The Athletic Hockey Show - Are Ovi and the Caps for real?

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Hailey and Sean welcome Dom Luszczyszyn to discuss his 16 stats piece including the struggling Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalanche, Alex Ovechkin and the surprising Caps, Quinn Hughes' chances of winning the Norris Trophy again, and the St. Louis Blues playoff probability this season, plus, the crew rank the PWHL's new uniforms which were unveiled on Thursday.Hosts: Hailey Salvian and Sean GentilleWith: Dominik LuszczyszynExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Haley Salvean and Sean Jintilly here with you. Sean, what's up? How's it going? Oh, great. Everything's awesome.

I watched some games last night, but I spent most of my night watching Snack Shack on Amazon. It is a movie. It was a movie night in between watching bits and pieces of, of the Caps game and then making sure that McDavid stayed in one piece against Vegas. That's how my net went. For sure. I stayed up and watched

not Oilers, Golden Knights, but there was a rivalry series game on yesterday. Women's Hockey's Back. Canada, USA played in San Jose last night. The 10 p.m. puck drop was more closely at 10.11 Eastern time, which kind of annoyed me. like, what time is this 10 o'clock hockey game at?

Is that how you know that women's hockey has truly made it? Is that now they are lying about their start times, just like the fellas. We love it. What time is this 10 o'clock game at? Someone just tell me, I don't need the broadcast time. That was a big game. I don't care. It was a big game.

If you're American, big game if you're an Abby Murphy fan. Oh, she was on her worst behavior. now I'm regretting watching, you know, a period and a half of Oilers Vegas. I should have watched the Rat King, Abby Murphy, do her thing. Yeah, yeah, she scored the first goal of the game, like rocket of a shot, kind of a bad goal by Kristen Campbell who got pulled after the first period. She led in five goals, five goals on like 12 shots. Not a good start by her.

But Murphy scored two goals, had a couple penalties. had a dirty, like, she threw an elbow at the end of the game. And it's stuff like that where it's like, ah, maybe don't. But then at the end of the game, her and Laura Stacey were like trash talking each other from the penalty boxes. And Abby was just like pointing at the score, being like, what's the score? What's the score? And it's stuff like that where I'm like, she's so entertaining, man. It's a Canadian.

It's like frustrating. And what was the score? Seven to two, the final. That's right. How did Chloe Prima Rana look, Haley? So that was the other big story is Chloe, 17-year-old. We did a big feature on her. She made her national team debut.

She's the youngest player on the roster. Fun fact, second youngest defender to ever play for Team Canada since Cheryl Pounder made her debut in 1994. So it's significant for such a young player to be on the blue line. And there's been young forwards before Mary Philippe Poulin. I think Emily Clark was a teenager when she cracked the national team. Haley Wickenheiser, you know, all those old Hockey Hall of Fame players. But Chloe was fine.

She was not like activating in the offensive zone, which is kind of her thing. But I think she was paired with Jocelyn the Rock, which is really interesting because Jocelyn's usually on the top pair with Renata Fast. So it was nice they put her with a veteran, a more steady presence, but it's going to take her some time to adjust to this level and adjust to the college level. But that was the goal. That's why we're seeing Chloe Primerino in college and not high school. Like this is someone who's like she's a 12th grader, but she graduated early to go to college and there's going to be an adjustment period. But like that was the whole point because she was never going to get better if she's just cooking.

high school kids every single night. She set records in two years in girls' high school hockey. So it was a fine. Nothing crazy. Didn't get a point, didn't score. She didn't look lost by any means, but nothing showy. It wasn't like a Macklin Celebrini scores in first game kind of debut. And I say that because they grew up playing hockey together.

I'm not just randomly bringing up Macklin Celebrini. But anyways, we can get to women's hockey at the end of the show as well because this is a big day. PWHL announced their jerseys finally. I say finally. I mean, it is finally. They played with jerseys last year that just had a name diagonally across. Although I do kind of like those. I think they're going to be like cool retro jerseys, but there's new look jerseys. In the third segment, we will go over our definitive rankings of those jerseys. I don't think we have time codes, but if you're interested in that, just skip to the final 10-ish minutes of the podcast, but we've got to bring him in.

He's been patiently waiting. Our friend Dom is here. He took a long break. He didn't do much for a while, but he's back. Hello. That's not true. How long about break was it? I'm joking.

He hasn't been on the podcast, so I've just assumed he hasn't been doing anything. Oh, that's not true. I mean, last time you invited me, I literally said, I haven't done anything in a bit. I don't know if I have anything to talk about. That's why I said that.

Three days of hockey. That's why I said that. You're going to have Dom on, yeah, like first week of the season. And he's like, well, I'm still on my post-previews break and nothing's happened. It's like, okay, maybe next time. And here we are. And then we talked about the penguins for 45 minutes. I don't see the problem there.

That's fine. And everything's fine in Pittsburgh. Yep. Things have only gotten better. Yeah. Yeah. So Dom's, you've had a few things that we want to get into this week.

You had your NHL playoff report. I assume this could be a new monthly look at teams' chances of making the postseason. And 16 stats came out today, which is always fun. But first, and these kind of play into both of these stories. but I want to get into like a few of the games from last night. I think the big one that we all circled,

even though I'm going to admit I watched women's hockey over this, was Vegas Edmonton. Connor McDavid returns for the Oilers. Sean and I talked about this last week, like how long can Edmonton withstand a loss of Connor McDavid? Because when we had that discussion, the prognosis was like three to four weeks, right? We expected him to miss a significant chuck of time,

not just three, three games, 10 days. So McDavid returns, but Vegas wins four to two. Wasn't a great game by the Oilers. It's a tough loss against a divisional rival. Don, what did you think about that game? What do you make of these two teams right now? It is tough to gauge both of them because I feel like the Oilers aren't getting the results they should be getting.

and Vegas maybe is playing a little above their means, not to say that Vegas is bad or Edmonton is good. It's just, Edmonton is getting their chances, aside from a power play that looks weirdly awful. But at 5 on 5, they're still dominating the puck. They're still doing a lot of things that gave them success last year. It's just pucks aren't going in,

and Stuart Skinner is having his month and a half, Stuart Skinner moment that he has seemingly every year where he's like, I'm the worst goal in the league. And then two months later, he's fine. I don't think I'm ready to just assume that he's fine. I'm not. That's fair. I know he's done it before. He certainly did it last year where he was, let's be real. The single biggest reason that Jay Woodcroft got fired when he did is because Stuart Skinner had a protracted amount of time at the start of the season where he couldn't stop a beach ball.

Yeah. But like, I don't think that dude has the track record at this point for me to feel great about it. I know it's happened already, but we're still talking about, you know, goalies and a relatively small sample size. So as this, you know, season ending or season beginning slump extends a little bit more, I get a little bit squishier about, about Stuart Skinner, at least in terms of turning it around in a real way.

I feel like more than just Stuart. Skinner though, and this is maybe where the overall concern with the Oilers come from is the offense. They're 30th in the NHL and goals scored per game. And they're shooting, but then I guess where you maybe feel a little better is their shooting percentage is like 7% right now, which is only the Islanders are worse. So you've got to think that's going to level out at some point, a team with Connor McDavid and Leon Dreisidel and Zach Heimann, like lumping him in, but he scored 50 goals last year and we need to respect that. And I know he had a bit of a dirty one yesterday, but maybe that's what kind of gets them going again this season. But this is a team that was it, the oilers had

always been the team to me that are like, they can always outscore whatever problems they're having. The issue now is they're not doing that because they're shooting percentage is seven. Yeah. I mean, you have to figure they have more scoring talent than the New York Islanders and things will progress a bit. I mean, we had a lot of these conversations last year as well, and the big thing was McDavid doesn't look like McDavid, and at some point you figure McDavid will look like McDavid. Maybe that happens a bit slower because of this injury, but I don't know, I am not ready

to push the panic button. I think they should be fine, but we'll see where we're at in a month, and maybe that all comes crashing down because Skinner continues to not make save and McDavid regresses to only a hundred point score or something like that. And you know, chance generation has been an issue on the power play in a way that it hasn't been for them typically over the last several years. So I get it. Like there's other yellow flags, let's say, about, about their production.

But for me, this is still, this might just me, I'm just, I'm using this as an opportunity to relitigate conversations we had. player tears, honestly. I'm just not, I'm just not fully sold on, on Skinner. Like, I don't, I, I know yet, like, wisely wrote about the power play in 16 stats this week. I get it. Like, that has to be acknowledged because they've been so otherworldly good and otherworldly consistent over the past few years. But, um, I'm, I'm hand-waving that. You know, I'm like, out, whatever. They'll, they'll figure it out. I'm just, I'm less sold on, on the goaltending, despite what happened last year. Yeah. And a lot of that has caused

major issues on the penalty kill and maybe they were just really missed Cody Cici and his penalty killing presence. You never know what you have until it's gone. It all comes back to Cody Cici, folks. Truly. Truly. Let's

go to the Washington Capitals because that was another big story from last night. There's only three games on the schedule, but actually some pretty decent storylines to come out of it. The Nashville Predators lose again. The summer darlings, maybe not that good. That's okay. It's fun. It was a fun summer. Hot, Barry. Eventful. Yeah. Everyone was saying that Barry Trots was having a brat girl summer and

it was fun while it lasted, but now it's fall and it's not going well. But the Washington Capitals, they went again. Alex Ovechkin scores again. And there's actually, there's quite a bit on the caps this week. You talked about them in 16 stats. They're in the, playoff report here as a bubble team, right? Which I don't know, I had the caps listed as when Sean and I did our kind of preview set piece of like, who are we buying stock in heading into the season? I didn't know how good the caps were going to be, but I wanted to buy some stock in the team just based on what they did. Like they were making a run for it to be relevant and not just give Ovechkin the puck in the left face off circle.

So we, I think Sean and I were both in on the caps, but even still I think they're doing maybe better than some people might have thought, right? Some people. I don't think any, even like the most perfect caps fan thought they'd be doing this well. I think a few of them definitely. Oh, they did. I heard them. They did.

They thought they would be, what, nine and three and second and XG? Yeah, that's what I mean? We're not talking about a just above 500 team. Yeah, like they're a wagon right now, and that wasn't expected to say the least, but good for them because there are a lot of times where a team starts nine and three, and you look at everything under the hood and they have the check engine light on and you're like, this team is going to fall apart. They look terrible, all the stuff.

And they usually do, but the caps look genuinely amazing. and that is a great story because for the last couple of years a lot of it felt like just give Opie the puck and even he has looked like his vintage self with how he's scoring and how he's not a liability at five on five. So go caps. It's a great story. You love to see it. And I hope they can sustain it because I think the chase for Gretzky's record, it feels. a lot more meaningful if Ovechkin's scoring meaningful goals for the caps. And that just makes the race all the more exciting.

And you have to give credit for the summer they had where they picked up Dubois, who has controlled play well. Magiuponni has been great. And Roy's been injured. But when he's in, he's got a chance to be a good difference maker. Thompson has been great. So I don't know there, it's not just the additions they made. the underlying foundation has improved as well, which is nice to see.

Do you have any thoughts on the work that Strom and Protis primarily are doing as Overskin's linemates? Because I feel like that's something that's probably worth mentioning. You know, is that I've, from what I've seen on Protis on that top line, he looks like he adds something. Like there's, there's some defensive ability and some defensive conscience that's that gets added to the mix with Strom and Ovechkin is kind of, is kind of the point. Which is funny because Protis is like, he's a,

he's an odd player because he's gigantic and he plays on the wing. He's a playmaker and he's, and he's got some five on five, you know, play driving chops, which it's a profile that you don't see that much. And I'm just, I'm kind of fascinated by him as the,

is the third element on that line. Because that, again, a caps results with Ovechkin at five on five have been like startlingly good. And I think a lot of it, a lot of it starts with, you know, maybe some of the buttons that Spencer Carverie's pushed to get him in that, in that space. Yeah, he's playing well and they found a great fit for him. I think Strom is a very underrated center. I think when he wasn't qualified by the Blackhawks or whatever, his stock went down to a lot of people, even though his numbers were great.

It's just, it's hard to forget that moment where a team specifically says we, we aren't even qualifying you. And I just, that still just seems like one of the most flagrant tank moves that, that, that, that can remember seeing. Like, they're like, we can't even, we're not even going to risk it that this guy goes off and ends up being like a, like a 75 point player or something. We need to, we need to get him out of town. And I think he suffered unfairly because of that. And I just, I don't understand why they didn't just trade him. Like, it was, it was a very. odd move and he has proved so many people wrong because of that and he's been unreal like he looks like a legit number one center and that is not something ovechkin has had for a long time and that really helps things and

protis i remember when the caps gave him the extension a lot of people were like who is this guy why is he getting this much money and i think a lot of the underlying number said this guy is pretty good. He has some potential as a middle six four that can drive play and he looks even better than that now. So a lot of the the youngish players they have are taking a big step.

Connor McMichael as well has been huge for them. That is their shutdown line, him in DuPois and Wilson and they they've looked unreal too. Haley's terrific team MVP. That's true. I got I picked him up. He scored

like four goals and I was like there's no way going to keep doing this. I dropped him. And then I saw he kept doing it. And then I picked him back up. Amazing. I'm so sorry. Forever doubting you. Yeah.

Like I'm just, look, Ovechkin Pro Destrom, 100 minutes together at 5 on 5. They're, they're getting 80% of the goals. They're averaging 7.05 goals 4 per 60. Like this is,

this is wild stuff. And the sample size, you know, while it's still small, like we're far enough along. where it really seems like they have something there. And it's certainly goased up Ovechkin's production as well, just because the amount of time they have the puck now.

It's crazy to watch. Yeah. And we might be witnessing one of the greatest old man seasons ever, which is amazing. So to stay on Ovechkin for just a second before you go to break, the five on five numbers for Ovechkin and that line, as you were talking about, has been much better this season.

I don't know if this was updated after the game last night, Dom, probably was. The caps have outscored teams 13 to 3 in Ovechkin's minutes at 5 on 5, and they have a 57% expected goals. Last time, the Capitol's outchanced opponents with Ovechkin on the ice was 2017, 2018. So this is like a real, as Dom just said, it's a great old man season. He has goals in five straight games, scores last night in the win against the Preds. He only needs 34 more goals to pass Wayne Gretzky for the all-time record.

It's happening, folks. It is happening. A 12-game stretch that I just didn't think he had left in the tank, honestly, overall. Like, if you look at it in totality, the way, like the results that they've gotten with him on the ice over a dozen games, I was like, I never thought we were going to see that again. It's been, it's been, it's been something. It, uh, it hasn't happened for a while. And it is, it is amazing to see we, I think people think because we write the previews and I specifically have the model that anytime something unexpected happens, I'm like, oh, no, we were

wrong. And it's like, this is amazing. I love it. It's amazing to see unexpected things. Part of the reason that I have the model is to measure what is. what is unexpected and then those become the stories of the league like the capital is doing this is an amazing story and it's partly because no one was expecting ovechkin at his age to look like he's 25 years old again and that is incredible to witness maybe he read the player tears blurb that said a lot of

a lot of people inside the nchel said don't put them on this list anymore and maybe he just had this huge chip on his shoulder and said, I'm still a Eshka, baby. Hey, we put him on the list. We had people say not to and we did anyway. See? So, like, don't be mad at us. This is, yeah, but you guys were, like, kind of mean. Like, you were like, this is just a respect thing.

It is a respect thing from us after being disrespected by a bunch of people, by a bunch of people who work for teams in one capacity or another. Don't play. Yeah, but it came off as like, we hate Alex Ovechkin, but we're going to put him here anyways. That's exactly what we weren't saying. I couldn't be further on that side of the spectrum. I'm getting bad vibes from you guys. From Alex O'Fashkin.

If anything, I like Alex O'Veskin too much. Whatever. Yeah. I saw that the capitals to go from one Gen Z pop star to another. I saw the caps posted like a chapel rowan little thing when he scored again. And it did like H-O-T-O-V goal. Okay. Which is so great.

And now we're going to sing that to the break. Charlie X-E-X is not Gen Z. Her asses like her. Her brat album was very Genzy. Like everyone was doing that Apple dance. And that was teenagers on TikTok. That was co-opting millennial culture. Yeah.

Leave Charlie X-EX to the old. Brash. Millennial culture. Get a job. Okay, let's go to break. And when we come back, can Quinn Hughes with a Norris back-to-back seasons.

Probably that's the answer, but we'll talk about it more in the second segment. All right, welcome back to the show. We are here with Dom Lus Chishin, because I realized I just said Dom is here in the intro, and I just never say your full name. He's a one name.

And I think that's disrespectful. I agree. It's not just Dom, you know? He's a whole person. I actually think it's the most respectful to be a one-name person. Yeah. That is a very,

Okay. Yeah, Dom. Dome, Raygun. We're surrounded by one-nameers here. Breaking news. She is retiring. That's right, folks. The Australian break dancer is leaving us.

I wish that I had more friends and then I went out for Halloween and wore a Raygun costume. Yeah. So I could like do the worm sadly down the street or something. That would have been a real hot costume of Halloween was three months ago. Okay. people dressed up as Raygun. It's like dressing up as Monica Lewinsky or something. It was a million years ago.

Everyone move on. Hmm. Okay. So one of the big storylines from 16 stats that we circled was about Quinn Hughes. Can he be a back-to-back Norris trophy winner? And I think the fact that he's playing so well is almost flying under the radar this season. like if you just pulled a bunch of people who maybe don't watch all the Canucks games, like would everyone recognize how good Quinn Hughes has been this season? I don't know, but it seems like he's been very important to the Canucks in the early

going to. Don, what do you think? Is he going to want to know this again? I mean, I don't think, like I think the betting markets currently have Macarra's over 50% favorite. And it is very hard for voters to ignore that he has, has 23 points and 13 games and the next best guys at 16. So, like, he is still the favorite, but I wanted to give some recognition to Hughes because I think what he's doing under the hood perhaps might be more impressive. He is controlling games to a degree he wasn't even doing last year in his Norris winning season. Like, his five-on-five numbers are out of this world.

He is the current net rating leader. he is the most valuable player in the NHL right now. He is that important for the Canucks. He's been amazing defensively. He's still doing his thing on offense. I mean, 12 points in 11 games is still really good, even it's not McCar good. And I just hope that voters will pay attention to that with Hughes

and at least give him a fair shot, even if the... Yeah, even if the discrepancy in points between him and McCar is substantial, that Hughes is given a fair shot because he's been extremely good to start. The fact that we can incredibly have this discussion, when Kail Makar is 23 points, so he's on pace for 115 or whatever, whatever it ends up being, the fact that we can sit here and talk about Quinn Hughes as a legit threat to win the Norris anyways is such a testament to what Hughes has become as a point.

player. Like, I, I'm, it's, it's, it really is a signal that he's as good as even the most, uh, crazy in the bag Canucks fan will suggest like that like I, because it's not just that Kail Makar is racking up points. It's that Kail Makar is Kail Makar. Like the fact that McCar can have a season like this and, and you can still look at, look at it all in totality and say, queen Hughes might be the guy, regardless of the fact that, The kale macar as a defenseman has 23 points in his first 13 games is sick. Do we think the fact that the abs are sub 500 still plays into that? And the fact that like Cal McCar, despite the point totals and how great he is,

like I'm not being a Cal McCar hater. I think he's unbelievable. But there was like a couple games early in the season where he's like, maybe the game wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't playing in it. Like he's been very harsh. about his game. And I know that was several weeks ago and his point totals have gone up since then. And the abs are, you know, maybe not playing as poorly as they were in the first like week or so of the season. But I do wonder if the fact that the abs are our sub 500 might hurt like depend.

You know, it's still early. We don't, I don't think anyone expects the abs to miss the playoffs here. But if that trend continues, I wonder how much that plays a role into how you look at these two teams because on the other side, and there's been some games where the Canucks have been kind of bad, and Quinn Hughes took over and they won the game. Yeah. I think there's two things with McCar. That sort of shift, I guess, his opinion,

where Hughes doesn't get that. I mean, Hughes doesn't play in front of Alexander Georgiev. Yeah. And so he doesn't have these horrid goals against numbers that aren't really McCar's fault. Yep. Hughes also doesn't play with Nathan McKinnon, who is as automatic as they come right now. And so he's not getting the secondary assists that McCar might be getting.

And McCar is obviously great offensively in his own right, but I think you do have to acknowledge that it's a lot easier scoring when you play with McKinnon and Ranton as well as much as he does. Like McCarra is controlling the game. He's got 57% XG. he uses that 64 with a lot of great work defensively that I think it should close the gap a little bit on the points. I think there'll be people who look at McCar's plus minus and say, oh, he's minus eight. He's been brutal. And at 5 and 5, he's only minus 1. Yeah. So minus 7 of that.

And what's the save percentage? Like 879. Yeah. That's not McCar's fault. No. And you look at the Aves, Nathan McKinnon has 25 points. Cam McCar is 23 points.

Like two of the best players in the game. Like, kale McCar just continues to raise the bar as an offensive, like skill player, right? Like, none of this is to not Cal McCar at all. And I do think it's important. Like, the abs have a losing record

with these two guys scoring at that pace already. And that is not their fault. But I do wonder if those trends continue of people would be like, well, like, if the tie- breaker as well, the Canucks have a better record than I'll go with Quinn maybe. Like, I don't know.

It's still too early, but I think it's, it's interesting that KLA has 23 points and we're having a, maybe it should be Quinn Hughes again this year conversation. I think everything just has to go in context. And we also need to raise the flag potentially on, on, on, on McCar's health. I mean, he dodged, he dodged a bullet a couple days ago. I mean, he left, he left the game, then came back and then left again. Yeah, it sounds like he's. just a possibility to play.

And it seems like he's fine. Bednar says, Bednar says he tweaks something and it seems like he's going to play. But what did we see last year? We saw injuries start to stack up early for McCar. And then we saw his effectiveness decline. Like he was, by the end of the season,

he was dealing with enough nagging stuff where he did not look the same. Undebatably. Like he looked off by the end of their regular season. And I think it was, in a lot of ways, the accumulation of stuff like last night, stacking up over the course of a full regular season, where it diminished his effectiveness enough,

where he didn't have enough in the tank to go and get it, to go and take it from Quinn Hughes down the stretch. So if we're looking for reasons to believe in Hughes as a back-to-back Norris candidate, I think that's there too, because for as bad as Georgiev has been, for as much, for as many, you know, reasons there is to, excuse some of these brutal goals against numbers from McCar, a lot of his case is going to be

built on point production. And if that starts to dip or if he misses a few games here and there, it's going to get a lot less strong. And someone like Quinn, who's got solid five on five numbers, like across the board, anywhere you'd want to look, is going to have a much better claim to it. So, yeah, I'm, I'm interested. And I'm watching Keel McCar to see how many times he leaves games and comes back and misses one here or there because we saw it last. year and it didn't end up right for him. Yeah, I think the big thing is McCar used to be incredible defensively as well.

Like not just passively good for one of the best offensive players of his generation. It is he was legitimately one of the best defensive defense in the league. And last year with his injury, that was like the one big thing that changed. As soon as he came back, like it just, he didn't look right defensively. He was still scoring, just not to the same levels before,

but he didn't control the game as much. And I think that might end up being the difference again this year if McCar continues to just be average defensively. And this is aside from the goals against, but like the chances against, he's not dominating the way that he used to. And if McCar has 100 points and Hughes as 90 points, I think that gap is small enough that,

the rest of these games should bridge it. And they also had the death lineup kind of going in a way a couple years ago that they don't anymore, right? The numbers that's carried over from last regular season. Is it the numbers from McKinnon

in Rantan and McCar and Taves are they're not what they were? So if you don't have that cheat code to plug in in terms of point production and whatever else, that's another reason to think that's true. McKinnon has 25 points in 13 games.

They've been, they've been good, but not great together. And they, and they, and they did a lot of damage there. And I, and I, I think if that's, if that trend continues where it's not at the level that it was a year or two ago, I, I think those are the sort of things where, like, you, you can, you can take a little from here and take a little from here and take a little from there. And then before you know, Quinn Hughes is not just a dude who deserves the Norris trophy. He's a dude that wins it.

And it's, it's a fascinating thing to watch. Yeah. I feel like the biggest. case for it goes back to the original point. I feel like we all kind of went on a bit of an abstangent. But I think I think the biggest point is just like looking under the hood at Quinn's own numbers, right? And the way that he's tilting the ice. That's going to be his biggest case, I think, is people looking at the full context of what Quinn Hughes is doing this season.

What were you going to say, Dom? So you're talking about the point totals for McKin. He has 25. How many do you think he has at five on five? Oh, 16. Six. Zero goals at five. Really? Oh, no.

In McCar, Ranton, and Taves, McKinan have been outscored four to three and 66 minutes together. Like, that is different than what we saw a year or two ago. Yeah, it's hard to properly analyze this team. Like, yeah, we have those numbers and we can look at all these things that might be going wrong for the big guys. but like basically their entire bottom six, their entire top nine. Like there's so many injuries, Giorgiv hasn't been good. It's really hard to to properly like slag on the abs when a lot of the stuff that's happening, this is not, I'm sure Nathan McKinnon like wants to be better.

Like there's no way that a competitive guy like that's happy without scoring at five on five, but also it's hard to just be like, hey, you're not playing well. season when there's all these extra things happening there. There's so many injuries and players missing. I feel like we've avoided talking about the abs just for that reason because it's been like, well, Georgia hasn't been good and everyone's hurt. But at the same time, there are some. Obviously, I had no idea that he had six points at five on five. So I didn't either. Would have been in 16 stats if I knew that. Let's move on to the basically out club. So Dom has a monthly playoff picture report now.

And this month, he kind of looked at how things shake out in the east and the west. And on both sides, there are the teams were basically in the safe shots, likely bets. The bubble teams, unlikely bets, long shots. And then the basically out tier. And a number of teams on each side, St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks, Philadelphia Flyers. I think Blues fans specifically were pissed off about this. it's like how can a team be out by November 5th when this came out? So what do you think?

What's the thought behind this? And like how much do we write off a team like the Blues one month into the season? As I mentioned with the chat about Obetchin the Caps, I'm not rooting against the Blues. I think if something unexpected happens, it is amazing. and maybe it won't be that unexpected for Blues fans because they were relatively close to playoffs last year. It is just that teams with their profile don't make it very often and they aren't off to a running start. They're what, seven, six and oh.

I just don't think they're a playoff caliber team and there's enough there to suggest that their odds of making the hill they have to climb is. Gargantuan. It is a big hill. And to me, it also felt wrong that the blues were in that club to the point that I went back and checked what my odds were through all these points throughout the last five or six years. And there was only one instance where a team at any point during the season was below 5% and made it.

And that was last year's capitals. And everyone agreed once they made it that they were going to get destroyed in the playoffs. and maybe that happens for the blues. And I mean, just maybe playoffs would be an accomplishment. But it's just really hard for those teams and very unlikely where looking back to all these teams in October or the start November, there were 34 teams that were at 5% or under and none of them made it. But if you just think about the math, a 5% chance means that in 34 tries, you'd expect one of or two teams to make it.

And maybe this year, that's the Blues. Maybe they're the team that finally breaks through because at some point, a team will break through. And the Blues have the talent. Right now, one of the factors against them is Robert Thomas is out and Philip Rober is out. But there is enough talent. And that plays into the number.

Yeah, exactly. I think people, I think maybe people, that's a fact that was lost on people is that Robert Thomas being out does affect their overall percentage. Yeah, exactly. He's unreal. He's one of the best players in league. When I saw CJ's

Team Canada projection, I was shocked he wasn't on it because I think he is a tremendous player and I'd take him over Sam Bennett 700 times out of 10. Oh, that's spicy. It's very unclear.

I did not read that story at all. I love... Do we care about the Four Nations face off? I care. I care. I went to the World Cup of Hockey. So did I. I remember that.

The tickets were so cheap, and it was right here. And I went to so many games. And it was fun. They didn't try as much as the Olympics, sure, but it was still cool to see best on best hockey. Even if it was Canada versus Team Europe in the finals, it was still cool. And I think it'll be cool to see Canada versus U.S. I think the U.S. has the better team. for the first time in two decades.

I don't know how long it's been, but Canada had a stranglehold on best country in hockey, and that is no longer true, I don't think. That team USA is stacked. Got the centers and goalies, brother, let's go. And a defense score that looks unreal. I think that's the big difference, is they're going to be really hard to score on.

And Canada, like, the issue is obviously a net, but even on defense, I don't think they're as good as the states. We got future two-time Norris trophy winner, Quinn Hughes. Exactly. I feel like once the tournament starts, I'll be all over it, but I don't know if I'm several months out

being like, I wonder who the fourth line center is going to be. Sweden. I'm like, eh. It should be Rob Thomas, is what I'm saying. For Sweden? Oh, not for Sweden.

Sorry, for Canada. I just want to extend an all of it. branch to blues fans who think I hate, like, I don't. Like, I think it would be amazing if they made it as the 1-5% team. I just, I just don't think it's likely. That's all. That's all it is. That's fair.

I'm looking at the rock. We'll have plenty of time to talk about store brand Olympics whenever, whenever the tournament actually hits. The other thing with the West is a lot of it looks fairly set because the Jets and wild got to such incredible starts. Golden Knights too where it's hard to see those three teams missing. Stars are fairly safe. The abs when they get healthy are going to be right there. And then I think the Canucks and Oilers are both fine. There's like one spot maybe. And that's the Kings who are playing really well themselves. So it's not just a tough

uphill battle for the blues. It's tough for any team that is listed above them, which I have Utah, Nashville, because I thought they were better teams to start. And maybe that's wrong because they look not great right now. And Utah has their own injuries to deal with. But there's just a lot of teams to pass. And I just don't think it's likely. All right. Let's take a break. I think we're good, unless we want to debate. I think they're basically out teams are like... Can I just say, wait, I thought Robert Thomas was American.

Until like, that's why you were... When Donald was talking about this, I was like, Sam Bennett, what, uh? So that's why you were fiddling with your phone for 30 seconds? You're Googling Robert, Robert Thomas nationality. Yeah, which is dumb because I definitely covered him when he played for the London. I know. I know. I was there.

I was there when they won the Memorial Cup. But like so was Matthew Kuchukuk and he's American. So I think I just lumped those two together. And I just assumed he was like from St. Louis. And that's so dumb. Jeff, cut this out. I'm joking. I'm joking. Don't cut it out. It's fine.

It's kind of funny. Specifically leave the part where you say Jeff cut this out. Yeah. Just a little peek behind the curtain. Show everyone that I'm a huge diva. Were there any teams in the Basically Out Club that were surprising to you, Dom? If you already touched on this, I wasn't listening. That's my fault.

It was just the blues because I feel like the other teams people would be like, yeah, that makes sense. If the sharks make the playoffs, I'll eat a hat or something. Like, it's just not going to happen unless something incredibly stunning happens. like maybe people believe in the flyers but I think they are having the season they were supposed to have last year basically and I don't know I think it's just the blues that are the surprise and I would agree with anyone who says it's a surprise it's a surprise to me that they're as low as they are but

we're going to trust the process for now and hopefully not have egg on our face later although again I'll reiterate if the blues make the playoffs with 5% odds it would be awesome. It's a good story. Getting soft in your old age, my friend. That's not what Dom of four years ago would have said. You'd have taken on the smoke. Beaten down.

Leave him alone. He's learned. He's learned from his mistakes. Yeah. All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about the PWHL jerseys. You want to like pause the show and then look at them if you haven't because I realize this is an audio medium.

Go ahead and do that. Describe them. I will, Sean will do a dramatic reading of the design details that the leaves. That's not funny. I will not be doing that. We are back and it is time

to go over the definitive ranking. In my opinion, don't read this anywhere else. Of the PWHL's New Jersey's, they just came out today. Although we should kick Dom off and bring Shane it back on because she did actually.

Why are we talking? Dom here. Why are we talking to him? It's a fair point. I guess I'm a stand-in at the moment. This is just another opinion. Yeah. So it's a less informed opinion.

It's worse opinion than Shana's. I'm doing my best. What is dumb, if not boy, Shana? I appreciate that much more than the other way around, actually. That's right. Copying her, and I think that's really lame. All right. So the logos came out a few months ago.

I actually think some of the logos look even better as a center crust. I agree. But let's go over a few. How do we want to do this? Do we want to just go over each team and rank them? Or do we want to say like, here's our number one? I think Dom should go through his top six and then we pick it up, go through his order and then we pick it apart personally.

I agree or disagree. Yeah. You guys have the article. We know your rankings. We don't know. Okay, what's Dom's rankings? Okay, I'm looking at right now. Number six, I think is the easiest one.

That's Ottawa. I think the logo is tough, and I don't think the jersey made it better. Something I'm noticing is that grading a logo without a jersey is kind of stupid. Like it looks weird out of context, but then you see them on jersey like, oh, that looks pretty good. Yeah. Audwads doesn't. It didn't help. My biggest beef with the jersey itself is that I don't like the logo.

And like the jersey doesn't help me get past that. I think these look like plused up, but not necessarily better heritage O jerseys. And I hated those jerseys when the Sends had them. Like there's a reason they're now back to the 2D. I thought just an O in the middle of a jersey was like very boring with some striping. I didn't love that personally. And this is just like a spiky version of that to me. Number five, I, ooh, can I go tie for four?

No, you may not. Okay, well, I'm going to say, I'm going to say the frost for number five, Minnesota. I don't hate the jerseys. I think it looks better. I just think that there are some letters that are allowed to be logos and F isn't one of them. I think it's just hard to make a logo with an F. That's what they should have done with all that empty space in the bottom right corner of the jersey

is somehow incorporated a U in there so they can really take it. They can take it all the way. Yeah, I don't hate the colors. I think the stripes are nice. It's just the, and I don't even hate the logo necessarily. It's just that it's an F.

And to me, I just, I don't know. I want to preface this by saying, like, I do, like, I don't hate any of these jerseys and I hate the looks. My, I don't like Ottawa's logo. Like, I don't like that objectively. I, I'm, I'm disappointed in that one. But, like, I don't hate the Minnesota Frost look. I think, I, I think what limits Minnesota and when you look at the design details, like,

the whole design about this is that it's like a frozen waste. basically is like the whole, they don't call it a wasteland, that's my fault, but they do call it like a frozen landscape. And I think that limits them because then all they're doing is like being like, let's have an icicle and here's some white.

And I think that limits the jersey more than any other team. And I also just think like, I think part of the reason why I'm coming down so hard on it too is that like there are some legitimately cool brands and team names in Minnesota. So I think that's what makes the, crossed a little bit more disappointing. I know it's hard to name teams in 2024 and they didn't have that much time, et cetera, et cetera. But I think Minnesota and Ottawa are like the bottom tier for me. And there's a separation between everyone else. Correct. But obviously you were

torn on someone. So who are you tying with Minnesota? I was torn because I don't hate it. I think the tier is Ottawa alone and then everything else above is fine to me. I was torn between Minnesota and the Toronto Taylor Swift's. Okay. So you and Shane agree on that. I like the jersey. I think the logo looks fine on it. It's just, I don't know.

There's something about it looks a little more boring. I know what it is. It's that it's the blues aesthetic. you hate the St. Louis blue. Well, there you go. That might be it. Nailed it. Maybe, like, I I think maybe like another white stripe somewhere might have helped. I think there's... Good point. I don't know. It's fine. I will be getting

a jersey, but I don't know. I think it could have been a little better. It's more of a hat to me. I think that logo will look better on hats than on a... I'll have it all. I'll have it all, folks. already has a Sarah Nurse jersey. Well, my girlfriend's a nurse, so I got to get a nurse Toronto Scepter's jersey. That just makes perfect sense to me, right? Do they have a player called a journalist too?

So she can buy. You guys can have matching journey. Yes, it's the new. It's the new... Not a Gass got married and her husband's last name is writer. New defenseman. Her name's Amy Journalist, and you're going to... New defender, excuse me.

Yeah, I think the Scepter stuff. I love the color. I think that's the biggest thing for me. I had Toronto three. Yeah. I think there's a clear top two to me. Let's hear it. Do you three then.

My three is the sirens. I like the colors a lot. I'm sorry, I like the colors a lot. There's something about the logo that I don't know. I said this. I said this on the story. I'm sorry.

So I realized this. Like I literally took my fingers and put them over the sound waves. And I was like, that's better. Something about the like reverberations. Like if that was just a clean cube, I think I would like it better. I was in, we were in New York for a work trip and I was talking to like one of our bosses actually. And he was like something about the sound wave stresses me out.

Like I don't want more noise in my life. And I was like, oh no, I might agree with you actually. loud noises stress me out. But I, the sirens is bomb. I love it. Like, that's just me nitpicking. I love it. It's a great jersey, 100%.

I think that logo was near the bottom for me originally. So to bring it up the three is, I don't know. I love it. I don't know what I like it. I'm starting to wonder why I like it so much. I really like it. I really like it. I was just nitpicking.

I think it's like almost perfect. It is. I think it looks cool. I think if the reverberations were like, subtle and not the exact same font as the rest of the logo, I would have liked it a bit more. There's something just a little off about it enough to- Shana hated it. Shana really hated it.

Really? And still does hate it as much as she did a couple months ago. So I'm doing a good job replacing Shane on this podcast for now. Thank you, boy, Shana. Okay, top two. Top two is tough. I think you've got to go Montreal. Boston at two. I really like the Boston logo. I like the striping. I like the color scheme. And I

like the logo, even if it's a sideways Hartford-Wailers rip-off. It is a good logo to me. And I was a fan, I think, from the start. And the jersey makes it even better. Victoire, best logo in the sport, best logo, best jersey in the game. They Montreal knocked the park to make me feel like I don't know what the rest of the league was doing a bit. I almost feel now that I've had a little bit more time with these that I underrated Boston a little bit. And I actually had them lower and then the more I kept looking at it, the more I loved it. And that is one of the logos to me that like rose up the rankings at least like before there was a clear top three and a clear bottom three. And now I think Boston is in a in that top tier because the way that that.

that logo looks is a crest. I think it looks unbelievable. I was joking about the blue squigglys. The waves, they look great. It matches the striping. That's a really good jersey. And I think it's going to continue to grow on me. I really like the green.

So I almost feel bad having it at four. But I think it's just that four because, like now I'm like, do I like Boston more than Toronto? It's a very fresh color scheme to me. I feel like I haven't seen. seen like forest green with sea blue sky blue um maybe i'm mistaken and i'm missing some teams somewhere not it's not widely used yeah it's it felt novel to me which was which was nice

i like that i think boston's like closer to toronto to me than it was two months ago like i think all the color pallets are good too and i'm whatever i'm i'm i'm higher Ottawa than everybody else who has established life. But I think they did a good job of finding like appealing palettes that are also kind of unique. And I, and that's really tough. And I, and the whole exercise is tough. But I think, appealing individual palettes. Like there's no team. There's like no problem in the NHL where you have everyone's red or blue or black and here. Somehow the red jersey is the worst one, which is hard to do. Red is usually an easy jersey to pull off. But the

Montreal away jersey in that like sand cream color might be my favorite of the dozen jerseys that I'm looking at right now. I don't know the away jerseys. Well, I saw the Toronto one, which is even more... Go to the ranking article. We have them all next to each other. I think that the color palette of adding the baby blue striping to the socks and the waist of the home jerseys, unbelievable.

But that like cream away jersey is unbelievable. is sick. Like, it's my favorite of the 12. Yeah, that is a great jersey. And I think the colors of New York are great. When do these bad boys go on sale? Today. Today.

Oh, man. So go on sale on the PWHL store, and then they go into retail stores on the 14th. Although, I have to ask, I have to clarify with, like, the league or PR on this, because all that was in the release was that these are going in store. at like Canadian Tire, sport check, pro hockey life. And those are big box Canadian retailers.

So I'm curious if these are going to be available in store in the States anywhere. But they will be on sale at home games as well. I think they're just selling the home replicas at this point. They're not selling the away ones because I like the white Toronto one better, I think. Yeah, it's pretty clean. I like all of these.

I think they're all going to look unbelievable in the arenas. But yeah, my only nitpick is Ottawa. Dom's rankings were pretty much the same as Shana's. Yeah. To watch you off. Well, yeah, Shana had Montreal one, too, actually. Great job, everybody.

I feel bad we should have just called Shana. Anyways. Thanks for doing this. What did they just called Shana up? We got boy Shana instead. And I think I did a 7 out of 10 job. Yeah. I think, I feel bad. now because last week I definitely

threw Shana under the bus being like, it wasn't me that made the bad take, it was Shana. We're the only women here, so you just got us confused. And now we had those. What was Shana's bad take? That I ditched the Jets and said I hate them now.

I think we at the Athletic would like to make a collective statement that we do not hate the Jets. We like the Jets. They're a good team. We're on the record saying they're good. Yeah. All right. let's get out of here. The next athletic hockey show is Monday with Mark Lazarus and Peter Baugh.

I have to stop reacting to Peter in that way. The world famous Peter. Did you guys see him in the Missou shirt at the World Series? Noted World Series attender Peter Baugh. That was one of the greatest things because it was someone like completely outside my network. I'm just on my 4U page and someone's like, who's in this show? I'm like, is that Peter? Nobody else has a face like that.

Yeah. Who else would do that, genuinely? All right. So he'll be hosting next Monday with Mark Lazarus. Thanks, everyone, for listening to this episode of the Athletic Hockey Show. Haley and Sean, special guest with Dom. Matt Bay, Mishkov will be a healthy scratch. Oh, baby.

We've already talked for far too long. Hear about that on Monday. Oh, my God. That's crazy. What a way to end this show. show folks.