I'm a little worried that we were marginally outplayed this series. And i think the eye test and nerdies agreed there. The nerdies think it was very close (only COL-SEA is closer so far), but still TB with the edge. Especially bothers me because we are better than last year and should have outplayed them by more.
A couple things make me feel better about it tho. First is that it sure seems like the forecheck strategy was deliberately changed by Keefe to be more conservative. I don't like it personally but if that's true then at least i can blame tactics more than performance. If it's true.
Second is that, really, Tampa's performance edge mostly came from the bottom of the roster, not the top. The Leafs top players outplayed the bolts significantly, while Tampa made up that difference with the worst players. Obviously winning the top players matchups is more important. And of course we can argue that Keefe played the shitty players way too much.
5v5
Matthews 17:11, 60.2xgf% --- Point 16:15, 51.5xgf%
Marner 16:30, 63.0xgf% --- Kucherov 16:01, 49.4xgf%
Nylander 14:34, 49.9xgf% --- Stamkos 14:49, 51.3xgf
O’Reilly 14:23, 42.4xgf% --- Cirelli 14:23, 48.3xgf%
Acciari 14:34, 44.5xgf% --- Hagel 15:50, 44.2xgf%
Knies 13:29, 58.0xgf% --- Killorn 14:44, 52.7xgf%
Tavares 13:18, 51.4xgf% --- Paul 14:14, 50.8xgf%
Bunting 11:31, 62.1xgf% --- Eyssimont 10:06, 64.7xgf%
Jarnkrok 12:43, 51.0xgf% --- Colton 12:04, 55.0xgf%
Kampf 11:42, 31.1xgf% --- Bellemare 8:48, 54.5xgf%
Kerfoot 12:08, 35.2xgf% --- Perry 9:24, 59.9xgf%
Lafferty 9:34, 33.5xgf% --- Maroon 9:49, 65.8xgf%
ZAR 9:20, 32.8xgf% --- Jeannot 13:04, 38.6xgf%
McCabe 20:39, 42.0xgf% --- Raddysh 22:04, 41.8xgf%
Brodie 19:57, 51.0xgf% --- Sergachev 21:19, 42.5xgf%
Rielly 19:44, 56.3xgf% --- Hedman 19:33, 60.0xgf%
Schenn 16:23, 60.3xgf% --- Perbix 18:12, 56.8xgf%
Giordano 14:17, 40.9xgf% --- Cole 14:29, 57.3xgf%
Holl 14:52, 35.6xgf% --- Bogosian 11:59, 61.7xgf%
Liljegren 9:01, 46.5xgf% --- Fleury 13:44, 24.7xgf%
Gustafsson 6:01, 55.9xgf% --- Cernak 8:26, 10.6xgf%