EHM The Blue Line

Does anyone have advice for playoff tactics? My team for the past 3 years has easily won the President's Trophy but gets creamed come playoff time. The lastest season the Rangers finished 10 points ahead of the next best team but got swept out of the first round. The normally stingy defense all of a sudden lets up 4-5-5-5 goals. I guess the team is on the young side, especially the defense, does having 'veteran experience' matter that much (this is 2012 btw).

Ladd-Malkin-Hunter
Kaspar-Tikhonov-Cole
Roy-Gaustad-Asham
Nikulin-Primeau-Parrish

Tyutin-Seabrook
Staal-Lyamin
Ekstrom-Varlamov

Lundqvist

Veteran leadership is important in the play-offs, more important than in the regular season.

I don't know if this is of any help, but here are a couple of things to consider

1. This is the time to go for broke. Unless I'm fighting for something important (i.e. the last play-off spot), my offensive line use is never set to 'overload', even in cases where just about all of my scoring power is in the 1st or 1st and 2nd line. I want my FWs to have something left in the tank in April. The play-offs are different. There's no reason to save yourself for tomorrow, because after 4 losses there will be no tomorrow. Drive your players to exhaustion if that is what it takes -- they have all summer to rest.

2. Pay attention to what happens in the games. If it looks like your current opponent is successful in shutting out your main scoring line(s), shuffle your players. Put scoring power in 2 or 3 lines (4 might be stretching it).

Anecdote relating to the latter point: In the first of my two Cup wins in my ongoing game (as the Wild), I faced the reigning Cup champions, the Sharks, in the Western finals for the second year in a row. The previous year I got swept; this time I had home advantage and I had beaten them soundly in our regular season games. My main scoring line featured the Rocket Richard winner Marian Gaborik, Art Ross winner Joe Thornton (who had been with the Sharkies the previous season), and Bobby Ryan (just plain Bobby Ryan, who'd develop to a 110-point man in a couple of years).

From fairly early on, I realized that my terrific regular season record vs. the Sharkies meant nothing here. I fought out a narrow one-goal win in the first game, but lost equally narrowly in the second. My main scoring line, which had so far breezed through post-season defenses as easily as regular-season defenses, was suddenly just not getting the job done. The third game the Sharks won at home with a convincing shutout performance, and I realized something had to be done. Looking at the game logs, I figured that the Sharks must have used their checking line to counter my Gabby-Thornton-Ryan line (even in the away games, to the degree that that was possible). But... what if that line just wasn't there to be countered?

My solution was to put Gaborik on the 3rd line, and put my 3rd-line LW Masi Marjamäki (!) on the 1st. Gabby naturally retained his place in the first PP unit, but 5-on-5, he skated in the 3rd with Gaustad and Anthony Stewart. Result: Stewart pounded his way into a hat trick on feeds from Gaborik in a comfortable win. The next two games were mine as well, and Gaborik made up for the time he lost going (nearly?) scoreless in the first three games by putting up enough points to win the play-off scoring race and eventually the Conn Smythe.

Of course, it may just have been a coincidence that the series turned so dramatically at just that particular point, but MAN did I feel like a million bucks after that series win.

Yes, don't rely on one big line, spread it, unless you really have that much talent to roll 3 pure scoring lines. I don't know how the attributes of those players you have look like in 2012, but if you have 3 good playmakers (high creativity, passing and stickhandling) and 3 good scorers (shooting, getting open) combine them into 3 lines and fill the lines up with role players. Of course the "best" role player would go into the first line on that scenario, so you would still kinda have a top line but enough scoring potential on the other 2. Just my 2 cents

I won the presidents trophy once with my Panthers. The top scoring line of Bertuzzi-Marleau-Olesz, whom all had more than a ppg in the regular season, were getting owned on the scoresheet. Luckily, Roberts-Stumpel-Horton stepped it up on the second line and were over a ppg. I swapped the lines around and all of a sudden the might Flyers were getting blown out 6-2 and i sweeped the last 3 games after going 1-1. So really its about balanced scoring and going with the hot hand. Make sure your goalie has something in the tank as well, I ended up switching goalies in the playoffs (from Auld to Biron) and Biron had a save percentage of 93 and almost won conn smythe.