The Hockey PDOcast - A goalie deep dive with Kevin Woodley

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Kevin Woodley of InGoal Magazine makes an in-studio appearance alongside Dimitri as the pair run through a full NHL goalie deep dive.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipo. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dimitri Filipovich and joining me in studio. Back by Popular Demand is my good buddy, Kevin Woodley. Kevin, what's going on? Can you be backed by Popular Demand when it's your first, like it's sort of, like I gets this new as old again.

So technically we've done this before, but this is kind of different. Got your own gig, your own digs now. It's nice. Yeah, we've got a professional studio. here. We got a producer behind the glass. Got your own dome. Yeah, doing great, doing great things. Podcast sounds better than ever. And unfortunately, we also do have time constraints today. I was looking back and I was telling you, when we get, when we get going, our previous episodes

have been like 90 minutes, 100 minutes. We just go, we just go all day. Well, and that's what? Like, he asked me three questions to get the 90 minutes. Yeah. Well, sometimes not even that. Sometimes I start a question and then we go on a digression and it works out that way. So we'll keep it tight today. Okay. So I don't really have any necessarily specific topics. I kind of just wanted to bounce around some ideas with you. You know, we're what, most teams have played around 10 games or so. So I don't think there's any necessarily like, you know, concrete takeaways to take away, especially from individual goalie stats so far. Like maybe we've seen some trends or especially with some of these goalies,

we were curious about the switch teams, how they look in their new surroundings. But I don't necessarily want to be just pulling up their goal save above expected and saying, for proclaiming that there was a good signing or a good trade or this guy's in trouble. So I thought we could going to bounce around some bigger picture topics and see where that takes us today. 20 games. And I learned that one from Mike McKenna, who I know is a guest on various shows here. Maybe even 25. Yeah, he's always said 20.

So that's the minimum for me before you start to really judge a goalie by his numbers. And we've seen it, like, at this point with this smallest sample, like, all it takes is one stinker or one. It doesn't have to be a stinker. It could be a night where, like, your team gives up a low number of shots, but half of them are high danger and you're dead. So it takes a while to dig out of that. So I'm with you. There are some trends, however, that we can pay a little attention to.

We're going to give a little back pat to Woodley for the Logan Thompson. Vegas will be just fine because his underlying numbers last year. Yeah. We're right where they are this year. Yeah. So this is not out of nowhere. And you may have been the old Dark Horse Vesna picks a little early yet for that, but I'm feeling pretty good about that one.

Well, I just did a Vegas Golden Knights deep dive yesterday with Jesse Granger, who covers the team really well. And he brought up a great point about how Bruce Cassidy came in and totally changed our defensive system from under Pete DeVos. where all of a sudden now they're less so pursuing the puck all around a defensive zone and more so allowing teams to take shots from distance but controlling where those shots are coming from. And you look at their heat map before they're giving shots out last year, around the net, it was just

peppered with red. They were just giving up a high volume, high frequency of grade A looks from that inner slot area around the net. And this year, they're giving up shots from the outside, but it's very contained. And that must be like a goalie's dream to know where. those shots are coming from. As opposed to Pete Divor's system in Vegas, which was a goalie nightmare. Like they leaned heavily on goaltending.

Robin Lainer, Mark Andre Fleury, was fully deserving of the Veson. He was the best goal in the league and he had to be because, again, they leaned on him so heavily that season. And again, what I like about Thompson so far is that he showed he could handle that last year. And now in a more controlled environment, he's making the easy stuff look easy. But when it does break down, and it's not always pretty. Like you watch Logan Thompson as a goalie, like somebody who sort of

tries to study goal tending and there's moments we're here like hey but he just battles right and he's so far he's getting away with it at times but there's like there's an there's an art to that too right and so again the numbers in both systems are are in a really nice spot and it's not to me out of nowhere that he has you know the ability to do this the challenge and we're seeing it here in Vancouver Thatcher Demko is over time can you keep it up yeah that's like what Demko now because he was on my on my list here in my catalog of things I wanted to discuss do we have to I mean I think we should because some of the dialogue I've seen around his performance so far I find to be so misguided so so two things can be true he set an incredibly high standard last year he was top five in the league and all the adjusted numbers I have access to and you know I know buddies on my beer league team assume that every time I say this I get money or something because I say it so often but all the stats are you're on the last year's payroll no clear site analytics every time I say this I get money or something I say this I get money or something I'm saying They say a little ding should go off because I throw that around so much. But hey, they give me access under the hood and it's one of the, to me, the best sort of places to measure shot quality.

And so when you adjusted Demko's numbers last year for shot quality, he was, he finished seventh, but a lot of that, he dropped out of the top four only because he tried to play through the injury the last four games. It really submarined his numbers. You know, and I think that's something that we have to consider, the fact that he required a surgery in the offseason. and his offseason didn't look like it normally does, has that slowed the start? But at the end of the day, so he's not living up to that high standard he set. Adjusted numbers are below expected.

You know, he's in the bottom third of the league, near the bottom, and goals saved above expected. That's, again, that's a rough start and how many times he's been out there. But the environment's just a nightmare right now. Like, the numbers that are killing him are, you know, he's giving up 32 goals this year, okay? 10 of them are on slot line plays.

So what we think of is the back door, the cross-ice one-timers and the backdoor tap-ins. 11 of them are on broken plays. And a lot of those went across the slot line, hit something on their way. I saw some people critical of the rebound goal the other night against the goal number two were the blowing coverage on the back door,

but they felt the rebound should have been controlled off the right pad. I would say the same thing if he had clear sight on the puck and if it wasn't deflected on the way in and the numbers say both of those things happened. So that goes from a puck, a shot you should control to one you're just trying to make sure you get a piece of. And everybody else has to do their job and nobody did. And it's another backdoor tap.

So 32 goals, 10 on cross-ice, 11 on broken plays and three on breakaways. Yeah. Like that there have been a couple of uncharacteristic, you know, low percentage goals at this point in the season. But the majority. Very few though. Just a couple. The one in what, the Carlson one. Like a little outside of the RVH zone.

Even they stay in reverse VH here, post. play longer and higher in the zone than most, but that one's still outside and he doesn't get up and so he gets sniped. You know, on a play that's not a sharp angle play using a sharp angle, save selection. The tying goal in Minnesota, Caprosoff or Caprisoff comes down the wing, he hits a spot. Again, Demko goes into his post, expecting him to continue down the wing into a sharp angle. Oh, is a pass down a Zucrello for the tip over shoulder? No, that was the one right before that.

So Capersoff down the wing, he passes it to the middle, and Demko is actually moving into his post on the right so he's late getting back to the middle. And then the last one is the Zuccarello one. And to me, to me, that's the perfect example and I've used it a few times. So apologies to 650 listeners who've heard this before. But it's just the way it goes sometimes.

Like every decision you make, it feels like the wrong one. So he goes in early into the post on the second goal I just talked about off the rush. And then on the next play, on a power play, it goes down low to Zuccarello and there's a slight hesitation. Like normally he would be slammed into that post, so hard he almost knocks it off,

sealed tight, short side, but he just got beat going in early. So what does he do? He hesitates a little bit. And Sue Carolla makes a hell of a play. And still, that's one where I would expect him to have that sealed up. But because of that hesitation, oh, crap, I just went too early. I better not get caught moving.

He got caught going in late. And it's just, that's the way it's sometimes snowballs. Listen, like, I watched him in August because people have asked about the injury. Does he look slower? Does he look this? In August, I was doing video when he was working with Ian Clark out at 8. rinks and i put a few little bit about social media keep the keep the you know we had some new gear at one point keep the goalie geeks happy right i literally had nchl goalies like texting me like oh my god

his movement looks so good it's so crisp it's so clean it's so powerful right the other night mackenzie blackwood after we finished the post game interviews and blackwood's got like a career nine sixty two against the connect he's like he comes up to me after he goes wait wait wait just a second as i was leaving to go get lindy rough and he's like man demko's post play it's just so good, right? And he's asking me for like, you know, what the focal points and what are some of the things he does? And I'm like, yeah, it's been a bit of a rough start and you just go, no, it's not him. Like there's a guy who's taking care of his own stuff at the other day, and in a night where Demko gets backdoor twice and two two on ones. Like other people can see that this is a product of the system as

much as it is that you're struggling. And yet at the end of the day, whatever eight starts in, the numbers aren't what we expect either raw or adjusted and the criticism will follow. Well, I went back and I watched all. those goals back just to make my own tally. I've got it at 12 goals of the 32 that went across the scene. So probably a couple of those got qualified, they probably hit something. So they get qualified as broken plays. That's, that's where they discrepancy there. Seven either tips or rebounds now, as you said, maybe a couple of those rebounds. He could have corralled or helped out his defensemen at the same time, I would argue if the people in front of them were doing their job,

maybe the other team wouldn't have been able to just tap it in right away as well. It'd be nice to have somebody anywhere near the other person tapping in and every once in a while. Yeah, nine. I classified nine of them as all alone in front. So that three of those are breakaways. A couple of them were all of a sudden the puck just came out front and someone was just wide open uncovered. And those get, there's like five different types of breakaways and clear sites. So there's a, the three that I reference are just a clear cut breakaways.

Yeah. But you're right. There's some where it's like bang, bang. They call them parcels or down lowbrows. Rick waste, things like that. Like it's basically mono-o-o-mano with a shooter who, and half the time, like you said, you never expect that puck to end up on that guy's stick. And that's just the way it's going right now.

Yeah. So honestly, yeah, I came down to four of them out of the 32 where I was like, all right, I think he should have stopped this one. And the reason why I wanted to bring us up to you, I'm very curious about the way we process goals against where I think we all have this subjective definition in our minds of, all right, that's a shot the goal he should have, right? and we just expect goalies to save every single one of those versus the ones where either it's a breakaway

or they're having to move laterally where, all right, it'd be nice if they stop this one, but I'm not necessarily expecting him to. Right, should have or could have, right? Like I think Mitch Corny used to qualify it, like as no chance should have stopped, could have stopped. Like there's sort of like three different classifications. And I think part of the problem is,

and listen, hey, like your goalies got to stop the out two on one, right? Like, that's, that's part of the gig, right? You don't want to see as many as they're seeing. And I always remember a conversation with Robin Lainer about going from Buffalo to the island and how things really changed. And that's why I look a lot at rush chances, especially odd man rush. Right. That's how he score.

Like, Lainer, Lainer put it to me this way. When I was in Buffalo, we'd have four or five a game. I don't know if that was an exaggeration, but that's how he felt like. When he gets to the island, he gets one every two games. Yeah. And he's like, even if I am playing the best that I can, I am on top of my game. If I see four two-on-ones in a game, there's a good chance at least one of those is going in. But now if I'm seeing four two-on-ones, it's like seven or eight games and one of those goes in.

Yeah. Like nobody notices, right. So you're right. And I think that the thing I dig down a little deeper on is how are these odd man rushes going in? And the one thing I would say is like that pass is getting through all the time. We see that you have your numbers. I'm looking at the stats like that slot line passes. getting across every time.

And it's not rocket science. Like we're not speaking out of turn. It's not like the Kinnux have all of a sudden reinvented the wheel and said, hey, on two on ones now, we're not going to give up the pass. Yeah. Or we are going to give up the past. Like they're trying, like the goalie's supposed to take the shooter.

I don't know. Watching Tyler Myers play, it seems like that is the game plan. So they're giving it up a lot. And so, listen, somebody said, is Demko cheating? Because it's so bad in front of him. I said, well, actually, I think he might have to start cheating. And you never want to say that. Right. But if he's playing the shooter and he's out past the blue ice,

and that pass gets through. Like every foot I take, if a guy coming down the right, every foot outside of my crease on a guy coming down to my right, that pass gets across to my left. That's another two feet I have to cover to get back into position.

And so it's happened so often where he's just not getting there. And there's been times he actually gets there and gets a piece of it and he's just, again, this is when the snowball goes downhill. You get a piece of it and goes in. I look at the McCann shot.

Like, I still don't know. I mean, it's a hell of a shooter on a breakaway that should never happen frankly the way that breakout was. He gets a major piece of it with his glove and somehow it goes in outside his pad on the blocker side. Like those are just the way it's bouncing for him right now. But on the two-on-ones, if that, like, you don't want to be like, oh, man, my guys

are going to let the pass there. I'm going to have to start playing deeper because then you're going to get beat. Some guy's going to see you backed up into your crease and just snip you short side. Yeah. If that pass keeps getting through like that, maybe he needs to take less ice. And again, that would be cheating. I don't see him cheating yet. Yeah.

But if they keep defending like this, he's going to have to. Well, I was watching the TNT broadcast history, and Henrik Lundquist was on the intermission panel, and I thought it was a really, actually thoughtful and interesting conversation that they had, which is a rare thing to say about a hockey broadcast. But he was... All you got to do is have a goalie on? Yeah.

All you got to do is have a goalie. I'm going to plug the Engelred Radio podcast. We spent an hour with Hendrik Lundquist, and that dude is so... Was he wearing a three-piece suit? He called in. He probably was. I think he called him because he knew, Like, like, if he had, if he had actually done the video chat with us, like, I think he knew that I had, like, four of my, like, beer league teammates' wives that had, like, lined up to get a copy of the video, right?

So, yeah, no, I don't, he probably was, guaranteed, yeah. So it felt like when he was speaking about it. I mean, he's clearly speaking for firsthand experience throughout having played for so long at such a high level. But he made this point about how he's like, I wonder if the defensemen are either aware of the analytics here or are being told that. them because if they were aware of them, how can you play it this way, acknowledging that if you're the goalie, I think every goalie that's made it to the NHL, probably even ones that are not that good and are playing beer league or lower levels, they probably feel like if I can set my feet and I can see the shot, I have a chance to save it, right?

Yep. So as a defenseman playing on the two on one, knowing that, all of a sudden, I think it makes the calculus for you pretty simple where it's, all right, I need to under any means necessary, stop the pass from going through, let my goalie do his job. And that's why I was joking about, like, it's not like the conducts have changed assist. I haven't talked to anyone like, hey, are you guys suddenly letting the pass through on purpose?

It just kind of looks like that, right? Like, I'll go you one further. We do pro-reads and in goal, or we sit down and break down saves with goalies, and they walk us through their reads and their tape. And I had a really good, with Braden Holpey. We sat down for like 45 minutes and just went over a video in person last year.

And one of the things he talked about, like, he's like, If we're going to give up the pass, I want us to give it up in tight, in close. I don't want us to give it up high in the zone because when I'm high in the zone, and listen, goalies play odd man rushes with varying degrees of backwards flow. In other words, some guys come way out and drift quickly. Some guys will start at the edge of their crease and just barely drift. Everybody sort of has different personal preferences.

We're seeing Demko right now outside of his crease, maybe a little more than I remember. And that's what's sort of exacerbated the pass getting across high in the zone. But in Hoppe's mind, he's like, I don't want to getting across high because that guy can catch it. Now he's got options. And he's got time. If you force him down low, even if you let this guy come in and he gets like close to my crease, like below the bottom of the bottom of the circles before he makes that pass. Yeah, it's really, it's tight and it's quick because the pass doesn't go as far. But that guy who gets it on the other side, like if I get a pad across and I've got a glove over top of it and just,

built a little vertical coverage. Like, that's a really tough play for him to make. And so it's not just that the Canucks are giving up the pass, but they're giving it up in a spot in the zone where the guy catching it has options. And right now, he also has enough time and space that, like, there's been one, I think, Oliveson beat him along the ice where I was surprised.

That's pretty rare where a guy can shoot it inside the post and you don't get something there. But for the most part, these guys are teeing it up and getting a lot on it and getting it up. Well, on that same broadcast, the same conversation, and Anson Carter referenced that Stephen Valacette had passed them along. Now, he didn't reference what the time frame was for this stat, but he said that out of whatever, however many two-on-ones had happened at the NHL,

25% of them resulted in goals, which to me seems like a strikingly high number if the defensemen were doing their jobs and allowing the goalie to face the shot as opposed to dealing with a cross-ice pass. Well, and I know, so I wonder, and I know he has it and I don't know that I have the ability to maybe we'll come out of a commercial break here

I'll see if I can dig it up because I've got the I got the raw machine turning in front of me here but I'm not sure I know how to sort for that to be perfectly honest I'm not that bright but I think I'd be curious to see out of that 25%

how much like where the conversion rate is on guys just coming in and shooting and guys completing that pass I mean I know I always go back to the Capitals Cup win against Vegas. And like there's one where the capitals and how they attacked was influenced by sort of turning that over to the goalie coach Scott Murray and using access to clear site to sort

to look at how we how do you score in the NHL and making sure that they were emphasizing getting that pass across. And I remember watching in the cup final and it was it stood out more because Fleury was so aggressive. Right. And so there were times where knowing the game plan, like I knew what, what the sort of ideal was that they were trying to achieve offensively. They get these odd man rushes. And even I'm looking at my TV watching Ovechkin come down and I'm like, shoot that, shoot that. But he's passing it. Right now, listen, it helps when it's Ovechkin, either making the pass or receiving the, like skill to execute on a two on one makes it a lot easier. Like, you know,

if I'm coming down in a two on one and somebody makes the pass to me and I try to one time or a good chance I missed the fucking end up face first that's why I'm a goalie but when you've got that type of skill that's what they did like to the point where they were passing out of what looked like great shooting situations on odd man Russians and they were still making the pass because they knew if they tried it four times and three got through they were still going to score more than if they shot from glorious spots four times like it's the math just adds up and so it became an ideal for them and it was something that I think against flurry for sure they exploited as a matter of fact I know they were told not to say anything.

Yeah. Because they've, like, listen, if Mark Condary doesn't make an adjustment here, we're just going to keep pumping them. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. Well, we talked, last time we did a podcast together, we were talking however many years later in last year's first round series against a team like the Blues, who was exclusively looking for these

cross-ice passes before they shot any time in the offensive zone. It was a nightmare matchup for Flurry because of how aggressively he was coming out and challenging the initial shooter. And so I'm, I'm, that's something. that I keep trying to think about and keep trying to incorporate more into the way I'm watching these games and the way I'm analyzing them, that shot selection component of this, right? Because I think so often we think about it in such binary terms, and all right, the player got the puck in a certain area of the ice, are they looking to pass or shoot?

And clearly you're not with the speed of the game, you're not thinking, okay, this percentage of the time, if I do this, this will work or not, regardless of how much you've pre-scouted and watched the other team and everything. but when we're thinking about all these expected goals models or something, right? That's something that I think is kind of a next frontier for us to break down. All right, a guy gets the puck in the slot. If he puts it on net, that is assigned and expected goal value, right, depending on, and then whether it went in or not.

But if he had a guy across the ice that he could have passed it to for an even better look, what was the kind of like the added win probability of the decision he sort of made there, right? And I think you have to have that in mind, not just from an audience, watching it, but like a coaching staff. Because there are those, like I said, even when I was yelling at the TV that you're like, like shoot that, right? Like, so you know damn well, if you pass out of one of those and it doesn't get completed and you don't create anything out of it, you don't get a goal, you don't even get a chance

on net, you know that you're getting it at the bench. Why don't you shoot that? You're in a glory, like everybody scream at shoot, shoot, shoot, right? And so I think that understanding has to go, you know, beyond. just us like that that has to be understood on the bench as well and on the coaches and if everybody understands it like hey if I get that pass through that's you know yes per brat yes and the power play the other day you know shooting from the top of the circle demco got there he's set yeah um he's a hell of a player with a pretty good lane and he makes a backdoor pass and it's a and it's a tap

and um to he sure if if he shoots that it's still a pretty good chance right what if somebody got a stick on that pass i know it's the conucks penalty kill so chances are it wasn't going to happen but what if somebody gets a stick on that pass? Is anybody yelling at Yesper Brad that he should have shot that? Right? So you're right. It's understanding where how you, it's understanding how goals are scored in the National Hockey League.

And I think we've at least graduated past the, with the exception of a few teams and philosophies, we graduated past, throw it on the net and crash the net and good things will happen. There are areas of the ice where you can, especially on specific goaltenders, you can funnel things to the net. And if you have bodies there,

you are going to create scrambles and traffic. But as a general philosophy, understanding that offense is created by making goalies move east-west and getting rid, even that, just getting rid of the puck quickly. Like you can't dust it off. Goleys, yeah, we got to make them move, but they're too damn good. If you catch it, dust it off, and then shoot, you're probably shooting into their logo. It's got to be one T.

Well, that's what I was thinking about exactly, because I think it used to be so basic the way we'd consider that equation, right? It would be like, all right, let's say you average 30 shots a game as a team. score on average 10% of the time getting three goals that's good right but that's not necessarily how it works right like if 27% 27 of those 30 shots are unimpeded kind of point shots where you're not getting any of that lateral action coughs we shouldn't expect Carolina hurricanes like five years or yeah no exactly exactly like I love that it used to be the conversation with the hurricanes goalies is like they would dominate the possession numbers before we sort of started to round them out

a little bit you know and add some of this contact for the for the expected goals models um and the goalies would just be like man like i watch us play and like all we do is warm the other goleo it's what i call 99 percent it's like the ones that the guy like if listen again if you if you if you have traffic and you funnel puck from certain areas you can create chaos absolutely but if you're just throwing it on the net along the ice without any purpose and without with those bodies. Like, goalies in the NHL, steer that anytime they want, that along the ice is off the stick and into the glass or over the glass

and control it with the face. It's just a turnover. That's how I know the Capitals look at it. Like, I've sat next to their goalie coach and watched a game. He just came and sat down in the press box and, like, they're taking shots. He's like, oh, it's a turnover. Like, we're basically just giving the other team the puck or having a faceoff and resetting. I'm maybe sometimes maybe you want a face off, but they're looking for quality.

And I think more and more teams, I think we've seen that early this season. I don't have the numbers in front of them, but talking to people, they feel like less teams are settling for that stuff from the outside, the ones you talk about that really don't do anything, and they're looking to create quality. And in some cases, it's messed with goalies numbers. Like, they don't have those easy ones help you feel your way into a game,

those 99%ers, but they also pad the stats a little bit. Oh, yeah. And without them, you know, if half the stuff you're facing, I look back at the Canucks Oilers first game of the season for both teams. And the Oilers, because it was held up in this market as a victory in terms of how they played and what they limited. But I think the Oilers had like 18 chances or 18 shots. Nine were high danger. Like as a goalie, that's nightmare fuel.

Right. Like that's just, there's none of the easy stuff to ape. Like I said, pad your stats, absolutely. Like Christian Leitner missing the putback so he could grab another rebound. You know, like it pads your stats, but also gets you feeling good about the game. You don't get any of that feel. tough. Yeah. All right, Kevin, I have another thought on this, but we have to take a break here. And then when we come back, we're going to keep talking about goalies and everything with you.

You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming here on the SportsNet Radio Network. We're back here on the HockeyPedio cast talking all things goalies with Kevin Woodley. Kevin, before we went on break, we're kind of getting into the big picture of topic of kind of game theory, shot selection, optimizing your looks on the offensive zone. And the point I wanted to make before we move off of this was, you were saying how certain teams deem a point shot as essentially a turnover because it has such a low percentage of going in. I was looking at this because I was noting yesterday how the Golden Knights have shifted their offensive philosophy to redistribute their shots more from their defensemen where last year it was like all Petrangelo, Hague and Theodore firing away to now their forwards are kind of carrying a large load.

2% of all shots by a defenseman went into a 5-15 last year. Now that doesn't count. of the ones that might have, you know, wound up being tips or whatever. But I mean, when you think about it that way, it's such an astronomically low percentage of them that it almost really is. And I do wonder if we're going to reach a point in time where a team just tries to almost like a baseball perspective, you know how we've seen probabilistic thinking result in, all right, you move your infield defense over when a certain hitter comes up because they're more likely to hit it over here, where we see teams just go so aggressively in this regard and say, no point shots. If you get it at the point it as a defenseman and you're getting pressured and you don't have time to do something

with it, just dump it back down along the boards and let your forwards try to win a battle and then do something themselves because we don't want to turn it over at the blue line. So there's a couple things there that we can measure that, you know, I think will maybe prevent us from ever getting to that point. Okay. Completely at least. And one is broken plays. So, I mean, throw in, hey, listen, if it's a like clear sighted, the goalie can see it

and you're shooting from the blue line, like there's time. where you see those and you're like, I'm like, I get stopped that. And again, everybody in my beer league team's like, no, he couldn't. But you know, that's how low percentage it is. But if you've got, like, you know, we have the numbers on what it looks like if you've got layered

screens or like not just one person in front of the goalie, but several layers. We know that pucks that hit bodies on their way to the net create broken plays. Like, can you, are they predictable? No, but creating that chaos leads to goals. And so there's value there. But I'm with you,

for sure in terms of not trying to force it. Taking it if you don't have those types of bodies and those types of players. And also the value in just like, hey, like you can create that chaos. As a matter of fact, there's a better way to create it out of the corner from below the goal line where a goalie's got to turn his head or be stuck on his goal line is probably a better way to create those broken plays in chaos by making lateral plays into that traffic versus from the point. So we are seeing that shift. but I think for as long as you still create goals with broken plays and pucks off bodies

and because as a goalie, that's the nightmare feel, right? Like if I see it and it hits me, even if I give up a rebound, if it hits me, I know or have a good idea where it's headed because I felt it. Even if I didn't see it coming through traffic, I got a better idea. If it hits that guy standing in front of me and I've lost sight of it as it hits him, like I didn't feel the puck. I didn't feel it off my left pad. I didn't see it off my left pad.

so I don't know that I have to recover to my left next. I've got to find it. And so that desire to create chaos and the fact that, you know, for all the talk about lateral plays and slot lines and all the great ways to create offense, chaos is still one of them. And broken plays measures is one of the highest types of scoring chances we have means that you'll still see teams rely on, hopefully less, but rely on trying to create some of that.

For sure, unscreened, like just at the goalie, like you said, turn over every time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially, you know, in the playoffs, we'll see time and time again with how the game bogs down and stuff like that. It feels like teams are incentivized to almost just throw the puck into a crowd and hope something that happens. But I don't know. I just find it to be such an unsatisfying offensive approach. You said 2%.

I got clear sight outside, anything that the goal that has clear vision on clear site outside of the slot area. So it doesn't have to be the point, like anything around the perimeter is 1.4% this year. Well, this was 2% for a defenseman, which could be like a breakaway for Romanoisi or something, right? it's not like just purely a defenseman should never be shooting the puck is what I'm trying to say clear side that's outside the slot area clear site perimeter so like way out there like zero point four percent yeah like literally a turn I call them 99 percenters right I should be calling them 99.6 percenters well and that's such a remarkably low number like if you think about the volume you have to reach just to get one goal well I used to use the 99 percent because I like 99 have a

hundred a goalie stops it but and I started saying like it's actually not true it's probably more like four 99 out of 500 yeah like they just don't make those mistakes Oh, man. All right. What else do you want to talk about while we're here? I mean, we can talk about the Blues a little bit because, you know, they've gotten up to a rough start and their GM came out. And I thought an interesting point that he made there was there was a question about, you know,

the goals they were giving up, how much of it you lay blame on the goalies. And he pointed out how much backdoor action they were giving up. So I went back similar to what I did with Demko and watched them back. And in one of the most recent games against the Kings in particular, I believe all five goals they gave up were not only cross seam, but they were like backdoor tap-ins where I guess the only way it could have been prevented was if Jordan Bennington block the initial pass

because as soon as it got by him, like it was in the net, there's nothing you could do. It wasn't even a matter of, you know, anticipation or lateral movement because the puck was literally behind him after the pass because he was out to get the shooters. So they started clean and his numbers were off the charts, but it's gotten really ugly there.

And I've been saying this sort of, ever since they won the cup. Like the narrative sort of surrounded them that they were a good defensive team, and they really haven't been since that year. And Bennington's numbers have suffered because of it, and obviously he lost a job to Huso last year. But I think we saw in the playoffs, as they sort of buckled down defensively

and gave him some structure he could trust last year before he got hurt, he was pretty good. Like, people used to sort of yell at me when I say, like he would have been the guy, you know, with no carry price, and, you know, Carter Hart last year wasn't having the season. He's having the, like, Bennington would have been the guy for me, if there was an Olympics for Team Canada. I don't know what kind of uproar that would have created

because of the act that comes with it sometimes that people don't appreciate. But the reality is his adjusted stuff's been pretty good. He's always had a really low expected say percentage in St. Louis. It's down there near the bottom, much like we talked about Demko here, down near the bottom of the league again right now. And they said, and again, like I don't even think that can,

in this smallest sample, like it's not even enough, right? Like we're just talking about Demko. Like, he's got one of the lowest expectations. to say percentage in the league, but he's playing below that. Even with all the context we add here, it's still not enough. Like backdoor tap in like 100%. You still gets measured as like a 60% more intense, not 100%. You and I can see it.

Those are 100%. They're going in every time unless the guy totally whiffs on it, right? But they don't, that's not how they're measured in terms of creating these models. Yeah. All right. Here's a fun exercise for us. Let's say you and I were giving the car keys to a team. We're building it from scratch.

I don't want to go with particular names because it's very easy. We go, all right, yeah, let's just take Andre Basilevsky or Igor Scheriken and figure it out after that. But I remember last time we were speaking about giving actual thought to how you construct either your defense out from the net in terms of, all right, you have a goalie. They have particular strengths and weaknesses. Now, how do we make them look good by not giving up shots where they struggle to face those? whether it's off the rush, whether it's cross-ice with movement, whatever it may be. And then how teams don't typically do that, right? Like you generally have a defense and then you just bring in a goalie and you're just like,

all right, make it work. Stop the puck. Yeah, I mean, goalies have strengths and weaknesses. So bringing in goalies that suit the types of chances your team give up makes a lot of sense. The golf analogy is courses for horses, right? There's always certain courses that fit certain golfer's eyes. And every time they go there on the PGA tour, you know they're going to tear it up because it just works for their game, whether they hit a draw and

everything is right to left. Like, it's that type of mentality. Why wouldn't you pick a system that fits your goaltender? Or if you've already got the system and the coaching staff in place, pick a goaltender that would succeed in that system. And it has happened. I know, like, I know, I know a team that used these numbers to do that a couple of years ago

and had good success with the goaltender. The problem, I think, has quite often the contracts the goaltenders come with exceed the length, the lifespan of how that's going to be around them, yeah. Yeah, like what the environment is like, whether that's a coaching change or just personnel, like defense changes in front of them, and all of a sudden you've got to adjust the system because their strengths and weaknesses

no longer match how you're playing, and there's six of them and one of the goaltender. But again, in a perfect world, yeah, you'd want to, I use the Luongo example. Luongo and torts, nightmare fuel. Roberto had size 13 skates, you know, sometimes getting that moving around the ice was like, I mean, he's a Hall of Famer,

but it was like turning a freighter, right? Like it was not quick. His game was based on, a technical element for sure, but his reeds were so good. Like he wanted to see the puck. So now a sudden you throw torts as the coach and they're collapsing in front of him. He can't see the puck. He loves to play at the top of his crease. Can't see the puck. Pucks are hitting bodies bouncing everywhere and lateral speed wasn't his strength. So now he's not feeling it. He's not seeing it. It's just ending up over to his left and he's got to recover. Well, there's a Hall of Fame goaltender and

you're now playing to his biggest weakness, which was lateral speed. Right, if he couldn't see and get a read on the play. Like, if he could read it, he'd beat it because of his instincts were so good. But on pure reaction standpoint, like, that wasn't the strength of his game. And he wasn't comfortable, like Eddie Lack was more comfortable, playing deep near his goal line. So when that puck hit all those bodies and bounced out, you know, he only had two feet to move. Roberto had six. Like, none of it made any sense.

Again, horses for courses, he wasn't a fit there. And you see that happen around the league all the time. It drives me nuts. Here's what hearing you say all that made me think. so much has been made of how you have to be like over six two or whatever to be an NHO goalie these days right or whatever the cutoff point is like where the UC Soros is an aberration

you're not seeing a sub six foot goalie for the most part and it starts at the lower levels where typically you need to be a certain you're getting a requirement or you're just not getting promoted to the next level or whatever being scouted right that's all that held me back to me true that and my inability to stop the puck Um, with the game not only becoming faster, but becoming so much more rush-based, as we talk about all the time, right?

Is it fair to say then that athleticism for goalies should be more in demand than ever? Because of that lateral mobility. See, athleticism can be applied in so many ways. I think we, when we think of an athletic goalie, we think of sprawling saves. Yes. I think skating. You know, like we don't think of goalies and skating because goalie skating looks different.

Yeah. But skating, edge control, the ability to hold edges and be patient. Those things become increasingly important. Soros is sort of your, not just from the size standpoint. Yeah, from the movement. But the movement, his ability to get there, be square, be on and hold edges and not commit early. Like it's off the charts.

And, you know, I know, I know. like 6-2-6-3, I mean, there are teams that will not even look at, let their scouts file a report on a goalie who's under 6-foot-2. But, I mean, the reality is, and I had, it was a goalie coach that gave me this analogy, and I'm honestly, I'm struggling to remember whether it was on or off the record, so I won't name him. But he's, he's one of the brighter minds in the game. And he said, listen, like, if there's an ideal, whether that ideal is 6-2 or 6-3, it's in that window. every two or three inches on either direction of that window, you have to overcome something. Yeah,

you have to compensate for that. Yeah. And so if you're 6'5, it's the holes that you open when you move. Or you're probably not going to be as quick on your skates or as mobile in the crease as the guy who's on the other side of that scale at 511. And I'm sorry, UC Saros is not 6 feet. Yeah.

511 or 6 feet tall. But what's happened is in the pursuit of the 65 and the 6 6 and bigger, the guys that are smaller just don't even get, like there's no margin for error. Like if they have a bad season, they're done. Like there's just, so they just, you know, the guy at 65, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7 is going to get every opportunity to succeed. And the smaller goalies aren't. I think maybe you're starting to see that shift with the success that Soros has had and the way the game is changing. I mean, in a perfect world, goalie coaches are still going to tell you, I think I can make the 6-foot-5 guy move like the 6-footer and then I win, right?

And that's what they're always trying to do. I mean, you look at, again, this is tough because he's not having a great start to his year. And we've talked about the environment. But man, you look at the pace with which Demko moves and 6'4. Right. You know, I watched him last year and, like, probably count on one hand the amount of times he was behind the play. Like, this is the speed and pace of his game and his ability to connect all those moments and movements seamlessly from, you know, off the rush down the wing, bang, bang, bang, into the post, across to the other side and up. It's like, it's just lightning.

he's almost never behind a play and so then you kind of go yeah okay if I can get the six foot four guy who moves like six foot great but I just think we're throwing too many sort of out with the wash in the smaller range because the ideal still remains large square footage

and you might maybe not see the next UC Saros because he doesn't get as long a look well if you're scouting a junior age goalie do you even care if he's actually good at stopping the puck or are you are you watching the physical tools and saying,

all right, you know, if you bring this into the right environment, I can mold this and get him in a position where he will stop the puck more often. That's interesting. And you know what? I wish I had more conversations with goalie-specific scouts.

Yeah. You mean, in general, you'll see goalies, and I think there was a lot of, you know, goalies that had success at World Juniors and Canadian Hockey League that fit this description, say, 10, 15 years ago,

that got drafted because they had success. And they were technically efficient, especially at the time. And so those two things, it's like, okay, that's great. Most of the goalie people I knew at the time were like, like, I'm looking for raw tools. Because like, give me an athlete with technical deficiencies, I know I can clean up.

And it's almost a, I heard this argument around Yesper Walshdad, and I disagree with it personally because I still think there's, there's more to him than that. But the argument at the time was he's already a finished product. They've got nothing else I can fix. And so they were looking, you know, a lot of goalie coaches and goalie scouts would be like,

give me the raw tools and I can, I can improve the efficiency. I can clean up the skating. I can fix these things as opposed to the kid that's having success in junior because he already does those things so well. Quite often the scouts look at it. It's like, hmm, in the past they didn't. But now it's like, hey, is that a finished product?

Like, is there any more upside here? In the past, they'd look at the success and the technique and they'd be like, we want that guy, and then he'd get to the NHL, and all of a sudden the environment wasn't as structured, the shooters were better, they couldn't just play on a good team and get away with blocking. There's no blocking anymore. But there's a whole generation where guys got picked high,

and if you really looked at how they played and how they had success to lead to that draft status, you know, it was not easy to predict it when to work in the NHL, but certainly more people should have been asking questions about, like, hey, is this going to translate when the environment changes and he's exposed a little more? Does he have those extra layers beyond this good technique that will allow him to succeed in the national hockey league? Yeah, because I guess the more I was thinking about it, it's ultimately irrelevant if you can consistently stop WHL shooters as an example. Because once you make the NHL, you're not going to be facing those shooters anymore for the most part.

Or if you're on a team that, like, let's be honest, like, there's such a discrepancy. for a lot of teams. Yes. And again, I don't watch enough CHL now, but back in the day, you'd have these sort of wagging teams.

Yeah, that just kind of like, man, like, like that's where I'd want to look at the shot quality. Right. And be like, is this guy really outperforming his environment? Is he completely a product of the system here?

And if so, is it because he has all these great athleticism and instincts and they're still more upside? Or is it because he's just getting into the spot and getting hit by the puck because the guy shooting it has, A, is less skilled than the guy defending him, has no time and space and all those other factors.

Like which one is it? What is allowing him to have that success? Do I think I can get more out of him or are we at the peak right now? Will it translate? Can I fix what won't translate? And I just think for a long time the people that were looking. And I've had some pretty hilarious conversations with goalie staff in the NHL about some of the non-goly scouting reports that they get over the years.

It's gotten better. But like back in the day, be like, guy to have a good game. He's like, oh, looks, looks, plays big, looks confident. Guy has a bad game. Plays small, doesn't look confident. It's like, okay, why? Why is he having success? Why is he not having success?

Where is he on the ice relative of the crease? Is he retreating? Does he play with flow? Is he play inside out, outside in? Like all these factors that you can look at to sort of figure out, is this going to work? Is the stuff that isn't going to work fixable? Is there more upside beyond what I see right now?

Those questions just weren't being asked for like, I don't know if it's gotten that much better. Yeah. I was watching some of it's gotten better. The draft this year, the avalanche took a goalie in the seventh round. I think it might have been the last book of the draft. And then the commentary was, this guy is really skinny. I don't know if he'll ever play a heavy game.

And it's like, he's a goalie. I don't know. I don't think it matters. And we all go to cliches everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. In classic us fashion, I asked you a question 20 minutes ago. And I answered one?

We did not. No, we didn't answer the question. Okay. So as a thought exercise, we're building a team. Acknowledging that you're probably not going to have the perfect goalie in Andre Vasilevsky, who's a specimen and can basically do anything and would thrive in any environment, I'd say, although he's gotten a pretty good hand down to him as well. Yes.

What are we sacrificing or what are we prioritizing? You could take it from either direction in terms of either a physical trait or a skill set for a goalie that you feel like, all right, this is something they're going to struggle at, but I feel like we can get an infrastructure around them that will allow us to minimize that and still allow them to succeed at that HL level. The one thing I am not sacrificing is that skating and that, like it's the one thing that absolutely has to be there now.

Because I don't care, like, you know, we did this a different way one year where it was like, you know, if you're building a team, you want three top line centers, four great top 4D or one elite goaltender. And if you gave me truth serum, I'd say four top four D and I'll build you a goaltender that can succeed behind it. Like I would take the structure and the defensive play ahead of an elite goaltender and I'd say I can

find you or not, I shouldn't say I. I would say I can hire goalie coaches that I think can build you a goaltender that would succeed behind that. Well, you still would say that just because having four good defensemen is such a luxury both offensively and defensively. Yeah, but I'm still not 100% sure that like everyone would see it that way. So that and the goal union people wouldn't expect. that answer from me. So there's that caveat. But the one thing I am not sacrificing, I would sacrifice

size ahead of this is even if I haven't, as the game becomes so dynamic, even if I have a great defense, I got to have a goalie that can move. Like I just got to have a goalie that can move. If you can't skate, you can't play. I hear that all the time around the National Hockey League for goaltenders right now. And I think that's just the one that, you know, I'll take a six foot or who can skate over a six foot five that can't. Um, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, Like, Saros is the perfect example, but that's the one attribute you absolutely have to have. And I would sacrifice others. Not all of them, but I'd sacrifice others as long as my goalie could move and skate.

Do they actually list Saros at six foot? I think they do. I think the only place, it's in his dating profile he lists that he's six foot. Otherwise, I think he's probably more in the five-eight-ish range. Listen, listen, and this is like so common. So I've written stories obviously about like the trend towards bag and like, you know, I remember Jonathan Bernier telling me, like, he watches and cheers for the small goalies. Like, look at the career he's carved out.

And his whole career, he was 5-11. He was listed as 5-11. I've covered Joe since his draft. I've been on the ice with him, working with goalie coaches in the off-season. Like, his whole life, he was 5-11. He has now listed as six feet tall on the NHL website. And I'm like, they were just in here. I'm like, hey, did you know you grew in it?

Like, I think it's a default. Like, I don't know if they put him in skislemer. before they measure much just every goalie it's like how tall are you well how tall am I really and then add an inch to an inch and a half I love that uh that's good stuff Kevin all right uh that's all the time we have unfortunately oh man this this 50 minutes said I answer four questions this 50 minute setting isn't going to cut it for us which is why now that we're in this studio we're going to have you on more often uh and and not just I feel like before it was like a once and it's like an annual appearance I think we have to check the analytics on car accidents today in the

Vancouver area to see if it went up because of people falling asleep at the wheel. But if it didn't, then I'll definitely come. I don't think so. Everyone always loves it when you come on the PDOCAST. Plug some stuff. I'll give you a minute here. Oh, I plug it all the time. You want to sports.

650, but ingolemag.com, just go there. If you're not a goalie, hey, probably don't care. If you are a goalie, we'll make you a better goalie. Myself is the exception of that rule. We go on the ice drills, tips, mindset drills, mindset tips, Pro Reeds where I talked about where we literally will sit down and watch a video with an NHL goalie and then we'll explain to us

what they're looking for in a play. Handedness, how the players sort of holding the puck. Like little things that, it blows me away. We did our first one with Carrie Price and I've covered the league 20 years. And Carrie was sort of my guinea pig. We had a day in the off season with them. I'm like, Carrie, like I've had this theory.

Let's do this thing called Pro Reeds. I've had it for a few years. I want you to try it for me. And after 20 years in league, I thought I knew what goalies were processing the information. and he blew my mind. Like the amount of detail that he picks out in real time to decide where I go on the crease,

what save selection I use was mind-blowing. We have a new one of those with goalies around the league every single week. So if you're a goalie and you watch that, you're going to get better. So check that out. Like I said, if you're not a goalie, don't bother if you are ingolemag.com,

we've got something to make you better. Love it, Kevin. As always, blast talking to you. If you enjoyed listening to us, please go hit the five-star review button for the PDO cast wherever you listen to the show and we're going to be back tomorrow with more. We're going to do the weekly mailbag since it's a Friday. So thank you for listening to the Hockey PDOCast here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.