The top player performances in NHL playoff history

The league average save percentage in the 1985-86 playoffs was .895 as the NHL was in the middle of its firewagon hockey glory. Patrick Roy finished the playoffs at .923, a mark that would have been good in even the most defensive era, let alone the highest scoring era in league history. He did that as a rookie and backstopped the Montreal Canadiens to the Stanley Cup while also taking home the Conn Smythe Trophy. Everyone had to know right then and there that he was going to be a special, special player. 

In their first year in Colorado the Avalanche captured the Stanley Cup thanks to the in-season acquisition of Patrick Roy and a legendary performance from Joe Sakic. Sakic scored 18 goals in 22 games (tied for the second most goals in playoff history) and scored six game-winning goals, including a pair of overtime winners. One of those overtime winners was a triple overtime goal in Game 4 of their second-round series against the Chicago Blackhawks. Had the Avalanche lost that game they would have been facing a 3-1 series deficit and may have never had a chance to win the Cup.

After being a key part of the Edmonton Oilers’ Stanley Cup dynasty in the 1980s, Messier arrived in New York and helped finally bring the Cup back to The Big Apple. It was a legendary postseason for the captain. He didn’t lead the team in scoring (Brian Leetch did that) but he scored four game-winning goals and made his famous guarantee against the New Jersey Devils in the conference finals. 

Bossy was a consistently dominant goal scorer for the New York Islanders dynasty, scoring 17 goals in each of their championship runs in 1981, 1982 and 1983. The latter year was perhaps his best performance due to the fact five of those goals were game-winners, including in their Cup-clinching win over the Edmonton Oilers. 

Orr was at his peak in the early 1970s, winning the Norris Trophy every year, taking home three MVP awards, leading the league in scoring once (as a defenseman!) and winning a pair of Conn Smythe Trophies. The second of those Conn Smythes came in 1972 when he finished with 24 points in 15 games. He recorded at least one point in 14 of them. 

In the same year that Wayne Gretzky set the single season scoring record for the playoffs, Coffey did the exact same thing for defensemen with an incredible 37 points in 18 games. He had at least one point in 15 of the 18 games and had multiple points in nine of them, including a six-point game against the Chicago Blackhawks. 

In 2003 Brodeur backstopped the Devils to their third Stanley Cup, and this was probably his best performance. He set an NHL record with seven playoff shutouts (in only 24 games) and finished with a .934 save percentage, the highest playoff save percentage of his career. This is probably the year he put together a Conn Smythe worthy performance but did not win it. That honor went to the goalie he defeated (Jean-Sebastien Giguere). It was a great year for historic playoff goaltending performances. 

A record-setting performance by Gretzky as the Oilers were just starting to hit the height of their power as one of the NHL’s greatest dynasties. Gretzky finished the 1985 playoffs with an NHL record 47 points (in only 18 games) to help the Oilers win their second Stanley Cup. That is a playoff scoring record that is likely to never be broken. 

Richards was a beast for the Tampa Bay Lightning during their Stanley Cup win in 2003-04, leading the league in scoring and setting an NHL postseason record with seven game-winning goals. During one particular stretch he scored the game-winning goal for the Lightning in three consecutive games. 

How good was Giguere during the Ducks' run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2003? Good enough for him to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP… even though the Ducks lost the Stanley Cup Final. It was a well deserved honor, too, with five shutouts and one of the highest save percentages (.945) in league history. 

Probably the greatest performance of Sawchuk’s Hall of Fame career and one of the greatest goaltending performances of all-time. Sawchuk went 8-0 during the Red Wings’ clean sweep of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1952, allowing just five goals in the eight games. That run included four shutouts, three games where he allowed just a single goal, and only one game (a 6-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs) where he allowed more than one. 

Lemieux was limited to just 26 games during the regular season (and still finished with 45 points) but was healthy enough to dominate in the playoffs with 44 points in 23 games to help the Penguins win their first Stanley Cup. This playoff run also featured what was perhaps the signature moment of his Hall of Fame career when he split through two Minnesota North Stars defensemen in Game 2 to help the Penguins even the series. 

The Flyers’ quest for a three-peat fell short in the Final against the Montreal Canadiens, but you can’t fault Reggie Leach for the loss. He set an NHL record with 19 goals in 16 games. He scored four goals in the four Stanley Cup Final games. There were only three games during the entire playoff run in which he did not score a goal.

This didn’t result in a Stanley Cup win (actually, the Panthers were swept in the Stanley Cup Final) but the fact the Panthers even made it that far was something of a miracle. They were a third-year expansion team, had very little talent on the roster, and rolled through the Eastern Conference by knocking off the Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, and a powerhouse Pittsburgh Penguins team to reach the Final. Vanbiesbrouck was the backbone to that team and the playoff run, shutting down the Legion Of Doom in Philadelphia and then slamming the door on Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr in Pittsburgh. 

His 36 points in 2008-09 are the seventh highest in any single playoff run in NHL history. On its own it’s impressive. But when put into the context of the era it becomes an all-time great performance because players in this era simply do not score like that. Out of the top-25 single season scoring marks in NHL postseason history, this is the only one that happened after 1995. 

The 2010-11 Bruins ended Boston’s lengthy Stanley Cup drought with an incredible run through the playoffs that saw them have to win three different Game 7s, including the Cup-clinching game in Vancouver. The driving force behind that team wasn’t Patrice Bergeron, or Zdeno Chara, or the “Big Bad Bruins” mindset — it was Tim Thomas, who put together one of the greatest single season goaltending performances in league history. He finished the regular season with a .938 save percentage in 55 games and was then even better in the playoffs, putting a .940 mark on the board. Without him, the Stanley Cup drought in Boston is still on. 

Ward hasn’t always been great in his NHL career, but for one playoff run 2006 he was sensational, backstopping the Hurricanes to their first — and to this point, only — Stanley Cup win. With only 28 games of NHL experience under his belt when the playoffs began, Ward put together a completely unexpected postseason run for the Hurricanes that saw him take home the Conn Smythe trophy as a rookie. 

The Kings entered the playoffs in 2012 as the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference and heavy underdogs against the Presidents’ Trophy winning Vancouver Canucks, a team that just one year earlier was a Game 7 away from winning the Stanley Cup. None of that mattered to the Kings as they cruised through the playoffs on their way to their first championship, losing just four games (and only two in the first three rounds) along the way. Leading the way was Quick, as he finished with a .946 save percentage, one of the highest marks in league history. He was nearly unbeatable. 

The overall numbers are not among the NHL’s best, but he did win the Conn Smythe Trophy and cemented his legacy as “Mr. Game 7” for continuing his big-game exploits. The Kings needed to win three Game 7s on this Stanley Cup run, with Williams scoring at least one goal in two of them. During the first round, when the Kings had to overcome a 3-0 series deficit against the San Jose Sharks, Williams scored four goals during the four-game winning streak to end the series, assisting on the eventual game-winning goal late in the second period. 

His team didn’t even make it to the Stanley Cup Final, losing in Game 7 (in double overtime) to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins. It was still one of the all-time great postseason performances. Karlsson almost single-handedly led an undermanned Senators team to the brink of the Stanley Cup Final and cemented his status as one of the top-three players in the entire NHL. What made it even more impressive is that he pretty much did it while playing on one foot, playing through a significant injury the entire time.