The Athletic Hockey Show - Breaking down The Athletic NHL Player Tiers 2023-24

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Hailey Salvian and Sean Gentille are joined by Dom Luszczyszyn to take a deep dive into this year's Athletic NHL Player Tiers. They discuss Connor McDavid being in a tier of his own, compare David Pastrnak and Matthew Tkachuk, why Connor Bedard is already included, and so much more.Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowStart building your credit up. Open a Chime Checking account with at least a $200 qualifying direct deposit to get started. Get started at chime.com/nhlshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. What's up, everybody? It's Friday. Welcome to another episode of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Haley Salvian, Sean Gentilly here with you. We're almost there. NHL training camps are open, games less than a month away. But the real sign that hockey's around the corner, player tears have dropped at the athletic.

That's the real sign. And we've got Dom, loose Chishin, our friend from the athletic here with us. What? The real sign that the season is about to start is that I haven't left my apartment in like 48 hours. That's what it is. You're bringing up player tears and we're going to talk all about that because it could have dropped a couple days ago. I am in season preview mode now and I am in hell. It's, yeah.

This stinks. Yeah. Well, they've started to come out as well. on Wednesday you guys had the Montreal Canadiens and San Jose Sharks and that's never a good sign to be the first two previews that come out It's bad

Well it depends on your outlook of bad For San Jose it's fantastic That's exactly where you want to be We got some good engagement from Sharks fans On the preview dropping They're like yes It finally happened We're the worst

team in the league at a long last. Well, today, though, we... Fireworks going off. Confetti flag. Yes! It's a big day. It's a big day. It's a big day.

The plan is working. Shout out Mike Greer. Everything's going great in San Jose. But today is a player tiers deep dive episode. So Domloose Chishin's here with us. He did the player tiers with you. Sean and Shane and Goldman.

I think Shane is going to come on one of the shows next week. So if you want to hear from Shana, not these two dudes, you can end the podcast now and wait for Monday or Tuesday. Listen. Listen. We know you do. Yeah.

So thanks for listening to this first three minutes. We appreciate your time. Dom, what's up? Are you in hell or do you enjoy preview time? No. This is like, it's hell for Sean. For me, I used to do three times the work and now I'm vibing. I'm chilling.

This is like easy mode for me. This is just smug, smug bullshit from you. I know this isn't true. He used to write all of them by himself. Guess what? The boy's soft now. This is year three without him writing 100,000 preview words by himself. He's struggling.

Don't let them fool you. There's no struggle at all. We have a spreadsheet of like who's assigned what and the word counts we're expecting for like each section. And I had. like everything done except for like all our big questions and strengths and weaknesses. And I just clocked out all the little stuff in the first week last week. So now I'm just, now I'm just viving writing like one big question a day, maybe some strengths and weaknesses. I'm already like

half done. I'm feeling good. A little peek behind the curtain. But again, this is the player tiers deep dive. So Sean and I are back for the athletic hockey show, obviously, since we're still talking to you right now. But one thing that we talked about this season, we want to do more like deep dive episodes. So instead of just bopping around and spending five minutes on a bunch of stuff, we want to dig in on bigger league-wide topics. And obviously player tiers came out on Monday. We're not going to be able to get through all 125 players because then this would be a three-hour podcast and nobody wants to listen to that. So we'll get through what we can first. I guess, So you guys just want to go through and we can start with Sean how this one got put together this year because obviously it's a little bit more revamped, 125 players this year are not 100, the different drop downs.

You spoke to a ton of different people. So this wasn't just you two and Shayna on a Zoom call chatting and looking at graphs. You guys talk to a lot of people. So do you guys want to quickly tell? us how this came together the season? Well, the format's different. That's probably worth noting. It's not just that it's an extra 25 players.

We've got a shiny new interface. I set the drop-down menus. See, I zoned out when you said out. Yeah, you should listen. But anyways. They gave us the NFL tools. That's point one. This is what, you know,

Dane Brugler and our NFL draft teams. And, you know, they had access to this tool in the last six months or so, whereas we didn't because it was finished basically after the last set came out. So A, that was a consideration, though, because the new tool meant that we could do other things with some Adom's data, with some historical stuff, with some charts, just kind of visualized stuff a little bit differently.

Now, that was a, that was something to consider really from the start, right? Because it affected, it affected, you know, what we wrote. It affected how we presented it. it and we knew that we were kind of operating in that bucket from the jump. That was something to consider. And also, yeah, we made a point, Dom and Chana and I to talk to more people this year ourselves. We didn't, Corey Promin had been part of this project last year. He's stacked up with a million other different things.

So he wasn't, he wasn't involved this year. Corey was our go-to for talking to scouts and talking to, you know, more traditional kind of front office folks. around the league. We didn't have that security blanket to fallback on this year. So a lot of it was the three of us. Cold calling people, going to people who we had maybe some preexisting relationships with and just asking, you know, out of the goodness of their hearts, you know, to kind of audit the list that we came up with using Dom's model is kind of the baseline. So that's kind of a long-witted way of getting at it. But we had our list that we used, you know, Dom's model is the baseline. We shuffled that around ourselves. We had a bunch of calls with the three of us trying to figure out who goes where, who drops off, who's too low, just based on the output of the model.

Because nothing like that's perfect. And then we took that list to, you know, I don't know, 18 or 20 combination GMs, AGMs, analysts. scouts, coaches. Like it was a pretty solid cross section, I think, of people around the league this year, definitely more so than any of the three that I've been involved with so far. Yeah, and like that's always been the goal. I mentioned this last year we talked about. Like, I first brought this over to Craig Custin's and said, I saw this idea from the NBA

tiers, set part now. And obviously, they have better data with hockey. isn't great. What if we move some stuff around with how we think it should look, bring it to people within the organization, within NHL organizations, ask how they look, get a sort of a crowd source thing. And the first thing he said was, aren't you not supposed to do this? Isn't like this goes against like the ethos of analytics? And I said, no, this is what every front office should be doing is blending what the data might suggest, blending what, your eyes might suggest into one thing where the organization is on the same page about a lot of

players or they know where the debate points are for other players. And that's the other thing that has come about over the last few years is that a lot of the organizations we've talked have said, yeah, we do the same exercise in-house. We have a similar process. It's like a good thing to do. And it's, yeah, it was a lot of fun this year, especially because we got to actually write about every single player. So prior years, we had to squeeze as much as we can down to make word count. And this year, we had a space for every player. And understanding that readers might not want to read about all 125, but they want to read about their favorite team and they want to read something worthwhile about those players. And they're not just reading like one sentence that they obviously.

already know. We want to add some insight as to why these players are ranked where they are, because for some people, it might not be common sense, but it's where the data has the players going to next year based on how they've done, how they're expected to progress because of age. And a lot of times, just how people within the game see these players maybe a bit differently than the public would think. Yeah, I thought it was great. I really liked how much or how many quotes in there were from executives, analysts, et cetera. I thought it added a ton of value and made it different. Okay, so the first one, we're going to kind of go through as many tiers, players, big topics, debates as we can.

But the big one is, and I went back and I found all of the player tiers that have been done over the last four years, the last four iterations. Once has Connor McDavid been in his own tier? The first time you did it, Dom, with Craig, it was McDavid, McKinnon, Matthews, and Tier 1A. Last season, it was McDavid, Matthews McCarr in Tier 1A. But this year, Connor McDavid is in a league of his own. What did McDavid do to separate himself this time? I think it helps me score a million points. but that is something that we talked about mid-season.

Last year we tried to do like a little refresh mid-season of like where players may be shifted since we last talked in the summer. And it became clear then already that McDavid was in his own tier. There was no one that was even close anymore. He was the best player in the world before that. But there was at least an argument that, that Matthews and McKinnon or Matthews and McCar were closer to him than they were to the next year. And that's just no longer true after the season he had last year where he scored 153 points

and was still a bit unlucky doing that, which sounds impossible for anyone but McDavid. And he seems to have like that gene that generational talents have where if you slight them in any way, they will see it, they will read it, they will do anything. to destroy that opinion, prove it wrong. I remember back in the day, I think the hockey news had Cindy Crosby ranked as the second best player in the world behind Jonathan Taves. And the next

season, Cissy Crosby made absolutely sure that that would never be an opinion again. And McDavid did not win the hard trophy last year. He lost to Austin Matthews. He started having arguments about whether he was the de facto best player in the world. And he said, I will, yeah,

I'll prove you wrong. And he did. And do you think, and Sean, I'm going to, like, throw this part at you. Obviously, what McDavid did stands on its own, but did the Matthews and McCar injury-plagued season play a role as well? I think so. And I think it's a testament to how small the margins are here. Like, we included this a quote from one of the GMs that we spoke to in the top where he was like, yeah, you guys did a good job here. You know, you're splitting hairs.

And Dom said, you know, I think was Dom's line like that. that's, that's what this project is. Like that's what this element, part of the job is, is you are parsing, you know, you're talking about decimal points and you're talking about little data points that can swing, you know, something pretty significantly in one direction or the other. So, yeah, a lot of it was about how great McDavid was. Like, that's undeniable. The season he had last year was terrifying.

It was wild to watch. but also to have him stand alone definitely required a little bit else. If Austin Matthews would have had a repeat performance of his MVP year, I don't know that we see this as the result. If Keel McCar plays 20 more games than he does and looks like the best defensemen we've seen this century for those 20 as he did in the 60 that he played, I don't know that we have this result. But as it stands, with McDavid being as great as he was, and then having just enough fall off for Matthews and McCar specifically, and it's no slight to them, stuff happens.

There's fluctuations, season to season, you know, based on injuries or bad luck, whatever else. But it took a lot to break those, to break up, to break up that tier, even though it was something that we'd kind of discussed, you know, we talked about it at the beginning. of last season, having them by himself. But it took more. And I think, yeah, I think the kind of off, the off years that those two ran into in one way or another played a role for sure. So in the first tier, obviously it's tier 1A, 1B, 1C.

There's a lot of centers. Jack Hughes in there, not Quinn Hughes. Nathan McKinick gets that later. We'll get to him. Yeah. Canucks fan. Keep listening. Obviously, some top pair elite defenders, Adam Fox, Kail McCar.

Two wingers, though, in the first tier. Usually it takes a lot for somebody who doesn't play up the middle to get in those elite MVP tiers. And that's David Pasternak and Matthew Kachuk. And I believe there was debate over Kachuk being a tier higher than Pasternak, but he maybe got dropped down. Who's the best winger in the world right now? It is between those two. I'd pick Kachuk. There might be some people who pick Pasternak.

There might be some people who pick Nikita Kutrov in tier two. We were fairly adamant to drop him down, but it's not unfair for him to be maybe in that conversation, maybe be next up. But after last year, it does feel like Kachuk and Pasnack have separated themselves. And for me, I'd take Kach, but it's close enough of a debate. that they're in the same tier. And I don't think that's pretty fair. I mean, we had Kachuk. I don't think people would have said that.

Sorry, Sean, but I think if you would have asked people last season, are Kachuk and Pasternak in the same tier as Wingers? They'd be like, no, it's Pasternak. I think Kachuk leveled himself up that much. Because in Calgary, it was like, well, is it Kachuk a lead or is it could draw? Is it Linnholm? Like, who's the driver? And then Kachuk had a really good regular.

season. He drove the bus, got that team into the playoffs, and then obviously was excellent in the playoffs, but still looks like there's some concern about, like, is he the one that takes over games? But, Sean, you had something to say about Kachuk, right? I mean, we had it in 1B to start out. Like, when we went through... And people weren't mad about that either, really. No, no, that definitely not. But when we went through the data and when we accounted for personal preference, because that's another thing here, too. When you're talking about Kachuk, versus Pasernak versus Kuturav. Like, there's not a wrong answer.

A lot of it comes down to the preference, I think, of the people you're talking to, right? And for the three of us, when we went over this, I think the gap wasn't huge, but it was also decisive enough on all three of our parts where we were like, yeah, Matthew belongs in 1B. And it was also, the margin was small enough that we got, nobody was mad. Nobody was like, this is some miscarriage of justice. We just got a bunch of people kind of gently being like, I don't know how, basically saying, I don't know how you differentiate between those two. Or like maybe you got a little bit too much dip on the chip for Matthew just yet.

You know, maybe we need that, we need one more year of like super elite production, you know, before he, before he finds a home in one beat. Like if he comes out and does, here's what I'll say, if he comes out this year and does what he did last year, he will be in one beat. I have no doubt there. Yeah. I can move himself into top five player in the world territory. Last one on the first tier.

Adam Fox is a 1C, Kail Makar is a 1B. Is there a world in which Adam Fox and Kail Makar are in the same slot? Like not just in the same tier one, but in that same B together. I don't, I,

I think the gap. between McCar and Fox is pretty substantial. That would take a lot for me to be convinced that Fox can get there or McCar drops down to one C. Like I think Fox, if he wasn't in the same league as a once-in-a-lifetime talent, he would be the best offense in the world and there'd be no question. But McCar is just a different kind of special over Fox. to something to consider um man a coach i talked to was you could i could hear it he was trying to

convince himself that fox and mccar were on the same tier right but he just couldn't like he like he you could see he could hear him in real time trying to trying to talk himself in the same like yeah those guys those guys are in the same class but he just he just couldn't do it i don't know it's just something there's something about McCarer's game. There's, there's the self-evidence of his talent is just, you know, it's, it's overwhelming whenever you,

whenever you, uh, compare him against something like that. Yeah, like, to me, like, we don't rank within the tiers, but if we did, McCar is probably the top of tier 1B and Falk is probably at the bottom of tier one C. Sure. Yeah. It's just a bigger gap than just that subterier between the two, especially because tier one probably has like that widest

variation of talent from top to bottom. It's true. Okay, let's move to the second tier. Why and how is Sidney Crosby not a tier one player? Who do you put him ahead of?

Who do you drop down? And I think that's the challenge of like, it's like how do you put him higher? but then just like, how do you not have him there? Like, it's hard for me to see Sidney Crosby as a debatable top 10 player in the NHL, not just like one of the best in the world. Was that a big challenge for you guys?

It was for sure. And eagle-eyed readers will note that description for MVP says a top 10 skater, and we have nine skaters in there. And that was an intentional choice because. A lot of top tens will be the same, and we felt would have the nine players we included in the MBT tier in a majority of them. The 10th player is the one that's going to change. And those are, I think the guys in 2A are the, they have the best case to be the last person in the top 10. And for a lot of people, that might still be Cindy Crosby.

For a lot of people, that might still be Nikita Kutrov. For some, it might be Marna Ranton. for others might be Caprice Auburn Robertson. Maybe it's even Charlie McIvoy. But like those are the guys in contention. And it's just it's such a debate with how much great talent there is at the top of the league. Yeah. I just don't know what else you like need.

And I think this is one of the quotes that's in here. It's like he's an excellent two way center. He drives play. Like he's still a point per game guy. He can still be a hundred point guy. Like what more do you want from Sydney Crosby? He's perfect. You're anticipating some age-related fall-off at some point.

That sucks, but it's true. And also, like, splitting hairs, like, the defensive value, like, isn't quite there for him in the way that it maybe has been in the past. That's where maybe you're starting to see him start to tail off just a little bit, right? Where you got to pick at some point. And his offensive production last year was unbelievable. That team is nowhere without. them. It's a miscarriage of justice that they couldn't assemble a roster around him that made the most of the season he had when he's 35 years old. But you got to account for it in one way

another. And it's also worth saying about that tier specifically, about this who is number 10, what is the difference between 1C and 2A? We had Caprizov and Robertson in 1C to start out with. At one point, we had 11 players in Tier 1. Sure. in tier one. And that was a pressure point just generally with everybody we talked to who, again, depending on what you value, there's not necessarily a right answer or wrong answer, but everybody treated the people that we have in group 2A. Everybody was somebody's pick.

There were people who wanted Crosby. There were people who wanted Coutcherov. There were people who thought that Rantonin should have been above, above Robert. Like it, you know, it turns into really a question of personal preference. Like you have, you get, you try to get the general order right and then come up with some kind of consensus for the movement based on pretty much the preferences of the people that we spoke to, which is like, I don't know, I'm not sure what else you can do other than that. So Sean jumped ahead a little bit.

So I want to get into the Jason Robertson debate. He just had his best season yet, 46 goals, 109 points, still not a tier one player. why is Jason Robertson a 2A despite the offensive production that we've seen from him? Dom? It's sort of the same debate as Kachuk. And the last two years, my model has loved both of them a lot. And we ended up moving them down. And then they both have these amazing years.

And it comes down to what you value. And for both those players, they are amazing in the offensive zone. They find space. They can score goals. But they don't do a lot of the puck work. That's some people we talked to really valued. So last year, I think my model already had Kachuk as a bona fide top 10 player, and we had them in 2B because a lot of the people we talked to just weren't quite sold on his 100-point season,

and weren't quite sold on who was elite on that line. And then he threw people wrong in Florida. And now that opinion is much more commonly placed. With Robertson, it was that argument on a different scale where people weren't even sure he was a franchise player. And the model was like, no, this guy is influencing things like really well. And then we see that happened last year in Dallas where he becomes a nearly 50 goal, what these score of 50 goals?

Or was he just under, he was around. 46. Yeah. And a hundred point player and like the talent is there. It's just he he doesn't do it all in the same way that a lot of tier one players do it all. Sure. What he's very good at, he's absolutely elite at. It's just that tier one is a very, very, very high threshold.

And we got to either see Robertson have an MVP caliber for season again or start taking on a bit more of the puckwheeling responsibility. I also think that Robertson's origin story plays against him from time to time. I think there are a lot of people who look at him and, you know, there were dings on his, on his skating when he came out. I think, I think subliminally that that plays a part. I do. I think he's, you know, everyone, it's easy to say that, you know, everyone knows who Matthew Cichick is. The dude was. But he wasn't a good skater either. He's never been. a good skater. I know, I know that, but he was also a top 10 pick and, right? And I, and I think, I think there's a level of bias there that comes, that comes in a play, honestly. Do I think that,

I don't think that Jason Robertson's misplaced in one C. I think he's, I think he's where he deserves to be. But I, part of me thinks with, with Robertson specifically, because we've had this discussion with him the last three years where we've, we've, like, put the brakes on and then had, and then had him, you know, outkick the projections. And I think part of, there's just something about that dude's game. I don't know if it's the situation that he's in because he's playing with two fantastic players or what, but there's something that is causing him to be under, like, underestimated just enough to, to make people look silly, like year after year.

And at some point he's going to hit his ceiling, right? Maybe, maybe there's nothing wrong with being, you know, the 12th best player in the league. but it's something something funky's going on with him in the perception it's the Canadian media member who said that Jason Robertson might be primed for a breakout after he'd already scored almost 50 goals um one interesting part from 2b or the tier 2 excuse me Charlie mackavoie is tier 2 a Amiro hayskin in tier 2 b why the separation we have had maccoy in this year for like three years now. I think his two-way game is just incredibly good, where he doesn't have to sacrifice any part of his game to be good at both ends of the ice. With Hayskinin, he obviously had this big offensive breakout last year, but what was missing was the defensive game that made him so special before that. And it's not that Hayskinin can't. can't do it all. It's just that we felt that maybe Charlie McAvoy can do it all on a slightly

higher level. Yeah, that's well said. I think we had them and we had them each and two way to start. It seemed it's no knock on Muriel Hayeskin, but I think it would have been unfair to Charlie McAvoy to pair them together, right? Like he's done enough over the last couple years to earn some, earn some separation. And a big part I think of Hasekenen too is again, Dom you kind of to this is, you know, for years, it's like he has, there's more meat left on the bone offensively, right? Like, he has more to offer. He's more to offer in terms of point production in terms of power play responsibilities and whatever. And last year was his responsibility, was his opportunity to kind of put that on display. And he wasn't bad at it, but it also wasn't

like the, you know, holy hell, look how great, Amiro Haskin and his, you know, it's mega breakout that I think people were kind of anticipating him for whenever he got put in the kind of situation he was put in last year. Charlie McAvoy, the best defender who's probably not going to win in an Orestroby just because of who is playing in the league. There's a lot of centers in Tier 2B, but I think other than Lice Patterson, who's kind of getting his flowers, the one that stands out to me is Jack Eichol. He's back, baby.

Everybody loves Jack, man. We had him because we had him lower. We had him dumb. Do you remember where he was? I think he just started. to see. So we bumped him, we bumped him up to that group.

We bumped him up to the, uh, Sebastian, Ahio, Alexander Barkov group, Braden points. Like that, that group,

he was initially outside of it. Right. And then we showed it to NHL people and pretty decisively in some cases, too. Like there were, maybe not literally pounding the table, right? I couldn't hear anything on the phone like that.

But people are like, yeah, you got it. You got to put them there. Like, like this was what people were waiting for. Sure, he missed a little bit of time last season, but, you know, what he showed down the stretch, I think, is what people always kind of anticipated that he was capable of, right? And I'm on board with it.

You don't have to twist my arm and make me put Jack Eichel in a group with, in a group with, you know, say, Barkhoff or Braden Point. Like, I think he's there. Yeah. And the reason he was lower initially is that even though he's there, you watch him, he's amazing, is his production the last few years has not been. elite. Obviously, he's dealt with some injuries, but even last year, it took until the playoffs for him to be a point for game player. But beyond what he actually does on the score sheet, he does so many little things incredibly well. And that was on full display in the playoffs. And that's the exact thing that a lot of the people we talk to within the industry wanted to see.

When we talk about what they didn't necessarily like about Kichuk and Robertson, those are the exact things that Jack Eichel is very good at, even if it doesn't result in 90 point, 100 point seasons yet. Really quickly, maybe just for Dom, before we move on to tier three, why did you guys finally drop Victor Headman down? Because you guys said in the blurb that you thought about it previously, but you never did. But this time he's down from tier 1B to tier 2C.

So he's had off years in the past, but he was younger and you'd expect him to bounce back. And everyone we would talk to in the game is like, no, he still got it. He still got it. This year, we put him down in the tier list. And part of the thing with the tier list when we first put it out there to these NHL people is we will sometimes put players in a bit more strategic locations to see what they say on this player, what they comments. Like, oh, is this guy too high, this guy's too low? knowing that we are going to adjust it later based on what they said anyways, right? And headman starting in Tier 2C is going to be a talking point. It still has on the top 10, but it has him

outside the top five. And not many people were banging the drum saying, you got to get heading back up there. He still got it. There were people who were legitimately like concerned about his numbers last year where I think for the first time since rookie year, he was outchanced and outscored. And that wasn't because Tampa Bay was bad. It was just because he was struggling with that regard. With that being said, his playoffs, he was still amazing. So that guy is probably still in there.

But the week regular season is definitely reason for concern. And a big, I think one thing, one thing to note is that, you know, the succession plan that they kind of have in place, the quasi succession plan with Sergachev, I don't think that's going to change. Like, I think, I think Sergachev is going to continue kind of eating in, into his power play minute, it's eating into maybe some of the stuff

that they typically have used him for in the past, right? So, and that's fine. That's the point in his career that he's at. This is year 14 or 15 for Victor Hedman, which is insane. Yeah. And it goes without saying, too, I know sometimes as we're talking about, like, some of the decisions that are being made within the tiers,

it's making it sound like these guys are like old and decrepit and terrible, but he's still a 2C player and still one of the top five defenders on this list. top, yeah, top 10, I guess, but there's only like five or five ahead of him. So he's still pretty high up there. And Eric Carlson is in 2C as well, but I think we're going to get to him as we get into the Quinn Hughes conversation once we move into Tier 3. So the top of Tier 3 is interesting. I know Johnny Yudrow is interesting.

William Nealander got a ton of love. Artemey Panarin and Mark Stone are in here as well. But I think the big debate that I wanted to get into within this tier is Tim Stitzla and Tage Thompson, two young centers in the All-Star slot. Could they have gone higher? Did you think about putting them higher? Like, what do you guys think about these two guys who are kind of going to be the big leaders of the Sends and the Sabres if those two teams make the kind of,

of leaps people think they will this season. I think if we do a mid-season refresh on this, those two are candidates to jump. It's very clear what both of them need to do, I think, and what they need to show to kind of take that level up into franchise territory. Like, Thompson just needs to show something on the defensive end. That's it, right?

Just one thing. Just one thing. Humor us, Tage. You'll be in 2B before you know it, buddy. In Stutzla, you know, I think, you know, just do it again. Just do it again. Dude, don't change anything.

If he has the same season that he had before, like he's going to be there too. He doesn't even, Thompson needs to do something differently. Stusler just needs a repeat, a repeat performance. And he's right there. Yeah.

Stutzelah had probably like a similar season to one Jack Hughes had two years ago. And we put Jack Hughes in the same tier 3A. We did think about putting Stutzla in tier two. but it did feel just a little bit too early for him. We, and when we show this to people with Stutland 2C, there wasn't like a whole lot of pushback. It was just some people who reserved a bit of caution saying,

let's see it again. It was like an eyebrow raise from a lot of people that like, huh, okay, Stuttsland 2C. And we're like, yeah, what's up? Is that ambitious? Like, what does that mean? Everyone just wants to see a little bit more. One thing I find interesting, as I mentioned, with Nealander, he's, what, third on the Leafs?

And so there's Matthews, then Marner and then Nealander, and then Tavares is in the fourth tier. And I think this is something to get into, like, next week once you see what actually happens in camp. But I had like a little hot take thought today that if they put Neelander at center on the Leafs this season, like he should be the 2C and Tava should be the 3C, in my opinion. Like, there's no way, like if you put kneelander at the season. Lander as the 3C with like third line like Sam Lafferty and Kelly York you are not getting another 40 goal season and it's a waste

of William Nealander he is underappreciated but I digress I want to talk about Jake Gensel Sean I'm a lot of people yeah exactly so let's hear it Jake Gensel uh not getting a ton of not getting enough love

I think he was pretty firmly where did we have him initially Tom because I know I know I'm of up. 3C. Yeah. And he finished in 3B. Had no intentions on moving J.

Kensal up. Did not think we were going to have that conversation. Especially when you get down in the lower tiers where the tiers get bigger, you're, you're just, you're saying, all right, this guy's here, like barring something wild.

That's where he's going to stay. Multiple, like three, four people were like, nope, Gensel too low, swap him out for, blah, blah,

like swap him out for, player actually. I had one, I did GM specifically say that he would swap him out for Tim O'Meyer in 3B. And that makes sense. Like Jake Gensel is a subtle player. I think he gets it it's kind of, it's kind of an interesting test case because he gets a lot of credit for scoring a ton of goals with Sidney Krazi, but also gets dinged for being stapled to him, I think at times because that's who that's who he's played with for quietly almost had 40. Like you know that Jake Gensel's production. but then I think sometimes it takes actually like looking at his stat sheet to know that he almost scored 40 goals last year.

So like the production's there on some level. You can't you can only play the hands that you're dealt. Sydney Krausey's not easy to play with. It's been said many times. That was like a weird narrative that took hold early in his career was that you could stick that dude next to, you know, Dom and Dom would pot 35. And that's just not, that was never true. it's increasingly less less true over the years

like not everybody work with him that's why he played with Pascal DuPuis and Chris Coonis for so long because Krazzi is a You dare say anything bad about them You know that I know that I never would But Krazi's a finicky dude He's got he's got preferences

He's got things that he expects his line mates to do And he hasn't always mesh with people And Gensel You know has slid in over the last six years now is just, you know, the dude. And it makes sense to me that, you know, one general manager and two assistant general managers and the scout where like you have this dude, you have him too low. Jake Gensel is a hockey nerds player. Like you watch the guy with the work he does along the boards. He does like just smart. He's not physically that impressive. He's not that, he's not big. He's

not that fast. You know, he's got a, he's got a great release, but like, whatever, so do a lot of guys. And I think that's the thing that, that's, he's the sort of player that hockey men love, because that dude's brain is his, is his number one asset. And I think there was some amount of desire, you know, especially with the front office folks that we talk to, to reward that. And, and that ultimately was, was I surprised to hear it like, yeah, maybe, maybe not. not. But I think on balance, you know, whenever we talk to the people that we talked to,

like, that dude had to move up. Like, like, if we're being true to the process in, in weighing the words of these folks that we're talking to as much as we should, he needed to go up a tier, which is crazy. I was not prepared for that. And the quote you guys included was great. The executive said, if the point of hockey is to win, Gensel has got to go up. He's so, so good. He does everything right. He gets pucks on the wall. He makes little defensive plays. he makes offensive plays. He's not an elite athlete, maybe, but his brain is an elite in an all-around sense.

Okay. I would like to say specifically, one thing. That person did not work for the Pittsburgh Penguins. I feel the need to just like point that out. He is unaffiliated. All right. That's good to know, actually. Okay, so here's the big debate as we move from Jake Gensel to Quinn Hughes.

So Quinn Hughes is in 3B, much to the disdain of, Canucks fans everywhere. You have someone in here saying he's good. I don't know how good. And there's also some stuff in here about how he's not great defensively. Canucks fans are upset that you clearly don't watch Quinn Hughes play because he's better defensively than you think they say. And I guess I'm curious.

Yes. Dom doesn't stay awake. So, and this, I think it's an interesting conversation though, because Quinn He was in 3B, Eric Carlson, one of those players who people knock for being a good offensive player, but not a very good defensive player, isn't to see in the franchise tier. So let's hear it. Why is Quinn Hughes not higher? And I'm saying this. I don't mean to bring Eric Carlson into the conversation to knock him because I say this is somebody who voted for Eric Carlson to win the Norris.

But I also had Quinn Hughes, like, just outside of my Norris ballot last year. He was a debate for me in the fifth slot because I think Quinn Hughes is very good as well. So let's hear it. Yeah, he had a great season. Before I get to that, I want him to make a point to say that. Number one, I'm wearing my Canucks hat to beat the allegations. Number two. It's true.

He is. It doesn't matter if there are three bylines on any story. Sean will get off Scott free. Yeah, it's always Dom's fault. It's everything is my phone. credit though, dude. I have people being like, wow, great work. Great work by Dom here.

I'm like, yeah, okay. Is he the one who spent a full week on the phone? No. No. I spent a lot of time on the phone. But yeah, it does go both ways. I want people to understand how much work everyone attached the story does and that there are three names attached to the story.

And in this particular instance, like I did not write this, but I vetted it. I liked what I saw. I thought it was a good blurb because I think it captures the uncertainty that lies with Quinn Hughes still at age 23, soon to be 24. He had a great season last year. One of the people we talked to was a bit skeptical, whatever. He doesn't have the history that Eric Carlson does. He still wasn't as good offensively as Eric Carlson was.

So no matter how, I guess, much you believe his defense is better, Eric Carlson doing what he did on a horrible team, scoring 100 points, is so much more offensively impressive than Hughes to the point that defense doesn't make up for that. Yeah. He fills up his tank, right? Yeah. If you want to deduct points from those guys for the defense, like, so be it. But the watermark for Carlson is just so much higher because his, because his offensive production is other, especially last year, is just like, otherworldly.

It's like it's, it's no, there's no knock. There's nothing wrong with being a worse offensive defenseman than Eric Carlson. 99.999% of the people who've ever played the game can say the same. Yeah. And again, like Quinn Hughes, even in 3B, I mean, he's in a tier with Dougie Hamilton. A Norris trophy. And everyone loves Dougie Hamilton. We love him too.

Exactly. And it's still within that tier, the top 15 defenders in the NHL. Like, so. He's the best of that group. And there's no shame in being the 11th, like, whatever, right? Like, we can, it's safe that I know we don't really differentiate between people in in tears, but he was, but he was at the top of that because we slid him down based

on, based on some of the stuff that we, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

and at the end of the day, a team that has, that has been, like at the bottom of the standings for the last couple years, like, it's gonna, it's probably difficult to have two players and the,

and franchise tier. They have all these franchise players, like, why can't they make the playoffs? Yeah. Um, sorry, did you have something on?

I just have one more thing to add, like, yeah, we had used in the, franchised here. If you look at like the model output on the right side in these beautiful charts, like he's not far off the guys in 3A. He's not far off the guys in 2C. He is the 10th best rated defenseman by the model. And he's young. We like his upside. So we put him in tier two to start. And everyone we talked to, every single one we talked to said, not yet. Or,

I don't think so. Or I don't like this. Or some of them were just, we're not sure. They said, he's good. I don't know how good. Yeah. These are not dumb people that we're talking to either.

Like I, I, I want to make, I want to take the opportunity. I think, I think everyone should understand that. They're not, they don't. That's like, we're not, we're not, like, look at us. It strikes in there with fans, though. Like, you're not, like,

just saying like, these people are smart. they're going to be like, well, we're still pissed. That's fair. But like, I just want to make it clear that we're not just talking to randos here. We're not, and we're not talking to 80-year-old men. Like, these are, these are smart, these are smart people who's moving. And you guys struck, and you guys struck like a good balance between, like, the analytics, East and West, analytics versus more like scout, like boots on the ground heavy,

like it's a mix. It's not just leaning super heavy one way or the other. I think, you know, the other thing to probably consider is how many coaches and how much bullshit's happen in Vancouver that might have impacted Quinn Hughes's development or like his ceiling or that growth over the last few years because that was one of the things that somebody said is, you know, he hasn't gotten worse over the last few years. He hasn't gotten, you know, particularly better. I don't. I either. He's just been kind of chugging along. So, um, he's turning 24 in October, a full season with Rick Tocke. You know, no one's saying that Quinn Hughes is stunted as a three B player. That's just where he is heading into the season. Let's, um, quickly to wrap up the Quinn Hughes because we have a couple more

to get to. I just have one one thing before Sean. Sorry. Um, I should have brought up Quinn Hughes sooner. I was trying to go in order. There, so there was a good mix of East and West. There's a good mix of old school, new school. There was not really a good mix of smart teams and dumb teams or good teams and bad teams. We talked to mostly people from good smart teams. Like that's the big thing. It's like we didn't go,

like maybe we didn't get someone for the Vancouver Canucks organization to talk about Quinn Hughes, but that's for a good reason, folks. We talk to teams that have had success. Building consensus in this exercise. That felt unnecessary. Building consensus. Oh, that was sassy.

Sorry, that's like the dance mom's clip. Sorry, I should I go ahead. Building consensus in this exercise is tough, right? We just spent hours, how, 45 minutes here saying like, you're splitting hairs. It's about personal preference, whatever. The single biggest thing that the most people agreed on about our initial list was that we had Quinn used too high. everybody could fight over everything else and have differing viewpoints on

100 other players every single person who brought up Quinn Hughes was like you got him a little bit too high so take that against a bunch of people who have Quinn Hughes avatars on Twitter freaking out that we have him as the 11th best defenseman in the league instead of the sixth or whatever

and see who wins. Stephen Stamco's stays pretty steady in 3C. He's really interesting because obviously some headlines during training camp, day one of lightning camp on Wednesday. Stephen Stamcoe says he's disappointed that the lightning has not engaged, excuse me, in meaningful contract talks with his UFA status looming next summer. pretty disappointed. He's 33 entering his 16th season, all with the Tampa Bay Lightning, one, two cups. He's still a 3C player. If you're Breezebois, are you picking up the phone and

signing Stephen Stamcoast right away, or do they need to start turning the page with a younger core? Like, how do you deal with the Stephen Stamcoast question? Because he's clearly still a good player, but I'm curious why he doesn't have a contract. I think it's a hard contract of fit. Yeah. What do you do? And we've seen them be cold blood. Like they cut the cord with people all the time being like,

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. It's one thing. It's one thing to be ruthless with Ryan McDonough or Andre Pallot or letting, letting people walk. And it's a whole other thing to be like, yeah, yep, thanks for everything. Like, see you later. But is that maybe that's why Stephen Stamcoast is like getting ahead of it, like trying to put the boots to Bree's ball.

a little bit being like he is not about to do this to me. Is he someone that you should sign though? Like if you're Breezeboe and you want to extend this window, like what's the case for keeping Stephen's dam question? Dom? Dom? I saw Breezebaugh's answer and I felt like it was a very savvy, smart answer. Like why not wait?

Why not wait to see what your 33-year-old franchise winger, center, whatever can still do at his age. And he was very deferential to what Stamco's can still do. We obviously think he's still a fantastic player. How that's going to look in a year's time when you might be talking a multi-year extension that is still fairly expensive. Like, that's going to be a tough sell. I think he can age pretty gracefully.

But I think the last thing Tampi wants is something like, like Ovechkin, where a lot of the points are empty calorie and he's not helping them win anymore. We thought the drop-off for Samcoast was coming the year before last. Two years ago. Yes, exactly. And it hasn't. So does that bode well for whatever comes next for him? Does it not?

As far as the contract is concerned, I don't know. But it's good to see him hold steady because he was really good last year. And the year before. And Ovechkin, by the way, to much fanfare. was in 4B. People loved that, I'm sure. But I don't think we're going to have time to get into the fourth tier, but that's fine. Because those are the top 125 skaters, and I don't care about you.

I'm just kidding. We just don't have time. To round out the third tier. Why is Connor Bedard here? He has not played in the National Hockey League. And yet he is ranked higher. And he is ranked higher. Not only is he in the top 125.

He is ranked higher than Matt Boldy, Maddie Baneers, the aforementioned Alex Ovechkin, Alex DeBrinke. I'm not saying these guys, I'm not saying like DeBrinke it and these guys are world beaters, but they actually have played in the NHL and done pretty well. So why is Connor Bredd here? Dom. Um, one of my, one of my favorite quotes, uh, I don't think we use. I'm just looking over. Yeah, we didn't use it. Someone said, because we had a Meridian 3A next to Artami Panarin. And they said, if you put Artani Panarin with WHL, how many points do you think he's getting? As many as he wants. And that was the argument against having Bidard so high. And we had a lot of pushback. Because as you know, noted to start. He has not played a single NHL game. But the idea of this is that we're trying

to project what is happening this year. And that includes an entire full season of Connor Bredd. Where do we think he lands among all of these players by season's end? And we think his season is probably going to be better than Maddie Baneers. And he'd think he's going to be on par with Matt Barzell and Clayton. No one knows what Matt Barzell. is going to do on a year-to-year basis. I know. But like, and again, they're not world beaters. I'm not saying no disrespect to Matt Brazal, but that's a hot, I mean, it's a high bar

for an 18-year-old who's never played in the NHL and is the best play for the Chicago Blackhawks. Here's, here's all say about Bedard. It's like, this whole exercise made me look at how good Connor McDavid was his freshman year. His real. His first day with his little backpack at school. He brought a lunchbox. Actually, he was one of those kids.

He was one of those kids that put all his, he put all his books in a roly bag and pun-pola-behind him. McDavid was so good as a rookie. And if you think that Boudard is of his class and he's got enough insulation around him, which it seems like he does, Taylor Hall's fine. There's, there's NHL players in the Blackhawks right now. If you think he's going to produce at a McDavid level this year, he's going to be in tier in 3C.

Okay. If not higher. If not higher. Yeah. That was the thing is. Yeah. And I will say, I'm not asking that because I am a badarde hater and I think he's going to be

terrible this season. I'm just trying to ask the questions that the kids want to know. Yeah. I talked to. Don't yell at me. Don't yell at me. He was also bearish. Talk to Scott Wheeler,

bearish. They both expected something closer to 60 points, which is. Barish. bullish. I've never heard any of it's bullish. Bullish. Bullish. Bear's bad.

Yeah, they were bearish. They were bullish. Barish, yeah. They were bullish on him getting like 80 points or what? I've never heard on anything say bearish. No, no, no, no. Bull versus bear. Yeah, bull versus bear.

I talked, we have him. Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom. Were they, were they into Connor Bedard or not into Connor Bedard without placement? They, they were not. That is what I'm saying. Okay. Oh. So.

Bear. Okay. All right. So let me start from the top here. Bullish, bearish. Haley, it's not just bullish. There's a second term. But are you saying that they thought he was too high or too low?

They thought we had him too high. Okay. Yeah, there we go. Okay. So he started high. Just say that. Don't confuse me with the animals. American stock. Also, I've got to say, you know what, I kept this in.

I didn't talk about this random shit off the top because I'm trying to be a good host and keep things on the rails. I got on elk TikTok recently. It's elk. I saw an elk video. It's elk running season. So their elks are just like

trying to find lady elks. And so they're just like running around Yellowstone National Park like switching. Why are the male elks just elks and why are the female elks lady elks? Because I called the guy. Oh. I don't know.

I don't know that much about animals. I just know it's elk running season. So the male elks are looking for laid events. Return to Badaard. His angel equivalency is extremely close to McDavid. He's higher than Matthews. He's higher than McKinnon. He's higher than Hughes.

He, from that data, is at that level. And when you look at when David did, he was, I think, third in points per game. his rookie year. Crosby was like sixth or something. That's the class of prospect Badaard is supposed to be. So that's why he started high. We talked to a lot of people.

They said, we were too bullish. And so I talked to our two prospect experts, where we promised Scott Wheeler, and they agreed that we were too bullish, and that made them bearish on Bajd, thinking something closer to 60 points was more accurate. Mm-hmm. Female elks are also known as cows.

I'm bearish on this podcast going any longer than it already has. I did so well trying to keep you to in check. You know what? I'm going to take that back. I kept myself in check today. What are you talking about? I kept, I didn't talk. I took me an hour to talk about elk talk.

The elk talk brought us that tier two. B podcast. We were like solidly tier 1C before that. I actually think it really elevated it because I think... Do you mean it elevated? Mm-hmm. That's correct. I think it really raised the level of the show because it brought in a little bit of fun. So it was a very serious set of discussions that we had, certainly. I was, um, I was wearing my more professional host hat today. Okay.

Okay. So that was the first three tiers of the top 125. I'm sorry to the tier four folks that we didn't get to. But I guess to kind of wrap it up quickly, were there any players that got put in at the last minute, like anyone in that tier four that was a late addition or anyone that got bumped out from tier four at the end that you wanted to bring up quickly?

before we end the show. The addition were Seth Jones, Dylan Cousins, John Marino. Who did we take out? And who got cut? I don't see you Trevor Zegerson here, I'm just saying. He wasn't in a discussion.

What? Why? He can't play defense. Defense is part of the game. Couturier, Coterie, Cotrillo. You make fair point. True.

Sean Cotterier got dropped because of injury issues because it's just tough to project where he's going to be this season after the last two that he's had. Dom, I don't really remember who the other ones that got bumped from Reno. I'm also losing my mind about who we bumped. It wasn't Clod Giroux. We didn't have him on the list initially. And I'd like to apologize to Senators fans everywhere because...

He was good last season. He was good last season. He maybe should be. And I think I agree with that. We probably should have had more love for. or Juru. We're sorry about that. I don't remember who we cut. That's okay.

Late editions and a palpul. Hanifins on it. Yeah, he made it. All right. It doesn't matter. This was great, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Dom.

It's going to bug me. All right. You can tweet about it after. We don't have time for this. I've got to order a pizza. Oh, is Chris Tanov. Okay. There we go.

Is there not one more? It's a great podcast. There's one more. Final five minutes are really. riveting stuff Dawson Mercer Elk running season Dawson Mercer yeah there we go

Scouts GMs AGMs Analyst said Not yet on this young man That was it Probably would have been too many Devils in there anyways Yeah

I do love the devil so Mercer Tenev and Katiré Were the three that cut the boot All right Great So if anyone Listen to this and hasn't read The Player Tears yet

You can definitely go take a look. Obviously, there's way more players in there than we talked about. 125 in four tiers. If you like the Friday show, if you want to listen to Sean and I, we will be back with another episode in the first week of October, the last episode we do before I get my wisdom teeth taken out. Oh, boy. Before I have to lay in bed and eat baby food for a week. So enjoy that well you can. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.