The Athletic Hockey Show - Which NHL offseason moves have aged the best and worst?

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

First, the guys are joined by The Athletic’s own Murat Ates to talk about Connor Hellebuyck undergoing “a minor Arthroscopic knee procedure” that will keep him out of the Winnipeg Jets lineup for four to six weeks, as well as how Jonathan Toews’s season is going so far, and which of Mark Scheifele, Connor Bedard, or Tom Wilson could end up on Team Canada at the Olympics. Plus, Mikko Rantanen’s automatic one-game suspension for consecutive game misconduct penalties and the guys take a look back at some of the offseason moves that could have gone either way and determine which have aged the best and the worst as Thanksgiving quickly approaches. Hosts: Max Bultman and Mark LazerusWith: Murat Ates and Jesse GrangerExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Chris FlanneryWatch full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowJoin our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VTm9VjkFSubscribe to The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hey, everybody, Max Bolman here alongside Mark Lazarus for another episode of the Athletic Hockey Show. Fun one on tap today. We're going to be talking about some of the best and worst aging acquisitions of the off season, at least so far. We're getting close to two months into the season here. But I want to start out, well, up north with Marat Attesh, our writer who covers the Winnipeg Jets. And Marat, one of the most important players in the NHL, of course, Connor Hellebuck, the reigning MVP. he is going to miss and announce four to six weeks after arthroscopic knee surgery.

Again, it says it all. Most valuable player, like this is not a guy that Jets can really afford to be without for long stretches. How do you think they can respond here? Well, their first two games have been losses, and I think that there's going to be a temptation to panic around the NHL or in Winnipeg about their current situation. I think that's legitimate just because of how important Connor Hellebuck is, but you'll also notice,

Winnipeg didn't score in their most recent game, a 3-0 shut out to the Minnesota Wild. So there are things that the Winnipeg Jets need to be doing better anyway, irrespective of this situation. What this gives us a chance to investigate is this myth about the Jets for the last several years. Are they just Connor Hallibuck propping up a very mediocre team? At times they have been in years past. At times more recently, it's been a great team game. but this particular version has struggled with their consistency, and now we do find out what they're really going to be about.

I kind of want to approach that from a different angle, and I'm not, let me preface this. I am not saying Connor Hellobuck is like a system quarterback here. Obviously, he is one of the best goleys in the world, has been for a long time. But for the last several years, the Winnipeg Jets backup goalies have had phenomenal numbers. Comrie in a couple of stints, Lorain Perra in a couple of stints, David Riddick in there for a year. The Jets seem like they're relatively easy to play behind, right?

Like it shouldn't be the end of the world to go six, four, six weeks without your number one goalie, given this team's history of backup goaltending, right? I think that that's ambitious if you're a Winnipeg Jets fan, but I understand what you're saying. I understand what you're saying. There is one line of thought that says their goaltending coach, Wade Flaherty, is a bit of a bit of a wizard. and people come here to take the benefits of that. But I think that evaluating Winnipeg's defense are trying to say this is an easy team to play behind or a difficult team behind to play behind varies wildly season by season.

This year, medium. Last year, they were a great team to play behind. That was a really high-quality defensive effort by a lot of people. You go back three years, four years, and that includes some of the previous backups numbers that did have good seasons, and that defense was absolutely porous. That Connor Hellebuck did drag a couple of teams within the precipice of playoffs. Now, this is like the first major injury of Hellebuck's career, right? Like, this is not a guy who misses a lot of time.

It's called a minor procedure on your knee, but if you're a goalie, nothing's minor when it comes to your knee. What do we expect from Hella Buck? What do you know about Hellebuck, having covered him for so long now, that leads you to believe that he'll be able to bounce back from this. You know, Marion Hose, you used to always say coming back from injury mid-season, like jumping on a moving train. Very difficult to do. I got to think it's even more difficult for a goalie. So much is about timing, so much is about being in the flow.

And that's what training camp is for. He's not going to have that. What is your level of concern for when Hellebuck comes back that he might not be the Hellebuck that we know? Well, I think it's reasonable to wonder about that. They have used this language. And by they, I mean the Winnipeg Jets have used this language that it's a minor knee procedure. It's a minor surgery.

and you get into a knee with a scope and it's the world's best goaltender depending on your perspective, that doesn't give me a lot of confidence as a general rule. Knees make me squeamish. Needs are an important part of a goaltending repertoire, right? That needs to work. I think the thing that I've learned, at least in thinking about this so far, is that the Jets shared with us, Scott Arneill shared with us the other day, that this is something that's been nagging Connor Hallibuck since roughly the end of training camp.

And we talk about his workload all the time, right? When he bombed in the playoffs in that series that you and I covered, Blas, one of the things we wonder about is, is this guy playing too much? Is this guy playing too much? And then to think that even with this nagging item to start this season, he wasn't number one in starts like he usually was. I think he was 14th or something like that, but he was still getting the volume,

the large volume of Winnipeg's nights and workload. And I wonder about that. I wonder if that was the right play necessarily. he can answer that when he gets healthy and when he tries to return to form. From Winnipeg's perspective, what they've got to do is make the playoffs and pray, right? They have to get to that threshold and they're below it as of today and hope that his January, if that's bad, well, hey, he's got the Olympics. And if those are bad, then he's got March and April.

And that by the time that playoffs come around, he'll be at his best. And that's the bet that the Winnipeg Jets are making with this timeline. And you can also make a pretty strong case that the workload he's had, Laz, is one of the reasons for kind of the trend you were alluding to of how good their backups have been. When Connor Hellebuck's taking on such a big workload and you can kind of feed your, keep your backups so fresh, feed them like the starts you really want them to take and put them in a situation to put them in a situation. That helps a lot. Let's talk about the guy who's stepping into it in Eric Comrie because I don't know what the league, because Connor Hellebuck is who he is, has really ever had to pay too much attention to the Winnipeg Jets backup goalie situation. but here's what I know about Eric Comrie from having covered him for all of one very funny week in Detroit where they claimed him on waivers and then lost him on waivers.

Probably one of the five nicest human beings I've ever met, Marlon. Yeah, I would put him up there as well. I remember talking to Paul Maurice about him when he was new. And we had this conversation where both of us were wondering, and Paul Maurice brought this up. Like, when he met Eric Comrie, he had to ask himself, is this real? Can a guy be this nice? Or is he putting this on just because I'm the. coach. And then he said over the next few years, he realized to wait a second, no, Eric Comrie

doesn't have that ability to, to, I guess, lie about who he is. That's just who he's always been. And that's been my experience in the years covering him as well. He's, he's one of the sweet ones in the NHL. Let's let's pull back a little wider on Winnipeg here. You know, Nikolai Ehlers and the hurricanes just swept through, kind of a reminder of what this team is missing. There's so much to like about this Jets team, but they are slow. This is not a, this is a very fast league now and the Winnipeg Jets just do not play a fast style. Can you win with that kind of lack of footspeed in the modern day NHL? Are the Jets concerned about that in any way? Well, you can win sometimes. They do have 12 wins on the season and they've been able to

pull that off despite being the slowest team in the NHL or second slowest team in the NHL part of me. If you look through the NHL edge data and compare it all as Dom did and then I went and looked and saw how poorly Winnipeg ranked, which you probably don't need a chart to tell. I think that there are ways that a team built like the Winnipeg Jets can win, and one of them requires all of the decisions that they make in all three zones to be fast and effective in a way that their overall foot speed is not. And what I mean by that, if you can kickstart a puck retrieval by making the right decision where one defenseman relieves pressure to the other.

That defenseman kickstarts a breakout. His winger is in the exact right spot. That works well. The transition game is a well-willed machine and get into the... Like, there are ways where if the decisions are efficient, that works. But the Winnipeg Jets are running a third pairing right now that they can't trust and they don't get breakout passes from... I'm going to say a third of their defenseman right now.

It's off the glass and out. There's a lot of dusting it off. There's a lot of those moments where you're wondering, like, that defenseman's just running behind the net to hide for a moment and everything has to start again. The Jets used to be wave over wave against teams, and that's more than Nikolai Elyer's being really fast. It was the fact that they were able to make great decisions all the way up the ice. I think that they can be an above average team, a good team this year at this pace, but they've got to figure out some puck management issues, and that probably takes cleaning up some defense as well. Yeah, the bar is so much higher for execution and the margin of error is so much narrower when you don't have the speed to make up for mistakes defensively and offensively, right?

If you're not precise with the puck and you're going up against a team that's faster than you and just about everybody's faster than them, you just really need to be so precise. It's asking a lot of this team. Yeah, I think that's the perfect way to put it. The margin for error disappears in a way. Like you have, there are so many different ways to win a hockey game. And by not being faster than the opponents, you've given yourself a zero. out of 10 in that one score, right?

Like, that way is not the way that you're going to win unless it's Kyle Connor on one particular play. So that is not an option. I'd also say, though, in playoff hockey, sometimes teams pack the house so well that the slower teams do win. Connor McDavid couldn't get to the middle against Florida in game seven. And there are ways, right? It's just you have to be really unbelievably good at everything else.

And Winnipeg, as of late, has not been unbelievably good. just been one of the mid-tier teams of the NHL. Let's talk about Jonathan Taves here, who's one of the more interesting players in the league this season, a guy who was away from hockey for years, comes back in. How have you seen him kind of take back up to the NHL grind and what it takes to play an 82 game schedule? The first thing I did at his very first training camp practice was call Laz and say, hey, he looks like he belongs.

He's not washed. He's a real NHL player in this group of NHL players. He didn't stand out, but, you know, as we were talking, you're like, well, that is a story in and of itself, right? There's a version of this comeback where that was it and that was all that could happen based on his health. So then next steps, it's been a game by game situation where he would do something clever in game one or two. A reporter would ask coach Scott Arniel, hey, it doesn't that mean that? he's great and Arneill would sort of pump the brakes on that and say, we're not really evaluating this guy yet.

This is an April player. This is a give this guy some time kind of deal. And I think that's wise. He was buried in his own zone for, you know, 35% shot metrics to start the season. It's only in the last four or five games where that's turned around. And that's partly because the jets have gotten healthy around him. But Jonathan Taves, man, he is a clever, clever player. if I can keep going on just on just him.

His internal computer of what the next play is going to be might be the best I've ever seen. Might be like his sense of, okay, this scrum is happening. Where do I need to be positioned? His sense of this defenseman is leaning this way. That stick's going to move and a lane's going to open up. I think is absolutely elite still.

And it's just a matter of foot speed and execution that's costing that brain a chance to be a real driver at this league in this league. Yeah, I mean, the Jets are being outscored 15 to 6 at 5 on 5 with him on the eyes. I think putting him as a 2C was just, it was way too big of an ass for a guy who hadn't played in a couple of years. But with Lowry back, are they kind of rethinking the way they're using him now as the Jets get healthier? Is the burden on him a little less now? You know, yes and no.

Right off the hop, it wasn't. You look at the minutes and Jonathan Taves was still very much the second line center. Adam Lowry was the third, which is interesting because last year, one of the things a lot of people don't know is Adam Lowry was Winnipeg's second line center if you go by minutes. People talked about the Eilers line as the second line. It wasn't if you add it all up at the end of the day. Lowry did so much

work for the Winnipeg Jets and I think for them to have success again. They need him back from hip surgery up and running dominating minutes against top competition because you can't give up a 15 to 6 lead with your other center. The other thing I've got to say though is that

Tave's line mates to start the year. One of them was you'd stay able to Nick Kita Chibokov, a rookie who's not there yet. A lot of plays died, and it wasn't just Taves killing them. You know what I mean? There was a lot going on around him. He had a line in the last few games with Cole Perfetti and Vladislav Nemesnikov that actually did win the shot metrics, though they continued to get scored on.

And then most recently, Adam Lowry and Jonathan Taves have switched spots, and you may see Lowry become the second line center and Taves fall to third, where I think a lot of people think is most reasonable for them. All right. So that's Winnipeg's second and third center. Let's broaden out here. We're going to talk about their top center now, Mark Schifley, and broaden out and talk about Team Canada here because as guys who were not on Team Canada last year ago, he's making

one of the very strongest cases to be on that team this time around. 100%. He got as close as Next Man Up last year, right? And the story in Winnipeg is that when he got quote unquote snubbed or simply just didn't make the initial line. March Schifley went on an absolute heater last year, starting in about November through the Four Nations face-off. And a lot of people had counted this player out, said in his mid-thirty, early 30s,

he's not going to produce like he used to. There were a lot of questions even then about the Winnipeg Jets and his ability to lead them offensively. He crushed it. He covered that off, more than cover that off. Started this season on that same exact tear. He's one of the league's points leaders. He's up there on the table, not number one or two.

or anything like that. And the big question for me is, can that player make Team Canada when there are so many other brilliant offensive players who are known for better two-way play? Even if there's, even if I can tell you, I watch games where Shifley is a great defensive center,

I don't think he has done that consistently enough throughout his career to have won you guys over or Team Canada brass over as, hey, we can play him on the third or fourth line and play him against Austin Matthews and life will be fine. Well, this is where we're at with Team Canada, though, right?

We've been talking for two months now as the season's gone on about, this guy's got to make Team Canada, and this guy's got to make Team Canada. Connor Bredar's got to make Team Canada. McLeodaghs got to make Team Canada. Morgan Geeky leads the league in goals, and he's not going to make Team Canada.

Tom Wilson has, you know, 21 points and 11 goals and 22 games. He's 14th among Canadians. Like, Shifley has, well, what, 11 goals, 17 assists in 21 games? He's on the bubble. This is an insane. difficult team to make. And the question is, it's going to come down to do they want guys like,

you know, and Anthony Sorrelli? Do they want a Brandon Hagle and Seth Jarvis who could play a certain role in kill penalties and play more defensively? Or do they just want to load up with the very best players in the league right now? Because some of the guys who we thought were locks are not among the 12 best forwards, Canadian forwards in the league right now. And I just don't know what kind of team Canada wants to build here. Do they just want to load up? Because then Schifley's got to be there. Baddard's got to be there. Celebrini's got to be there. Giki's got to be there. But that's going to come at the expense of guys who are established, who have won with Team Canada in the past,

and who play perhaps more well-rounded games. I don't know that Canada is the country that goes against the group of players that they've won with before. I think that one of the lessons you learn as a Canadian is that the brass chooses players that they've won with. And because there are so many great players in Canada, from Canada, that usually works out just fine. I'm not like Tom Wilson,

wouldn't that be a pretty dramatic overreaction to that everybody drops the gloves game with the kichucks and everything like that at four nations? Are we really expecting Olympic hockey to follow that same? It will not. I'm expecting that it will be the very opposite of that, right? Double IHF officiating is so different from NHL. Like I think Tom Wilson's a really good player

who belongs on the bubble on merit. And I think if you take him, you're asking for trouble because if you get a flying elbow in the wrong game, you're going to put yourself in a really tough spot. And like, so I'm with you, Marat. Like, I think you could bring him and be like, oh, we'll see what the Cucks did.

You got to have someone to counter that. And if you do, I think you're asking for trouble. I think so. I think penalty minutes are going to be one of those things that cost teams and in a small tournament like that. I also understand, like, Team Canada has generally, they got scorched for a player named Rob Zaminor at 98 in Nagano, right? I don't know if you guys, if this is part of your lore as Americans,

but this is something we grow up in Canada being like, why did they take Rob Zamner? He was a checking center. That's why they... And I don't know that they go down that road again exactly, but I can definitely imagine Team Canada being scared of running Celebrini Bedard Shifley as their fourth line. Even though they play against top defensemen every single night,

top forwards every... Like, you, Laz, you tell us, Can Chicago shelter Connor Bedard? That's not how these guys play. He went up against Nathan McKinnon's line on Sunday night and did very well against it. He's a much better, well-rounded player than people think. But again, there's just so many guys.

This isn't like Team USA bringing Justin Abdelcator to the World Cup in 2016. We're talking about elite, like Tom Wilson is an elite player. Brandon Hagle, Seth Jarvis, these are fabulous hockey players. It's just do you take the 12 best? or do you create the best team? This is always the decision you have to make when you're an Olympic general manager. It's difficult.

You can make Canada look good in so many different ways. And I say that with a little bit of patriotism in it, for sure. I think that Team Canada has a huge wealth of players to choose from. So you can probably make the wrong decision, the quote unquote wrong decision still come away with a gold medal contender

based on who's driving the bus for that team. Right? Like, geez, you can argue about Seth Jarvis, who I just had a front row seat for against Carolina Winnipeg played them a couple days ago. The wheels on that young man and the way that he can forecheck. And I believe in that player as a penalty killing selection, if that's the rude team Canada goes. And if you put Mark Schifley there and Seventh Jarvis somehow misses the team, I'm like, well, you know what? I've seen Sheifley carry the offensive mail for the Winnipeg Jets so many times. I also think that's a good idea that contributes to a good,

good Olympic hockey. We're going to do a whole, a whole episode on Canada coming up here soon and, and well, on the Olympics, I should say, coming up here soon. But to me, the bubble guys are the ones that you have the pace question on. It's Brad Marchand, it's Mark Stone. It's Sam Bennett, I think probably the most vulnerable in this regard, even though he was a huge piece of the back-to-back defending cup champs.

And I think to Morat's point, like, when you've seen a guy win, it gives you a lot of good feelings about him. But that to me is the one that you got to watch, is the pace guys. And I think all these guys that we're talking about can play at pace, and that's the best thing they have going for them. I think that's it. I worry about Brad Marchand on Team Canada, but he's played with Sid Crosby and had success with him for so many years.

That's exactly right. And what that brings it back to is the guys who make these decisions are human beings. And if you've tapped, you know, like I think about this with Jonathan Taves in Winnipeg, if Scott Arniel has the opportunity to tap the jersey 19 and the nameplate Taves in front of him, he's seen that guy have so much success so many times, is that the fact that, okay, maybe one offensive play isn't going to happen because he can't turn the corner on somebody doesn't really occur to him. The feeling you get is the same thing when you've seen it for over a decade.

Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break right there. We're going to come back. Thank you, Murat, for joining us. We will talk soon after the break with Jesse Granger about the worst and the best aging deals of this off season. All right, we are back and we are joined now by Jesse Granger. And I want to start here. We talked in the first segment about one central division powerhouse in the Winnipeg Jets.

Let's move to Dallas here. And Miko Rantan is very much in the news right now. He gets suspended after consecutive misconducts, Las. This is not really how I see Miko Rantanin as a player as someone who's a suspension risk. It's an automatic one, obviously. Different hits. What do you make of the whole Miko Rantanan saga right now? Look, I don't think Miko Ranton is a dirty player, but these were two dirty hits.

Like, they were bad. The Coronado one in particular, you know, he was lining them up right in the numbers, swung the elbow out and was ready to drive it into the numbers. Like, there's no excuse for that kind of hit. The Romanov one is a little farther from the boards, but perhaps even more dangerous because of that. And I don't like the, it's a consistency issue, right? Like, I don't like that the NHL regulates the injury, but that's what they often do. If a guy gets hurt, the suspension is worse.

Well, Romanov's out for pretty much the season now, and Miko Ranton is missing one game kind of by default because of an obscure rule that very few of us even heard about. I just don't, it feels kind of like a cop-out to not suspend him for further for having two hits like this in a three-game span, one of which the Coronado one, which he was not heard on, was really, really egregious.

I don't know, this felt like a multiple game suspension to me, and it feels like the NHL is kind of hiding behind this rule. Yeah, I think with me, the Coronado one, at best what you can say is he maybe thought that Coronado was going to turn into a different way. Like usually when you hear a guy defend, it's that, oh, the guy turned at the last second. This was almost the opposite. The only defense would be he thought he was going to turn. And I think it's flimsy.

I think that's one where you kind of got to just take accountability for, you know, yourself and your body and your hit. And it's just one that I have a hard time seeing the explanation for. So it's probably a little bit of a reason. I have more patience for the one that's farther away from the boards. I don't know that you always know how a guy's going to, when you're bumping someone that far away, you don't necessarily know how it's going to go. You can probably see that play fairly often. But I don't know, Jesse, what do you think?

Yeah, for me, the first one on Romanov, I was kind of defending him a little just because, like you mentioned, you don't know how the guy's going to fall. I also thought Rantan looked off balance, like out of control. Now, that's not an excuse for an illegal hit, but it's, I don't think it was malicious. I could see a world where he was just off balance and kind of out of control, like lost control. like lost control of himself and hit the guy. Whereas the Coronado one, and plus you add in the fact that he had just had all the spotlight from the one hit. And now the Coronado one was obviously a dirty hit.

He was lining him up from a long ways away, like Mark said. So yeah, I was very shocked at the Coronado one. The first one I was like, yeah, that's renting. He's a big guy. He throws his body around. Sometimes you're going to lose, you're going to hit somebody in a way you're not expecting to. The Coronado one was very out of character for me for him.

But that's what I'm talking about, though. There's a cumulative effect here, right? We talk about players with a history. And Rantanin is not a guy with a history of a dirty play. But when this happens twice in a week, I feel like the NHL needs to step up and say, whoa, dial it down a little bit here. And that means more than a one-game suspension in November.

One game is not that big of a deal. I'm sure it feels like a big deal to Miko Rantanin, but it's a much bigger deal to Romanov into Coronado. And you guys are kind of, you know, little kind of pushy-footing around the Romanov hip. But those are so dirty. When you hit a guy low and he's already crouching and he's at around the goal line, he's going face first or shoulder first into the boards every single time.

Those are almost more dangerous than when you just sandwich a guy up against the boards because he's got forward momentum carrying his face basically into the boards. Like the risk of concussion, the risk of a shoulder injury, the risk of breaking your face is very high when you board a guy from that far away. It's almost more dangerous. Yes. It's definitely more dangerous. If he goes down.

But at least some of the time you're pulling. pushing him that far because you're trying to push him upright into the glass. He was already kind of going down. Like his body position said like if you hit me here, I'm going to get killed. And Miko Ranton, it went right through him anyway. Yeah. Well, obviously that's why Patrick Wahl was upset. And that was quite the moment.

I don't know if we want to talk about that or not. But two in a row for Miko Ranton in it becomes a trend now, right? Like anything that I, that Jesse or I could say about the Romanov hit kind of gets washed out by the fact that one game later, it's the same thing. actually, I would say a little worse with Coronado. So something to watch with Miko Raton, and I would imagine, to your point, as this is not a track record situation for him, I don't expect we're going to see a ton of this going forward. But it is now.

Now he's got the track record. If this happens again, you know, then you've got to throw the book at the guy, right? You've got to tell him, like, this is, you're a big dude. He's a big, strong dude and a good skater. So he can crush people this way if he chooses to. He could be a Tom Wilson out there. He's going to have to dial it back because now the track record's there. That's exactly what I was wondering is like.

If you're Dallas, I almost would rather them give him, like, throw the book at him now. Give him the, whatever, three games, five games other than just this one automatic game. Because now he does have the reputation. If this happens again later in the season when the games mean more, I could see the NHL giving him a longer suspension just because, like you said, now he has the trend, the track record. Quick poll, how many of us knew that consecutive misconducts was an automatic suspension? This was new to me. Not me. No idea.

Always fun when you can discover a new rule through the course of the year. Our producer, Chris, actually did some research on this, and maybe Stars fans will get a kick, I don't know, out of this. It's only happened three times that we could find. All of them were to players on the Dallas Stars. So interesting little tidbit. I don't know that there's any causation there. The main thing that we wanted to talk about today is the moves from this off season

that are aging best and worst. And we're going to start with, let's start with the ones actually that are aging the worst here because there's one in particular that I want Jesse's opinion on. And that's John Gibson in Detroit. I think Red Wings fans are really dissatisfied with Gibson's play. He's an 870 save percentage. Jesse, I'm sure you have a little more on the advanced stats front for this. But it's a tough one because I don't think all the goals that are going in on Gibson are like no doubt or soft goals.

There's some tips. There's some point shots that were screened that I'm sure are hurting the goals they have expected. But you get to 21 games into the season and it's an 870. there's not that many other things you can look to besides that. It kind of takes up all the air. Yeah, it's, I feel very similarly to you in that when I watch Detroit games, he isn't giving up a bunch of soft goals. Like this isn't a team that's defending incredibly well and the goal he's killing them

because he's giving up these goals that you just cannot give up. But there are some goals that are tough saves. They're like, they aren't easy saves that he should make, but they're tough saves that you need a goalie to make. And that when you trade for a John Gibson, the way Detroit did, thinking he can get them over the top, get them into the playoffs, be the guy. He's not making those types of saves, at least not enough of them.

I think you can ask for more from him. Obviously, the 870 save percentages is miserable. He's had a lot of, like, pucks getting tipped in front of him, chaos in front of him. And I think that for me, that's like the biggest worry here is that is he going to be able to control the game? Because when I think of high-end goal, he's like Jeremy Swayman this year to me, is the best example of a positive example of this. He has looked phenomenal and he controls the game.

He's controlling rebounds. He's absorbing shots. He's, we can't absorb them. He's kicking him into the corners. Whereas Gibson, I feel like he's making his own job more difficult because he's not controlling these rebounds as well as he can. And that's not necessarily been a strength of his. He's kind of an old school guy who makes saves in like untraditional ways.

Like he's, he's one of the last kind of guys, like a little bit like Mark Mark Andre Fleury was. Doesn't do it as successfully as Mark Andre Fleury. but I worry, is he going to be able to control the puck and settle things down and not have to make these saves? Because at this age, I don't think he's acrobatic enough to make those spectacular saves that sometimes you have to make when you get that chaos in front of you. Here's the thing about John Gibson. He hasn't been very good for a long time now. Like, he had a decent year last year.

And I think the goal union there, like you and Jesse and your cohorts have been quick to write it off. Oh, he's a great goalie behind a bad team, right? He's not his fault. But this guy hasn't really had a great year since 2018-19. He's like an 895 goalie since then. This is a number of years now. Is it possible Detroit saw what he did early in his career and just assumed he could get back to that

and that all of his struggles were just a ducks problem when really Gibson's been part of the problem? Yes, it is possible. I mean, the Red Wings have been fairly desperate to upgrade. And I think, you know, they've tried so many different places, right? They tried Alex Nadelcovich. They tried Vili Huso. So, you know, they brought in Camp Talbot.

I think Camp Talbot's been probably their most successful goalie acquisition of recent years. But this has been basically a decade problem for them looking for a guy. And I think when you see what John Gibson has done in his career, you can certainly tell yourself that story. As much as I would love admittance to the goalie union last, I am not part of it. I think they would reject me roundly. I think if anything, I'm a little bit of the other side. Maybe goalie management kind of thing on that side of the bargaining. So I'll let Jesse take over here.

but I think it's very possible, Les. Yeah, and I also think you, playing behind that bad of a defense can kind of erode at your game. And like, I think it actually, like, that was the, like, part of the reason John Gibson's game has gotten worse is you start cheating on plays. You start, you don't trust your defense. Like, in any situation, you're reading the play, you're reading the chant, the threat of the shot in front of you and the pass behind you.

And as a goal, you have to focus on that shot in front of you. But if the team regularly lets the backdoor pass, you're going to eventually. eventually start to creep back into your net a little deeper along your goal line. You're going to start to flatten out, getting ready for that pass. And those are just bad habits that creep into your game. And when the NHL's as fast as it is, just tiny little details like that. We're talking your skate blade is an inch further backwards than it should be. Now you're not square to the puck.

And now that shot that you would normally save is getting by your glove. And he has been beat by a lot of shots. I will say that. That's the other thing. And like John Gibson plays a, he plays out of his crease. He plays with a lot of depth. Usually those types of goalies don't get beat by a ton of shots because you are cutting off the angle so much. The fact that he's been getting beat by shots is worrisome.

My question, though, and this is probably for Max because you follow the team more closely, I know the team is backing him now, and I know it's still early, and they obviously committed to him, so you're not going to jump shipping this quickly. But it's been getting worse lately. And Trey Augustine is looking really good in Michigan State, and COSA is still sitting there in the HL. like at what point do they give one of these young guys a chance, like to prove like specifically COSA because he's more in the position to do it right now.

How long do you wait before you give that guy a chance to prove that he that he can play better? Because like you said, Gibson hasn't played well. Talbot's been better, but still I think he's below a 900. It's not, his numbers haven't been great. I would say Talbot's pretty influenced by one disaster game on Long Island. I wonder what it would look like if he took that out early in the season. It's everything so sensitive. I think Talbot's been really steady.

On COSA, I think the answer is just a little bit longer, right? Like I think you're not going to go away from John Gibson after six weeks here, right? Like he was your big offseason acquisition, even if it hasn't worked out. Well, you kind of need him to work out if you're going to go anywhere. And so you're going to give him, I think, every opportunity to do that. And COSA's had a good start at six games. We just saw him in the preseason and one was clearly better than the other, right? And so you're going to give Gibson as much opportunity as you can possibly justify.

especially while you're in a playoff race. If you fall out of it, you know, I still think you're going to see COSA this year. But it's not something I think you can rush to do. I think you kind of have to let it happen organically. At least Detroit has some options. If you go to another team that we're talking about the worst offseason decisions, you've got to go to Edmondon and their decision not to add at goalie. They're fourth worst in the league and goals against.

They're still a top three power play. They still got two of the best players in the world. And they're a middling team because they got crappy goaltending. Stuart Skinner is an 885. Calvin Pickards in 851. Jesse, what can they do? What's out there? Laurent Reisois is practicing with the Blackhawks right now.

He is starting to get, he's still a ways away, but he is on the ice. He exists. You've got to do something if you're Edmonton, don't you? Yes. And I mean, even if I've been saying this for a while now, even if you can't find a goalie who is a clear upgrade over Stuart Skinner, because those are not easy to find. Like, we're talking top 20 goalie in the world and teams that have those don't

want to trade them. you've got to at least add another goalie who, like, Calvin Pickard is a great guy. He's a great teammate. He's a professional as a backup. The players love playing for him. His technique is not good enough. I just,

I think he's an A.H.L. goalie, and I would want to add a high-end backup if I can't add, like, UC Soros to me is the dream scenario. I don't know if Nashville has any interest in trading him. They appear like they're not going to be ready to win until UCSaurus's prime is over and he's not good enough to do it. So if I were the Predators, I would be trying to cash out while his value is high.

If he plays behind this team a couple more seasons, he's going to be John Gibson. He's going to be in that situation. So if I was the Oilers, I would really be looking hard at that. If Nashville has no interest in trading him, then there's nothing you can do there. I would be looking more towards in Boston, Eunice Corpusallo. His numbers aren't great, but man, when I watch him, he has looked good. I think the eye test, I think he passes the eye test more than he does the number so far this season. And like Max was saying, early in the year, a couple bad games can kind of ruin a goalie's numbers.

I would be looking at players like that if I was Edmonton. I don't know if Boston's interested in trading him. Corpus all has got quite a big contract. So it's not like it's super cheap to add him. But I think a goalie like him could flourish behind a talented Edmonton team. It's really incredible. If you just took, you say, Saros and added him to Edmont. Everyone's so down on Edmonton right now, you put Saros to everyone's like, oh, they're going to the Stanley Cup final again.

It's such an obvious. you very rarely, like, it was like Colorado needs a second line center. You very rarely have these like the most obvious need imaginable. And if the oilers just had a good goalie and Saros is the only great, potentially great goalie out there, you add him whatever it costs almost. And they instantly become a Stanley Cup favorite again. Right. And like I, when I, I tweeted it out and I got a lot of, well, they can't fit it on the salary

cap. And I'm like, but you are the same fans on Twitter that are so upset when the Golden Knights make 17 trades a season. And you're all like, well, the cap doesn't matter for them. that's the point. Make it work. You can, if you want, if the Edmonton Oilers really want UC Saros and the predators are willing to train, they can make it work. We'll give you, I don't know how many years in advance you're allowed to trade draft picks. Whatever that limit is, that's how many first round picks will give you.

And we'll give you whatever contract you want. It's like, just do it. And then if you win a Stanley Cup with Connor McDavid and UC Saros, who gives a crap about all those first round draft picks? We've talked about all the parity in the East and how hard it's going to make it on teams to find any separation, to feel any safety. There's 16 teams in the Eastern Conference. Where would the Edmonton Oilers rank on teams bothered by the East's parody? Because one thing it's going to do is clog up their potential trade options. You know, you guys talk about sorrow.

So that's one out west. But like if the Islanders were not like looking like a potential playoff team, maybe we're having that same conversation about Ilya Sorokin. Are we talking about Archer Seelovs on the Pittsburgh Penguins, who's having a pretty good year, but the penguins are still right there. Yeah. And that's another guy. Like, if the penguins were bad, Sheelovs isn't, again, the Vancouver gave them away for free.

They, like, they didn't ask for a king's ransom from him, and Edmonton had no interest. I don't understand why they're so satisfied with this goalie tandem that has proven that they aren't good enough. Yeah. We can probably have a similar conversation on not doing enough on the Toronto Maple Leafs. I think we kind of did it with Shana a week ago, so we can speed run that one, I guess. But it does feel like this is a team that, you know, I know options were limited. they got one of the worst case scenarios out of it all. Well, they lost the best player available in Mitch Marger and then didn't really do anything to add to it.

So you take a team that was stagnant and make it worse. And hey, why are we a bottom five team in the league? I don't understand. It's, you know, it's GMing 101. And I keep going to the goaltending, but that's, to me, that's the difference. They got elite goaltending last year from a pair that isn't like, they didn't come out of nowhere. Oh my gosh, I can't believe they're good. But nobody expected Anthony Stolars to have the season.

he had Joseph Wall had an excellent season. Now all of a sudden, Wall's been missing for most of the year. Now he's come back a little bit. Stolars isn't playing at the elite level he is. And now those, when your goalies are playing the way they did last year, it covers up errors that you just don't notice because the goalies are making up for it. And now of a sudden, the goalies aren't making up for it. And you're seeing a lot more flaws on that team.

Yeah. Another one we talked about before, St. Louis trading away, Zach Bullduke for Logan Mayu. That one obviously when May you get sent down, like that's, probably the leading candidate for toughest move of the year. It does help slightly, I guess, that Bullduk's not letting the world on fire in Montreal. But I think right now, if you could get an undo, you're hitting that button if you're Doug Armstrong. I did think it was funny that JR when we did our All 32 on what's the, what's the trade you most regret as in a franchise?

JR went right to this one. He went to Folding for May. That might have been a little bit of recency bias there. But I love just how when things are so bad in the St. Louis are like, well, if only we had Zach Boldew, we'd be fine. That's just how bleak things are right now in Missouri. Everything would be solved. All right, let's take quick break right there. I'll be right back with some of the moves that have aged best early on this season.

All right, we are back. Jesse had to run out to morning skate for Golden Knights Mammoth tonight. So we're going to do the best aging acquisitions of the offseason so far, Lazz, with just you and I. And let's start here. I mean, we'll take out the obvious. We'll take out Mitch Marner. We'll take out Nick Eilers. These are the ones that kind of had to work.

But of the ones that- The Panthers re-signing Bennett and Marshand and. Everyone. Like, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Of the ones that kind of could have gone either way, is there one that stands out to you is like, wow, that that looks really good two months later? You know, I know it happened earlier, but like the Chris Kreider trade for Anaheim is just,

we all wrote him off. You had one down season in New York. You had 22 goals, which isn't even that bad. And we all wrote him off. I know he's in his mid-30s, but this is still one of the fastest guys in league and just pure straight line speed. And he's on a team with guys that can keep up. up with him. And he's got, what, 10 goals and 18 games, even after he's on a little bit of a,

he's cooled off a little bit, these last handful of games, but he's still just producing so much. Top line winger, he's power play one. And look, his shooting percentage is high, but his shooting percentage is always high because that's his game. He's around the net. He's one of those guys that's just going to score on a quarter of his shots or a fifth of his shots just because he puts himself in the right positions with the tips and the rebounds. I know the Rangers felt like they had to do something, but Chris Kreider would look pretty good on the New York Rangers right now, and it looks really good on the Anaheim Ducks. Well, it's true of both former Rangers that Pat Verbeekwinton got, and he took a lot of crap from people saying, like, oh, you let the Rangers

off the hook too easy by giving them anything for contracts they had to move. When I've seen the ducks live twice this year. And in both games, Chris Kreider and Jacob Trubo were like legitimate positive impact guys on the game. So that those are both working out very well. I know Trubo was last year, but yeah, I think Crider's a great shout. One of the ones that first came into my mind. This is the second year in a row that the Buffalo Sabres are getting a little bit of like, and I told you so moment here on a trade. And this one was not one that I saw coming. The JJ Paturka for Josh Don and Michael Kesselring won. But Josh Dohn's production is nearly identical to what J.J. Paturka has done for the mammoth. He's doing it obviously for much cheaper.

You got Michael Kesselring. And Done is much more the player type that the sabers have been missing. Well, that's right. I mean, Peturka and Done have been basically a wash, right? But it's cheaper. and you get a legitimate defenseman in the group. Kessler Wings got that big shot. He's eating up a lot of minutes. He's, it's a two for one. You trade one guy, get basically the same guy back, and a viable defenseman on top of it.

It's a great move. And the Sabres were just kind of starting to see them, kind of get their feet underneath them after that horrible start. I don't think this is a playoff team still, but they're a better team because of this trade and Don's a very exciting player for them. Yeah, I don't think they're a playoff team either, but it's just when, if they ever are.

I don't even know if we could say when right now. Josh Done seems like the kind of guy who's going to be better suited to it than J.J. Paturka, too. And that's rhymes to the Ryan McLeod trade from a year ago where you trade away Matthew Savoy and you get back Ryan McLeod. Ryan McLeod consistently when I see the Sabres is one of their most important players. It's really interesting when you think Don at Paturka, they're both 23. I think they have almost the exact same stat line this year.

Like it's a weird trade in that respect until you factor in the, you know, the kessering of it all. And just it's making the team deeper. It's making them more well-rounded. and you didn't really take any step back by losing a very good player in J.J. Petirka, you very rarely see trades like that where both teams get a guy that they're happy with. An actual hockey trade. God forbid, you get an actual hockey trade. That's not just for futures. We want to see more of this.

Sandwich in the middle of it is a really bad hockey trade or one that looks really bad right now, and that's the cousins for Josh Norris one. But, you know, injury is obviously a driving factor of that. So we'll move on from there. Colorado, Victor, all of a sudden. I mean, Colorado has been the story of the year. I think I'm now of the opinion that everyone just goes to Colorado. It's at that Carolina level now where it's like,

oh, they're going to go there and they're going to be amazing. Happen with Marty Natchez. Now it's happening with Victor Olifson. Yeah, and he's playing on that third line with, I think, Jack Drury and Parker Kelly. And this is the problem with the avalanche in recent years is they've been top-heavy, right? They got two amazing lines or one and a half amazing lines. They address that hole at second-line center with Brock Nelson.

Now they got some scoring depth, some actual scoring depth. Someone on that third line that can score. I think he's got, what, six goals already? He's got 15 points. This is what they've missed. They've been top heavy on the back end. They've been top heavy up front. They're getting great goaltending.

And now they have some scoring depth to go with it. That's how you go this far into the season with one regulation loss. They look just absolutely phenomenal right now. Yeah, I think right now they have to be the cup favorite. I mean, they're. Oh, no question. Yeah. They're, I mean, I know it was a close game against Chicago,

but they've taken some really good teams and humbled them so far this year. Yeah, and you got two goalies that are just playing out of their minds in Blackwood and Wedgwood. I don't know how sustainable that. That is, the Wedgwood is kind of playing over his skis right now. But when you got that team in front of you, this is probably the best start we've seen since the Bruins had their record setting year, since the Blackhawks in 2013 went 210 and 3. That's the kind of start we're talking about it. You don't see teams go this far into the season.

We're at Thanksgiving week, and they got one loss, one real loss. I mean, it's kind of incredible what they're doing. One regulation loss, they've won nine in a row, a lot of good things going on in Colorado. How about Trevor Zegris? I mean, we talked about some guys that the Ducks brought in. Trevor Zegris in Philly looks like quite the reclamation process there. God, wouldn't it have been fun to see him on this Anaheim team, though, to see him like with his offensive creativity on a team that's this offensive-minded,

see what Joel Quenville could have done with him as a player. But yeah, no, he's been a great fit. Philadelphia seems to have toned him down. I don't know how that happens. It's not like he's playing for John Tortorella, but it's working there. They've reined him in without stuyter. which is what the whole concern was.

If you, if you, if you, if you reign in his personality and his style, will he still be able to produce? Well, he is. He's the best player on that team right now. He's making Mitchcoff slower start a little more palatable because he's another young guy that's producing at a high level. He's been a great fit there. And I think all of us were like, that's going to be a terrible fit when that trade happened.

We were all expecting that to be a horrible trade. And it's been quite the opposite. It is an interesting what if you talk about like, you know, seeing him with Joel Quinville. Like, I think he needed a fresh start. Could Quinville have been the fresh start is a valid question? But what we know is he went to Philly and he got it. And he's returned to being something like the Trevor Zegris that we knew from his rookie year and even the second year.

And the key to that is that he's been that player productivity wise. I think without, I didn't even really mind that he was pissing people off in that way. I loved it. I loved it. But it's come without some of the kind of like outside stuff that I think people would term a distraction. Right. And so there's been no distraction. It's just pure, uncut, good hockey from Trevor Zegrois.

Yeah. And when you're playing well, it's easier to behave, right? It's easier to play within yourself and not be a distraction because things are going well. But I hope he gets, I like when he's a pain in the ass. I like he was out there stirring it up. I want to see more of that from him. Yeah.

And I think this is, it's important for the flyers that Trevor Zegris is hitting because they needed a guy like this. I know right now he's playing on the wing in the middle six. And so like, yeah, ideally in a perfect world, he would have come in and been this point per game center for them. Either way it goes, they needed high-end talent there based on where they've been picking. I mean, they have Porter Martone on the way. Obviously, they have Mitch Cove in the fold. They could be on their way to having one of the more dynamic winger groups in the NHL. I'm sure they'd love the center, but what they needed was just the talent. And so he's a big infusion of that at a very

still young age. Yeah, they're kind of almost in that Detroit style where it's like they never really got the top two or three pick. They were always picking kind of in the bottom half of the top 10. And you could get a lot of good players that way, but you don't really necessarily get the generational guys that really changed the entire, you know, direction of your franchise from that position. So getting a guy like Zegaris to add to that mix, he's still a young guy. I think he's what, 23, 24. I mean, he's been around forever. These guys come into league at 1819 and we think they're so old and it's like, oh, God, this guy's still a young guy. So the ceiling is still very, very high for him over there. Can I give you my answer to this question, the better offseason acquisition

so far that I did not expect to be giving at all. Okay. Corey Perry to the Kings. This has been a match made in heaven. And it's bizarre because it feels like Kings fans don't even want it to be because of all the memories in Anaheim. Cory Perry's been quietly huge for the Kings. Hey, he's second on the team and goals.

He's, you know, this is what he does now. He's on the fourth line, doesn't play a ton of minutes, but he plays on PP1. He can play up in the lineup when you need him to. you need a goal late, you just throw him on that top line, plant him in front of the goal. It's so funny, he's 41,

I think he's coming up on his 41th birthday. He has, I was looking at the NHL edge stats, it's clear. He has zero speed bursts over 20 miles an hour this year. Zero. Not even, like, this is the slowest guy in the league potentially. He's so effective, though. He's just so smart. He knows how to play around that.

It's like Chris Kreider minus the speed, right? You put him around the net and the puck's going to wind up going in there. Whether he's the one scoring it or he's the one causing the screen. Like nobody screens quite like this guy does. This is just what he does. And, you know, again, wouldn't he look good on the Oilers right now? The Oilers are a middling team offensively right now. Wouldn't they love to have him back?

I don't know why you would let him go. He had, what, 10 goals in the playoffs for Edmonton last year? Just keep him. Like, he's a guy that just seems to succeed and you need him in the playoffs. That's when you need him most. And you know he's going to be effective in the playoffs. That's where he's at his best. It's a great acquisition for the Kings.

It's exactly what they needed was a little bit more scoring. punching punch and everywhere he goes, Corey Perry provides that. He's matching Anzay Kopitar so far production-wise. I never expected to be saying that. When I saw him live, the Red Wings were out in L.A., Red Wings had like a 3-1 lead late. I think Corey Perry got both goals, right? Just by being right around the crease, getting a stick on something. That's what he does.

It's why he's so good in the playoffs when that's sometimes about the only way you're going to score in some of those games when things get really structured. He's a cheat code to it because there's just not very many guys in the league that have the skill that he has around there and just that can withstand the beating that you have to take to be there. He's just one of those old school power forwards that we just don't have in the league anymore. We have skill guys. We have skill guys. We have speed guys. We just don't have a whole like Tyler Bertuzzi in Chicago is having a monster start to the year.

He's another one of those guys who can just, he somehow manages to stay in the corner of the goal mouth and puckes bounce in off of him. It's a skill. It's really hard to do that. You have to have the will to stay there while you're getting slashed and cross-checked and the goalie's whacking at your ankles. But you also have to have the hand-eye-eye. coordination to follow through on it. And Perry is one of those few guys. There was a lot of guys in a league like this in like the 90s, right?

This is like a, this is what a prototypical high scoring forward used to look like. Now it's like a unicorn in this league. A guy, nobody can do this anymore. And it's just that, and this is how you play into your 40s, right? This is how you succeed into your 40s. Because again, zero speed bursts. You guy does not have a single, like nothing he does is can be qualified as a burst, right? He just doesn't have burst ability.

But he's just so effective at what he does. And I don't know why more guys don't try to emulate that and have these long careers. Everybody hates him, right? Everybody hates Cory Perry. Chicago hated him, L.A. hated him. Edmonton hated him. When he's on your team, it's like Daniel Carcillo, all of a sudden you love him, right? It's like you hate him until he's on your team doing what he does best and being a pain in the ass and scoring those kinds of goals.

Cory Perry, man, he can do this until he's 45, easy. Yeah. Now, I mean, maybe we go back and retroactively add not keeping Corey Perry to Edmonton's not getting a goalie in the previous seconds. Exactly. He's so cheap. He's like a million bucks a year at this point. He just wants to keep playing. He comes at no cost.

And you know exactly what you're going to get from them every time. Yeah, no doubt. All right, that's going to do it for us. Thanks for listening to this episode of the athletic hockey show. Remember, you can subscribe on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at the athletic hockey show to watch full episodes. Sean, Sean and Frankie have you covered on the next episode on Wednesday. We'll talk to you soon.