Empty Netters Podcast - 84. The Lightning Are A Sleeping Giant with Pavel Barber

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Hockey Internet Star Pavel Barber talks about the secret skills to being an elite hockey player. Spoiler alert. It’s all about skating. Matthew Barzal is more elite than people realize. The boys discuss what makes a player incredibly hard to defend. And a breakdown of the greatest trick shot goals in the NHL. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuf52MHW1O7guPMzsMvv2kA FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/empty.netters/?hl=en FOLLOW US ON TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@empty.netters   Chapters: (0:00) - Intro (1:07) - Interview with Pavel Barber (10:34) - Underrated Skaters in the League (18:34) - Appreciating Two-Way Defensemen (33:54) - The Importance of Skating Ability in Defense (38:09) - The Importance of Stick Skills in Hockey (47:37) - The Skill and Control of Elite Players (50:34) - Overcoming Fear of Failure and Embracing Mistakes (58:46) - Favorite Pavel Datsyuk Moments Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What up, gang? We've got an awesome interview for you today with Pavel Barber, one of the best. stick skill guys on the planet. Unbelievable stuff. Talking about a ton of training things. Guys in the league who are revolutionizing the game with their skating, stick handling, and all the skills and how the game's just evolving.

It's so fun. What I think is sick about talking to him is, and we kind of said this with Swaggy too, but he can just continue to improve your game, even if you're a beer league or now. Like there's ways you can get better right now. If you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I play on Tuesday nights.

I'm like, sick, do you want to be lighting up Tuesday nights? listen to PATH because it's money. What a pleasure it was laughing with him and just goofing around about what cool stuff guys are doing in the league. Really cool change of pace interview just talking to more of these guys who were kind of revolutionizing the game in hockey content creators and how he's built an entire business on this stuff. So super fun to listen to. Hope you guys enjoy it. Hit him up on all the social. He's doing unreal stuff that you'll get a kick out of.

Can't wait for you. Follow everywhere. Massive thanks to Barb's. Hit it. Ladies and gentlemen, today we are joined by a stick handling specialist, a skills coach, a YouTube sensation, a founder of his own training company, a Pavel Datsuk super fan, which we are also card carrying members, and all around hockey guru, Brandon Barber, aka Pavel Barber. Welcome to the Empty Netters podcast. Oh, what an intro, buddy. Thanks a lot for having you, boys. I can't wait to talk to you boys. Oh, hell yeah, dude. I do have a quick bone to pick because I still have a scar on my shit from the CCM 3B3 game at the All-Star weekend from you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's like a thing in shinny, buddy. Oh, yeah. Has to happen.

You go for the poke check and miss. That's my game and then he puts the shin. So I apologize. No, no. That was my fault. I had just an idiotic cutback across your stick. And the second the second the contact happened, we were both like, like, oh, fuck, this is terrible. It's so common, though, bro. Oh, yeah. That happened to me in the All-Star 3 on 3. Yeah. All of us were, like, comparing our bruises and our scars, like, bleeding from the shins.

It was hilarious. Like, getting dressed later that day. I was just looking at both my shins. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm leaking everywhere. This is unbelievable. Oh, yeah. That was, and for the listeners, Barb's team took that down. Yeah, yeah, you did.

And I think in hindsight, I think we gave you the best game in hindsight. Totally. Absolutely. absolutely that was a tilt at intermission yeah yeah dude and the funniest thing is that intermission one of our buddies he was like we're filming like a mockumentary during the things so we're like faking to be serious during like every interview we do and this guy after the first intermission he goes up to the camera he goes boys it just wasn't meant to be we're done and I had to skate up to him be like yo there's another period eh like he thought we were you thought we

you're done dude and like that first that first half too was like so low scoring i think we were up like one nothing so he's like this is the worst documentary ever like no goals in three on three oh it was terrible and then just like the floodgates open in the second oh yeah for sure after that first period we were joking around with nashir we were all like what's going on this is like a real game right now everyone's playing like such settled lockdown hockey yeah yeah i know i know i and we didn't even like when we had that intermission, I don't even think we really said anything either. Yeah. Yeah.

We're just like collecting ourselves and we're like, we should just, I think we all just agreed we should just go for it or, I don't know, stop playing defense or I don't know, but it was, yeah, I think both, it was better hockey. I think we're all. Oh, for sure. For sure. And bars, before we really get into it here, the, I have to ask you, after you got to go down to the EA office, put the mocap suits on with all the boys, you know, Nash,

swaggy, everybody. and you're doing the trick shots and the hits and the hardest shot competition, you're in NHL 24. How often are you playing NHL 24 as yourself? Like, is that a every night event? Because it would be for me. Yeah, honestly, I don't play video games like too much. But when I do, I'm ripping shell every now and then. Usually I like playing video games with buddies.

So when I have a buddy over, we'll play. I think I've played as myself like two times only. But it's cool. It's definitely cool. It's like the childhood dream. you know to have yourself in a video game playing this video game since that was like 10 years old probably yeah yeah just just having yourself i'm massively overrated they gave me like some ridiculous 88 or whatever like it's uh yeah it's definitely an ego boost when you see yourself getting all the

points and stuff out there dude dude you got to find a list of the players who are below your rating and start tweeting out it's you know just that i i was texting cam accinson that i was gonna text him that like yeah there you go higher higher rated player than you and i just teach skills so it must be 75% of the league or sign up for a camp camp you know like here's here's the list serve bug i also really i love that soundbite of us asking barbs how much he plays with himself yeah yeah it's just a really good bit right there that'll be the promo uh yeah yeah title of the episode um but man obviously you know anyone who knows you and and has gone on any of your channels they see what you've done in the game of skills and stick handling and all of that.

And something that I love that you preach pretty heavily is the skating side of the game. So, you know, you've obviously, you know, if you've launched this whole career, you have this whole business where you do, you know, group skills, one-on-one skills and all this stuff. And you've gone viral on so many cool videos where you're doing trick shots and all these cool things. You know, you're on the treadmill. Yeah, the Canadian citizenship test. Yeah, yeah, but all that shit is so awesome. But I want to hear you talk more about the skating side of it because obviously the flash of all the stick handling, all the shots, the trick shots and all that stuff.

That's what goes viral. That's what kids really love seeing. But you're not shy about talking about how at the end of the day skating is still the most important thing. Yeah, I glad you asked that because I specialize in the puck control side of the game and people make the false association that I think stick handling is the most important part of the game. and that couldn't be further from the truth. It's skating is number one. If you have great hands and you don't have the great edgework and skating ability, those hands aren't worth anything.

So mostly the things that I do is working on the edgework first, working on the movements, working on the body language in order to look like you're doing multiple things to sell to a defender, those fake options. And then from there, we'll add the stick handling in there. From the skating side, always from the ground up, we work on the skating, the edgework, and then we get the hands. hands involved there. So yeah, so at all those kids out there, always remember, skating is the most important part

of the game. You always want to work on that first. And then you want to implement all the stick handling, all the dangles, the moves and stuff like that. But the moves effectiveness is always going to be determined by the edge work and the skating ability and being able to elude players with your body movements. Dude, when you're getting a new person that you're training, like when a kid comes in and you're sort of seeing the raw.

talent and abilities that they have. Are there any signs that you see in a young player where you can tell, like, oh, wow, this kid is going to be a great skater or this kid has a lot of raw ability that is going to be fun to work with? Like, what are the signs that stick out most to you? Yeah, outside edge control. I think, you know, so much of the game is crossovers and being able to absorb pressure on that forward lean.

So a player's ability to just be comfortable like on more of an angle like this on their outside edge versus some players are more comfortable a little bit too upright. It just means their abilities are going to be far, far better, the options, the tighter turns. They're going to get a better second push off off their second push on their crossovers. It's just such a marquee skill for, you know, taking it to the next level to be able to build up speed, accelerate from like, if you're going to change directions, gain the zone button, hook and go the other way. You see guys like Barzell do it all the time. You just gains the zone. Punching. turn and you just circles, they call it the merry-go-round or something like that.

But it's one of those skills where if you master that, you can choose when and where you want to attack. And if you don't like what you see, you can always circle back and keep that distance. So those skills are paramount, I think. And it's something I notice with kids right away, for sure, is the separator. Yeah, it's that that photo that we always see of McCar when he's like at this angle turning in the zone. And everyone's like, how the fuck is he on his? feet still. It's unbelievable. But that's a perfect transition into what I wanted to ask next. I feel like we're seeing so many differences in the game now compared to, you know, when we were in high school even watching guys in pro, I feel like the emphasis on skating is getting

more and more intense every single season. And you're seeing guys, obviously McDavid is the one that stands out. But we had Jack Eichel on and he talked a little bit about when he's he was growing up. People always talked about his skating and there's just different things that he does that separates himself from the pack, even today, in the national. Are there any guys in the league, you know, other than people like, are the obvious ones like McDavid that you look at and you can tell like, wow, this guy's an unbelievable skater and maybe people wouldn't think to mention him for that ability? I mean, maybe not too underrated, but Braden Point always catches my eye. Great one. I think he is just so phenomenal at his, his cut

backbacks, his ability to change direction and accelerate after doing a punch turn or something like that. You know, he's very strong, able to absorb pressure while he's doing those moves too so he can, he doesn't have to completely eliminate a guy. He's very stable on his edges. So I think he definitely comes to mind. He's not, he's not necessarily one of the guys that gets talked about enough, I feel. And he's just so clutch in the playoffs, too. It's just on those deep runs. I mean, he is one of the main reasons why Tampa was so good for all those years. But he's just not that superstar name, I guess. But man, he is one of the best edge work overall skaters in the league for sure.

Yeah, no doubt about it. It is crazy. I don't know how many times the dude has to go for 50 goals or 100 points before somebody's like, uh, brain points pretty good, actually. It's, uh, Dan and I did a list over the summer, which I will never do again. That was like, 100 best players in the league and we released 10 at a time. and it was hard because we're just like, you know, comparing the stats and everything. And it would be so funny when we look at Braden and we put him really high, forget where.

Yeah, yeah. We put him really high. And so many comments were like, Braden point. And I was like, check the stats, dude. Like he is an absolute stud. It's insane. It is unbelievable. I feel like a lot of guys, when I look at the prospect and HL level at college too,

when you're wondering when guys are going to take that jump. And you love to see it right now. You know, the college tournament starts today, and it's very interesting to see there are guys that you think, okay, the second their team loses, their draft rights are owned by, you know, Gay Perot. Let's say Gay Perot with the Rangers. There are so many people who are like, when BC's done, does he get called up immediately to this Rangers team for this playoff push? And then there's so many guys that you read the breakdowns or the scouting reports and people say, oh, yeah, he's not that strong on the puck. He gets pushed off so much. how much do you think with the skating emphasis is on that puck protection? Like the better skater you are, do you feel like it's a translation to the better you are protecting the puck, not getting pushed off, being able to keep possession like that?

Oh, God, yeah. I mean, you could just look at the best puck protector in the league in Sydney Cross. You know, just the ability. Because so much of edgework isn't just like being able to carve tight and make tight turns and, you know, decelerate, while maintaining a decent amount of speed and balance, it's being able to absorb pressure because that's what our game is. And to have the stability on your edges while in a position where you're going to have to be giving them some,

so you're going to have to be on a lean to be able to balance yourself. So you're having to be strong and stable on your edges, even in a more compromised position as you're leaning onto someone. I think that speaks volumes. And I know these guys trained that way. I know they challenge their edges so that they're having to absorb contact and try to put themselves in a position where they can absorb that contact but still make an escape play. They don't want to just absorb the contact and have that compromise their ability to step off a player or whatever that is. So 100% the edge work, the skating goes hand in hand with that puck protection.

Yeah, no doubt about it. Barb, do you ever get to camp or training sessions with kids that are not in a bad way, but are, our, frustrated when you're like they get there ready to do a Michigan and you're like we're actually going to skate and work on some ads to work first yeah yeah yeah we've had uh we've had that in the past i try to make it uh well known and i separated i've made pavill barber training instagram so people would know like you know this isn't for highlight real fun and stuff this is what we work on this what's important but we've had that with kids uh you you're always going to have kids asking to teach the michigan's stuff like that kind of unavoidable i feel they're just so gungho

about it. But yeah, we tell them, it's like, listen, we're here to work on stuff that makes you better. That stuff's fun. If we have time extra, we'll do it. Sure. Maybe, but yeah, it's, and you'll have some kids, you know, maybe thinking, oh, like, I've done this drill before. Yeah. And like, you have to remind kids, it's like, well, you're, Cindy Crosby's done this drill before, too. He's never going to stop. It's to, to do a drill means you're going to have to continue to evolve it and push past your comfort zone and get better at it. So you don't just do, you know, punch turns once and say you've got it. Yeah.

Punch turns, check. Know how to do that? Yeah. It's like you're going to have to do stuff repetitive. It doesn't have to be boring, though, because there's always, as long as you're challenging yourself and it's difficult, there's always ways to make it better. So always try and go up to those kids who are having an easier time and say, hey, like, can you do this looking up?

Can you do this scanning the ice? You know, can you do this dropping your weight or something like that? There's always a way to challenge it further. That's awesome. Well, speaking of the fancy Michigan stuff and everything, I wanted to talk to you about the end result of a play, because we're here to light the lamp, right? Everybody wants to score. And I feel like too often hockey fans, the hockey community is always looking at that. If the play doesn't result in a goal, then what even happened? But surely, things can happen throughout the buildup of a great hockey play that make it useful, that make it successful. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, you know, I think people have gotten so used to watching hockey highlights just via Instagram. So they just watch these short clips and they're fed mostly highlight real goals and where it ends up in a goal. Whereas if you watch full games, you'll notice all those little things that people do that lead teams to get better scoring opportunities, which any coach will tell you in the league is the ultimate goal.

We want to get better looks. We want to get more high percentage scoring chances. So the more sustained pressure you can have, the more puck possession you can have in those key areas, the less likely a player has to, like, you know, get it off their stick, the more they can hold onto it under pressure, like Quinn Hughes back at the point.

You know, he can hold on in it, that extra two seconds. It doesn't always end up in a goal, but it ends up in that team developing a way higher scoring chance, allowing his players to disperse and move around. That power play moves like a symphony. It's crazy.

Everybody moves. but it's those little things that don't end up in goals that really lead you to understand why players and teams have success. So I think the worst way to analyze hockey in terms of effectiveness is to look at the end result. Because listen, like Radco Gudas could toss one off someone's skate, it could bounce and go in the net. You're not learning much from that. Yeah. Put puck's on net, never a bad play.

But, you know, hockey is a game of bounces sometimes. and really all we're after is getting high percentage looks. And then from there, if a player is not finishing, then obviously they need to work on their finishing touch or whatever it is. But generating high scoring chances in those good areas is what you're always after. So if you're doing that more than the opposition, you're almost guaranteed to win the game most days. So that's definitely something people got to continue to look at,

like that badar play. people like he did two dangles and people were like oh he lost the puck at the the blue line it's it meant nothing which like at the end result it's like yeah that was a net zero it didn't do anything for the team but throughout the course of the game if he's continuously making moves to create space you notice that stuff matters defensemen start backing up a little faster because they know he's coming with speed right no it changes it the 100% yeah I think you're so right there's there's the tiniest little place getting puck's out at your blue line getting puck's in at their blue line that really do change the course of the game.

And I found myself, we were Bruins fans, right? And I found myself loving the David Craichies of the world where, you know, he passes too much, honestly, to a fault. But, but, you know, and he would, and talk about a playoff guy, God, the big bees runs, he was always one of the leading points scores. But my point was he would, 20 goals was, was a, was a great season for the kid. But his, it felt like his IQ was, was, was, he knew where everybody was, he was holding puck's up he was making the right turns making the right moves and i i personally really gravitated

towards guys like that and i wonder it sounds like you probably do too um and i know you listed quin but and i'm sure uh your your um instagram namesake comes to mind as well but are there any guys that you're like man they they they saw the game the right way we're making those plays obviously they put up stats but they were making those plays throughout the 60 minutes that didn't always result in a goal but was really changing the game yeah 100% and yeah to your point like the The reason my channel is called Pavel Barber is because of Pavel Datsuke. I originally made a channel that was just under Brandon Barber, my real name, that was dedicated to Datsuk highlights that mostly didn't end up in goals

because he was always widely regarded as the best players in the world, but the point totals wouldn't indicate that. I was trying to show people why that was. You know, like hockey's a 200-foot game. If you have a player who is unbelievable on the back end, instrumental in getting the puck up on the offense and then even in the offensive zone, you know, he's putting up like 90 points or something like that as a two-way center is ridiculous numbers.

But people just, I don't think they had the, like a lot of people didn't really fully understand what if those plays mattered or what it was. But that's why I wanted to do it. I wanted to show people like, listen, like all this stuff that he's doing, he's generating so much offense for their team. he's stripping the team in the defensive zone there and making sure they can go on the counterattacks. Like he's doing all this stuff that isn't ending up in goals, but is allowing his team to have more successful scoring opportunities, which, as you said, like over the course of a game of a season is massive. And to your point earlier, like people backed off of him, just like they do Patrick Kane, like, especially in his prime, like you would see Kane and you'd be like, why are people giving him so much time and space?

well that's earned. That's earned because he burns people so often. He's such a high IQ, smart player. He makes quick moves. He finds players. He knows where to find where they're more susceptible and expose that. That is earned space over time and you have to play against them routinely to fully understand that. And dude, I always laugh about Datsuk.

It's like he's winning Selkees out here having a 90-point season. And people are like, yeah, he's not a hundred-point guy. And I'm like, are you insane? He could have 130 points. if he wanted to and just gave up on the defensive side of it. And then I also, I mean, I'm sure this was in at, and I don't mean to sue or anybody, but that clip when he is turning Logan Couture inside out five times in a row. And it's just like, he just stays in the corner.

He doesn't go anywhere. He's in his phone booth, but it's, that's that stuff that just while he's doing that, his forwards are recycling, getting open, finding new space, because he's just taken all the time he needs over there. And it's unbelievable to see. Barb's, do you tell kids, because actually one thing I thought that was really cool about your story is you, you were, like you just said, you love Datsuk. You were like watching Datsuk clips and then kind of going to the rink on your own and being like, I'm going to try to do that. See if I can pull those moves. Do you tell kids, because I love doing this, watch NHL games and find players that you think you play like or want to be like and see what they're doing and then try to do it. Obviously, 99.99% of the time they're going to be way better than you'll ever be. but it's a great, it's a great tool. It's a great resource. Watch the game.

See what they're doing. Do you encourage kids to do that or is that too far? No, no. 100%. That's most of the kids I work with all, one of the first questions I'll ask them is who is their favorite player. And then I'll encourage them to watch clips of them throughout the course of a full game. Watch the areas they go on the ice in the offensive, defensive zone.

Watch them on the breakout. Watch them. Because when you focus on an individual player, especially when you love watching them, you're even more like laser focused and entertained just by them being on the ice. You learn a lot more because you watch every detail of that shift more deeply than you otherwise would. It's very easy to watch our game and miss all the nuances, all the important things that build up to a scoring chance, kind of go under the radar, seem kind of obsolete.

But when you really watch a player deeply, you notice these patterns, these things they constantly do, the positions they put themselves in. McDavid's a great example of a guy who constantly takes detours to build up speed before he even catches a puck. He'll take these little detours to get the speed advantage. And that's something that, you know, if you tell a kid, like, yeah, like watch your favorite player, watch those little things that he does. You'll notice, like, I saw a kid I worked with once in BC only one time.

And I said, your favorite player is Patrick Kane, isn't it? And his number wasn't 88, but his play style was like, man, like exactly the same. His stick handling, like his kind of like awareness, he's got to like slows the game down type of player. So it's like I feel like it does have a great effect and it can be such a great teaching tool for kids for sure. That's awesome. He's doing heartbreak. He's a heartbreak, Ellie every time. Farms is like, who you like?

You like cane guy, Eric. Yeah. Yeah. all the puzzle. Dude, is it hard? You know, I, we were talking earlier about guys like point, maybe we don't get the flowers they deserve. I'm the biggest Dylan Larkin guy in the world.

I'm always banging that drum about the little things that he does right that people don't see and why he's such a good leader and such a good center in the league. And I always talk about his hold-up play, like you're talking about the things that maybe don't result in goals. You see sometimes these clips where guys come flying in the zone, they try to walk a defender, or they get one move, a second move, and maybe the third doesn't go well.

And people are like, oh, my God, like, that was so sick. It was so close. And I feel like Larks is always such a master at zone entry and then a sharp curl on the boards, hold up, let your forwards catch up with you, let the D get into the blue line. And how valuable that is for puck possession throughout the period, throughout the game. Is that a hard thing to impress upon the younger kids that you're training? It's like, you don't always need to go for the flashy move. You don't need to try to dangle it through someone's legs.

In fact, having good skating and puck possession and protection is going to be more valuable long term than trying to walk someone every time. Yeah, 100%. It's far harder to put that on a kid over a highlight real goal if you're comparing the two. Like they're going to be, they're just so much more entertained by the flashy highlight real stuff. And it makes sense. I was too as a kid, but that's our job as coaches and people who are, in authoritative positions to influence development is to show kids.

Like this is why it's important. It doesn't mean you have to not do the flashy stuff and the high skill stuff, but you have to understand percentages of the game. Yeah. How many times if we're going to take a percentage point do you have the puck even just on your stick? It's very low. Yeah, so true. How many times do you have the opportunity to pull a toe drag is very low or dangle through a stick?

But the opportunity for you to like just do a punch churn and cut back and just buy time for other players and stuff like that. Like direction changes are number one. I always make that like my number one thing for kids. Like your first order of business is you have to be solid on your directional changes. Because if you're good at changing directions, you can dictate where and when you attack. And if a player is on you, like really close to you, you don't have to feel scared of that pressure because you know you can hold that distance if your directional changes allow you to do so.

Yeah, for sure. So you just put that into percentages for a. kid. So you tell them like, it's important you learn this one-on-one skill as well. Like you don't want to just be like, oh, you only get to do like one-on-ones a couple times a game, so barely ever do it. Like that's not the proper way because you're like goals matter. Like you got. Yeah. You do have to teach that, but it's not going to be the number one thing you work on and teaching that stuff that's like zone entries, for example. Like it's just like being able to gain a zone and like that little skill of like you'll see NHL players do this,

like reach move where they reach over the blue line to make a pass just the game they're in it. Like little things like that. As long as you make kids aware of how many times they do it, why it's important. And yeah, and you find games to make it fun too. Like I've done zone entry games where we make the zone entry as a goal. Yeah. Oh, cool. Get over a team's blue line with possession for five seconds.

And if you hold possession for five seconds, that's a goal. So there's always ways to kind of make it fun. I love that. We talk so much about how the game's transitioning and evolving. And obviously there's a great emphasis on stick handling, stick skills, skating like you've talked about. How does that translate into the defensive side of what you do and what you're seeing now in the game today? Because sometimes I feel like we see people trying these moves, trying to walk someone, and people are always screaming like, just hit them, like lay them out. That's all you got to do.

But that's just like not how defense is played these days. And what do you think are the most important things when we see some. some of these elite defenders now in the game. Like, what are they doing so well that you try to teach? Yeah, I think to your first point there is like it's important to note that saying just hit him is an ideal outcome. Yeah. Staying tested chest is a fantastic approach.

It, but it is just that. It's just an approach. You know, you always want to keep it in the back of your mind. Like I think it's a little bit insulting to say NHL players, if they get walked, they are unaware that they should have stayed chest to chest.

Oh, take the body, right, I forgot. It's one of those dumb things where it's like on a power player. You're like yelling, shoot, shoot. It's like with a guy with a wide open end, he's like, oh, I never thought of that. No shit. Good idea. We get it. Like, it's like that's the ideal thing.

But it's defense is a skill. Hating is a skill. Staying man on man is a skill. Pope checking is a skill just like stick handling is. So I try to make people know it's like, you know, the majority of one-on-one's defense are going to win so people have a bias for defense and they approach it from a oh defense is flawless standpoint but you know if you tell someone to just hit him i could tell an offensive player to just angle him yeah none of us is saying anything of substance anything that's worth anything to anyone if you're

going to take kids onto the ice and try to teach them to be solid defensemen i'm not going to line up a bunch of defensemen and say hey just stay chest to chest stick on stick you'll never get beat it doesn't happen that way you have to do is you have to teach these players so certain cues to pick up on. So their reads get better. If their reads get good and they understand, okay, I have the speed the same as them. I have a good gap control. I have a good angle on them.

And I can catch them unaware that to time I could potentially go for a hit. That's how we teach players to be good. And every situation that comes at them is going to be different. You can't just take this all-inclusive approach of just don't let them be in the zoo line, just stay chest-to-cheft and have that pass off as helpful. Yeah. You know, it's just not. And, you know, like, I think it's just, people got to credit sometimes the offensive players.

And people have a hard time doing that because of the negative negativity bias. But sometimes players like defensemen stay chest to chest with the guy. They're tracking them. They're not puck watching. But they just get deceived because a player made a high skill. Yeah. You know, especially if they have a speed advantage with off, which often McDavid does. Whenever you have a speed advantage, that move is worth way more because you can get them to bite.

more. So yeah, that's little things I think from the defensive side people got to understand is that it's just way easier said than done when you're talking about playing the man or staying chest to chest. Yeah. So I was a defenseman and I love defense so much. I love that side of the game. I love the way you see the ice from the defensive position and I love watching defensive players. Now on that note, I hate the obsession with offensive-minded defense. that has taken over the league. And that's not to say I don't appreciate or respect some of these guys in the league. But, you know, it's like last year not taking away anything from the incredible feat it was,

but Eric Carlson winning the Norris Trophy because he got 100 points when he's also a dash 26. I was a little bit like, what the fuck are we doing here? And again, Carlson's a weapon. He's unbelievable. He's so good, so fun to watch. He's a revolutionary talent. It's unbelievable. But I really love showing respect to and highlighting some of these guys that I just think are so impressive on both sides of the puck and both as an offensive puck-moving defenseman and a stay-at-home shutdown guy.

And I think there are so few actual number one defensemen in the league that are that puck-moving guy who's going to get you of 60 plus points. But you can also trust on the penalty kill, also trust to shut down another team's first line. So, you know, I'm huge on guys like Victor Hedman who people are like, yeah, he's washed. And I'm like, are you fucking insane? He is playing at a point per game still and is probably one of the top three shutdown guys in the league. So are there any players that you, defensemen, that you kind of look at as guys who can do both of those things that maybe don't get the shine they deserve? Yeah, I mean, I would have said Hedman, too, is my one. probably Drew Doughty

another guy man like honestly he's just and you see it and it's like how gritty he is and how much he wants it like he you can tell he's more passionate about the defensive side than the offensive

but he can be the quarterback you know leading the play up the ice or quarterback and the power player or whatever it is he has the skills to carry the puck up for the team and gain the zone and all that but he's a shutdown D man who can get it done on both sides

And to your point on the Norris trophy, it's like, I agree with you. Like, it's kind of sad we don't have two trophies because, you know, we're not really highlighting the best defensemen. I get why they highlight the offensive defense because it's just what people, people are just love offense and whatever. But man, it's like when you get to playoffs, people understand how important those defensemen are. And that's the only time we realize that because so much is on the line and you begin to see the minutes they log, the defensive plays that they make because so many things are on the line and it sucks that they just don't even get any mentions ever for Norris Trophy or anything because those defensive plays are everything and anyone on that team will be the first to tell you how important those guys are.

Dude, we said it. I know, I know Wayno said it on TNT once, but we preach this all the time. There should be two. There should be a Bobby Orr trophy and there should be a Norris trophy because 100%. That would be a great thing for it. Yeah, Bobby Orchroby. Yeah, it's like we're just losing the thread here in that it's like you look at Vegas and how they won the cup. Vegas won the cup for a lot of reasons and a huge part of that was how unbelievable their decor is. And if you look closely, no one on that decor is scoring 60 points. Like they're just a bunch of great two-way guys. And then something that you've been preaching this whole time here is, you know, sure, it's great to have a nice brood. or defenseman who's going to lay someone out, be tough in front of the net. But some of these guys like headman, like Doughty, like Petro, Shea, they're such good skaters. And like that's a huge thing that is just why they stay with the other team's top line guy, why you can stay with a guy like Connor McDavid.

Like if you think that a top defenseman is going to be able to handle Connor McDavid without focusing a lot on their edge work and their skating ability, it's like you're out of your mind. It's huge. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. You have to be unbelievably elite to be able to keep track of that guy.

Yeah, that Vegas team is probably the best example you could use as deep as a team as we've ever seen. I think, you know, when you talk about like no real like other than like Ico, you could say, no real like out-of-the-box superstars. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, that's, you know, you see it with the Leafs in many teams like the Oilers. It's a depth sport. That's what hockey is. you know, you need depth.

You see it in the playoffs more than anything. And when the playoffs come, the hits come far more. The intensity comes far more. We've all seen it. It's a different game. It's even called differently by the rest for some reason. Yeah, that's true. You know, it's a completely different animal.

And that's, again, just you see players like that. If they can do both, my God, like they're so valuable to come playoff time. Yeah. Yeah. Barb's, I think it's a cool system that you've got working with your training thing where you tell these kids, you get there and you say, listen, skating is the bedrock of this game, we're going to work on our edgework, we're going to change direction, we're going to work on these things. Then when you get to that defensive stuff that you were just talking about, where it's not,

you can stay chest to chest and think, take the body, but it's not always that simple because guys are shifty and there, you've got a speed advantage and things like that. It almost helps your skating argument to the kids. We're like, see, this is why you're hard to defend chest to chest sometimes. you're doing that. So can you talk about how you explain that to kids of what makes you harder to defend when those defensemen are trying to line you up coming across the middle? Yeah.

The best thing I ever did is I actually held a one-on-one specific camp and we had defensemen. We had forwards. They were all the same level. And we forced them both to play each other's positions. So we wanted them to see what it looked like from the other vantage point. And just to notice, it's like you have those conversations. Like what was deceiving about that entry?

what made it hard to track them or what made it obvious what that move was going to be, right? And we answer those questions. We could build a little bit of a framework to work within where players are now beginning to understand, this is how I make my reads properly. This is my chance to close the gap. You know, this is my chance to maybe just go stick on stick and not go for a hit and just maintain my distance or whatever it is. And you get kids to learn both sides of it. So I think doing that is by far the best thing we ever did for that.

And then the awareness thing, like the easiest thing to tell a kid is like, you know, if a defenseman turns their feet, that's an immediate moment. We can take the inside or wherever their feet are pointing. You go the other way, right? But it's funny. Like it's obvious to us, I think maybe watching and playing all these years, but to a kid who's like eight to ten, that's not necessarily an obvious cue for them, right? So even just making them aware of speed advantage, gap, where their stick is, feet positioning, and their momentum.

Like if a defenseman's momentum is just coming at you, it's just one simple move and you're around them. So you factor in those five or six things. You can kind of at least get them to think about how they're going to change their approach or where the advantage lies. Because it's one of those things like on one's, if there's a preexisting advantage, say like you have the speed advantage, then you have a couple sets of moves that you use and you just keep it simple and drive outside, fake one way you go to the other. But if there's no advantage existing on one-on-one,

you now have to create an advantage through doing something, whether it's changing the angle or what have you. And it's just fun to watch kids, their brains spin in, and you're just putting little feelers in their head and awareness so that they can just go at it and fail and try again. Yeah, would you say to, because, you know, especially at lower levels and maybe in Beer League two, a snappy toe drag can get you out of a lot of trouble sometimes, right?

But the way you describe it right there, it feels like the stick skills is almost like the sixth thing that should get you out of trouble. You know, it should be your attack plan. It should be your change of direction. All those things should be getting you open before the fancy stick move. Would you agree? Absolutely, yeah.

It's the last thing. It's the last thing I would work on for sure. It's it just seems like. like the most important again when you go to the like ending up in a goal part you would look at the move that led to the goal but it's like well what led up to the move while he changed his angle he came inside of crossovers you know he held the puck in a position where he could make a pass laterally which kept the defenseman stick over to that passing lane it's things like that it's you know the approach that you take and and even like you see mac david he'll often look

off players that don't even exist, knowing that the defense can't see behind them. He'll look off phantom players and just his, his, like, trajectory where he's skating, where his eyes are looking and his ability to just get them to overcommit quickly and spin out of that. You know, those things are just such an important thing for kids to learn early. And you just got to give them, I feel like you've got to give them minor structure, but you got to give him so much freedom on this stuff.

And I see so many coaches try and, like, you know, generalize again, just like the biggest generalization with one-on-ones is like drive wide. Yeah. Drive wide. And that's the whole risk management. Oh, we want to mitigate all risk. I don't want to lose the puck. And it's like it's not always smart to drive wide and not every time you get stick

checked by a defenseman is a bad attempt. You know, like sometimes it's okay to go at them. And usually like in the NHL, you'll see the players with the highest point totals have the highest turnovers, but that's because they're given more freedom with the puck because they have a better outcome. They get more goals. They're more offensively gifted than others, so they get more leash. So not everything. If you look at McDavid, I don't know what his one-on-one percentage is, but he fails more times than he succeeds. But it's about continuing to go with that approach and trusting it and just not thinking too much about every single time you fail,

like, oh, I've got to change everything. It's sometimes you don't really have to change everything. And to go circle way back, being smart when you take those chances, right? Like Connor, when he's doing that, he's driving, he's got the blue line and there's no other good options. So he tries to take a guy one-on-one. He's not doing that when he's last man back coming through his neutral zone, right? Because he's like, well, this is a bad turnover. The turnover in the ozone isn't that bad. So that kind of hockey IQ is a huge part of it too.

Yeah, exactly. And like everything I teach from the puck control side is all situational awareness. So, you know, a move, the move you use is only going to be a smart move or a dumb move based on the situation in which you use it. So there's certain, like, say if you're a righty, you're coming down the right side, your strong side. Your move set is far different than if you're a righty coming down the left side, your weak side. So your whole move set changes. So, and then if, again, like you said, like last man back or, you know, if I'm on a two-on-one or something like that and I try to like do a backhand. pass or something like that. It's not the smartest time to maybe do that. Yeah. Break out my backhand

sauce for the first time in three months. I try to make kids aware like, you know, physically being able to do the move is important. It's very important. You're going to have to do it. But the situation in which you apply the move is going to be the real kicker. That's going to be the thing that's going to determine whether the move is effective or not. So your awareness of a situation and whether it's appropriate to do a move, that's hockey IQ. And that's, you can foster that. A lot of people don't think you can teach that. You can absolutely teach that stuff.

It's so easy. You just have to make kids aware of it. Yeah. You know, like just ask a kid, like look at the NHL, watch the puck position of players on their weak side, where they hold the puck and watch them on their strong side. And they'll notice on the, on the strong side, the puck's ahead of their feet loaded in that shot path zone.

And on the weak side, it's behind them on the forehand in that shot path zone. And right there, you've increased their hockey IQ on two-on-ones just by making them aware of something that maybe slipped under their radar. Yeah, I love that. I feel like, man, hockey, of all the major four sports, I feel like hockey evolution is one of the most fascinating things in that if you look back even just 50 years and then if you want to go further to, you know, 80 years, the way that we approach the game is constantly changing and improving, which I think is so. fascinating to see the obvious one being you know stand-up goalies versus butterfly goalies that was a that was a monumental change and something you've talked about a lot is stick handling you know we had guys like wayno back in the day saying stick handling on the middle of the blade was the way to go and now it's kind of morphed back to the

heel and you get more control of the puck why is that and do you think there's any things that are you know starting to transition into a different mindset that people hadn't really focused on before yeah yeah it's funny like looking back on that and it's it's like uh you know at that time that was probably the best information there and most of them didn't have curves on their stick yeah yeah which factors into that not being the biggest deal like stick handling at the middle it's fine with a flat stick because the reason we want to stick handle the heel a lot of the times especially on the backhand uh especially when you have big whips like a p28 is it stops the puck from spinning up the backhand side so if you

have it too high up the backhand side when you go laterally the puck will spin like up the blade and spin off of it and you'll kind of lose control. On the quick touches, you want to keep everything at the heel, but on the wide movements, backhand heel, and then forehand you can go mid-blade when you're going wider movements or something like that, pretty much across all curve patterns. But it's all just eliminating useless puck spin.

You know, the more of the puck spins, the harder it is to control. As you know, like I even, I heard some people talking about even like on passes, people will put different spin on the passes so that people are able to one-time rate better in the NHL. I can't confirm whether or not that's true, but that's a interesting point. But definitely for stick handling,

it's one of those things where it's like, we want that puck to not spin so much. We want to be able to have full control of it. And it's amazing, like the more I've taught, like my hands are way better than they were like 10 years ago or whatever. And that's just through like understanding concepts I didn't. So like something as simple as like doing like any move at the toe, is so easy for me now because I don't elevate my heel so high off the ice anymore.

So even if I miss the toe, I catch it in the mid blade. Yeah. And I can toe drag like 20 times in a row with my eyes up. It's not hard anymore. Easier with the P28. But that's just through understanding like how to actually approach the rotation of the hands and keep more blade on the ice and whatever that is.

And, you know, I think players are learning that. Obviously, you see it like players are doing toe drag releases looking up the entire. time and having that comfortability to have it just tucked in that toe. And most of it's just being aware of those techniques, those different training methods to do so. It's such an interesting lesson of, yeah, I love how you say you have better hands now than you did 10 years ago. You can always get better. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Like we're washed, but I can learning stuff with it, like being open to learning more about it, you can just still get better and improving things. And that's, it's cool to see.

You know, Dutchie came on the podcast a while ago, and he was talking about that exact thing. It's like, in his 30s. He was like, I'm still trying to get better and learn more about the game. And I think we're seeing that a lot with pros these days of being like, sure, I'm in the back nine in my career, but there's things that I can still get better at. And you're starting to see it now a lot with these guys. I mean, look at fucking Sid, man. He's on the back half of 30, and he's still playing at the most absurd level. It's ridiculous.

Barb's, is there anybody that, you know, Kainer comes to mind, of course, but is there anybody that can really manipulate the puck in the league right now that you point to to kids to be like, you know, that this guy, he's got it figured out? Ah, man, I get shit for it, but Brad Marciaun, you know, he is very crafty with that puck. You know, he's hard to knock off and he's got a little bit of that, you know, that, that gritty edge to him where he's able to absorb checks and stuff like that. but he's he's very crafty with the puck for sure he'd be up there. Barkov is pretty other.

Yeah, I do. You know, I think he's so like Datzuk in a way that he, his game is all around like body positioning and puck protection first. But he's just so smart with the puck. He's so incredible on defense that 200-foot game. And just, you saw that assist he had the other day. It's insane. That might be the grossest assist I've ever seen.

just the fact that that guy has that level of offensive skill, but also be that sound on defense. There's so many guys, like Barzell. I'm a huge Barzell fan. I watch him play a lot. McKinnon ridiculous. Like people always call him choppy with the puck, but it's like just because he's like such a horse with his skating.

Yeah, that's all it is. He's just so big and he's moving so fast that it looks crazy. Yeah, he's like too strong. But it's like, I always tell people it's like you don't get style points for, stick handling. You don't get style points for like being quiet stick handling. You want to be in control of the puck doing the moves you're doing at the speeds you're doing them. And he does that, man. He moves at the speed of a horse and he's able to control that puck pretty unbelievably. Connor McDavid obviously would be up there as well. You know, it's just incredible to watch sometimes

these guys like doing not just the moves they're doing, but like when you watch the speed at which they're doing it. It just, it just takes that, that skill to a way more difficult place that I'll never understand because I'll never be half that fast, but you see it in, in the game and you're just blown away. Yeah. When, uh, yeah, I saw you posted that. I think we were talking about, um, the hitting thing we were discussing earlier, but you posted something on, I think the training IG, uh, but it was a compilation of some, some hits, some missed hits, you know, just showing it's hard to line people up all the time. And you had that Nate dog, uh, the little reverse hit he had, coming across and dude when he is like screaming over like that is the scariest thing i've ever seen

in my life i would have retired yeah dude he is like i could see the war pain on that guy yeah he was primal scream like he's like that though he's so so intense i remember watching a little mini documentary with him and sid how they'd race up the hill and he said sid one time was losing a race with him up the hill and he literally like grabbed him by the legs yeah and just stomped all over him to get up that hill and it's like that. It's just, and he got pissed one time or he lost a speed drill. You can see him like audibly get like pissed.

Yeah. That's like, that's the intensity. I love it, dude. You know, these guys, they're, they're serious about their, they're playing. And you got to have that intensity match with that skill. And he just has that in spades, you know. He's, he's one of the most intense players out there. And you're seeing it this year.

Like his skill is obviously, you know, you could argue, he'll win the heart this year. You know, he's one of those guys where he just, after his first four seasons just took off. I don't know what it was. He said he just became more, I remember the spitting chiglets. He was talking about how he was just way more into everything,

nutrition, training. He changed a lot of that stuff. But it could be a host of things. Sometimes people take longer to develop it. Man, what a player. Yeah, it's working, whatever it is. Yeah. One thing I wanted to talk about,

Barb's was I saw on your page, you had this really cool blurb in your bio or whatever that was saying, that when you were younger, you hated failing, falling down, trying new stuff in front of other people. So you would go train alone because you know the only way to get better is to push your limits. But you were like, I'm self-conscious about this. And man, I, on a personal level, I got into skiing super late in my life. All the boys skied all the time. And, you know, because it's so similar to hockey and the edgework, I'm pretty good now. But even still now,

no, he's not. I want to go. I don't want, when the boys are going somewhere crazy and some double black, I'm like, I almost just want to go alone because then I'm like, I can do it, I'll figure it out myself. I just don't want you guys to watch me fall down at three times before I get it. So when I was reading that, I was like, man, so, such a real comment

and you put in there, when kids come to my camps, it's check the ego at the door, it's no one self-conscious here, failure is a way, is an opportunity to succeed. If we're laughing, we're laughing as a group, no one's getting laughed at. So can you just sound off on that a little bit? Because I thought that was just such a cool message

and a really important message for young players. Yeah, like you said, It's just, it's something I wish I was told as a kid. I didn't know the value of failure as a kid. Literally had no idea. What, it just felt like a failure. And that was it. I didn't take it as learning opportunities.

I just felt like an idiot. I felt like I sucked and I felt I should be better. And I had no voice to kind of combat that. So now like you, you get older, you try things. You have better, you know, you have coaches or whatever, better mentors and they teach you this stuff. I read a lot of books and stuff like that. And you understand, like, the people who fail more. get more opportunities to correct and they become better.

Like Kobe Bryant missed so many shots. Like they did the stout on it, how many shots he missed was like way more than a lot of players, but he also drained more. So it's like taking the chances and whatever that is. It's so important. And like fostering the environment in which people feel comfortable to fail is paramount to me in my camps because, you know,

kids can be or whatever. They laugh and all that stuff. And it's fine if it's productive. It's fine if it's like we're just like, just like having a good time or whatever but we can't have people be taking it easy because they don't want to fail you know we have to encourage kids like if you're not falling doing this drill you're probably not getting better yeah that's kind of the mentality we take if you're not fucking up every now and then you're not going hard enough and it's plain and simple and i have some

clips luckily on my phone where i show NHL players looking like they suck in practice and they look like they suck because they're working on something at a way higher rate than they want to were and they're messing up. So you're showing kids like, hey, this is your, your idol. Like, these are guys the best in the world. They do this daily. This is why they are, where they are. And if you want to get there,

you have to stop worrying what people think of you. You have to stop worrying about your success rate. And you have to start thinking instead of, I failed nine times is I found nine ways that didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you're learning from something, that's productive failure. But the only

unproductive failure is, is, is, is, is not giving it your all and then messing up, right? You just can't move forward with that. But as long as we're learning, then we're absolutely moving forward. And it's one of those things where like when things click, you get it. But that, that clicking moment happens on the back end of a thousand failures and screw ups. And you just, you have to be able to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and not feel bad about yourself.

Like I'm pretty bad with myself talk. But I'll tell everyone, like you got to be your biggest supporter for sure with this stuff. because you're going to be messing up a lot. You're going to be the only one around you for this amount of time as you're training. So be nice to yourself and just give yourself the credit as long as you're putting the effort in. For sure, dude. And similar to that, how do you combat the burnout element? It's funny.

We're in our 30s. I feel like I could play hockey every single day still. And sometimes I think back at myself when I was younger in middle school and earlier into high school being like, fuck, man, I should have just, I should have got out on the ice more, trained harder. I should have shot more pucks every single day. But when you're just a kid, there's so many things that you want to do, so many other things that you want to be spending your time on. How do you work to combat that element of just not doing hockey too much that you eventually

go, fuck it, I'm done with this. It's too much. Yeah, that's like the golden question. I get asked that a lot from parents. And I don't think there's one specific answer, but I think the general approach is, number one, have conversations with your kids and make sure they're able to be honest around you, like when they've had too much hockey, is the kid going to feel comfortable telling you that,

or is you going to feel like he let you down? You don't want a kid to ever feel like he let you down because he wants a little bit of a break. That's more of an issue on your side as a parent where you've got to be more open to allowing that kid to have that. But then also it's like, I think for me it's like always enhancing your love of the game allows you to do it for longer periods of time and do it better.

So you talked about how you're in your 30s and you feel like you could play forever. It's because you really love the game. However you grew up playing it, you kept that love of the game, that passion of the game with you through it. And as kids, they have all these expectations on them. Like, I'm going to brick tournaments. These kids are 10.

It feels like the weight of the world's on their shoulders. You kind of need to remind them like, hey, like remember why you started to play hockey, right? Like, it was to enjoy it. And I don't say that as a like, you know, all like sunshine and rainbows, like, statement. I say it from a standpoint of if you love something, when the practice is over and you go home, you're probably going to work on it more in your spare time if you love it. And when you do work on it,

you're going to be more focused because you love it. But if it's work to you, you're probably going to take a few sessions off. You're probably not going to have your mind fully focused on the task at hand if you don't really fully love it. So loving the sport isn't just like, oh, we got to love hockey and like all hearts everywhere. It's like it factors into your,

at the amount of hours you log in away from your team, as well as the quality of those hours. So I think that's the biggest thing for kids is you got to find ways to enjoy it. So if you're working on boring skills, make games of it. You know, play target shooting game with that. You know, make a little game of it. So it doesn't seem like your training. You just have a fun playing a sport you love. Hell yeah.

I love that. Yeah, me too. I think it's great messaging. So I want to do a couple fun top three to you before we let you go. So on your IG, I forget what it was. Oh, what's the tape replacement that you did a thing for, you did a video for? Oh, the rest tech? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So for anybody that hasn't seen it, Barb's did the ResTech vid where he does like 8 million different Michigan's. And it's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. So could you give us, you know, maybe your top three or just a couple of your favorites of the Michigan-style goals that we've seen in the league? Because they're becoming such a real thing. Like, it's a real way to score now, no joke. So give us a couple of your favorites that you've seen in the league that you're like, man, that one, that one got me out of my seat.

Yeah, I mean, in the league, I have to say this fetched first ever was insane. My inbox was absolutely flooded with everything. Even the NHL posted it and they're like, Barbara, it finally happened because I was posting all of the close attempts and saying like it's going to happen. And there's so many comments. Like, the league's too fast. It's never going to happen. I'm like, you guys are nuts. Like, this is going to happen.

eventually. But that was my favorite for sure, just the first ever one, like, just so cool. And then the floodgates open. Second favorite would be Forsberg, where he flipped the stick around. Yeah, dude. Dude. And dive it up with the toe. And that was just like, I was like, what? Like, I have his stick in my house. And he has a big, uh, big curse. So when you dive that toe under it, that puck actually can slide up a little bit easier on it. So I think that's why he, He even he went for it. Yeah. Z's second,

not the, the volley pass one. He did that too. Yeah, right. He just split the toe and scooped it. And I was like, what the fuck is going on,

dude? How are these people doing this? It's unbelievable. And that's my, that's my third one. I thought that was like, because he, that was the fastest one ever done.

He actually was inside a couple of crossovers and went with some speed. Dude. And his first came back from injury. Yeah. That one was preposterous. Great. The ease with which. he did it and even his cellie looked bored he was like yeah whatever like it was there

in stride picked it up talked it what i was like what is going on in the league right now yeah that is i'm not sure if you guys have tried that like i i i'm not very good at doing that one uh the toe one but like i'm learning but it is it is crazy that he did it that fast like forsburg did it he did it quite a bit slower still unbelievably impressive but the speed at which Ziegers did it and like you said so casual it was just like that's that's insane like obviously it's a skilly practice or whatever but it's still like that is you have this much blade to use when you do that and and the thing barbs is because i'll mess around it sometimes but just standing still and it's like when you're going that fast you have to know i'm not trying to make this make sense but you have to

know it's going to work because every time i go for it with enough speed to scoop it i then pause to see do i have the puck and then by then you've lost it you know You have to be going the whole time and just know this is going to work. And he's zooming around the net and just voom. I'm like, are you kidding me, dude? Absolutely insane. All right, a little fanboy moment for the three of us here. What's your favorite dot-sook moment ever?

Ooh, favorite ever has to be the turkodangling. Yes, I was hoping you would say that. It started the obsession. I remember being in the basement of my buddy, John Brucker's basement. We downloaded the video on limewire.com. A great place. Totally legal. And we watched it just a million times and we couldn't understand it.

Like back then. Now it's like an obvious move to an eight year old, which is not. Yeah, yeah. We just couldn't fathom like the edge work, the timing of the pullback, how we changed direction like that and then kept his balance. It was just never before seen. So that was the first one. I would say probably that Couture one would be up there for me.

Yeah. The most disrespectful day. I think I've ever seen Hussu is on Couture's birthday. Was it really? Yeah, dude. Oh, that's an incredible stat. So bad.

Extra slap in the face for him. He actually tweeted out, like, Couture said, like, really, Dadsook on my birthday and he, like, showed the clip. So he had some fun with it. That's awesome. Yeah, you got to own that. Yeah.

It's a badge of honor. Getting dangled by Datsook is a badge of honor in the show. And then, what's the other, other clip, I would say? there is one against, well, you guys would know, you're Boston fans. You remember in the playoffs where he did that ridiculous,

one-handed pickup with the top of the blade and then went in and scored? I, like, I didn't even say a word. I just, like, went like this to the screen, and I was just, I was, like, I was with four buddies, too. I'm like, how did he do, like, did anyone just see what just happened? Like, it was so casual, but, like, no one ever, like got a puck like that before.

Like we've seen it now a couple times, but using the top of the blade along the ice to casually pick up a bad pass that was behind you between your legs and go on in the dim. Like, oh my God. It's ridiculous, man. There was also the the Turco one is absolutely the answer.

But there was also that I think it was either the K or it might have been like the Swiss League, but there was that clip that came out of the guy doing the kind of pullback drag and then chip shot over the goalie. and then like two days later Datsuk just did it in an NHL game

against Chicago I think I think so it was it was definitely against Chicago and I was like that was Linus Omark who did it for Sweden yes that's correct in the Swedish League there the first one and then

yeah Datsuk did it against Niami there so I was like you sick pervert dude it's ridiculous so great like that's such a ballsy that's so hard to do like even on like my buddy goalies like I can't get that to work.

Oh God, no. Yeah. Get them over to get and have that soft chip to just go over the gloves. That's crazy that he did it. Like to do that in the like especially coming from the standpoint of like at that point he had done the the dad suit move is like bread and butter or not bread and butter but movie did three times. But he he'd done that three times.

So then the goalie thinks, well, that's his move. He's doing that move where the O-Marc is kind of a fake. off of the debt suit. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's just, it was so fitting the first time he ever tried that very variation. Obviously, he saw the video. Yeah.

There's a couple days later. Because it's only a guy like him, right? Like, if you try that and fuck it up and you go back to the bench, your coach is like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. But he is one of maybe three people that's allowed to try it. Well, it's like you said, Barb, that's earned space. You know, like he had earned that space.

they were backing off already, so he was golden. Yeah. He did mess one up against that. I was watching one Canucks game. He tried that move and he totally flubbed it. So he did look dumb once with it, but hopefully no one will ever see that. That's how he knows. He's a human being, yeah.

Good to know he's human. And then, okay, last one bars, but this one is mostly selfish. But I saw that you said you said you're a big reader, and we are huge, huge book readers. So give me a couple, give me a couple wrecks, man. Give me your three favorite books that you got going on. Oh, yeah. Well, on the topic of like skill development, the talent code was an unbelievable book that took,

the author went to a bunch of places like hotbeds of talent. So he would go to places that were great in soccer and try to understand how they were building these phenomenal players. And he was understanding the patterns from sports to music to education. He found all the patterns of development that made them so great and it was eye-opening. Highly recommend that book. Great. I think it's Charlie Coyle. And then the monk who sold his Ferrari is a great book just for

life in general, understanding life's purpose and what's the purpose of life and how do you find your purpose or whatever. That was a very cool thing. Kind of puts into perspective what's important in life, right? It's not money. It's not cars, fame, whatever. It puts that stuff in a perspective in a very good way that really sticks. And then the other one, maybe the power of habit was a good one. You know, I think it's so underrated.

Like, you know, we have like 90% of the thoughts we have today are the same as yesterday. And, you know, what we do habitually, it makes us who we are. So owning those habits, learning how to build over those bad habits because, like the book teaches you never really fully break habits. You actually build new neural pathways.

over them, teaching you how to do that and just like how important that is because it's, we all have bad habits, like, you know, and addictions or whatever that is, whether it's the phone or whatever, but it's a good thing to kind of keep in mind that helps you kind of break those and, you know, make your life a bit better there. Well, Barb, listen, I run it, I run an Instagram account, Barb's I got to be on my phone. It's not my fault. Yeah, no, I'm with you there, bro. I'm like, I put like a two hour limit on my Instagram, TikTok now, because it was,

It was just, I would give myself the whole like justification. Yeah. But I had to have that conversation where I was like, buddy, you could be off this. Oh, you're so right. You're so right. Those are my three next books. It's perfect. I love it.

Barb's, this was such a blast getting you on here, getting able to chill like this, man. So we can't thank you enough. And before we let you go, is there anything you want to shout out, anything you want to plug? Honestly, not really. Just, you know, channels, Instagram, Hey, Barber, you know, on TikTok and Instagram, those are the mains. If you enjoy the comment,

our content, feel free to chime in. And then on the Pattle Barber training one, we love having conversations on that one. You know, whatever your opinions are, I love it. I think it's great to have the conversations.

And I think the main thing is like, try to have conversations instead of just shit on people online. Yeah. You know, talk to people like you would in person. Like, that's the thing with social I find

is people like understand they won't have consequences. is for speak into people certain ways, whereas it's like, you know, in, in, in, in person, like people don't really shit talk too much. Yeah. Oh, dude. Ain't that the truth, man. So real.

It's just like, yeah, if you're going to have a conversation online, just, just like talk to someone like you would. If you have a difference of opinion, you don't need to badmouth someone's mom. Like, it's, I don't know how you get there, but it happens all the time. And it's ridiculous. So maybe just stop doing that. It's so true. I love it.

All right. Well, you're the man, dude. It's great to talk to you, and hopefully we can link up in person soon and kick it again. Yeah, I'll give you another shin. Yeah, yeah. I need it. I'm too clean right now, so I need one. I love it.

Boys, it's been a pleasure. Thanks a lot for having me. Of course, my son.