The Stats Station: Game 2 – NYR 5 – TOR 8

* Powerplay records taken from NHL.com and all the other stats are from HockeyStats

If you’ve ever wondered why “Leafing” is its own verb, you found out in this game. Our wonderful R ran down this game beautifully as usual in her RbR so I’ll just summarize: Toronto is where four goal leads go to die. After picking up a 5-1 lead in the 1st period, the Leafs allowed four unanswered goals including three in the 2nd period to tie the game. They would recover in the third, however, winning the game 8-5 in a barn burner. Here at the Stats Station, we like to take a look at the numbers behind the game and in this case, they were pretty surprising.

 

First, looking at the game as a whole. The Leafs outshot the Rangers 42-35 and out-chanced them with 75 attempts at the net to their 56. The power play units for each team were on fire in this one with the Rangers going 2 for 3 and the Leafs going 3 for 6. Goaltending was an issue for both teams as is to be expected in a 13 goal game. Henrik Lundqvist gave up 5 goals on 18 shots in the first period for a 0.722 save percentage before being replaced by Ondrej Pavelec in the 2nd period who wasn’t great either, putting up a 0.875 save percentage, giving up 3 goals on 24 shots. Together, they stopped 34 of 42 shots for a team save percentage of 0.809.  Frederik Andersen stopped 30 of 35 shots for a 0.857 save percentage. So far, it looks like the Leafs got better goaltending, despite their’s not being great either, and had an unrelenting offense that powered their way to victory. At 5 on 5, the story is a bit muddier with the Rangers actually outshooting Toronto 29-28 but the Leafs won the Corsi battle, registering 55 shot attempts to 49 for New York.

 

But what about that collapse in the 2nd period? This takes a bit more number crunching to figure out. In the first period, the Leafs outshot the Rangers 18 to 12, scoring 5 times with 4 of 5 goals coming at even strength where they also outshot the Rangers 13-11. The Leafs also had more shot attempts here, beating the Rangers 30-21 and 24-20. That one shot attempt on the power play by the Rangers would find its way in the back of the net and started the comeback that ended in 3 more goals during the second period so we’re going to look at this period of time after the 5-2 goal at 19:37 of the 1st period until the end of the 2nd period. During that time, the Rangers outshot the Leafs 15-11 and 10-8 at even strength, adding another power play goal and missing a power play opportunity where they would get 4 shots, all stopped by Andersen. Shot attempts were a bit closer with the Rangers still leading but only by a margin of 22 to 20 and 17 to 15 at even strength. The Rangers definitely improved over their first period offensively but they weren’t dominating the Leafs. Ondrej Pavelec was perfect in this period in relief of Lundqvist, stopping all 11 shots. Freddie Andersen gave up 3 goals on 15 shots for a 0.800 save percentage after posting a  0.900 in the first.

 

Remember last game when we talked about score effects and Score Adjusted Corsi? Let’s see how much score effects applied in this one. Luckily for me, HockeyStats does the score effects math for us so my brain doesn’t explode from complicated formulas. Using their data, I’ve calculated that the Leafs actually had more chances than league average with the leads they had, getting a value of 27.85 shot attempts to NYR’s 20.69 (16.455 to 15.75 at 5 on 5). If those decimals hurt your brain, here’s the TL:DR: While the Leafs certainly played more in their end during this period than the 1st, they didn’t do any worse than the average team would have with a 5-2, then 5-3, then 5-4 lead. They got better than league average defense but still gave up a 3 goal lead in the 2nd period. They also got better than league average offense during this time and went 1 for 2 on the penalty kill so the only thing left to blame is Andersen’s 0.800sv% performance. Pavelec coming in for Lundqvist made the Rangers a better team than in the 1st and Andersen’s performance made the Leafs a worse one.

 

Freddie was perfect in the 3rd period and the Leafs took over the game, beating the Rangers 25 to 14 in Corsi (16-13 at 5 on 5) and scoring 3 more goals to win it. The first reaction to dropping a 5-1 lead might be to blame the defense but the numbers, at least in this game, would seem to show otherwise. I’m sure Mike Babcock will be giving the Leafs a hefty lecture during the practices to come about this one and they probably deserve it but maybe not as much as it would appear on the surface.

 

This was a very math-heavy edition of the Stats Station and now my brain is tired. I fully expected to be showing just how bad the Leafs defense was in that 2nd period but the numbers showed me a different angle that I wouldn’t have thought to look at. I hope they did for you as well.