Fresh off of their upset over the President Trophy winning Washington Capitals the Pittsburgh Penguins will take on the Ottawa Senators to see which team gets to represent the Eastern Conference in the Stanley Cup Final. Pittsburgh had the second best record in the league this season and as a result of knocking out Washington they will have home ice for the rest of the playoffs.
Pittsburgh will head into this series as a solid favorite. This will be for the same reasons that they were over Columbus. They have more high end talent. Ottawa has some nice forwards like Mike Hoffman, Mark Stone, Kyle Turris, Bobby Ryan, Clarke MacArthur, and Derick Brassard. However, it is tough to match up against Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, Jake Guentzel and Pittsburgh's supporting cast. Sid, Geno, Phil, and Jake are the first, fourth, fifth, and seventh respective point leaders in the playoffs. Guentzel leads all players with nine goals.
Round 3 probabilities from various models, bookmakers, pundits, and the public. pic.twitter.com/poMGp35z0E
— dom 💛 nashville 🤠(@domluszczyszyn) May 12, 2017
I share the same views as these models. I believe Pittsburgh will win the series.
There are a few keys for the Penguins to secure victory over the Ottawa Senators. The first is pretty darn obvious. Slow down that freak named Erik Karlsson. The Senators best player has a solid case to be included with Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid as the best player on the planet. When he is on the ice very good things happen for the Senators. When he is off the ice the Senators are a pedestrian team that are extremely vulnerable.
Pittsburgh is one of a few teams that has the kind of talent and speed throughout their forward lineup that can at least slow Karlsson down a little bit. You won't shut him down completely because he's too dynamic, but even if you slow him down a little bit you compromise Ottawa's chances to survive. It's a good thing Pittsburgh has forward depth because Karlsson never comes off the ice. He is second overall in the playoffs with 28:56 minutes played per game. When Erik Karlsson is on the ice in the playoffs his team controls 57.14% of the shot attempts. That number shrinks to 48.3% when he is off the ice. A remarkable and stark difference, but again, he literally plays half the game.
His even-strength points per 60 is 2.35 and that leads the team. That is an absurd number for a defenseman to have. He's been the best skater in these playoffs.
Travis Yost goes into detail why the Penguins are better suited than most to shutting down Karlsson
PIttsburgh, maybe more than any other team in the league, is equipped to slow Erik Karlsson down. Does it continue?https://t.co/McyNTBfxUx
— Travis Yost (@travisyost) May 11, 2017
There is one more detail about Erik Karlsson that will probably play a big role in this series and that is his broken foot.
Karlsson left practice almost right away
— Steve Lloyd (@TSNSteveLloyd) May 12, 2017
This is clearly an issue. He's playing close to 30 minutes a night on a wonky foot. He's playing amazing, but that will take its toll over time. It's scary to think what a completely healthy Karlsson would be capable of right now. Fortunately, for the Penguins they won't be getting that.
OK, so let's say the Penguins or Karlsson's foot injury slows him down, what next? How do they make Ottawa pay? Guy Boucher is going to try and slow things down with a 1-3-1 forecheck. I stress "try" because Ottawa hasn't exactly played at a slow tempo so far in the playoffs.
Ottawa 8th in Adj Tempo (Possessions/Game), Pittsburgh is 2nd.
— TempoFreeHockey (@TempoFreeHockey) May 12, 2017
Expect a track meet.
For the sake of argument let's say that the Senators do slow things down. How will things look? It will look a lot like what Boucher ran against the Penguins way back in 2010-11 when he was coaching Tampa Bay. If you recall that was the year that Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were missing from the playoffs. Pittsburgh had a 59.79% advantage in shot attempts that series and that isn't directly relevant because we are six years removed with almost compeltely different players, but Pittsburgh found that success in 2011 with a much slower lineup than the one the Penguins possess now. My point is that the 1-3-1 can be frustrating at times, but if the current Penguins focus on their speed advantage and really pressure the non-Karlsson defenders they should be able to do some work. Because of the 1-3-1 the Penguins might not be able to generate as many controlled entries as they'd like, but if they are clever with their chip-ins and use them as indirect passes instead of mindless dump-ins they should be able to earn zone time and wreak havoc.
Things aren't all roses for the Penguins. They have quite the troubling trend manifesting itself in their play right now.
It's been a long time since the Penguins have scraped the bottom end of a rolling average chart for possession. They are currently the worst possession team in the playoffs at ~42%. This deserves a little bit of context. The playoff format plays into this a little bit. Columbus and Washington were two quality opponents that Pittsburgh ran up against. Ottawa was up against a banged up Boston team and a Rangers team who was a bottom third possession team this year. That skews the information above a little, but doesn't explain all of it. Pittsburgh isn't the possession darling they were last year. It's worked so far, but it does make them more vulnerable against an Ottawa team they would have blown the doors off last year.
Let's talk about the goaltenders. Craig Anderson had a wonderful regular season and Fleury has had a very successful playoff run to this point. Both goalies have flashed brilliance this year. Here's how they've stacked up in the playoffs so far.
Craig Anderson has been leaky in the playoffs. He has been making the hard saves while allowing some of the not so hard ones to go in. Fleury has been the opposite. He is stopping all the shots he should, but continues to struggle in the high-danger areas when compared to his peers. Only Corey Crawford and Sergei Bobrovsky have a lower save percentage from the high danger areas this postseason than Fleury and they have both been home for quite some time. Pittsburgh will likely continue to pack things in defensively and force teams to shoot from the outside. If Ottawa can somehow find a way to split high-danger chances with Pittsburgh they'll likely come out ahead based on Fleury's ability to stop those kinds of shots this year (regular season included). It's just a matter of if Pittsburgh gives those up.
There are some underlying storylines to this match up. The Senators owner has a distaste for the Penguins and is famous for his CSI: Ottawa shenanigans from years past.
Also, we have the Sidney Crosby/Marc Methot dynamic that stems from Crosby obliterating Methot's finger with a slash.
Will Chris Neil and his two minutes of ice time strike fear into the Penguins? We'll have to see.
The Pittsburgh Penguins defense of the Prince of Wales Trophy against the Erik Karlsson show begins with a Hockey Night in Pittsburgh this evening.
Thanks for reading!