“On open looks, you should go after his glove,” said Woodley. “When I did the charting, high glove during the regular season was 24 goals, and high blocker was 15. The first round in the playoffs saw four goals high glove, and that was the predominant area to score on him. When they (shooters) move a goalie east-west, they know when the goalie slides or moves laterally, they tend to lower their gloves, so they shoot there. Save percentage on high glove was .768%, and his expected goal differential was significantly below expected. So open looks and lateral plays, that’s where you go.

“Another direction to go is rebounds. There were 21 goals where rebounds were the primary factor on Hill, which is almost double the average around the league, and predominantly on the blocker side. When we look at the goal chart, quite often when we see numbers outside of the goalie skate, like, goalies aren’t getting beat along the ice. They’re typically representative of plays where you lose your net a little bit or where backdoor tap-ins, things like that, where the goalie gets stretched out wide. And they’re more than double on the right side than the left (on Hill), and a lot of that was the rebound.

“So, getting him moving, whether that’s attacking down low, bottom of the circles, or as you mentioned, with the Darcy Kuemper example, even from below the goal line, like walkouts attacking from left to right, which is from his glove over to his blocker side. That’s the way to generate offence off second chances for him, and that was a significant way that teams scored against him this year.

“East-west plays are a way to score on goaltenders around the National Hockey League. This is what Clear Sight Analytics was founded on: the concept of slot line plays. They used to call them royal roads. Anything between the top of the circles and the goal line where you can move the puck from one side to the other is going to increase your odds of scoring on any goalie. Now, interestingly enough, for a lot of them, that is increased below the hash marks. Low slot line plays are predominantly where offence has increased in the last five years.

“But Adin excels on those because he’s got that reach. He’s got those long legs, and he plays somewhat conservatively in zone, and it is a short pass for him to move east to west, and he’s got that really wide butterfly flare. He gets there. He’s going to get there along the ice, and you usually build a little bit of vertical coverage above it. But when it’s off the rush, he tends to come out and retreat. Like, he’s no longer an inside-out goaltender off the rush.

“He comes out and flows backwards, so use high lateral passes off rush. Make that play higher in the zone, and don’t be afraid to one-time the puck from distance as high out as the top of the circles. Because inevitably, if you (goalie) start out taking ice and retreating, the earlier that pass is entering the zone, the further he has to go. And if you wait until it gets in tight, he’s shortened his path, and that’s sort of how he plays on in zone play.

“And the last one is low-high scramble. Pucks below the goal line, and the Oilers are excellent at generating pop passes from below the goal line up into the zone. That’s where you can get him into broken play scramble situations. He has a tendency to reach and lunge in those, again, more to the right than to the left. And there’ll be a lot of loose change there, if you can win battles in those areas. However, it’s not easy against the Vegas defence. I’d attack down low from the goal line, pop passes, and try and win those battles to the front of the net. Guys like Zach Hyman should have success in that area.”

“Up until this point, there’s never been a need to break it (his video) down to this degree. And sometimes it takes a little bit. I remember the Oilers against Florida in the Cup Final last year. The book (on how to score) is written on Bob. But early in that series, it was like they weren’t reading from it. They weren’t paying attention. They were making plays and scoring decisions as shooters that fed into his strengths rather than against them. So, whether Vegas pays attention to it (book on Pickard) or not, they will be able to build a good pre scout. He’s played enough games.

“One of the things that made Calvin special in the first round was his results against high-danger chances. Some of the best in the entire league. In his first three games, he allowed three goals on 19 high-danger chances. He finished the first round with six goals on 30 high-danger chances. The Oilers allowed 11 in their final game and were quite leaky defensively, and even after allowing three goals in that game, only Jacob Markstrom and Freddie Anderson had better results on high-danger chances in the first round.

“Now the question is, do you look at that in the small sample and think let’s try and beat him other ways or do you look at his entire year, which is probably what they’ll do, because his results in the regular season on these types of high danger chances were actually below expected, and this is likely a heater. At the end of the day, good offence is good offence, and I think teams will try and just create good offence. But there are specific things that apply to Pickard as well. And one of them is screens and sight lines.

“In the regular season, more than a quarter of the 85 goals he gave up involved the screen. And the Kings actually, interestingly enough, had four goals on just 16 chances off-screen. So, he handled all the high danger stuff, but traffic, he’s not the biggest goaltender. Vegas’ defensemen are very good at getting pucks through traffic, so will they try and generate high danger chances or will they settle for bodies and pucks to the net?”

“I think their defence makes it hard to get to the net with how big they are,” said Knoblauch. “But as big and physical they are, the still have a lot of offensive ability. Usually, you think of big strong defense as being stay at home guys who don’t produce much offense, but that’s not the case with them.

“With their systems. LA ran man-on-man, and Vegas is completely different than that. But I think the biggest thing is just how dangerous they are off the rush. They scored more goals off the rush than any team in the NHL during the regular season. It is going to be really important how we are managing pucks, and we have a good backcheck to limit those opportunities.”