Top lines driving Maple Leafs, Wild in the first round

Advancing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs requires contributions from every level. Early eliminations, however, tend to come on two fronts: substandard goaltending, and poor top-line play.

The goaltending component is obvious. In a league where the talent distribution of most puck stoppers is narrow, teams can ill afford blowups in net. Trying to win games while carrying sustained save percentages well below 90 per cent feels like mission impossible — the quality of competition is too good, and it’s hard to erase bad games. Give up four goals in a game, you are probably going to lose. Lose four times, your season is already over.

That explains why goaltending play consumes much of the oxygen when it comes to postseason hockey analysis and postmortems when teams hit the exits early.

But amidst the league’s offensive renaissance, one hallmarked by higher scoring rates and broad playing skill across lineups, I’ve increasingly focused my attention on top-line play.

The playmakers atop these playoff-calibre teams are scoring more than ever, and to that end, persistently creating advantage play for their teams. When those advantages disappear, so do the teams – unless there is extraordinary depth play behind them.

I was thinking about this in the context of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Minnesota Wild, where this trend may be most obvious right now.

In Toronto’s case, a sea of early playoff exits have haunted the organization, and in recent years there has been a laser focus on the underwhelming postseason production of the “Core Four.”

The minutes Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, John Tavares and William Nylander typically destroyed in the regular season weren’t translating against foes like Boston, Florida, or Tampa Bay in April. This year against Ottawa, there’s been a night-and-day difference, with Matthews and company dominating play against their provincial rival.

The Maple Leafs were a considerable favourite to advance in round one, but the criticality of quality top-line play is just as true (if not more) for underdogs. In Minnesota, a seemingly undermanned Wild have deadlocked with the Golden Knights at two games apiece.

How are they doing it? Simple. Matt Boldy, Kirill Kaprizov, and Joel Eriksson-Ek are now healthy and playing with their hair on fire, levelling the playing field in a blink.

In that context, I wanted to look at the performance of the top lines of all 16 teams in the postseason, and measure these two fantastic trios in Toronto and Minnesota against the rest of the pack.

Here’s what it looks like, and note I’m sorting forwards by usage rates, owing to some teams having already altered their top line:

The samples always come small in the postseason, but that’s what makes single-game outperformance so important.

Toronto being plus-five in the Matthews minutes across four games against Ottawa is huge and a major reason they’re looking at a gentleman’s sweep come Tuesday. Just look at Matthews’ on-ice goal differential every postseason up until this series in 2024-25, and note the material difference:

Ultimately this is what the top of the Maple Leafs lineup has been paid to accomplish for years now and frustration won’t abate until this team reaches a conference final, let alone the Stanley Cup Final.

But this is a promising first step. Matthews’ line, with Marner and Matthew Knies, has had its way in the head-to-head matchups with Ottawa, predominantly against Shane Pinto’s line and the Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub pairing. Ottawa has yet to score a goal against the Matthews line at even strength.

‘It's a similar story in Saint Paul. Kaprizov, joined by Eriksson-Ek and Boldy (who already has six points in the series), have out-scored the Jack Eichel line 5-0 at even strength so far. Vegas is a much deeper team than Ottawa, but the fact the Wild have been able to win nearly all the top line head-to-head minutes has positioned them to engineer an incredible first-round upset, so long as that advantage play holds.

With all 16 teams alive into Monday, the criticality of top-line play is worth keeping in mind. It will guide the outcome of several of these first-round matchups, and for one team, pave the way to hoisting Lord Stanley come June.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey