This Week in the Bubble: Awooooooo
This will be a weekly article with some of the fun stats, takeaways, and recaps from the past week in the NHL’s bubble.
The Hurricanes are Good
There were some doubters of the Hurricanes chances, like our own Felix Sicard, but they came out and proved all of those people wrong by dominating the Rangers throughout the series. The Hurricanes posted a 58% xGF% throughout the course of the series and the one question mark in goal was not exposed by a potent Rangers offense. Peter Mrazek posted a 0.95 GSAx over the two games he played and James Reimer was a beast with a 1.63 GSAx in the one game he played. From a former Ducks perspective, Sami Vatanen played a solid series totaling three points and five shots on goal.
The Carey Price Renaissance is here
As of this writing Carey Price and the Montreal Canadiens are on the verge of moving on to the first round of the playoffs, due in large part to Carey Price. The Canadiens have not been completely terrible this series with a 46.48 xGF%, but they are allowing the fifth most expected goals against per 60 minutes. Price has been up to the task, posting a 4.4 GSAx so far. He has kept Montreal in each game so far, and to their credit, the Habs have been able to find goals to win those close games.
The Power of the Kachina Propels the Coyotes
From a statistics perspective, the Coyotes had no business being in their series, but somehow they have come out on top, winning their series against the Predators in four games. Felix, on our most recent podcast, gave me a hard time for stating the Coyotes would win because their jerseys are pretty. Well I am now doubling down and saying that their jersey quality allowed them to completely defy all of the stats favoring Nashville in a short series.
The Bruins Got Screwed
It is hard to feel sympathetic for a Bruins team that has been consistently successful, but they got screwed by the round-robin format. The Bruins, for all intents and purposes, had the number one seed in the East locked up at the COVID pause, yet they find themselves either being the three or four seed after the completion of two-thirds of the round-robin format. I can’t help but think the NHL focused too much on the qualifying round, putting little to no thought into the round robin play. They should have done some form of weighted situation to reward teams that were better in the regular season because now we have the Presidents trophy winner with a tougher path to the cup than they would have had originally.
Let us know in a comment below what your takeaways from the past week were!