If I were to play armchair psychologist – a dangerous thing when doing hockey analysis – I’d say the time off between rounds three and four didn’t help the Florida Panthers. Partially because it killed their momentum, but also because it gave them time to read their news clippings and believe their own hype.

How had they made it as far as this? Well, if you read a lot of pro-Panthers pieces, Matthew Tkachuk and the boys burst through the arena walls like some collective Kool-Aid man, went right at their opponents, and made life hell for them. We spent a lot of time talking about Tkachuk’s edge and Sam Bennett’s hits and Radko Gudas’ nastiness and so on. You could easily come to believe it was their gritty play (with goaltending) that got them where they were.

In Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup Final they came out and played like that gritty style was their sole goal. They wanted to be the bully, and they didn’t do enough actual playing. As our own Iain MacIntyre noted, through the first two games Tkachuk played 34.5 minutes, while taking 36 PIMs. That’s not a great ratio for a Hart Trophy finalist.

In Game 3 he didn’t take any penalties, recorded no hits, and instead racked up a goal and an assist for two points, and was plus-3 in 18 minutes despite missing a chunk of the game in the quiet room.

When combing through the NHL’s EDGE IQ data (powered by AWS), it was fun to look at Tkachuk’s impact on projected goal rates (PGR), because he’s the primary figure involved in every piece of Florida’s offence. Their formula is as simple as it’s been the whole way through: they need saves, and they need Tkachuk to drag that offence to three goals (at a minimum) each night.

As you’ll see, where PGR is high, he’s the reason. Where it’s low and they still score, he makes the difference. Let’s look at Florida’s three goals from Game 3, and I’ll show you what I mean.

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The Game-Winning Goal

Tkachuk might be present-day Justin Williams in terms of clutchiness (that’s definitely a word, please don’t look it up just trust me). Tkachuk has scored three overtime winners, a series clincher in the dying seconds of regulation, set up another OT winner, and had a hand in Thursday night’s winner as well.

By Opportunity Analysis the OT winner graded out as a “low quality” chance, for fairly obvious reasons. It’s a clean shot from distance, unscreened, and Adin Hill is directly square to the shot without hindrance. (If he had a case for the Conn Smythe Trophy, this goal going in probably torpedoed that.)

Let’s have one look at the goal first. Watch Tkachuk come from the centre red line and go right down main street. His route is a teaching moment for young players looking for ways to be more involved in the offence.

The goal has some elements of the Game 3 OT winner versus the Toronto Maple Leafs, where a regroup and an assumed dump-in instead turns into the Panthers holding on to the puck and gaining the zone.

But on the shot itself — which Opportunity Analysis grades out as a low quality chance — look at the biggest factors which influenced that low rating, starting at the top of the clock, and working around to the smallest. Red indicates the factor lowered the PGR (as in, an influence that makes the attempt less likely to be a goal), and green the opposite:

The distance the shot was taken away from the goal line makes this chance less likely to go in. Same with how far away from the net the puck last passed across the middle of the ice (that’s “meridian crossing location”), and that the goalie is square to the puck (goalie angle) and in his proper stance (goalie height).

The only factors that say “this may increase the likelihood of the chance going in” are meridian related, and…they don’t actually impact this particular goal much (aside from the shot coming from dead centre of the ice, which is “distance to meridian”) even though the puck had just crossed the middle (“time since meridian crossing”).

But the model notes there’s no “screen” on the play here, right? Take another look from the goalie’s eyes and again notice Tkachuk’s positioning:

This is the Tkachuk factor and where guys like him, who are always around these areas, make life hard for goalies. It sure feels like he’s going to be in the lane of the shot, or will tip it, or will impact this play in some way, doesn’t it?

Maybe in 20 years we’ll be able to calculate a thing I just made up called a “mental screen?”

This attempt from Carter Verhaeghe has a low PGR, where Adin Hill should make this save, and Tkachuk doesn’t get a point. But you can’t look at the frame above and tell me he’s not the leading reason why Hill fails to make this save, and why the Panthers are now just one game back in the Stanley Cup Final.

The Game-Tying Goal

When the Panthers pulled their goalie, Tkachuk did what a lot of superstars do – they recognize the defence can no longer play man-on-man, and they look for ways to get lost.

It’s common when defending a 5-on-6 for the D to switch to fronting shots from distance, as getting tied up with any one player in front can lead to outnumbered situations down low (if there are two D in front, and one gets tied up while the other team has more skaters, well… that’s pretty dire).

Watch Tkachuk get lost behind the net, then emerge net-front beneath the Vegas defence.

We just saw a goal that graded out as a “low quality” PGR chance but, well, the game-tying goal was anything but. By the time Tkachuk got his stick on this puck, it’s the second-highest rated PGR opportunity of the entire playoffs. Look at all this green, it’s like Augusta National in April:

Great players often get themselves to quiet spots where if they get the puck, the opportunity will be so great it will lead to a goal (think Sidney Crosby constantly lurking off the back post with the goalie pulled). The Panthers created the bounce they needed here, and Tkachuk made no mistake.

Here’s where that shot attempt ranked in terms of PGR (the X-axis along the bottom), with the Y-axis being “goalie angle to puck,” as in, how open was the net? That’s Tkachuk, highlighted on the right:

The other one we’ve highlighted here is the save Adin Hill made in Game 1 of the Cup Final, just as a fun little bonus nugget, to see how ridiculous that save really was. But I digress. Back to Tkachuk.

The Game-Opening Goal

One of the greatest difficulties about scoring in the post-season is getting off the wall. Just four minutes into a game the Panthers had to win, Tkachuk made this slick little back-spin-and-slip to Brandon Montour, who shot from distance:

While this goal had nearly double the likelihood of going in than the OT winner, it still grades out as a low-quality chance for a simple reason: most shots taken from this far out with this many people around hit something instead of going in. All the factors that stop attempts from turning into goals are considered, and there are a couple bodies in the “shot cone” (from the puck to the posts) here. The goalie is square, in his stance, and the shot comes from distance, as you can see from the PGR factors pie chart below:

What increases the chances of this going in is pretty clear: “possible goalie vision block” is bright green, meaning Hill simply can’t see this shot. (A neat wrinkle in working with this model: it seems a possible vision block increases the likelihood of a “low quality” chance going in, but doesn’t always help on a “high quality” chance because it’s just another thing that can get in the way of the puck.)

In the end, it’s Tkachuk who makes yet another cheeky, small play that influences the Panthers getting a chance, which found their way into the net just enough times to get the win in Game 3. They’re 7-0 in overtime in the playoffs, and the Panthers’ leader is a massive reason why they’ve had so much success in those situations.

Tkachuk’s got his paws in everything for them, and if he continues to focus those energies on offence, they’ve got a chance to claw their way back into this series.

More from Sportsnet

Opportunity Analysis: How the Panthers’ forecheck has led to overtime success

Opportunity Analysis: How player and puck tracking data help us measure shot quality

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