NHL
NHL Playoffs
NHL front offices will be meeting in the coming weeks to discuss their offseason plans on the amateur and pro fronts. One of the most common topics of conversation in these meetings is looking at the remaining NHL teams, their roster compositions and asking what it means about achieving success in the league. This isn’t about getting set criteria you can’t deviate from, but it’s useful information.
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So today, we look at the ice-time leaders on the conference finalists and ask what can be gleaned.
Top five forwards: Sebastian Aho, Seth Jarvis, Jackson Blake, Andrei Svechnikov, Jordan Staal
Top three defensemen: Jaccob Slavin, Brent Burns, Dmitry Orlov
Jackson Blake is arguably the most interesting player to appear here for any of the four conference finalists. Blake was a fourth-round pick in 2021 and is a rookie pro. He’s not that big, and while elusive, he’s not a blazing fast skater, yet he’s become an integral part of Carolina’s power play and team because of his very high skill level and hockey IQ to go with a great motor. He’s a testament that his player type can make it and help a team.
Carolina has two small forwards among its best players in Blake and Jarvis. Jarvis is a tremendous skater and competitor with great natural skill. He’s the dream outcome for a small winger given his consistent postseason success. If a team takes Victor Eklund high in the draft, they are hoping for a Jarvis/Logan Stankoven type of outcome.
The Hurricanes’ blue line has very good mobility and size led by Slavin, who is one of the best defenders in the NHL. Interestingly, their PP1 quarterback, Shayne Gostisbehere, does not appear here, showing how they insulate his defensive play through excellent two-way even-strength players.
Top five forwards: Mikko Rantanen, Wyatt Johnston, Roope Hintz, Mikael Granlund, Matt Duchene
Top three defensemen: Thomas Harley, Esa Lindell, Cody Ceci
Dallas has obviously been helped in large part due to the play of its goalie Jake Oettinger, especially with injuries to Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson. That said, the play of the Stars’ top trio of forwards has been great. Johnston and Rantanen have shown a high-end combination of skill, sense and compete with Rantanen’s unique blend of power and offense being a difference-maker. Hintz is also a unique player with how big, fast and skilled he is.
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One question a lot of teams with high picks will be asking is how top draft prospects might compare to guys left in the playoffs. I’ve thought a lot about Matt Duchene when it comes to projecting James Hagens into the NHL.
Top five forwards: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman, Connor Brown
Top three defensemen: Evan Bouchard, Darnell Nurse, Brett Kulak
Edmonton is a unique team. The Oilers have big, mobile blueliners in Nurse and Kulak and good two-way forwards like Hyman and Brown, but McDavid is everything to them and makes some holes in their team not seem as apparent. Bouchard is an interesting No. 1 defenseman as well, given his so-so defensive play to go with stellar ability with the puck.
Top five forwards: Sam Reinhart, Aleksander Barkov, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Bennett, Brad Marchand
Top three defensemen: Seth Jones, Gustav Forsling, Niko Mikkola
The defending champions have a truly ideal core set of players. This group has a ton of skill, hockey sense and physicality. Aaron Ekblad would probably be here without his recent suspension, and Florida’s top four defensemen in general are overpowering due to their size and skating. Jones, a newcomer, has arguably been the Panthers’ best player in the playoffs.
Mikkola has developed nicely into an important player for Florida. He has limited puck play, but he’s big, mobile and physical. For the upcoming NHL Draft, I think of players like Blake Fiddler and Simon Wang in terms of who could have the simple yet effective game of a defender like Mikkola.
The biggest similarity between the four teams is their defensemen. The core defenders on these teams, for the most part, all have size, and outside of Bouchard, who is a unique case, they all tend to skate well or very well.
The forwards are more of a mixed bag. You have the star-driven group of Edmonton, the hard-to-play-against group in Florida, the deadly top trio in Dallas and a mixture of everything in Carolina. Carolina and Dallas show that you could win playoff rounds by giving some smaller forwards major ice time. Despite some of these forwards being very fast, there’s a lot of mediocre skaters in this group which has been a theme for years with the final few teams, that their forwards can be average skaters as long as they are very skilled, hardworking and physical and usually not small, although Jackson Blake seems to be an outlier case.
(Photo of Brent Burns and Aleksander Barkov: Rich Storry / Imagn Images)
Corey Pronman is the senior NHL prospects writer for The Athletic. Previously, Corey worked in a similar role at ESPN. Follow Corey on Twitter @coreypronman
