The Hockey PDOcast - A Holiday Mailbag Before the Break

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Harman Dayal to answer some listener mailbag questions in the final show before the holiday break. They talk about whether it matters what position the primary play-driver on your team plays, the young goalies in the league right now, and underrated storylines they're looking forward to following in 2025. 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.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitra Filipovich and joining me in studio here. My good buddy, Harmon Dile, what's coming? Excited for the holidays, excited for this last bit of hockey right before the break. And after the reset, after the break there, then Jan 1, I don't know what it is. It just feels like even though we aren't technically at the halfway point, that's sort of the unofficial second. half of the season it feels like a lot of the trade deadline talks starts to ramp up.

January is a really exciting time for the hockey calendar. It is. It feels like everything has been fast forwarded this year for whatever reason. I'm not sure if you feel this way, maybe part of it is there was that note that we heard earlier about how like because of the Four Nations tournament and when it's going to be if teams have players who are involved in it, they're going to try to trade them before just because obviously I think there's like a lot of additional risk involved with injury and stuff like that. I'm not sure if that's part of it, but we've been talking on the show all year about how it feels like more teams in the league are just on tilt early on than ever before where like everyone's panicking.

There's been, we've already seen a handful of trades this season and coach firings, of course, and it feels like everything has been sped up a little bit where I generally agree with you that like come the new year as you start approaching February. We start hearing a lot of trade buzz, trade deadlines come in, then you really ramp up for the stretch run. But it feels like we're almost already there. Maybe part of it because the league is so wide open. But everyone feels right now like they're sort of scrambling, trying to fix their team or trying to salvage their season and get in. And it feels a bit unique compared to previous seasons. Yeah, right before the holiday freeze, I mean, it felt like unofficial,

unofficial trade deadline day with Kakoo went down, a cocko trade going down, Alex Carrier, a lot of sort of discussion. Don't forget P.O. Joseph also going back to the Pittsburgh. Can't forget that. Can't forget the future considerations. How dare the St. Louis Blues trade P.O. Joseph away out. after the road to the Winter Classic featuring the brothers there. But yeah, you're right.

It has been accelerated. And I do think, especially when you look at certain situations around the league, like the Rangers and predators, there are some really spicy storylines when you talk about really disappointing teams. And for some of these teams that Nashville and Rangers have already started to make some initial moves, but there's almost this feeling that more is still to come if things continue trending in the wrong direction. Certainly. And we're going to get into some of that today.

I thought it'd be fun for us. This is the last show we're going to do here in the PDOCAST. Before the holiday break, we're going to go on a little bit of a PDO cast freeze ourselves to take a few days off. So I thought it'd be fun to include the listeners. We're going to get into the PDOCS mailbag from the Discord. We've got some fun questions.

And we're going to kind of bounce around and try to cover as many topics as we can since it is our last show for a bit. Let's start with this question from Brandon. I think it's an interesting thought exercise that we can get into and take multiple different ways. He asks, does it make a difference if the play driver slash playmaker on a line is on the wing and the goal score is at center rather than the traditional playmaking center scoring wing or combo we've become accustomed to? What if the play driver is on D? Let's break it all down in terms of all three of those sort of facets. I'd argue that it probably matters less so now than it ever has.

terms of those traditional kind of player types, I guess, that we grew up with, where you were just kind of like led to, you know, fit a certain mold, I guess, depending on your position and sort of specific tasks. Now everything's so interchangeable. There's so much movement, especially in the offensive zone, that I don't think it matters as much. And the game is played so differently offensively in terms of way teams are defending structurally and then how you sort of break that down. What are your thoughts on this in terms of whether you have a play driving winger or score and vice versa? compared to the center that they're on line with. Yeah, this was a really good question.

And the more that I thought about it, the more that I sort of agree with your premise that I don't think it really matters because when you're attacking, it becomes more about role rather than position, especially off the cycle. I think the traditional sort of standard formula is your playmaker sort of dominates pock possession, draws defenders towards them. And because of that, there's extra space for, a sniper to quietly lurk and find that soft ice around the slot and get open.

And what I've noticed over the last few years is a winger can play that playmaker role, a center can play that playmaker role. It doesn't really seem to have a huge difference. I mean, think back to a few years ago, the Godreau-Kuch-Lindholm line was the best first line in the NHL, and in that context, the Lice Lindholm was clearly the third wheel as the centerman is the goal score on that line. and I remember tracking every single goal he scored, both in the regular season in the playoffs,

and 29 of his 47 goals were directly preceded by either a cross-scene pass or a load of high pass that originated from below the hash marks in the offensive zone. So clearly, Lindholm's goal scoring there was driven by the playmaking of Goodrow and Kachuk. That would go against a typical mold of playmaking center and goal-scoring winger, and yet they were the best first line in the NHL, that season. And of course, opposite example last year, J.T. Miller and Brock Besser, I watched them really closely. One of the most dynamic duos in the NHL, 100 plus points for Miller, 40 plus goals

for Besser. And yet same formula. But this time, of course, it's the center in Miller, who's a playmaker doing a lot of the same things below the hash marks and controlling play. And it's better just finding the quiet, soft ice the same way that Lindholm was those years ago. So I don't think it really matters too much. Yeah, I think a lot of this is predicated on what I was saying about how teams are defending now. We've seen teams have success sort of packing the middle, right, and then with that kind of zone defense and then just allowing teams to work the puck on the outside. And so it's become almost necessary, especially come the postseason, for teams to be able to attack outside in, right? I think previously, it used to be easier to just

have a truly puck dominant center where you could just drive the middle and then create that way. Now it's really tough, especially against opposing set defenses to do so. And so we see guys like Kuturall, for example, how he does all of his damage and how he creates so much and sets the table for the lightning off the wall, right? And that's in all three zones, really. It's on the breakout in his own zone with quick passes out. It's in the offensive zone, certainly both on the power play at 5-1-5, kind of become accustomed to seeing that sort of quick one-time pass almost into the slot to Brayden Point,

and they're the best example of that, right, where they have the goal scoring center in Brayden Point and the playmaking, play-driving winger in Kutcherov. And so these days I feel like you almost need to attack that way, to start off your possession on the outside off the wall, and then have ways to break through that defensive structure and get the puck into the middle of the ice, because we know that's where you're probably going to more likely than not score from, right?

And so I think the dynamic in that sense is totally changed, and so you actually need to have playmaking, wingerers that can facilitate that because I don't think it's enough to just rely on your center to be able to do all of that heavy lifting anymore. 100%. And this doesn't just apply to star players either. I mean, another example from the Canucks. Connor Garland is a great example of a play driving winger, puck dominant player from along the board, especially down on the offensive zone, who is able to find those seams, find those pockets. And I will say, you really do notice the value of lines that don't have

this sort of playmaker because then it feels like the trigger man is sort of left isolated with nobody to feed them the puck in dangerous scoring positions. I think of, let's say Nashville, for example, prime situation where they have the trigger men in Stamcoaston. I know Marshall So has recently been heating up a little bit, but on the season, a big reason why they've underperformed is because they didn't have that playmaker on that line to take pucks from the perimeter. and spot, you know, Stamcoast and Marsha, so in the slot area, to take advantage. So it doesn't always need to be the center, but you do need that player type on your top six line, regardless if it's down the middle or on the wing.

Otherwise, your snipers are left dry without anybody to feed them the puck. Well, and especially we've seen them try to, and Andrew Brunette has tried various different combinations and kind of just try to kickstart the offense, especially at 515 this year, right? And then that included putting theoretically their three best offensive players on the same line, which is Forsberg, Stamco's, and Marsha So. And not only are all three guys,

and I know Forsberg can certainly play make a little bit more and has skill to distribute, but all three guys are at their best when they're the trigger men and they're also all right-handed. And so you get into this weird spot where there's a bit of an overlap in terms of handedness and skill set and you're almost trying to jam a square peg

into a round hole with like three guys who want the puck in the same spot in terms of the destination or end result of the possession and very few options of guys who can actually help bring them along to that path, right? And so I think that's why they've certainly struggled. What about the defenseman component of this? Because I think we've seen it with the Canucks, with Quinn Hughes, certainly. You could argue we've seen it with the avalanche as well with Kail McCarr,

although he plays so much with Nathan McKinnon that he can do a bit more of that driving and facilitating maybe in Columbus with Zach Wrenski and sort of what a big responsibility he has with the puck. How do you feel about, do you think there's a point of sort of diminishing returns maybe in terms of efficiency where if you're so reliant on one defenseman to drive offense that it limits you a little bit because I think we know that it's just tougher to create offense from the outside. Now some of these guys like Hughes, McCar, Werensky, Adam Fox are unique in that way where like their shots are generally more dangerous, especially Kail McCar like him. his shot is not equivalent to some second or third pair of defensemen that's shooting from the outside that has a very low percentage likelihood. So maybe it's a little bit of a different calculus there. But I do wonder whether it is ultimately optimal.

It's great having one of those guys. But whether it's a sustainable way, I guess, to cater your entire offense through one guy playing that specific position. Yeah, I think this answer is going to sound ironic because I cover the Canucks and they've been feasting when Quinn Hughes has been on the ice as sort of one man. offensive machine, but I think that's more the exception than it is a sustainable formula recipe for other teams to follow. I think the overwhelming majority of teams, if they're reliant on, okay, all the offense is going to flow through our defensemen first and foremost. It's just, it's too difficult to execute because the starting position for these defensemen is at the blue line at the point most often, other than when they're, of course, jumping up

in the rush occasionally. But the things Quinn Hughes has to do, to start from the blue line and then get to an attacking position, it's ludicrous. And I think that speaks more to his one-of-one skill set than it does. This is a way of manufacturing offense that other defensemen can sort of lean on. Because the way that he has to walk the line, the way that he has to beat wingers down the wall and then slash into the middle. And it's also the way that defenses can adapt.

because I remember last year, at times, Quinn used love the play of just sort of jumping down the half wall and trying to hunt for those backdoor passing plays. And then once opponents caught on, they sort of said, all right, we're going to let Quinn have that space on the perimeter. And we're just going to try and defend the passes that are attempted into the slot. Now, Quinn's had to adapt his skill set and constantly add layers of his threat. And credit to him, he's still found ways to manufacture and create an elite level. But just watching him have to problem solve and the magician like things he has to do to take the puck from the point to either I'm shooting from the high slot or I'm setting other guys up in that front scoring positions. I just don't think there's any other defensemen who can consistently replicate that.

And so I do agree with you. I think if your offense is overwhelmingly reliant on a defenseman, then in most cases, you're going to be stuck to the perimeter. Yeah, I'm with you. I think that's a great way to put it. The number of hoops he has to jump through just to get a quality look off, and he's uniquely suited to do so and does it with alarming frequency, but it is almost, it's unfair to expect that or keep relying upon that.

I was watching that game on Saturday night, and we're going to talk more about the Canucks later, or we can get into it now if you want, but just the, I mean, It wasn't unique in terms of he's been doing it all year, but the outsized impact of when he's on the ice and what the offense looks like compared to every other minute. He played 21, 25 at 5-1-5 in that game. The Canucks generated 14 shots on goal,

nine high-dangered chances, and they scored four goals and gave up just the one. In the 27 minutes, he didn't play a 5-1-5, eight shots on goal, two high-danger chances, and they got outscored two-nothing. And it's like, it seems like it's almost underselling it to say it's two entirely different teams, but that's really what it does feel like.

And he has such a burden of responsibility on his plate to do this stuff. It's kind of freakish. And so I don't know what you make of kind of that and just this Canucks team in general, because we got a lot of questions in the mailbag, obviously, about the ongoing saga between Elas Pedersen and J.T. Miller and sort of how we evaluate their play, the team in general, where they're at right now, especially with Utah kind of climbing up and the playoff positioning becoming more precarious with each passing day, it's such a unique situation, right? It's almost, it's, they clearly need

more help in terms of the minutes when he's not on the ice so that they at least reach some sort of a baseline where they're obviously going to smash when he's out there. And as long as they're just hanging on and creating the bare minimum when he's not, I think they'll be okay. But they're not even at that level right now. Absolutely. I think it comes down to a couple things. Number one, the blue line outside of Hughes, especially with Ronick out, is, is a disaster. They don't have any puck movers. We've spent a lot of time talking about this. They sort of corner the market on bigger defensemen that can kill penalties

and are big and tough around the neck and break up the cycle, but have limited or no puck skills. And that's certainly stunted their ability to transition up the ice and maintain any sense of consistent pressure. But also up front, Leeus Pedersen and J.T. Miller have both largely underperformed expectations. And I know a lot of the focus has been on the ongoing saga, their relationship, yes. Their relationship.

But my bigger concern is that neither one has looked anywhere close to their usual sort of elite star level. I mean, Elias Pedersen, since the All-Star break of last season, he's picked up 16 goals and 57 points in 79 games. That's basically a full season sample when you look at his play down the stretch in the regular season, the playoffs, and the 30 plus games that we're into for the 2024-25 campaign, sub-60 points, sub-20 goals, that is really alarming. And this isn't a case of him having brutal PDO luck. We're okay, he's getting the looks, he's getting the chances.

This is just a case of, oh, he doesn't have the finishing lock. It should bounce back. You look deeper under the hood, and his shot volume is down nearly 40% compared to, compared to his career high 102 point campaign a couple years ago his skating numbers according to NHL Edge the speed bursts about 20 miles per hour have significantly fallen off

even when he is shooting the velocity and speed behind his shots has fallen off he looks like a shadow of the player that we're used to seeing and Miller on the other hand it's not just that his point production has fallen off.

He's only got one five-on-five goal this year, but we're starting to see some of the two-way warts and defensive habits start to creep back into his game, which is really alarming. And so when I look at this Canucks team, they aren't going anywhere until Pedersen and Miller start playing at a star level again. Yeah, they've combined for, I know you wrote about this and you included the even strength goals and compare them to other one, two centers across the league.

At 5-1-5 alone, they've combined for four goals this season, and that's in 755 minutes of ice time between the two of them. And you're right. I think the production obviously needs to come from Miller. You watch that game against the senators, and whether it was the, especially the shorthanded goal by Josh Norris and kind of the lack of attention to detail and effort defensively off the puck. Those are things that, I think,

and he already heard after the game, right, Rick, talk it kind of singled that out, and express his frustration publicly and vocally. So these are all concerning things. One final note on sort of defensemen and their role as play drivers or initiators, I guess, and kind of funneling your offense through that. Spor Logic does a good job of providing offensive zone possession time broken down by individual players, like who has the puck on their stick most frequently. And first off, the numbers, I think, are shockingly low in terms of total output per game

because Connor McDavid leads the league and he has the puck on a stick in the offensive zone for a minute and 22 seconds per game, which seems like a very low amount and it's still easily the league leader. Quinn Hughes is at 116 and he's in the top five amongst all players. Then you go all the way down to Cal McCar at 58 seconds per game and then you go Adam Fox, 53 seconds, Zach Wrenski, 48 seconds per game with the puck on a stick in the offensive zone. And I think that sort of reflects exactly what we're saying, even the most. elite guys. Generally, as a defenseman, you kind of need to play more of a role of a distributor. And I think in general, moving the puck quickly and then attacking off of that move is probably the way you are going to break down opposing defenses.

And so it just provides this kind of like dilemma, I guess, for teams of like if you're just so reliant on having your defenseman holding onto the puck far away from the net, where are you ultimately going to be able to get with that, right? And so I don't know. I think it's a fascinating thing because obviously it's a great problem to. have in terms of like, all right, we have Kyle McCar or Quinn Hughes on our team and we're going to have them create a lot of it, but also they are

such exceptions and it's still so difficult for them to do what they do. It's an interesting middle ground where in today's NHL, you really do need to manufacture offense as a five-man unit. You can't just rely on having defensemen that stand at the

point and are there to accept a load of high pass and take the corner point shot that has like a 2% problem of leading to a goal. You do need them involved, and yet you can't funnel your offense through them, where I think you really notice the value of defense been in the process of creating offense when they give, let's say off the rush, they're jumping into the play,

and now the puck carrier has an extra trailer option. Now what that does is for both the defense of the goaltender, it's an extra threat to process and think about in their head. And it makes the offensive, you know, puck carriers, options in the moment because he has multiple players that he can go to, it makes the attack more unpredictable. And it's that sort of optionality, whether it's at even strength, on power play, and rush situations off the cycle that really creates breakdowns, creates that sort of confusion. And now the defender doesn't know what stick to put his lane in, whether it's a

shooting lane or which passing lane to take away. I think that's where you notice, okay, teams that, okay, have defensemen who have the green light to join, join in the rush and be that extra trailer option, regardless of whether they get the puck or not, it just makes that attacking sequence more dangerous, as opposed to a lot of times in Vancouver's non-quin Hughes minutes, for example, a forward will be carrying the rush, and there isn't that next layer of a defenseman jumping up in the play. And now you know that the puck carries options are so limited, it's so much easier and more predictable to defend as an opposing team. And same thing in the offensive zone. A lot of times for defensemen, it's often just even the off puck movement to not just be static at the point where if you've got a puck carrier who has possession along the half wall, for instance, if you start moving or the defensemen start changing sides or just bring some element of movement, it creates confusion.

It creates different pockets of space for your other forwards to sort of open up and take advantage of. So I think it's essential as a team today to have defensemen that can complement your offensive attack and output. But outside of the exceptions of having a Quinn Hughes or Kil McCar, I still don't think you can have your offense funneled through your defenseman as the initiators. Yeah, I think it's been proven that by far the most efficient shot you can get is one that comes off of a rebound and an immediate pass, right? Because it makes sense intuitively. it's like not only do you have to react off the rebound, everyone's kind of scrambling, but then a following pass as well. It's generally a lateral one. He's going to create an opening and then you shoot off of that. Last year I was doing these and I was fortunate enough to have

Darrell Belfrey on every week and we'd break down players and their tape. And a point he kept making was how difficult in today's game it is to be a puck on stick creator in terms of like the longer you have the puck on your stick. There is a bit of a point of diminishing return where like as time goes on, you become so much more predictable and easier defense. because everyone knows where the puck is and can adjust accordingly. There's guys like Connor McDavid, for example, you watch him on the powerpoint, he's kind of just like probing around with the puck on his stick and cycling around the net. He has a level of gravity where everyone is so in living in constant fear that he's going to do something outrageous,

that they just can't help. And he's moving so fast on top of that that eyes are just glued to him naturally. And so guys like Hyman or a dry saddle can sort of get lost backdoor or in the blind side and blind spot and all of a sudden receive a pass, right? But that's very rare. For most guys, I think teams are very happy to let you just hold on to the puck as an individual player and defend accordingly off of that. You got any other notes on this? I guess the one thing I wanted to note was Kuturov, when you look at the offense's own possession time leaders, he's still like top 15 or something.

But he's below a minute and he's quite a bit below, especially the top point getters in terms of how often he has. And I think that's what makes him so cool where when you watch him play, there's so many quick passes and quick moves. like he never really Hold on to the puck. It's like yeah, he gets it off the wall it's immediately passed someone and he's trying to stack puck touches in terms of like he passes it and he wants it back But he keeps trying to sort of move the opposing defense because he doesn't want to move that much himself He kind of wants to stay in his spot and so how he accomplishes that is he just passes it up their point to headman passes it into the slot to To brain point passes it behind the net and just keeps getting it back and keeps like facilitating all of these little movements in very quick succession and I think that's cool because he's puck dominant and the sense that he has the puck on his stick a lot of times, but it's for very, very short increments.

Yeah, it's the magic of how unique he is as an attacker because, number one, his decision making is, no pun intended, lightning quick, in large part because he has that next level IQ to where he knows where the most dangerous passer play is before he receives the puck. So he doesn't need any time to process where should my next play or pass be? He already knows before he has the buck so it's bang bang as soon as somebody gives him possession and that's so effective because

now you're making the play before the defense has time to adjust and identify what those threats are. All right harm, let's take our break here and then when we come back we'll jump back into it we'll take a couple more questions from the PDO cast listeners and finish the

Show strong with that. You're listening to the Hockey P.D. Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right. We're back here on the Hockey PEOCast with Harmon Dile in studio. Harmon. The next question we have is from Luke. And Luke shared an NHL network graphic. And it was, the caption was, there's a talented young group of goalies in the league.

And it included five of them under the age of 25. And it was Lucas Dostal, Dustin Wolf, Spencer Knight, Yaroslav Ascarov, Devin Levi. and Luke asks which of these five is going to be the best five years from now. Now, neither you or I or I or Kevin Woodley. We don't really know that much what we're talking about when it comes to goalies. I think I can only speak for myself. I'm a very simple man. If a goalie's fun to watch and makes a bunch of cool saves and is entertaining,

it might not necessarily be the most chill time, I guess, for their fans because it's a bit nerve-wracking and raises the heart rate and blood pressure. But I think that's very exciting to watch. So I have an answer based off of that on this list. Do you any notes on any of these guys? And in terms of your mileage on how you feel about their future progression, what you've already seen from now, and maybe answering a question here about what it's going to look like

a couple of years down the road? Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you. I'm far from a goalie expert. But I will say Dostal's been on my radar for a long time, even from when he first broke into the league as a sort of unheralded prospect. Now, one thing I'll also say is in having this conversation, I think it's important to note that with goalies more than any other position, draft pedigree doesn't really matter. So when you look at, for example, Connor Hellebuck is a fifth round pick. Eagerus Sesterkin was a fourth rounder.

Ilya Seroquen was a third round pick. Linus Almarc was a sixth round pick. UC Soros was a fourth round pick. So Dostal doesn't have that elite draft pedigree, but I don't. really care about draft pedigree. Once a goaltender reaches the professional ranks, I remember the first time just watching and play at the NHL level and thinking, especially behind an awful tux defensive environment,

he looks really calm, he looks really steady. He just looked like a goaltender who was always in control. I liked his ability to make reads. I liked his positioning. He didn't really have to make a ton of, like desperation saves, but I thought, okay, this this goaltender really has a lot of potential

and when I look at him relative to the other goaltenders mentioned, he has the biggest sample size of NHL NHL success, nearly 100 NHL starts, which I value a lot because goaltenders are notoriously so volatile, so if you can show me

success and add as large a sample size as possible, I'm more inclined to believe it's legitimate rather than just okay, this is a hot streak for a young goaltender and we'll see how it goes. And this year as well, I mean, he's got the second best goal saves above expected behind, or according to evolving hockey. So I've been a big docile guy for a long time.

And he's had an awesome year, right? If you stretch back even to the World Championship last year and what he did for Chequia and helping them win that gold medal as well. And what he's done this year, kind of taking that crease and really establishing himself. He's got a 9, 16, save percentage, as you mentioned, plus 14, goal save above expected. He's gotten the ducks a point in a lot. 11 of his 19 starts, which is, I think, an incredible feat considering the state of that team. And in a lot of those games, especially early in the year, it was exclusively because he was

playing so well, like he was just under fire and making a ridiculous amount of saves. I did want to give Dustin Wolf a bit of a shout out here as well. He's got a 9-10 save percentage, a positive goal save above I expected. The flames are playing at 106 point pace in the games he started. And so he's been really fun and a really cool story to track. But the name that I wanted to talk about here is Yaroslav Ascroft, because I'm not sure if you got to watch any of the game that he played on Saturday afternoon. It was a matinee game against the Oilers, but he was absolutely on one in that game. He wound up with 39 saves out of 42 shots. They wound up losing in overtime, and the Oilers did have a couple of like point blank looks where he was a bit

out of position and they just missed an empty net essentially. But he made some outrageous saves. Like his athleticism was on full display. He had this one play where he picks up the behind his net and there's a four checker and he toe drags the forechecker and gets the puck off to the wall. It was probably not the right play in terms of it was very high risk with very minimal reward because it didn't even wind up clearing the zone, but it was just unbelievably entertaining to watch. And to his credit, he's up to now in three games he's played for the sharks, stopping 90 of the 97 shots he's faced. I'm just curious, I know Vanichek is out for a couple weeks now and they have Georgiev there. I think they're trying to kind of like rehabilitate him and

potentially get some value out of that the rest of the season. I'm not sure what their incentive or motivation to give Yaroslav Ascarav too many starts the rest of the year is, though, because I think they're running the perfect tank right now, in my opinion. You look at the past five games they've played, or the past five losses they've had. They've had a third period lead in every single one of those games, and they've been right there with some really good competition along the way.

It seems like Carolina, Colorado, Winnipeg, Edmonton most recently. And they're leading in the third period. They're competitive. It was entertaining games. Macklin Celebrini is obviously doing remarkable things himself. And then they find a way to blow it and either get one or zero points out of that game to improve their draft stock. And if you're Mike Rear, you're probably watching that and being like, this is checking all the boxes right now. We're probably going to get a top four to five pick again. And we know how loaded or how compact that top four in particulars in this year's class, and we're still giving our fans and even unbiased observers like myself around the league a good show and hope for the future in terms of the players

that are producing. So it's almost like, I imagine there's a couple other teams out there right now that are pretty envious of the setup the sharks have right now where they're improving their draft stock, but they're also giving us amazing, entertaining games, and it's really the best of both world. Absolutely, especially because your young players are developing. So Brini has been terrific. After a slow start, Will Smith has looked a lot better.

Eklund, I think, is one of the more under the radar young players as far as the, you know, the talent level that he has. I still can't believe he didn't make the Sweden's Four Nations team, did he? No. I still can't believe they left him off that

roster. I think that was a... Well, they went with a more veteran in a group. I like because they had guys like Victor Arvinson and Gus Nyquist ahead of them and I do think I agree that was a mistake because we've already seen in the minutes that he's played with Celebrany for example like his creativity and slipperiness in the offensive zone creates so much

and so now you put him in a setting where he's constantly playing with the best players Sweden has to offer he would just be awesome in that type of environment so I agree with you it's a bit of a shame that he didn't make it but yeah no this Sharks team is really fun and we were joking earlier in the year about how every time a team lost to them it was like a catastrophic event for them where they would just be so down bad after it.

And I think at this point, even though they're losing some of these games, like they're just a legitimately tough out. There's going to be very few games where you just completely steamroll them. And that's why I was saying that I think Askrov might honestly be too good right now in terms of giving them too good of a chance to win the games he's in. And I feel like they're probably incentivized to get Georgia out for as many games as they can just because he probably will give in some bad low percentage goals. And I think that's what they want to accomplish this year. So, all right, any other notes on the goalies? Or you're going to win the next question. Dustin Wolf is so cool.

Dustin Wolf is so cool. He deserves his flowers. I know you reference the numbers there. But I also just love seeing smaller goalies dominate because I think there's such a prevailing notion that your goaltenders need to be seven foot tall to have success as a starter. And he's clearly bucked the trend.

And even though he has practically dominated at every level before even arriving in the NHL. You just look at this scintillating track record in junior, completely eating the AHL up. There were still question marks about can a goaltender at his size have success in the modern NHL? And just to see him find that initial traction is really cool. And watching him play the athleticism that he has, the reeds, the IQ,

he's got every tool there to be an elite goaltender. and I really like seeing that for the short kings as a guy who's 5 foot 10, it's good to see that you don't have to be seven foot tall to have success. You watch Dustin Wolf and you're like, wow, I finally feel represented in that. On a recent show, I brought up the idea

and it was more of a kind of like a fleeting, like just anecdote in passing. But on the note of the Four Nations tournament, I was talking about how fun it would be to see like a four generations tournament where we saw like, U-22 team, kind of like that team, North America team, and then like the prime players that are like 22 to 26, 26 to 30,

and then sort of the veterans 30 plus. And then one of our loyal listeners did a phenomenal job of like putting together all of these rosters in terms of what they would look like and made these really cool visuals and it apparently sparked this like whole dialogue and conversation on Reddit. So first off, I wanted to shout out that listener. But also what I noticed in that was how I guess long it takes for goalies to make their mark in the league.

And all these goalies we mentioned are under 25, but none of them would be eligible for the young team there in terms of U-22, right? And the goalies that were available because guys like Sebastian Kosa and Jester Walsett had just aged out because I believe they're both 23 years old. Wow. They literally would not have a single goalie available to them on the radar at all right now. And we've talked a lot about how the integration process for skaters has sped up so much. Right now, teams realize that, like, because of aging curves and all the studies we've done,

the primes are younger than we thought. Also, the value of having a young player producing on an ELC is so valuable to a lot of these contenders that have very limited cap space available. And so we've seen teams just more quickly put players into actual game situations that hasn't really translated that much to goalies yet. there's been very few exceptions along the way. And so I'm curious to see if that's sort of the next step or if that comes as well, where we actually start seeing some goalies who are 20, 21, 22 years old,

actually playing in the NHL. And I know that they're on a different ageing curve. They can certainly play much more regularly into the 30s and still maintain peak performance. And it takes them seasoning in the AHL and as backups in the NHL before they finally get to that starter level. But I do, I'd like to see more, I guess, growth or progress. there and just seeing younger goalies in the league because they're more fun.

I think a lot of them are incredibly athletic and entertaining to watch, and I feel like they probably would do pretty well if they were put in a position to actually succeed. Yeah, it's a really interesting thought experiment. I don't know what the answer is, but then I also see an example of how quickly the Sabres were, let's say last year leaning on Devin Levi as, okay, this is our guy right at a college and thinking, you know, he had a tough adjustment period, and he's still working his way back up to sort of being this, you know, turning his elite potential into sustainable NHL results.

So I see that and think, okay, like, that's maybe a sign of maybe goalies legitimately do need this extra time to bake and develop in the minors. But you're right. I mean, it also used to be back in the people used to, think the old, you know, Ken Holland model, for example, of just like, guy needs multiple seasons in the HL, no matter how good and how dominant he looks at the HL level, that just got to keep him and let them be overripe. And yet that has changed over time.

I'm a little bit more skeptical that accelerating the timeline for goal tenders would work. But we've never seen it, and it could be possible that they adapt as effectively as skaters have more recently. Yeah. I mean, I just, the goal is we mentioned, right? Like, Dostal, Wolf, Oscar, all, like, these guys are so fun. I just want to see these guys on my screen quicker. All right. Centron asks, what are some of the under-rador storylines you're looking forward to following in the year

2025? We know about the obvious ones like the Ovechkin scoring race. Is Ottawa finally going to break through in Atlantic? Who wins goal to the four nations, et cetera? What are some of the storylines that people aren't expecting or aren't getting or aren't giving enough attention? attention to as we go into the new year. Do you have any of that kind of stick in your mind? It could be on a team or an individual level. Yeah. For me, I think 2025 is the year that Utah really arrives

on the map, but I know they're around the playoff mix right now, but it's not just the fact that they're playoff competitive this year and could sneak in. It's not just the fact that, all right, you watch and play and they look like a legitimately good team, not just this plucky underdog side that, okay, they're winning games, but maybe they haven't, maybe, maybe it's on the back of being overwhelmingly reliant on quality goal tending or finishing lock. They're a top 10 team at 5 on 5 as far as controlling, you know, shot chair and expected goals. I love their forward group. They're skills, creative deep.

I think Cooley and Gunther are both evolving into stars. The back end is going to get a boost once, Dersie and Marino eventually come back. but it's also more about the offseason. I'm really curious to see what they do in the summer because just like last off season, they're going to have a boatload of caps base. They're still going to have excess picks to aggressively add to the roster

and given the maturation of their young core and the internal improvement that you expect, I just can't wait to see how they look come October 2025, for example. Yeah, no, they've been playing really well. It's a bit of disappointing on on Sunday night they blew the 4-1 lead at home to the ducks, wound up only getting the one point, and every point is going to be very

valuable in that Western Conference race, but I mean, they've been playing really well for a couple weeks now, and I'm with you, the underlying numbers are very encouraging. The progression of guys like Kooley and Gunther together in particular are huge, so I just really enjoy watching them play, and those home games have been really fun as well, even in

that game they lost Anaheim, the crowd was amazing, the game they played previously against the Canucks there. I thought that was one of the better sort of environments that I'd watched from home just how loud it was and how into it that crowd was. So it's really cool to see. I've got a couple here. And I think a lot of them are kind of revolving around the thing we mentioned off the top, where especially the top of the league, it feels like it's so wide open this year.

I recently made the case that I think that the Panthers have kind of reminded us in increments this season that they're probably still the best team when they really are fully motivated in treating the game as if it is a playoff situation. like we've seen their fastball is still pretty unhittable for a lot of teams. But it's very wide open. And so especially in the east, there's a couple teams that I find very fascinating to track how the season progresses for them if they can keep building on what they've done early on.

One of those is the devils, a team you and I have talked about many times in the past. The last eight games, they've given up 12, 20, 20, 17, 14, 17, 24, and 19 shots against. They're just trying to get to 20 shots against. against them these days is an incredibly impossible feat for a lot of teams they're playing. It's hearkening back to the trap days and the 90s, but they're not doing it that way through trapping. They're just doing it through constantly having the puck and just destroying you and kind of crushing your game plan with their team speed.

They're up to a top three defensive team now. We know they're certainly going to be able to score a lot of goals, especially atop the lineup. And so it feels like they're becoming very live as a legitimate contender, even more so than they were two years ago when they had that magical season. And then the Capitals, who are 23, 8 and 2 now, they're coming off of two very impressive wins I thought at home against the hurricanes. They beat them 3-1. Then they beat the Kings on Saturday, 3-1 as well.

They're leading the league in point percentage. And I've spoken a lot about them on the show. I still feel like just general kind of public sentiment based on what I'm seeing online is that people are still sort of skeptical, right? Because they obviously, for the most part, didn't deserve to really be a playoff team last year, even though they made it. It was a very short trip through the playoffs where they got swept by the Rangers. Then they made a bunch of moves, but just because it's sort of a new thing and people didn't

necessarily have very inflated expectations for them, it feels like people are kind of slow to come around to them. But I just think they're really good. Like, they're very deep. They have many contributors. They have very few weak links in the lineup. You can make the argument that in the playoffs, not like, that's less valuable because we know that top players are just going to play more.

There's going to be more rest in between games. Teams are going to be able to game plan for it. And so maybe some of that edge isn't as big of a deal in a playoff series. But I feel like for a team who's leading the league right now and a lot of metrics has a plus 39 goal differential and its first in point percentage, they're not even a top 10 team on the Stanley Cup odds market right now. And I feel like the impasse between those two things is something that I think might change if this continues for another 2025 games,

like come the trade deadline if they're still first in the league or hovering, around there. Maybe people will finally start to buy in, but maybe not because I feel like people are just so committed, I guess, to whatever takes they had in the preseasoners are just reluctant to kind of come off of that. Yeah, and especially to see their record without Ovechkin, right? That's how many teams could lose a guy that was leading the league in goals right before injury and not skip a beat? I think the coaching staff there has done a tremendous job. I think Spencer Carberry would be, I mean, not that writers actually vote on Jack Adams,

but if I did have a vote, Spencer Carberry would be number one on my ballot. I agree with the overall sentiment that the league is sort of wide open at the top. And another team that I'm wondering about in the East as far as, can they reemerge because the conference isn't that strong

is Tampa. I think a lot of people, myself included, looked at the the way that their depth got decimated, the extra sort of holes that emerged on their blue line, bottom six forward group, and even just the aging of their core, some more recent, you know, early playoff exits and thought,

okay, their window for legitimately contending for a Stanley Cup is maybe closed. Like, you know, you expect them to still be in the playoff conversation, but maybe they aren't real threats. And I'm not saying I'm definitively at that point where, I'm looking at them and going bona fide Stanley Cup contender. But bringing in Jake Gensel has really revitalized, I think, their five-on-five play and just, they have their fastball back at the top of their lineup. And yeah, there are still depth concerns in certain parts of the lineup.

But I also think the blue line has looked better with Moser coming in and the reacquisition of McDonough. Tampa is still a team that I'm watching Given the lack of maybe weight Among the top Eastern contenders of could Tampa Be one of those teams that reemerges as a contender? Yeah, Mozer was playing really well And that makes the injury that he suffered recently A tough blow.

Hopefully he's able to come back. I agree with you. I think they need to add probably one more right shot forward That can play a bit on the power play But just maybe give them sort of middle six scoring as well. But you look up in their first in the league unexpected goals generated offensively.

There's seventh in terms of fewest expected goals against allowed. And as I've noted, like the number of teams where top 10 in both is very small and they're all legitimate cup contenders. They've also had a very bizarre schedule this year where they didn't play. They had a bunch of time off early on. They've played the toughest schedule in terms of strength of schedule of teams they've played. They've pretty much played every top West team already both times for some reason early on.

And so their schedule is going to lighten up quite a bit. And so I could see them definitely going a bit of a bit of a run. Same with Vegas. Honestly, you look at their upcoming schedule and they've rattled off a bunch of wins recently. I think there's something like 11, 1, and 2 or something during this stretch. And they're playing a bunch of inferior competition coming up as well. So I know they're first in the West right now in terms of point percentage, but it feels like they could legitimately just kind of stabilize that and consolidate it even a little bit further.

I've got one more storyline that I'm interested in. And I spoke about this recently with our pal Thomas Drance, but I'm not sure if he's going to ultimately get there because he plays with Connor McDavid and he gets so much attention and he's putting up a lot of points himself. And the responsibility Caprizov has offensively on the wild is outrageous. Like every time they score, he's either getting a primary assist or goal essentially these days. But I feel like under the radar storyline is Leandro Seidel is just having an obscene year this year. He leads the league in goals with 24 of them and he's never won. won a rocket Richard. So I think that would be interesting to see if he can keep that up. Of his 52 points, 37 of them would come at 5-15, or even strength, sorry. So like that, the whole narrative of

like, oh, well, he only produces him the power play has not been true this year. And at 5-1-5, he's in the 60% club. It's basically him, Sasha Barkov, and Jordan Stall, and obviously a much different role than those two guys. But he's controlling 61% of the shots, 62% of the expected goals, 64% of the high danger chances and 65% of the goals that are scored when he's on the ice 5-on-5 playing with not the best wingers, certainly by any means. And so I'm curious to see if that gets more attention, not that he's starved for mainstream love and people appreciating his game. He's obviously won the Art Raw's heart and Ted Lindsay in 2019-20 already. But he's probably been the most valuable player this year in terms of the impact he's had on the ice.

from a scoring perspective and the context with which he's done it. And now the Oilers are back to winning a bunch of games as well. So I just wanted to give him more love because guys like Kuturov, McKinnon, Kaprizov certainly have been getting a lot of it early on. But I feel like Dreisaitle is right there and he might even be my hard pick based on these first 30, 35 games. Yeah, especially because as you noted, he hasn't had a lot of help on his wings. For sure, that's a great take.

another one that I'm sort of curious to look at where I hope there's movement on this front or some major changes. Seattle, I think, has lost five in a row. They're mediocre again. It feels like they're just stuck where they've assembled a bunch of, you know, upfront good players, but no, they seriously lack star power. same sort of thing on the blue line and I just I want to see

movement I haven't been a big fan of what Ron Francis has done I'm intrigued to see whether he survives if the Cracken missed the playoffs again and in just big picture I think they need to mole like what their strategy isn't working the roster philosophy of just collecting a bunch of average to above average players and relying on depth over star power at the top of the lineup,

we're seeing with each season that the success they had a couple years ago was more an outlier and probably more of a fluke than any sort of sustainable recipe for success. Whatever you do, do not look up Chandler-Stevenson's on ice impacts this season. Do not go on hockey viz and look at his player chart in terms of what they're giving up when he's on the ice defensively and what they're creating offensively because it's a harrowing experience,

especially when you look at then go on Puckpedia and look at his contract details as well. It's very tough. At least Brandon Montour has been phenomenal. All right, Harm, we're going to get out of here. I'll let you plug some stuff on the way out. What do you want to tell the listeners about?

Yeah, for Kinex related stuff, I just wrote recently about the Pedersen and Miller. Like, they're on ice performance and what it means big picture for the club. And I've got some cool national story over the next week or two as well. I'm working on a big preds deep dive into what's gone wrong for them

and also just a neat little story looking at the coolest rules in the CBA that people may not know about. Things like when a player gets traded to another team, the acquiring team is on the hook for playing the player's mortgage or rent-off for six months in their old city. So just like weird little fun nuggets like that.

Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to checking that out. keep up the great work harm, enjoy your holidays as well. If you're a listener and you want to spread the holiday, it'll have to the PDOCAST. You can help us out by smashing that five-star button wherever you listen. You can join us in the PDOCAST Discord. The invite link is in the show notes.

Get in there and contribute with future questions for future mailbags we do here. That's our final show before we take a little holiday break here ourselves. Hope everyone that's celebrating has a great Christmas full of gifts and great food and quality time with loved ones. and we'll be back shortly here with more of the PDOCast. Thank you for listening to us on the Sportsnet Radio Network.