TAMPA, Fla. — Brayden Point swears nothing changes for him in the playoffs.
“You try and play the same way,” said the Tampa Bay Lightning center, “but pucks have found their way into nets as of late.”
That they have. Through 20 games, Point had 14 goals for the Lightning, while no one else in the playoffs had more than eight. Through 64 career playoff games, Point had a goals-per-game average of 0.56, the highest in the past 30 years outside of Mario Lemieux (0.67). His points-per-game average (1.16) puts him fourth overall in that three-decade span.
To watch Point in the playoffs — including this year’s Stanley Cup Final against the Montreal Canadiens — is to watch someone at the height of his powers as a two-way player. His defensive acumen creates turnovers that he opportunistically transforms into offensive chances. He’s one of the NHL’s most agile skaters, despite less open ice in the playoffs. His stickhandling allows him to maneuver through the miniscule openings that postseason defenses allow. And the fact that his opponents know he’s this dangerous in the postseason only works to his advantage.
“He can make plays when you double up on him. He can still make that high-skill play,” said New York Islanders coach Barry Trotz, who said players like Point welcome tight defense. “They actually want you to double up on them. They want you to do certain things to them so they can find other people.”
Only one other player in NHL history has scored more goals in consecutive playoff games than the nine in a row that Point tallied in the 2021 playoffs: Reggie Leach, who had 10 straight games with a goal in 1976 for the Philadelphia Flyers.
Point, 25, was a contender for the Conn Smythe Trophy last season when the Lightning won the Stanley Cup, but MVP honors went to defenseman Victor Hedman. He’s back in the conversation this postseason should Tampa Bay repeat as champion, although goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy and winger Nikita Kucherov will certainly have their share of support.
“He just gets better and better. The spotlight is never too big for him,” said Tampa Bay winger Blake Coleman, who has been Point’s teammate and was previously his opponent while with the New Jersey Devils. “He just seems to step up, no matter what the challenge is. It just seems like there’s no stage too big for Brayden. As a fan of the game, I’m just happy he’s on our side.”
Not bad for a third-round draft pick who many felt didn’t skate well enough for NHL stardom.
There were 78 players taken ahead of Brayden Point in the 2014 draft. Only two of them — David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins (25th overall) and Leon Draisaitl of the Edmonton Oilers (third overall) — have scored more goals than Point’s 139 tallies in 351 regular-season games.
The Lightning found the diamond in the rough from the Moose Jaw Warriors of the Western Hockey League thanks to Al Murray, their then director of amateur scouting and now an assistant general manager with Tampa Bay.
As the story goes, Murray and then-GM Steve Yzerman were scouting a Moose Jaw game to watch defenseman Morgan Rielly, who would go fifth overall in the 2012 draft to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Their first glimpse of Point was as a 16-year-old playing part time in Moose Jaw. He made an impression and remained on their radar for two years.
“Why did he slip to the third round?” current Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois asked rhetorically. “Because his skating wasn’t at the level that you’d want it to be at that time for a player of his size. That’s why he wasn’t drafted in the first round or the second round. That’s why we got him in the third round, and we really hit the jackpot.”
Point would make his NHL debut in the 2016-17 season, the season after the Lightning lost in Game 7 of the conference finals to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ryan Callahan was entering his 10th campaign in the NHL when Point was a rookie.
“I knew nothing about him. He wasn’t a first-round pick, and that’s usually the only guy you pay attention to when you’re on a team,” Callahan recalled. “But in the first couple of days of camp, seeing him on the ice, he grabs your attention right away. It was just his poise. You looked at him and the way he conducted himself on the ice and off the ice in that first week of camp, and how he was playing, it looked like he was playing in the league for five to eight years. It was all very impressive.”
Well, except the skating.
Point had heard the criticism of his skating ability but didn’t take it seriously until the 2014 draft. “I thought I was doing all right,” he said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know how to fix it or what was wrong with it.”
Callahan recalled Point “didn’t blow us away with his skating in that camp” but that he kept working on it. “And it’s a testament to his dedication to the game. Every year, his skating got better and better,” Callahan said.
Point wouldn’t be the player he is today without the tutelage of Barb Underhill, a former Olympic pairs skater for Canada and a member of the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. After her competitive career ended and following two decades as a TV commentator on figure skating, Underhill became the NHL’s most in-demand skating skills coach. She taught power skating to the Anaheim Ducks, New York Rangers, Maple Leafs and the Lightning, who made Point one of her star pupils.
“He would come out of his turns on his heels. His crossovers were on his heels, so his acceleration wasn’t there,” she told the Lightning’s team website. “So we made several adjustments to get him — and some of them were mobility issues, some of them were skate issues — to get him to the right part of the blade. And with him, as soon as he got there, he just took off. It just all clicked.”
Point remains in awe of how Underhill unlocked his skating potential.
“She’s able to see things that I would never think about. And help you get to that next level in skill and speed,” he said.
His skating leveled up to the point where he’s considered one of the NHL’s most agile players.
“He’s the type of guy where his first three steps are really good. He gets going quickly,’ Callahan said. “I always point him out as a guy that doesn’t look like he’s going extremely fast when he’s at top speed. He’s one of those guys that has deceptive speed, where if you’re a defender and you take it for granted, then next thing you know, he’s by you.”
He compares Point’s speed to that of Arizona Coyotes star Phil Kessel, although Callahan admits they have different skating styles. “You don’t realize he’s going that fast. You try to take an angle on him and your angle is terrible because he’s far past you, because you didn’t realize he’s going that quick,” he said.
Lightning coach Jon Cooper said Point mastering his skating turned him into an elite playoff performer.
“I’d like to sit here and say we coached it in him, but that’s not it. Everything starts on your edges. He has really developed with our skating coaches, working on his skating and his balance,” Cooper said. “When you are strong on your feet — because Pointer’s not the biggest kid in the world — you have a leg up on other guys. It’s these guys that can make plays at a high rate of speed, and he has that ability. That’s what separates those from good to great. [Kucherov] can do that and Point can do that. They make plays at a high rate of speed and they’re thinking at a high rate of speed.”
BriseBois smiled as he thought about Point’s journey as an NHL player.
“It’s funny to say that his skating is why he slipped to the third round, when he’s arguably one of the best skaters in the world today,” he said.
It’s one thing to skate well. It’s another thing to turn that speed and agility into goals on the scoreboard, which Point has done better than anyone in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Part of it is the way he skates with the puck, no matter the defensive conditions. “He has really good hands in traffic, which is important in the playoffs,” Callahan said. “He has the ability to buy himself that extra second in time that a lot of guys don’t have because of his ability with this hands and his skating. And when a guy who sees the ice so well and anticipates the play so well gets that extra second, he can make a play on you.”
Canadiens defenseman Jeff Petry said it’s a challenge to defend someone with Point’s stickhandling abilities.
“He’s a highly skilled player. Every team we’ve faced has a player that’s similar to that,” Petry said. “You don’t have to change your game, but you have to know when he’s on the ice. Make it difficult for him, whether that’s taking away his time and space or being physical on him.”
Once Point has used his agility and stickhandling to create scoring chances, it’s a matter of putting the puck behind the opposing goalie. That Point does this with such frequency is remarkable, given the fact that his shot isn’t on the same elite level as his other skills.
“He doesn’t have the hardest shot in the world. The way he finds the back of the net and puts himself in position to score goals, he’s smart enough to put himself in areas to have success and where to place shots,” Callahan said. “He’s not blowing it by goalies, but he’s smart enough to know where the holes are and the goalie’s weakness are. There aren’t a lot of guys in the league that don’t have an incredible shot that put the puck in the net as much as Pointer does.”
For Cooper, the key is getting into those scoring areas. Point is not a perimeter player. He was tied for the team lead with 23 high-danger scoring chances through 19 games, or 43% of all his scoring chances.
“You have to have grit. You have to go to areas to make these plays happen. If you’re not willing to go there, you’re not going to have success,” Cooper said.
What that tracks back to is his competitive nature, something that was evident on the ice when he was a rookie — even if Point was fairly unassuming off the ice.
“He’s really down to earth. Just an easy-going guy. He fit into the room seamlessly. He’s just a pro,” recalled Callahan, who played three seasons with Point. “That’s a word that’s used a lot. But when you’re around him, that’s what he is: He puts his head down and does his business, and that’s what he’s been since Day 1. You can see the Western Canadian in him. He brings his lunch pail to work.”
BriseBois said for all his skill and potential, these attributes were also why the Lightning valued Point as a prospect — and why he’s the playoff star he is now.
“A lot of the time, we put the emphasis on the character of the players that we bring in,” the general manager said. “Are they going to fit in? Are they going to be the type of competitors that are going to continually strive to get better, to be the ultimate player that they can become whatever that potential is?
“I’m very impressed with the player he is today, the competitor that he is today, and the man that he is today.”