What we can learn about Cup-winning offence from champs of NHL's current era

The wild-card races have been settled. Home ice has been decided. And from here on out, every second of every game could be the difference between a championship run rolling on or an early summer quietly approaching.

The 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs have arrived, and given the way this season’s gone, we’re staring down a wild one.

We have an image in our heads of what exactly playoff hockey looks like. The freewheelers, the high-flyers, they get stuck in the mud. Time and space evaporate, and sheer determination reigns supreme. So, how does that reconcile with a year that’s seen scoring around the league skyrocket? We have hundred-point scorers by the handful, we’re seeing more goals scored per game than any year since the mid-‘90s, the days of Nos. 66 and 99.

But we’re told different stories about how that’ll translate when the ice turns to mud, when we get that playoff grind back. Some look at a team like Florida and can’t see how anyone could stop one of the most dominant offences in recent memory. Others see that list of century-scorers and wave it off, sure that their impact will be nullified amid the relentlessness of playoff hockey.

So, which is it? And what about the other questions we often retrace about playoff scoring — can a team that seems to lean on one dominant top line win? Do playoff squads need to surround electric scorers with muscle and truculence, or is stacking up as many scoring lines as possible the way to go? And how much of a swing will come from the presence of the blue-liners we're seeing this year, who collect points like all-star forwards?

We won’t get those answers until late June, when 2022’s champ is finally crowned. But we can get some insight by looking back.

To try and understand what wins in today’s NHL, we took a closer look at the past half-decade of champions, the past bunch of squads who’ve charted paths to the Stanley Cup in the game as it looks right now — or at least a version not too far removed. The key question: what exactly did the offensive make-up of each of these championship squads look like?

To get a sense of an answer, we looked at how each team’s goal-scoring was distributed throughout its forward corps over the course of the championship run — specifically, how the even-strength goal-scoring was spread among the forwards, how goal-scoring in all situations was spread among that group, and what the total production looked like for each forward on the team, factoring in not just finishing skill but who was driving offence with their playmaking ability, too. We looked to the overall production from the blue line too, and how much it contributed to the team’s overall offensive output.

Let’s dive in.

First up, the defending champs, the 2021 Tampa Bay Lightning. It should surprise no one who watched last year’s post-season to hear this iteration of the Lightning was one of the most offensively dominant groups in recent memory. Of the six championship squads broken down here, these Bolts were far and away the tops offensively, leading this group both in terms of their goals-per-game pace over their playoff run (3.80) and their goal differential over the run (+30).

The Lineup: Here’s a look at how the lines generally shook out over the 2021 Bolts run, with a few notes — Tyler Johnson and Ross Colton were moved up and down the lineup, with Johnson also logging time on the second line, and Colton spending some time on the second and third lines as well.

Ondrej Palat — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov
Alex Killorn — Anthony Cirelli — Steven Stamkos
Blake Coleman — Yanni Gourde — Barclay Goodrow
Pat Maroon — Ross Colton — Tyler Johnson

At even-strength, the 2021 Lightning notched 51 goals. Here’s how they were distributed throughout that forward corps (the number beside each forward’s name indicates their even-strength goal total over the team’s entire Cup run, while the percentage to the far right indicates that trio’s contribution to the team’s total even-strength goal count):

A quick caveat: As we move through each of these championship lineups, we cross a few different situations: some teams stayed consistent with their line formations, rolling out the same four lines nearly every game. Some went the above route, moving a couple pieces through different spots at different points. And some were far more chaotic, throwing their lines in the blender and swapping players in and out based on injury. Taking that into account, the lines listed for each champion are a combination of trios that logged the most minutes and, particularly for some of the bottom-six groups, formations that were used in key moments, like Cup Final games.

That being the case, when we’re looking at how each trio contributed to the team’s overall offensive output, we’re viewing the trios as representations of the different tiers of forwards on the team — the percentage reflects the contributions of those three players collectively, not only their contributions specifically as a line together. And their place in the lineup reflects where they slot in overall on the team’s depth chart.

Back to the Bolts: a quick glance makes pretty clear why this team was so hard for opponents to manage. While the top line led the way at even-strength, particularly Brayden Point, the rest of the goals were distributed fairly evenly throughout the squad. From first line to fourth, there was a difference of only a goal or two in how each forward contributed to the overall pot of even-strength scoring.

Factoring in the Lightning’s power play — which accounted for 29 per cent of the team’s total offensive output during their run — plus the pair of shorthanded goals they put up, and here’s how goal-scoring was spread throughout the lineup overall (the numbers beside each forward’s name below indicate their total goals during the team’s run, while the percentage on the right indicates each trio’s contribution to the team’s eventual total goal count):

Of course, this skews things more in the direction of the top line, with Point and Kucherov eating up on the man-advantage. But it shows how effective the rest of the top six was too, with Steven Stamkos and Alex Killorn feasting as well.

Zoom out and take into account who was coupling that sniping with playmaking ability, and you get the spread below — a look at the total point production for each of the above forwards by the end of the run. Dominance by Kucherov, and key performances from Stamkos, Point and Killorn too, while in the bottom six the overall production is fairly level throughout the group.

Adding in Tampa Bay’s blue-line corps, we can fill out the rest of the offensive picture. Below are the point totals of the Bolts defenders by the end of the run — Victor Hedman, in particular, was a key contributor offensively, finishing with as many points as some of the squad’s top-six forwards. Overall, though, this iteration of the Lightning got the vast majority of their offence from the forwards — roughly 95 per cent of their even-strength goals came from the forwards, a higher percentage than any of the other teams below.

Boil it all down, and the 2021 Lightning were essentially a deep offensive group that spread the scoring fairly well throughout the lineup, but clinched silver by adding in some bonus dominance from their very best offensive weapons in the top six. At even-strength, all four lines contributed at least 20 per cent of the team’s goal sum, while the more elite talents put in more elite performances. Given the majority of the teams below didn’t shake out quite so neatly, that seems a sign of a well-constructed group.

The performance of these Bolts is also why we didn’t put too much stock in regular-season numbers heading into the playoffs, but rather focused on post-season scoring itself, on who performed when it mattered most. All the regular season should tell us is the likelihood of a team’s greatest talents showing up and putting up numbers in the key moments. We’ve seen plenty of regular-season all-stars fall short in the post-season. And on the other end, in the case of these 2021 Bolts — who didn’t have a single player in the top 30 scorers or top 20 goal-scorers during the regular season — all that went out the window when the stakes were highest, particularly because of the timely return of Kucherov, who led the way.

Tampa Bay rolled into the playoffs with the eighth-best offence in the league, and a 3.21 goals-per-game pace (much lower than their playoff scoring pace), got Kucherov back, ratcheted up their scoring even higher, got even-keeled goaltending (their +35 regular-season goal differential was about the same as their playoff differential) and kept rolling all the way to their second straight Cup.

The 2020 Lightning were an entirely different story.

They scored far less — their 3.08 goals-per-game pace and +20 goal differential over the course of their run to the Cup were far lower than the 2021 iteration of the team, and middle of the pack among the teams below — and they got far more help from the blue line.

The Lineup: Here’s what this version of the group looked like, with the caveat that Anthony Cirelli also spent time on the top line, and Carter Verhaeghe was mixed into the fourth-line picture for some time as well.

Ondrej Palat — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov
Blake Coleman — Yanni Gourde — Barclay Goodrow
Alex Killorn — Anthony Cirelli — Tyler Johnson
Pat Maroon — Mitchell Stephens — Cedric Paquette

Here’s how the 2020 Bolts’ 60 even-strength goals were distributed throughout that forward group:

Unlike the most recent version of the Lightning, the 2020 squad was immensely top-heavy. Point, Kucherov and Ondrej Palat did all the heavy lifting when it came to putting pucks in the net at even-strength, the trio accounting for a bigger share of their team’s even-strength goal-scoring (42 per cent) than any other line in this collection of championship teams. Past that, it was slim pickings throughout the lineup, with the bottom six contributing little in the way of goals (Verhaeghe, who’s not listed above, had zero to his name, too).

Factor in the man-advantage, and it’s much of the same — here’s the 2020 Lightning’s total goal counts by the end of their run, still led primarily by Point and Palat:

Zoom out and compare the total offensive production for each of these forwards, and little changes — Kucherov again led the way for the group, followed by Point and Palat, and while Coleman, Killorn and Yanni Gourde made some noise too, the top line carried the squad through:

While they got less from their bottom six in 2020, it’s clear these Bolts leaned far more on their back end offensively. Adding in the blue line’s point production, that’s clear — Hedman was key again, producing as much as a top-line forward, while Kevin Shattenkirk outscored half the forward corps as well:

As opposed to the 2021 group, which got nearly all their goal-scoring from their forwards, the 2020 Lightning got only around 78 per cent of their even-strength goals from their forwards, the rest coming from their blue line. Hedman put up seven even-strength tallies himself — as many as Kucherov, and more than anyone else on the team not named Brayden Point or Ondrej Palat.

Again, the Lightning’s march to the Cup makes clear how little the regular-season numbers can mean, outside of a general indicator of talent and potential to show up in the big moments. The 2020 Bolts headed into the playoffs with the top offence in the league (their 3.47 goals per game average and +49 goal differential were both way higher than what they came up with in the playoffs), plus they had two of the league’s top 20 goal-scorers and three of the top 30 point-getters. Of course, they were dealt a massive blow during the tail end of the regular season, losing Stamkos to injury (their second-highest scorer at the time), meaning a readjusting of their offensive approach.

Without the captain to balance out the offence a bit more — as we saw in 2021 — the 2020 Bolts became more top-heavy, leaned on the blue line for more offensive contributions, weathered the storm and managed to make it to the end of the line on the back of massive performances from their other marquee names.

In the Blues we have the opposite approach of either of these Lightning teams. The 2019 champions from St. Louis were by far the least offensively-inclined group among this half-decade of champs — of these squads, the 2019 Blues had the lowest post-season goals-per-game average (2.88) and goal differential (just +5), both by a fair margin.

The Lineup: Here are the lines they were working with most often (the usual caveat: Ryan O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko also spent some time together, sometimes alongside David Perron, sometimes alongside Brayden Schenn):

Sammy Blais — Ryan O’Reilly — David Perron
Jaden Schwartz — Brayden Schenn — Vladimir Tarasenko
Pat Maroon — Tyler Bozak — Robert Thomas
Alex Steen — Oskar Sundqvist — Ivan Barbashev

Here’s how the 2019 Blues’ 62 even-strength goals were spread among that group. Unlike the Lightning squads, St. Louis really had no single breakout player leading the pack. Jaden Schwartz stands out with a few more than others in the top six, but past him, the goals were spread pretty evenly down the lineup:

Zoom out to overall goal-scoring and the full impact of Tarasenko becomes clearer, his man-advantage sniping tipping the scales for the Blues’ second tier of forwards, with both bottom-six lines still contributing similarly offensively:

Zoom out further to overall point production, and it’s O’Reilly’s impact that comes into focus, as he moves to the top of the pile as the squad’s scoring leader. The production was fairly even between the team’s top-six mainstays though, with O’Reilly, Schwartz, Tarasenko, and Perron all chipping in with key performances:

Looking to the blue line, the 2019 Blues leaned heavily on Alex Pietrangelo, who produced more than the majority of the team’s forwards. These Blues got 81 per cent of their even-strength goals from the forward corps, the rest coming from the back end, led by Pietrangelo’s three tallies:

Essentially, the 2019 Blues were the anti-Lightning — a far less offensive group overall, no real standalone, world-beating offensive performances, and the goals that did come were spread fairly evenly down the lineup (albeit with the higher totals coming for the guys who saw more ice). Case in point: the leading scorer for these 2019 playoffs wasn't even a member of the Cup-winning Blues — it was Logan Couture, who’d been ousted a round earlier.

Making their famed late climb up the standings in the latter half of the regular season, St. Louis rolled into the post-season with a middle-of-the-pack offence — their 2.98 goals-per-game were only slightly higher than their playoff average. They had just one player among the top 50 point-getters in the league (O’Reilly, at 31st) and one player among the top 30 goal-scorers (Tarasenko, at 30th).

They weren’t an offensive juggernaut heading in, nor were they over the course of their run, but they gutted it out, did it by committee, got what they needed from the stars they had, withstood an offensive barrage from the opposition (their +5 playoff goal differential was far lower than their +24 regular-season differential, and the lowest among all of these championship squads) and held on until they lifted silver.

The 2018 Capitals were the second top-heavy group among this collection of champs, their first line contributing the second-highest percentage of their team’s total even-strength goals of any line on any of these rosters. But some clutch bottom-six performances made them more than a one-line team. Overall, they were the second-best offensive club of this group, in terms of their post-season goals-per-game average (3.58) and goal differential (+25).

The Lineup: Here’s what they rolled with most often — however, these Caps switched things up a fair amount, with Chandler Stephenson spending some time on the second line, Devante Smith-Pelly spending some time on the third line, and a trio of Jakub Vrana — Lars Eller — and T.J. Oshie getting a decent amount of run, too:

Alex Ovechkin — Evgeny Kuznetsov — Tom Wilson
Jakub Vrana — Nicklas Backstrom — T.J. Oshie
Andre Burakovsky — Lars Eller — Brett Connolly
Chandler Stephenson — Jay Beagle — Devante Smith-Pelly

But here’s how the team’s 63 even-strength goals were spread among the group. The majority came from the line that stuck together throughout, with Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov pacing the team. The most interesting performance among the bunch, though, was from Devante Smith-Pelly, whose seven even-strength tallies over the course of the run were more than anyone on the team aside from that leading top-line duo.

Factor in the man-advantage and the Ovechkin-Kuznetsov duo continued to feast. The middle of the forward corps were all fairly productive, though, particularly Oshie and Eller. And even after bringing in the power-play scoring, Smith-Pelly still finished as one of the club’s most important and impactful snipers.

Zooming out to point production as a whole, the impact of the rest of the top six is clear, with Nicklas Backstrom and Oshie rising above the fray on the back of their playmaking abilities. The importance of the Caps’ depth down the middle is made clear here too, with Kuznetsov, Backstrom and Eller all producing over the course of the run.

On the blue line, the 2018 Caps leaned on John Carlson a fair amount, the big rearguard producing as much overall as the majority of the top-six forwards. These Capitals got 88 per cent of their even-strength goal-scoring from the forward corps, with the rest coming via a pretty even spread of tallies among the blue-liners:

Heading into the post-season, the 2018 Caps had the ninth-best offence in the league, led by the Rocket Richard winner in Ovechkin — no other Capital finished among the league’s top 50 goal-scorers. They did have four of the top 40 point-getters in the league, though, with Kuznetsov, Backstrom and Carlson also getting in there, the latter finishing as the year’s top-scoring defenceman.

They didn’t look exceptionally top heavy or exceptionally deep, but it was clear the big guns were going to do plenty of the heavy lifting if it was to all work out. And they did. But once the post-season rolled around, the Caps got clutch performances throughout the rest of the lineup — the most notable, of course, from the fourth line. In the end, they scored at a higher rate in the post-season than they did during the regular season, combining that dominant top six and that bottom-six boost to finally get No. 8 his ring.

In the second half of their own back-to-back, the 2017 Penguins sit in the middle of the pack among these recent champs when it comes to overall offence, having finished their playoff run with a 3.08 goals-per-game pace and +20 goal differential, both right on par with the 2020 Bolts.

The Lineup: The Pens’ lines lived in the blender over the course of these 2017 playoffs, with injuries also bringing players in and out of the lineup. The top two lines below logged the most minutes of any Penguins line. However, Bryan Rust also spent time with both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel moved between the first, third and fourth lines, and Nick Bonino and Patric Hornqvist were in and out of the lineup with injuries.

Jake Guentzel — Sidney Crosby — Conor Sheary
Chris Kunitz — Evgeni Malkin — Phil Kessel
Bryan Rust — Nick Bonino — Carter Rowney
Carl Hagelin — Matt Cullen — Patric Hornqvist

Here’s how Pittsburgh’s 59 even-strength goals scored over the course of their 2017 run were distributed among those forwards:

The whirlwind of lineup alterations makes clear the same thing that the above numbers do — the 2017 Pens were a fairly deep and balanced group offensively, led by a proven top six and able to plug in pieces where necessary to keep things moving along. While Guentzel led the way in terms of even-strength sniping, with Malkin and Rust close behind, the rest of the lineup is fairly even when it comes to their production.

Add in the man-advantage and the impact of Crosby and Phil Kessel’s goal-scoring contributions emerge. And yet, looking at how the final goal totals sit, there’s a key goal-scoring contributor at each tier — Guentzel and Crosby up top; Malkin, Kessel and Rust in the middle of the group; Hornqvist from the bottom of the forward corps.

Looking at how things stacked up in terms of total point production, things are still fairly spread out — Malkin, Crosby, Guentzel and Kessel all led the way, and all finished fairly close to each other, but Kunitz, Rust, Hornqvist, Conor Sheary, Matt Cullen and Nick Bonino all produced similarly, too.

The blue-line group for this particular Pens run was an interesting one, as the club was dealt a key blow in losing No. 1 defender Kris Letang. They got some production from Justin Schultz, but overall, had to make do without leaning much on offence from the back end:

The 2017 Penguins entered the post-season with the top offence in the game, housing three of the league’s top 20 scorers in Crosby, Malkin and Kessel, and two of the top 15 goal-scorers in Crosby (the Rocket Richard winner) and Malkin. That electric offence ended up dipping quite a bit in the post-season, the club’s 3.39 regular-season goals-per-game average much higher than their eventual post-season mark (3.08), and their +49 goal differential more than double their playoff differential (+20).

But even as that dominant offence found itself stymied a bit once it had to contend with the post-season muck, even with the team suffering a key setback in losing Letang (who’d looked unstoppable at the time) midway through the year, the Pens battled through and got what they needed from the pieces they had. The marquee names stepped up and did their job, the rest of the forward corps proved deep enough to make up for the fact that the club didn’t have a true No. 1 defender on the back end, and the Pens pushed steadily forward toward back-to-back banners.

The Penguins group that won a year prior was, in a sense, just a better version of that 2017 group. They were more balanced — and, in fact, led by their depth scorers rather than their marquee names — even while being one of the lowest-scoring groups of this collection of champions (their 3.04 playoff goals-per-game average and +18 differential topped only the Blues among the above teams).

The Lineup: Unlike in 2017, the 2016 Pens knew exactly what they had and how the pieces fit together. They rolled these four lines for essentially their entire run to the Cup:

Conor Sheary — Sidney Crosby — Patric Hornqvist
Chris Kunitz — Evgeni Malkin — Bryan Rust
Carl Hagelin — Nick Bonino — Phil Kessel
Eric Fehr — Matt Cullen — Tom Kuhnhackl

Here’s how Pittsburgh’s 54 even-strength goals were distributed among that group:

Compared to the above teams, the spread was incredibly even here. Bottom-six pivots Bonino and Cullen scored more even-strength goals than top-six stalwarts Crosby and Malkin. Wingers from all three of the top lines finished around the same mark in terms of even-strength goals.

And looking overall at how each line contributed to Pittsburgh’s even-strength goals total over the course of the run, the team’s clutch third line of Carl Hagelin, Bonino and Kessel (the famed ‘HBK Line’) ended up as impactful as Crosby’s line in the end, and more impactful than Malkin’s line. And the fourth line wasn’t too far behind that second line, either.

Zooming out to look at the all-situation goal sums by the Cup run’s end, and things are still fairly evenly spread, though Kessel’s overall dominance during that post-season tips the scales in the depth scorers’ direction:

The depth of the forward corps stands out even more clearly when we look to the group’s overall point production. Kessel led the way as the squad’s highest scorer with that combination of third-line even-strength consistency and power-play feasting, but past that, we also see Pittsburgh’s first, second and third centremen all finishing with near-identical totals.

With Letang in the mix and playing a key role during this 2016 run, here’s how the blue-line contributions shook out. No. 58’s eventual point total wasn’t too far off of those three centremen, and he chipped in three even-strength goals as well, on par with Crosby and Malkin.

The 2016 Pens’ regular season was, of course, a tale of two campaigns — they started the year terribly, prompting a coaching change, and saw Mike Sullivan turn them into an offensive juggernaut. By the year’s end they had the third-best offence in the league, sporting a 2.94 goals-per-game pace that just continued to rise in the post-season.

They headed into the playoffs with two of the top 20 scorers in the league in Crosby and Letang. Yet their star Cup run scorer, Kessel, ranked far lower at 45th, and their second-best forward overall, Malkin, had missed half the year. When it all came down to it in the post-season, though, their depth carried them through — the top six delivered, the bottom six delivered, and their third line became such a game-changer, it finished the team’s best trio by the run’s end.

Stepping back, here’s how all six of those recent champions stack up, with an overview of how much each of their lines contributed to their team’s overall even-strength goal-scoring:

Over the past half-decade we’ve seen three teams win with deep groups of forwards, who got significant even-strength contributions throughout the lineup — one a bit more top-heavy (the 2021 Lightning), one a less offensively-inclined bunch overall (the 2019 Blues) and one with a bottom six in fact contributing more than the top six (the 2016 Penguins).

But we also had two champions carried pretty significantly by their top lines — not necessarily those dreaded ‘one-line’ squads, but not far off. The 2020 Lightning leaned heavily on their top weapons to make up for a key absence, while the 2018 Capitals saw their top-line dominance supplemented by some surprising performances dotted among the bottom six, which raised the team’s overall offensive level.

And then we had the 2017 Penguins sitting somewhere in the middle — an elite top six that led the way, and yet, enough balance in the bottom six to make up for the fact that the club lacked a true No. 1 defender, considered a staple for runs ending with silver.

What does that all tell us? First, that contrary to what we continue to hear about the type of offensive units that will or won’t win in the post-season, there’s no set formula that has delivered a championship every time.

Every team needs to check a certain number of offensive boxes to stitch together a title run — you don’t make it through four rounds without a certain amount of depth, and without that magical mixture of stiff defending, timely goaltending, and the ability to navigate the playoff muck. But we’ve seen teams in today’s iteration of the game win with marquee scorers, and without marquee scorers. With dominant No. 1 defenders, and without. With significant contributions throughout the bottom six, and without. We’ve seen teams lose immensely important pieces and still go all the way, and others see a returning player become their most important piece.

Looking at how these teams won their rings tells part of the story of the balance needed to make it to that 16th win, too. Losing a crucial piece at an inopportune time doesn’t guarantee playoff disappointment — it might just mean the players remaining have to play otherworldly. A team that looks top-heavy might not be so one-dimensional when it matters most, if they find a fourth-line miracle of their own. A team that looks middle-of-the-pack can scrape by the high-flyers, if they get some stout defending and keep out enough goals — even if just barely.

All we know for certain is that what makes teams look indomitable or underwhelming during the regular season matters little when we move into the quest for the Cup — only two of these recent six champions entered the playoffs with the top offence in the league.

The first 82 simply show us what teams have to work with. Once Game 1 arrives, the true test is how they use those pieces in the moments that matter most. Let's see which route 2022's champ takes.