck well and reads a play developing behind his net better than most, and the decade of being the goaltender other clubs planned around is not a memory — there was a stretch in the middle of his career when the workload and a back operation took the edge off it, and it has come back.

Behind him the club has 2 very large men and different reasons to hesitate. Dennis Hildeby is 6 foot 7 and takes up the net simply by standing in it, with a lateral push better than it has any right to be at that height; the difficulty is the one every goaltender this size has, which is getting down, getting back up and holding the post through traffic. Jonas Johansson is beaten laterally and his rebound control is the weakest part of his game, and at his size the technique ought to carry him further than it does.

What the Quant Says

8th in the league at 7.34 expected goals per 60, on 5:12 a night — 6th in opportunity. Good unit, plenty of time on it.

Kucherov led it with 8 power-play goals, Guentzel 8, Point 6, Hagel 5. It is a top-10 power play on a club that does not need one, which is the definition of a team with no obvious weakness — and the reason the only real caution here is the six goals of finishing that arrived on top of everything else.

What the Scout Says

The most dangerous unit in hockey and it is a matter of one man's patience. Nikita Kucherov holds the puck on the half-wall until a kill has committed to the wrong option, which is a thing that cannot be defended by structure — only by taking the puck off him, which nobody does. Jake Guentzel is the finisher who works the ice nobody else will. Brayden Point arrives in the seam a half-beat early.

John Carlson is the addition that changes it: the heaviest point shot left in the league and a man who has run a power play for a decade, which frees Victor Hedman to be the passer he still is rather than the shooter he no longer is. Brandon Hagel does the retrieval work most units have to buy separately. The only vulnerability is the same one Kucherov's game has always had — an aggressive kill that presses him at the wall and refuses to bite is the one thing that makes the whole thing look ordinary, and very few clubs have the discipline to do it for 2 minutes.

What the Quant Says

9th at 6.97 expected goals against per 60, over 5:10 a game — the fifth-heaviest workload in the league.

A top-10 kill doing top-5 volume, built from D'Astous's 112 penalty minutes, Cernak's 74, Yanni Gourde's 66 and Guentzel's 61 — a hard team that takes penalties and defends them. Cirelli's 2 shorthanded goals and Guentzel's 2 are the pressure showing. 3rd in attempts, 4th in chances, 6th at both ends, 12th on the power play and 9th on the kill: there is no phase of the game in which this club is worse than ninth.

What the Scout Says

Deep, willing and unusually well suited. Anthony Cirelli is the best defensive centre in the league who has never won the award for it, and 48 penalty minutes is disciplined for how much he defends. Yanni Gourde has built 680 games and 2 championships out of exactly this work. Pontus Holmberg is good on draws and good on the kill and reliable in his own end; Jansen Harkins takes defensive-zone draws; Zemgus Girgensons has done this for 800 games and is exactly what he was at 25.

On the blue line it is the best net front in the league. Erik Cernak takes that space outright, Emil Lilleberg blocks and clears, Ryan McDonagh still moves men out of the paint, and Charle-Edouard D'Astous fights for it. The one cost is discipline in the enforcement corner: Scott Sabourin's 89 penalty minutes in under 8 minutes a night is one of the highest rates in the league, and Jeffrey Viel is employed to do the same job. Only one of them dresses, which is the club being honest about how often it wants to be a man down.