Ville Leino and Why Chance and Circumstance Matter

Up until, well...this past week or so, Ville Leino had been seen as a bust. An overaged free agent from the Finnish elite league signed by Detroit, Leino spent a season putting up just okay results in the AHL before making the leap for the injury plagued parent club this year. He didn't do much. All of his stats were mediocre or worse across the board (11 points in 55 games between DEt and PHI) . He looked for all the world like a replacement level NHLer and not much else.

Lo and behold, he's a better than PPG player in the post season! What happened? Well, for one, his PP ice time per game has increased from 29 seconds in the regular season to just under 3 minutes in the playoffs. He's also probably most coddled Flyer at even strength - in the first 9 games played, the former healthy scratch has started more than 70% of his shifts has a zone start ratio of 70+%(!). Compare that to Mike Richards at 49% and poor ol' Blair Betts at 25%.

Of course, the real culprit behind his explosion is the bounces. His PDO, before tonight's performance, was a shade above 106. I'm sure that'll go up after this evening. (PDO during the regular season = 96.4).

The truth of Ville Leino is probably somewhere in between the two extremes of his regular season and playoff results. Luckily for the Flyers, Leino is signed through next season so they won't be forced to overpay for his string of luck and unrealistically easy circumstances come July.