Playoffmetrics: Game 1, Round 3

From the outset - certainly after that hectic first period - it seemed like the Chicago Blackhawks were much better than the Anaheim Ducks. But our home team pulled out a victory anyway, leading many to give the win to Frederik Andersen's heroics and call it a day.

Here's what makes game one really interesting: the Ducks were the better team in possession the second half of the game. Similar to how the Calgary Flames lucked into a goal in its first game against Anaheim, it was only a boneheaded turnover by Francois Beauchemin that actually yielded anything for the Hawks.

Here's the Hockey Stats event chart, and I used all situations because the Ducks actually generated attempts when killing:

The first period was horrendous. But remember: this team rarely plays this early, and only once this season since the trade deadline. Plus doing so after sitting for a week is tough. Chicago had a similar layoff, but the early start in this game lines up with its time zone a little better - it was likely less difficult for that team to prepare for.

But I want to include this Natural Stat Trick chart (even strength only) as well so you can more clearly see that Anaheim actually took over the game midway through. The Ducks never climbed back to level through the whole game, but it slowly took control of the shot attempts in the game. Here it is:

After the Ducks first power play (and really leading up to it), the team gradually took more attempts than the Hawks. Andersen was nails early on - that can't be ignored. But Anaheim put together a very strong game from minute 30 and on.

Here's a head-to-head chart from war-on-ice:

Here are the TOI charts for both even strength and all minutes:

Jakob Silfverberg is the best. Also that reunited fourth line of Rickard Rakell, Jiri Sekac, and Emerson Etem (#RickyEtemCakes!) was pretty good in really limited minutes. It was hard for Boudreau to play them early because of the plethora of defensive zone starts, but as the game went on the trio was able to hopefully convince the coach not to switch them out!