With the opening round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the books, we're going to have some fun recapping the respective matchups here.

To get a better sense of how the advancing teams won their series, we're going to highlight one key factor that helped push them over the top. That could be an individual player that dominated, a whole unit that came together nicely to take over, or a stylistic thing the team did generally to exploit a weakness of their opponent. 

In each case, there will hopefully be some actionable information that we'll be able to keep in the back of our minds heading into the following round as well. 

We're tackling them two at a time based on the order in which they finished up. We've already taken a look at the Colorado Avalanche transition game, and the St. Louis Blues ruthlessly efficient power play. We've also marvelled at Connor McDavid's superhuman effort, and the surprising adjustments the Florida Panthers had to make.  

Next up: how the Calgary Flames were finally able to get just enough past Jake Oettinger to beat the Dallas Stars, and how the Tampa Bay Lightning were able to outlast the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7.