At the mid-point of the National Hockey League’s opening round of the playoffs, it has become apparent that none of the 16 franchises involved will breeze through with a clean sweep. The Eastern Conference is providing the best odds for a quick series with at least three squads facing elimination in Game 5, while the Western Conference’s clubs seem determined to go the full seven games to determine a winner.
Here is how ESPN outlines the NHL Playoff Tree before the two contests get underway on Monday:
With 31 NHL post-season games in the books, home ice advantage appears to be a real thing since 67.7% of the teams have won at their own barns. That boost has been more noticeable in the West, with a whopping 75% of victories coming from the hometown boys in those 4 series. In fact, two of the series (WPG-STL & LA-EDM) have yet to see a road win in the 2024-25 playoffs. The Eastern Conference hasn’t seen the same impact (60% of home wins) and perhaps the smaller distances to travel between cities has played a role in that. An example of that could be the all-Florida clash between the Lightning & Panthers, where the clubs didn’t even need to leave the state and has seen the road team walk away victorious in all three contests (the only series that hasn’t played 4 gms).
Switching our focus to the Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues series, which of course is all tied up after our club dropped two straight on the road. Now essentially a best of three contest, the franchises will return to Manitoba for a pivotal Game 5 at the Canada Life Centre. The Jets picked up wins in the opening two clashes at the CLC, using the White Out crowd to propel them to victory in tightly-contested affairs. When the series switched over to Missouri, the Blues were able to overwhelm Winnipeg with bursts of offense early in the games to take comfortable back-to-back wins to even things up. In Game 3, it was an early collapse by the True Northers that put the game out of reach, while Game 4 saw the Jets out-play St. Louis in the opening frame only to fall apart in the 2nd by allowing 3 straight goals in the latter part of the period.
With 4 playoff games and equal home & road contests on the record, I figured it would be a good time to compare how Winnipeg & St. Louis are doing in the statistical categories. Using the great analytical site, Natural Stat Trick, and their playoff series pages, I have compiled 5 graphics to take a deep dive to see what the data tells us about the two Central Division rivals. To assist us in our review, each image will include the numbers for All Situations & 5 on 5 play.
Up first is a look at the Corsi & Fenwick stats through 4 post-season games and this will inform us which teams are attempting the most shots (Corsi) and how many of those get through unblocked (Fenwick).
As you can see, despite the recent lop-sided losses our Jets are still leading in both of the shot attempt categories. Winnipeg even has a slight edge in getting their shots through block attempts to test the opposing goalie (70% to 68%). So shots for & against aren’t responsible for the True Northers problems in the playoffs.
Up next is a review of the total Shots on goal, as well as a look at the Actual & Expected Goals (xG) data. This graphic should give us an idea of who is creating the best scoring chances and give us the opportunity to compare that to who is actually scoring the goals.
In a sort of continuation of the first image, we see confirmation that Winnipeg is slightly winning the shots on goal battle. The Jets are also doing well in the xG numbers, with a big margin in all situations and a much smaller edge when the teams are at even strength. Both franchises are playing fairly well defensively at 5 on 5, as WPG’s 1.56 xG/gm and STL’s 1.35 xG/gm are much lower than expected.
It is in the actual goals category where St. Louis’ edge in the series finally shows up, with the Blues winning the battle in all situations & at 5 on 5. At even strength, the True Northers have scored 70% of their goals to date, while St. Louis has 62.5% of theirs.
In graphic #3, we move onto to look at a bunch of the Scoring Chance opportunities for the Jets & Blues. This group doesn’t include what Natural Stat Trick deems high danger scoring looks, so is a essentially a look at the low & medium danger scoring chances.
The advanced stats indicate that Winnipeg is getting the majority of scoring chances in the first 3 columns, but when you look at the next 3 it becomes apparent that St. Louis is the team that is actually scoring the goals. The final columns display just how badly Jets’ snipers are being out-matched by the Blues, as well as how Jordan Binnington is out-playing Connor Hellebuyck. After the first two games, Bucky was performing above expectations at 5 on 5, but the recent road trip has plummeted that to replacement goalie depths.
While the last diagram gave us some great clues into why the True Northers have blown a 2 game lead in the series, the fourth graphic will look at the High Danger scoring chances to see what they tell us.
Well, the High Danger numbers tell us that Winnipeg has been the better team at getting more top-notch scoring looks, but once again it shows that St. Louis has a slight edge in the actual goals. Continuing the theme from above, the Blues also are getting more stops from their tender when things break down defensively. The shooting percentage numbers don’t say that the Jets are terrible from in close as they are near expectations, yet they trail the competition in that category too.
Our final graphic is to outline the overall Shooting & Save Percentages, as well as telling us what Winnipeg & St. Louis PDO rating is.
Looking at the first two columns, it is not surprising to see the Jets losing these categories because we saw hints that it was going to be that way in the earlier graphics. What is does tell us is that Winnipeg is shooting with slightly less success at 5 on 5 than they did during the regular season…and this lack of sniping is magnified on the powerplay with a measly 10% success rate.
The last column is the PDO stat, which basically adds a team’s shooting & save percentages together in the hope that it gives us an idea of whether a team is over or under performing on the ice. Basically, any rating over 1.000 is supposed to suggest that a team is getting more than it’s fair share of puck luck. While it does confirm that the Jets have been a bit unfortunate and the Blues have had more success than expected, the data doesn’t suggest a huge regression or increase by either clubs over the remaining 3 contests.
Before I wrap this review up, I thought I would share one more graphic from Natural Stat Trick by including the Shot Heat Chart for the series. The darker the blue or red get, the higher the number of shot attempts were from that area, while “G’s” mark where all the goals have been scored from.
To me, the shot chart is showing both clubs have had success in the high danger area (goals 8-7 STL), it is the goal scoring from outside of this range that is causing Winnipeg the most issues (goals 8-3 STL). While I will save the gleaning of knowledge to each individual reader for the most part, I did find it interesting that St. Louis is consistently getting shots from the right point (and 2 goals)….so maybe that is something the Jets’ coaching staff could focus a bit more attention on.
Coach Scott Arniel and his staff have their work cut out for them to pull this Winnipeg Jets franchise out from a nose dive and get them back on path in this year’s 2024-25 NHL Playoffs. I certainly am glad I am not the one in charge of all that…because the legacies of some players could get marred permanently from another failure to deliver when the games matter most.
Let me know what you think of all the information included in the article and feel free to ask any questions in the Comment section if you would like a specific statistic explained further. Has Winnipeg’s edge in the Expected Goals category given you more hope the True Northers can win two out of the next three games? Or will it actually take a dominant performance by the Jets to reinstall some confidence?
