With the Montreal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning deadlocked at two wins apiece after four games, the series has become the talk of NHL circles as not just the most entertaining and fiery series of the first round, but possibly the most even series in recent memory.
The teams boasted 106 points each in the regular season, though if you looked under the hood you would see a sizable gap in the ability to consistently control play, favouring Tampa Bay. Yet the series has reflected much closer to the point accumulation than the underlying numbers, which has been unusual and interesting.
So far the series is tied not just in wins at 2-2, but in goals at 11-11, and five-on-five goals at 6-6. Jakub Dobes has an .883 save percentage, while Andrei Vasilevskiy is at .882. Expected goals in all situations are at 50.04% in the Canadiens’ favour, shots are 50.27% in the Lightning’s favour. (Stats in this column are sourced from Natural Stat Trick.)
The Lightning have the advantage in territorial control with 54.44% of the shot attempts, while the Canadiens have the advantage in shot quality with a 55.00% share of high-danger chances.
Power-play time is also remarkably even, with Tampa Bay sitting at 33:24 with the man advantage to Montreal’s 32:27. Even the power-play production is similar, with Tampa notching 5.67 expected goals while on the power play to Montreal’s 5.14.
That’s about as tight as a series gets, and if you had asked the Canadiens ahead of the series if they would be happy with this result after four games, my guess would be that they would say yes without hesitation. However, those areas where the series seems deadlocked aren’t the whole story, and the devil is in the details.
Separation
Where things drift away from the series being totally even is at five-on-five, where the Canadiens have a distinct advantage in expected goals (a 53.01% share) and in high-danger chances (a 60.47% share). Those metrics tip even further into the Habs’ favour when you account for score and venue adjustments as well.
Over the four games, 70.21% of the minutes been played at five-on-five, and 78% of that time (54.77% of the series) has been played while the score is tied. The Canadiens have an even stronger control of shot quality while the score has been tied at five-on-five of 54.08% of the expected goals, and 60.00% of the high-danger chances.
As you might expect from a team that is controlling play while things are even, the Canadiens have out-drawn the Lightning for penalties while the score is tied, 14-11. Discounting coincidental minors, the power plays while the score is tied sit at 12-9 in Montreal’s favour.
While leading at five-on-five, the Canadiens have been a little porous, controlling just 34.67% of the expected goals, but while the Lightning have been leading they’ve controlled just 19.94% of the expected goals, the second-lowest mark in the playoffs after the already-eliminated Los Angeles Kings.
The separation isn’t monumental, but it is significant. However, things go a bit awry when we look at the tiny bit of the series that hasn’t been spent tied.
Uncontrollable factors
There is a distinct feeling among Canadiens supporters (and probably the organization as well) that the Habs have been getting the short end of the stick as far as officiating is concerned. That is partially due to the Lightning’s strategic agitation and how effective that is in the NHL playoffs where the rulebook is optional at best, but there are some other mitigating factors that add some context for those who look at overall penalty calls (34 against Montreal, 33 against Tampa Bay), power-play opportunities (21 for Tampa Bay, 20 for Montreal), or power-play time (33:24 for Tampa Bay, 32:27 for Montreal).
Compared to the regular season, the Canadiens are actually getting an improved situation while they’re behind, earning 60% of the power plays, while Tampa’s rate of taking penalties per minute rises by 379% compared to when the score is tied, though Montreal’s rate rises by 438%. When you remove coincidentals from the situation, Montreal’s rate of actual power plays goes up by 64.43%, while Tampa’s rises by 46.16%.
Those numbers might seem crazy, but remember that we’re dealing with just 27.2 minutes of ice time that the Canadiens have trailed in this series. With almost double the ice time where the Canadiens have been leading, things get truly nuts.
While the Canadiens are leading, Tampa Bay takes 129.02% more penalties, while the Canadiens take 353.42% more. Cutting out the noise of coincidentals, the Canadiens end up with 48.44% more power plays while leading than while the score is tied, but when the Habs are leading, the Lightning see their power-play-per-minute rate shoot up by 295.84%.
To put that into more concrete terms, while the score is tied, the Canadiens have been taking 3.02 penalties that result in power plays per 60 minutes. While the Canadiens are leading in games, the Lightning have been receiving 11.95 power plays per 60 minutes, with 10 power plays in just over 50 minutes of playing time. Flipped the other way, the Canadiens have received just three power plays while trailing in their 27 minutes. Put another way; while the Lightning are trailing, they’re awarded a power play every 5.02 minutes of game time, and take a penalty themselves every 10.04 minutes. Meanwhile when the Canadiens are trailing, they’re awarded a power play every 9.06 minutes, and take a penalty themselves every 13.6 minutes.
While the Canadiens are trailing, 73.64% of the penalties called are coincidental minors, compared to just 34.78% while the Lightning are trailing. That results in 29% of the time Tampa Bay is trailing in the series being a Tampa Bay power play, compared to just 18% of the time Montreal is trailing being on the power play. In small samples like this, one or two calls make a huge difference, and this fraction of ice time is especially critical as it’s where a whopping 20.2% of Tampa Bay’s scoring chances in the series come from.
Another little wrinkle has been the frequency of penalties called shortly after goals are scored. In just four games, the Canadiens have been hit with a minor penalty four times within two minutes of scoring a goal themselves, and three times after Tampa Bay has scored. Conversely, Tampa Bay hasn’t seen a single call against them within two minutes of scoring a goal, but have been dinged four times after allowing one.
The immediate momentum swing of being down a man right after scoring is tough to deal with, as is the double-down impact of taking a penalty right after being scored on, and the Habs have dealt with those situations seven times to the Lightning’s three.
Game management blues
It’s tough to divine why exactly the Canadiens are getting hit so hard while leading compared to the Lightning, especially since they apply more offensive pressure than the Lightning do (1.27 expected goals per 60 minutes to 0.52 for the Lightning), and give up about the same defensively (2.39 expected goals against the Habs per 60 compared to 2.10 for the Lightning).
Obviously part of it is strategic from the Lightning, tying up and agitating constantly while the Canadiens are trailing to limit focus and break up the flow of the game with penalty calls. There have been 19 minor penalties during the 27.2 minutes of the series where the Canadiens have trailed.
A veteran team like the Lightning is clearly good at taking advantages on the margins and getting the benefit of the doubt, but the overall effect this gives off to observers is a series with a thumb on the scale to ensure that the series is tight, rather than simply a tight series.
Playoff officiating
Another area that seems to be working against the Canadiens is what is and is not called in the playoffs. In the regular season, tripping was the most common infraction, accounting for 19.64% of all minor penalty calls. Following that was roughing at 12.86%, hooking at 12.71%, and high-sticking at 10.2%.
The Atlantic Division was much rougher than the rest of the league, with 19.06% of all minor penalties being roughing, but trips were right behind at 18.95%. The Canadiens drew a large chunk of their power plays with trips; almost 27% of their power plays were drawn from forcing their opponents to trip them.
In this series so far, trips account for just 7.46% of the minor penalties, way behind roughing calls (35.82% of all minors in the series), and high-sticking calls (17.91%). High-sticking was one of the Canadiens’ worst infractions in the regular season, with their opponents drawing over 60% of the high-sticking calls in their games, though curiously Tampa Bay was even worse with their opponents drawing almost 65% of the high-sticking minors.
The point is, the shift away from a focus on trips towards high sticks is stylistically not good for the Canadiens, as even playing their game successfully won’t draw the calls they should. That’s doubly true when the Canadiens are a significantly speedier team, and have been far more successful than the Lightning at getting the puck to the middle of the ice, where calls should reasonably be drawn more often.
How even is even?
This series has been a wildly entertaining clash of styles, and the result has been a very even series that both teams could reasonably win. However, the uncontrollable factors influencing the series have been a gigantic factor in why the series is so even, and by the run of play through four games Tampa Bay’s breaks have *felt* more given than earned.
The Lightning forecheck has given the Canadiens fits, but the Bolts have had an incredible amount of trouble getting the puck off the wall and to the middle. The Canadiens’ overall have outplayed the Lightning and accumulated better scoring chances, but they’ve been unable to capitalize on opportunities to take a real hold of the series. The Lightning have been given more unearned opportunities to get back into games, but they have taken advantage of those opportunities more often than the Habs have when they’re awarded breaks (like the weak cross-checking call on Yanni Gourde midway through the first period in Game 4).
The net result is very even, but considering how much better the underlying numbers looked for the Lightning heading into this series, the Canadiens have put themselves in a very good situation. At this stage, what the Canadiens need more than anything from the officials is for the top line to show up at even strength. The Lightning have done an excellent job just wasting that line’s shifts where almost nothing happens either way. If they can find a way to cut through the tight checking of the Lightning, the series won’t be even for long.
Andrew Berkshire is formerly a managing editor of Eyes on the Prize, and the founder of Game Over Network Inc. A Canadian, employee-owned sports media startup focused on platforming young creators across the country. Find Andrew live on YouTube after Habs games with Game Over Montreal, where you can also find Marc Dumont, Kay Imam, Jordan Hachey, and Conor Tomalty to bring you interactive postgame analysis. You can join the Game Over Network’s Discord, and support us on Patreon as we employ over 30 young sports journalists and analysts across Canada’s seven NHL markets.
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