[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Okay, so let's actually look at this.
In game 7's, Boudreau's teams outshoot the opposition (they get 54% of the shots on average, but only 1/3 of the goals). Boudreau's goalies have posted an .867 save percentage at 5 on 5. At even strength, 5.5% of their shots went into the net.

On the one hand, given the success rate of Boudreau's teams in these games I think this forms a powerful argument for the notion that the underlying numbers are not always foolproof indicators of all that goes in in the course of a hockey game.

Year over year, during the regular season, those same teams have the following even strength numbers.

2008 WSH: .915 sv%, 7.8 sh%
2009 WSH: .920 sv%, 7.6 sh%
2010 WSH: .930 sv%, 10.4 sh%
2011 WSH: .927 sv%, 7.5 sh%
2013 ANA: .930 sv%, 8.6 sh%
2014 ANA: .926 sv%, 9.8 sh%
2015 ANA: .919 sv%, 8.4 sh%
2016 ANA: .923 sv%, 6.6 sh%

Those numbers are nowhere close to what his team gives him in game 7's.

Here again, I think this points to the fact that there is something fundamentally different about playing in the playoffs.

So what's the theory here? Before every game 7, Boudreau gives his pre-game speech, and forgets to tell his goalies how to stop pucks and his skaters how to score, so they don't know what to do when they get out there?

Clearly, that is not anyone's theory. And for me I quite frankly don't have any idea about what it is that Boudreau is or is not doing correctly, but the fact that his teams now—and we are talking about two completely different rosters on several occasions—appear to really struggle with the Game 6/7 hump SHOULD and DOES reflect badly on him. If it happens a few times, or even half the time, then that looks like bad luck to me. When it happens nine times out of ten, I think it is completely reasonable to posit that he contributes to the problem.