The “best of x games” playoff format gives both teams in the series a bit of grace and time to sort themselves out. More often than not you’re going to see the better team come out of that series ahead, but you almost always have an ebb and flow of form, quality, and luck that puts one team in a better situation, whether it lasts a minute, a period, a game, or longer. For the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday, Game 1 was altogether not a pretty game for them. Perhaps they were out of sorts from the rest head coach Dan Muse gave them over the last week or so of the season, but they did not play well in their return to the postseason after three years out. At the same time, the Philadelphia Flyers have been fighting for their playoff lives for over a month, so it stood to reason that they would want to continue that on the road against their Pennsylvanian rivals in their first playoff appearance in six years.
In my Round 1 warmup the other day, I summarized the Penguins’ season with the comment that, with few exceptions, Pittsburgh’s players generally met expectations whereas in the past few years they were underperforming expectations. Seeking to eliminate one of their key issues in terms of underperformance, general manager Kyle Dubas traded starting goaltender Tristan Jarry to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for the Oilers’ starting goaltender Stuart Skinner (among other pieces). One of the knocks on Jarry is that his second half performance was never as good as in the first half, and the couple of times Jarry was the Penguins’ starter in the playoffs not only was he not able to keep Pittsburgh in games, but his lapses were sometimes the reason the Penguins lost games (and series).
On the other hand, over the past couple of postseasons, Skinner wasn’t necessarily standing on his head, but he was keeping Edmonton in games, and that was enough to help bring the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Finals for two years in a row. In Game 1 on Saturday, Skinner did a little worse than expected (3 goals on 2.77 expected goals against), but so did Flyers goaltender Dan Vladar (2 goals on 1.96 goals against), so as long as Skinner maintains (or hopefully improves) on that performance, Pittsburgh will not have him to blame if they lose. (Meanwhile, Tristan Jarry will be lucky if he starts a game for the Oilers this postseason. Edmonton may not be so lucky though.)
The Philadelphia Flyers did a good job bottling up what little the Penguins sent their way in Game 1. The Penguins’ 17 shots on goal matched the third-fewest they took during the regular season, and the 1.96 expected goals would have been sixth-lowest in the regular season as well. Pittsburgh won none of the games this season at or below that expected goals total, and they won just one of the games where they were credited with 17 shots on goal or fewer. Perhaps not coincidentally, those numbers also are among the best the Flyers saw this season. It stands to reason then that the Penguins are going to positively regress from those metrics, ideally starting tonight and for the rest of this series.
LGP