The Hockey PDOcast - AHL's role in development, coaches going 11-7 with their lineup, and goalie usage

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Sean Shapiro joins Dimitri to talk about the AHL's role in player development, the pros and cons of coaches going 11-7 with their lineup, and trying to optimize goalie usage.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.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? Not too much. It's, you know what?

I'm ready for, I'm ready for hockey games that, like, really, really matter. Not saying that these games don't matter. But, like, it's kind of right that spot where, like, these final 10 games feel like the longest. streps to the season because you're just like playoffs are right around the corner and like I don't know it's I think part of it is I've been being in the Detroit area and being around a team where the balloon is basically popped things feel like they're just it feels like it's slogging to the finish after what had been potentially potential well it's remarkable

what sort of expectations or perspective can do in terms of that framing right because two teams can wind up in the same spot. But if they were way out of it at the trade deadline and then they finish hot, they can kind of talk themselves into, all right, well, you know, we can build off with us heading into next season.

This is how we want to start playing, maybe especially some of our young guys are contributing or we made certain personnel changes, whereas a team can be kind of on the fringe of that wildcard race, become a seller, completely bottom out. And these last couple weeks just feel like the most like hopeless stretch of games possible.

And in reality, you're talking about the Red Wings there, for example, I would still view this season as, I know they kind of like invested a lot of resources this offseason in veterans to kind of try and fast track this process. But considering the results they had the past handful of seasons, this year still feels like a massive success for them in kind of turning around the organization. Yet these last handful of games just feel so bleak. They do.

And it's something where it's like you look at it. And you should be, if you had said before the season, like, So obviously, like, there's a lot of excitement about what Simon Edvinson can possibly be in Detroit and everything like that. And they're going to get him nine games and NHL games in here before the end of the regular season ends and everything like that. And that should be kind of more exciting. Like, it should be like, oh, you get to watch this prospect who's supposed to be a big part of the future and everything like that. But at the same time, they're playing these games that just kind of feel that don't have lost the feel. after kind of there was such a vibe, but basically four weeks ago of, you know what?

Hey, maybe, maybe this, maybe this is the playoff here. And then you lose back to back games to Ottawa. Steve Eiserman gets really good value on selling of the deadline. And you're like, all right, this, what was it all about? Well, I know for, you know, the paying fans are going to these games in particular, this won't really move the needle much for you. But I much prefer that to the alternative, right? at the very least.

They have a ton of flexibility. They have a lot of draft capital. They have a lot of caps space to work with this summer. And they have now a 6% chance all of a sudden at getting Conradar or 12% chance or whatever at getting a top two pick. There's a lot to work with there beyond pushing all your chips in or kind of selling this false hope, finishing just outside the playoffs and then not having really anything to show for the season.

At the very least now, I actually do prefer what's going on with the Red Wings, whether how much about intentional or not. I think they would have preferred to be competing, but once they kind of saw the signs on the wall, they were smart to react quickly before the deadline and trade the players. They could get a bunch of capital back and at least decisively pushing this direction. So I really don't mind it. I know that these games can really feel like this long. No, it's, yeah, it's, it was the right move.

It was the right move. And things are, it's, it's the right step for the franchise moving forward and everything like that. It's just, it's one of those spaces where you're starting like, I'll go over to the game tonight and they're playing Pittsburgh. you're like Pittsburgh is in this, this fight with Florida for that last spot. It looks like, I don't know, right now it looks like they're going to get it over Florida, but we'll see, right? Like, you just, I'm just looking forward to play off hockey right now.

That's kind of what it comes down to. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I, uh, so I took the two weeks off while I was in New Zealand, so I really did a good job. I'm proud of myself for just like staying away from my phone and really kind of unwinding and not following hockey. So now since I've been back the past couple days, I've basically like been using one of those machines to just keep my eyelids open while I like just jam in as much hockey as I could from those two weeks that I missed into my system to catch up on everything.

So I'm, I'm all over the place. But we're going to have some fun. I've got a grab bag of topics for us today. None of them are really fully fleshed out. It's a lot of like kind of half baked ideas that could be interesting topics. So we're just going to bounce around and see how far we get with them. Let's, do you want to start talking about either the HL as a development? at Mental League or goalie usage?

Because I know we kind of have both of those teed up on our. Yeah. I've got the, let's do the HAL one just because I get fresh in my mind because I was before we hopped on and I was still working on that story. So let's, that's fresh on the mind right now. Let's do it. Let's go there. So yeah.

Yeah. Quick teaser, everyone. Check out Shapshots. Story tomorrow morning on something that popped for me. I mentioned Simon Evanston earlier. last week when evansson gets recalled they're talking about his play and getting acclimated and everything like that and um a derrick lawn mentioned something just about how the systems are slightly different between detroit and grand rapids and like any great ear earworm worm worm

or whatever i have now gone much deeper down that wormhole than i ever should have of past couple days of talking to people from various n-hill organization watching more film of neutral zone four checks than I ever should from the AHL, just to see what the heck is the norm for should your NHL team and the HL team be running the same system? Like, for example, once again, Pittsburgh's in the building tonight. I asked Mike Sullivan about it today. I talked to Mark Friedman as someone who has been up and down, right?

Someone who has a little bit of that insight of who's just like, well, yeah, in Pittsburgh let's say it's a mandate, what the Wilkesbury Scranton penguins do. is exactly what the Pittsburgh Penguins do. It's the only, obviously there are some differences for personnel in logistics. Looks Parish Grant Penguins don't have Sidney Crosby and Evgeny Mavitt. So there is some change for that. But to the flip side where you have some teams, and it was fascinating to hear things like this,

where Tampa is affiliated with the Syracuse crunch in the HL, completely different systems. There's times, Lelon told me about there's times where guys would come up from Syracuse, who they would have no idea where to be on puck retrievals in the Tampa system because they've done something so different in Syracuse. So fascinating wormhole that I'm sure you and I can go deeper into right now and will even help me with this writing process. Well, the reason why that's really interesting to me and those two teams as specific

examples is because of recent history, right? With the penguins, especially when Mike Sullivan took over, they had this track record or kind of built up this identity around the league of being an organization that could essentially plug and play, right? Like they had an injury or if that had an opening in the lineup, regardless of where I was, whether it was a grinder who would just place eight four checking minutes or whether it was someone who would jump up to the top line

and play next to Sidney Crosby in a scoring role, they could call someone up and they could be a relatively unknown name to us on a national level. It would be a kind of 25-year-old, whatever, you know, not even necessarily a former prospect, just a player who's kind of been working their way up the system. And all of a sudden they step in, they make a name for the sounds,

they score a bunch of goals and they wind up becoming Brian Rust, right? And they had great success doing that. The Lightning have also similarly developed a rep around the league of being a team that kind of uncovers these gems or these especially undersized forwards that wind up having very successful NHL careers in their mid to late 20s. But I guess in that case, they've kind of been more like from one season to the next as opposed to on the fly in season additions to their lineup that immediately stepped in seamlessly. And so maybe that's where that discrepancy between the way those two organizations operate reflects itself. But it is interesting because they both had success in very different ways running entirely different approaches. Yeah. And it's, for example, and there's other, the other key question, like I talked to one NHL video coach about this.

And he brought up the point where it comes down to the question of is the NHL Development League or is it a league about winning? Because there are certain schematics that work at the AHL level that wouldn't work at the NHL level. Like for example, the Dallas Stars who, near and dear to my heart, and we both love,

we love talking about the Dallas Stars. Them in Texas is very similar in certain ways, but if you look at how they forecheck and how Texas is a very wide team. They're very wide in the forecheck. And it's too wide. it's too wide of a forecheck and too wide of a neutral zone approach to work against NHL talent because NHL talent will just see that down the middle and cut right through the middle and take

that space where in the AHL you don't have the elite defenseman that NHL you don't have the elite puck carries you don't have especially on the blue line so an HL team can do that it's a system that it's a system that it's a system where someone made a comparison says you watch some of the college hockey from this past weekend there's some teams who they use, they may use a team that plays in the CCHA or the WCHA. CCH is a better example. The CCHA may be able to get away with using a wider forecheck against a CCH opponent, but if you play the Michigans of the world or you play against some of those others,

where they have that top end, that top end talent carrying the puck, they're just going to take that space and it's going to burn you. So it's, it gives this larger theme of, is the NHL's team, job is it to win games, is it to develop talent? And we've seen this trend, right, where it's become more and more of, it's going closer and closer to the minor league baseball model where the games don't matter. The fact they expanded the AHL playoffs is just a full testament to that. The fact 24 teams get into the HL playoffs now takes away. You don't have to be a good HL team. You just have to avoid being a bad HL team. So it's now at a spot where for teams to get their

prospects playing quote unquote meaningful games, 24 teams are in. So it's no longer a spot where you have to win games to get more of those meaningful games. You just have to be good enough to avoid the bottom too. It's, I don't know the exact answer. It's a, it's a, it's, it's, it's, there's one way to look at it from a, a team perspective. And it's why an NHL teams keep buying up their HL teams. It's definitely a, a right off for development. And then there's still a couple holdouts. And that's why the Syracuse Stample won is a great example. Syracuse is still an independent business that is trying to win hockey games. So for them to be told what you're a right off for development,

that's not going to work for, I believe it's Howard Dolgan is his last name. For Howard Dolgan, who owns the crunch to be like, no, we still have to win games. I'm still trying to run a business here where on the flip side, the Texas stars aren't necessarily a business. Obviously, Tom Galardi would love the team to make some money. At the end of the day, it's about, I want the Dallas it's about having

a cost for the Dallas stars to get better players. Yeah, I think if you'd ask anyone, I think they'd say ideally you'd find some balance between the two where if you're teaching young players

good quote unquote winning habits that'll translate to relatively short-term results, right? They're going to win more games and it'll also help in their future development. But you and I both know that's not necessarily how it works though, right? And that's specifically for a

coaching staff, if you're a coach who is looking to garner recognition for future jobs, you're looking to work your way up, right? You don't want to necessarily just be stuck in the HL for the rest of your career. It seems good in theory to say, oh, if you have a track record of developing young prospects and the full-time NHLers, that's going to be a selling point for you. But in reality, we know how the business works, right? Most likely it'll be, all right, did you have a winning program? Did you compete for a Calder Cup? Of course. That's what's what the NHL teams are going to look for and that's going to buy you future interviews and future your name popping up in in coaching search headlines and stuff like that.

And so it is unfortunate because I would like to think that ideally the HL would be the best developmental league where you would send your young players regardless of their age and they'd get meaningful opportunities to play 20 plus minutes and work on their craft and then be ready to go once a position opens up for them on the NHL roster. But unfortunately, that's not really how it works right now in the NHL. Yeah, it's a league where you have the coaches who get the next jobs are the Jared Bednar won. He didn't get, Jared Bednar didn't get the Avalanche job because, oh, you promoted this many players to the Blue Jackets. It's because he helped the Lake Erie Monsters or Cleveland Monsters, whatever the team is named now, win a Calder Cup.

That is why he got the job. And it's probably, the AHL is, and we got to give credit, because the HL is one of the toughest, leagues in the world to coach in because it's the one, the ECHL, even the ECHL is not a development league. Let's like, and I don't want to, it's just let's speak, let's call what it is. The ECHL is a league where if there's development, it's a spot where you house young bullies who you're trying to get some more minutes. Other than that, the ECHL coach's job is to win and that's it.

And HL coach's job differs greatly by organization. and also it also comes from a spot of at the end of the day, your roster is going to get ransacked one way or you might lose this or whatever for either positive or negative reason at top. It's, I don't, it's, there's no real, I don't think there's a coaching job that's a really good equivalent. Because even like those junior teams where even if you're like in theory going to lose, you lose one player or whatever,

you're never going to be in a spot where some team above you is going to make a trade and all of a sudden you have an entire top line sent somewhere else or something like that. Yeah, I'd say there's not necessarily one right-of-way or right way to do it or wrong way to do it, because as you mentioned, the penguins and the lightning have had different approaches and have each, you know, minded for great success for their NHL club. The one must, for my opinion, I'm wondering if you feel the same way is like geographically, like you need to keep them close, right? You need to keep it under a watchful eye and also have the players readily available for you.

I think that's a must for me. It's always bizarre when you see. And it's been shrinking, right? I think this used to be much more of the case five, 10 years ago. But like where you'd have the Kodok's, for example. And then it's like, oh, their HL team is in Utica. And it's like, all right, that makes no sense. It's like if you need that player, it's going to take them a significant period of time first off to come and be available.

But also it's just such a far gap between the two places that, it's really tough on a day-to-day basis to be keeping up with it. And that's why I know that, you know, sometimes fans get frustrated when a young player or a prospect is up with the NHL team, but they aren't getting on the ice or they're, they're being healthy scratched. And I know there's teams that prefer that because they feel like, all right, on the off days or on practice days or game day skates, they can keep that player close. They can have them working with their NHL staff.

They can, you know, prepare them for the rigors of being a full-time NHL player. And that is an entirely different approach as well. to what you see in the AHL and kind of what that entails in terms of all the logistics as well. Yeah, the thing we're seeing right now with the AHL and as that geography has gone a lot closer, basically the only holdouts of teams being close are owners who aren't willing to spend to make that happen. And Tom Dundon, for example, has even said it himself, I'm not going to pay money for, I'll pay money for players, but isn't going to pay. for, I mean, there's the whole John Foresland saga a couple years ago where he had a long-time

broadcaster leave because of pay. Like, the fact that the Hurricanes' AHL affiliate is Chicago and not the team in their home state comes down to the fact that he was looking for the best, the cheapest possible HL affiliate deal. The St. Louis Blues have no interest in owning their own HL team at this point. So there's in Springfield, Massachusetts. There's lots of Springfields. So it's, we're getting to the spot where.

The map has gotten, has made so much geographical sense. And when it doesn't, you can look at it and it goes back to the point of, okay, oh, that's, that goes back to ownership, deciding what is worth my investment or what is my, or what, or how can I make it make sense? Because right now at this point, as for Tampa, they've won two Stanley Cups, so they've been to the finals three years in a row. at this point, the Syracuse model for them still works because they are still at the spot where they look at Syracuse as we don't need to move an AHL team closer to here because what we have is working right now. I will be fascinating.

Like, I just long term, like if I'm doing magic crystal ball, I'm curious to see what happens with Tampa and their HL affiliate because that's the one that still doesn't make sense. Syracuse to Tampa doesn't make sense. Syracuse is not easy to get to. Like it's. Well, the Charlotte Checkers, their Carolina's AHL affiliate, right? wait.

No, they're Florida. They're Florida. That's strange. Okay. Is there anything else here on the AHL or do you want to move on to our next topic? No, let's move to the next topic. Okay. Here's a good one.

So Jonathan, we also opened up the mailbag. So ask the listeners for their thoughts. And Jonathan here asks, how effective is it for a team to run an 11-7 lineup, meaning 11 forwards and seven defensive and dressed? In my mind, it throws off a defensive rotation. and it mismatches top six forwards with bottom six line mates. So I'm curious for your take on this because it's a really interesting thing that I wouldn't say it's necessarily growing in terms of popularity.

Like it's kind of been the same. But what we see it kind of pop up with different teams time and again, and I'm kind of curious for your take on it. I hate 11-7. I don't like it at all. Like I personally, I would rather play with five defensemen than seven, honestly. Like I just think having having seven,

you get to a spot. The only way someone should be using 11-7, I really think, in my view, and I'm not an NHL coach, but is if you have a defenseman who you're like, he's coming back, we need to figure out if he's, like we're managing some minutes, and we don't know if he can do the,

it's beyond game time decision, it's in-game decision. It's, you know what, after the first period, it's, we got to go to the other guy. Like, to me, that's the only justifiable use for 117, especially in a spot. And thankfully, we're in a spot

we're in an age where you don't have to, the position you play doesn't mean you have to be on or off a power play. Like, we're not in an age where it's, oh, you have to have a defense amount of the power. You can just use four forwards in the power play. But the team should use five forwards on the power play whenever possible in my view. But that's a whole other story. 11, I don't like 117 for the perspective of, I think of that someone, you're basically sacrificing a roster spot because that seventh defenseman basically it's not going to be one of your top four guys and so basically you got a third pair that is already getting third amount of minutes anyway and you're creating a weird lack of cohesion I personally would rather if you said could you have seven

defensemen or five defensemen I'd rather have five defensemen ride might's top four and let the fifth guy rotate in a little bit and still play my top and play him my top four that way I just I think I am not a fan of 11-7 at all, unless you have a clear, we're using it because we're testing a guy in, or we're trying to, or we're trying to, guys coming off injury and we couldn't make enough of decision based off

warm-ups. I am, I'm not going to, yeah. This is the John Cooper special, right? He brought this, brought this, I don't know, he's brought it to fame, but he's most recently been the coach that has leaned on this the most, especially in the postseason.

This is going to make for good podcasting then, because I completely disagree with you. I much prefer it. I, I, it obviously time and place situationally dependent and the personnel you have could sway my opinion on it. But for the most part, I like the idea of, you know, the seventh defenseman doesn't necessarily, you don't necessarily have to get them out there. It's kind of a bit of insurance in case there's injury, I feel like, especially from like blocking a shot or something, you're much more likely to have a defenseman go down or if they get a,

getting a fight or whatever, they're sent off for whatever reason. It all of a sudden doesn't completely throw your, your pairs in a flux. You can just plug and play. But I like the idea for most purposes, from a practical perspective, getting your best forward out there as much as possible because my belief is that forwards in the NHL are typically underused, right? Most coaches like to roll their four lines, right? It's that cliche, get them out as much as possible, keep the rhythm going.

And so you wind up in these situations where the gap between this was the Rick bonus special during his time in Dallas where the gap between the first lines 515 usage and the fourth lines 515 usage was like a minute per game or something like that. It's like, oh, that seems kind of strange. You'd think that you'd want to get your best players out as much as possible. And so in this case, at the very least, and especially I think it's becoming more irrelevant because fourth lines are now becoming lines with players that can actually still play and score and contribute offensive. defensively, right? You're not sending out your number one forward with two kind of face punchers, like two grinders. You're actually generally, they're pretty good players in their own right. All of a sudden, it's giving you an opportunity to get a Nikita Kuturov or when the lightning do it, for example, away from the other team's top defensive assignment. And all of a sudden, you can sneak them on the ice,

maybe create an extra chance. If they have a good offensive zone shift, all of a sudden, you can send brain point out there to join them, right? And kind of sustain offensive momentum that way and keep control of the puck. And so for that purpose, I like it. I understand the problems with it, but I do think the risk is so small and the game is actually, you know, there, especially in the playoffs where one little shift here, there can make that big go difference that I like getting your top players out on the ice as much as possible. You've hit on another key problem. We need an excuse to do that. The issue that, that, you've hit the other key problem when it comes to hockey thinking, is we need an excuse to get a Nikita Kuturav out on the fourth line when you go out.

Why do you need the excuse for that? The job is to win hockey games. What's stopping you from breaking up that fourth? If you're going 126, what's stopping you from saying, hey, we have an offensive zone face off? And for some reason, I'm putting out these two fourth line players. Why don't I put Nikita Kutjura up with them over someone else? The end of the day, your job is, like,

you've hit on the problem there where the issue is we have to create the excuse to be able to do this. I want 12-6, but I still want my, I still want a large gap between line 1 and 4. I want my best players playing more often. Well, no, I agree with you. It's certainly a deeper rooted systemic issue, but I'm saying based on the landscape we have

and how coaches generally operate, at least this sort of forces the issue a little bit and nudges them in the right direction, in my opinion, in terms of allocating ice time for your various lines. I mean, Otto here asked a question which kind of ties into this then, and you're going to like this.

Otto says, why do many coaches seem to go to the quote unquote line blender as option number one when their team is doing poorly in or across games? It feels counterintuitive. Wouldn't a coach want their players in comfortable situations with familiar line mates to execute whatever strategic changes they're making? Another great question, right? Like it's, yeah, and that's, yeah. It's like, oh, I don't know what else to do. So I'm going to just try different combinations. And certainly sometimes, you know, there is a motivation element, right?

Like you're dealing with human beings. it's not necessarily just like names on a screen. And so that can lead to a spark in terms of all right now. You understand the way we've been playing isn't acceptable. We need to make a change. All of a sudden, you acknowledge that that's happening when you're playing with different players and that can lead to better results.

But it also speaks to, I think, a lack of sort of creativity from a strategic perspective we see in NHL where that does seem to be the most common resort for coaches where if things aren't working, especially in a playoff series, they'll get credit for all. They're just trying different combinations. and that seems to be like the least creative possible approach to fixing a problem.

I think it's kind of a bit of the mentality of if I don't know what I'm doing, the other guy can't know what I'm doing trying to counteract it. I think that comes up too where it's like, oh, well, we might as well throw anything. I mean, this is an entire sport where it's great. We sell it this way. It's an entire sport where we sell that all 16 teams going to the playoffs have a chance to win. It's the randomness of this sport is part of what people love about it

and the playoffs of it and everything like that compared to some other sports. So of course, it makes sense that you have, you have the people in charge of running these teams is going to look at, are going to look at randomness as a positive and an opportunity to,

to fix something. Well, I have to make it look like I'm doing something. And I think, I think sometimes it becomes a message sending thing because I think, I think sometimes the people who watch hockey and I think the people,

who watch and cover hockey, just the sport is so fast. It's within a game, we miss the small, too many times we miss the small changes coaches might make before the line blender. And I think that's the other thing that happens too often where it's like they may have changed the forecheck. They may have changed the defensive assignment. They may have done all of that in the first period. And then, okay, well, that didn't work.

So I go to the line blender in the second period. But because of how this sport is covered and with the chaos and everything, so much of the coverage of it is built off of I'm just watching something in front of me, and it's not like football where I'm breaking it down play by play or even basketball. And I think so many, and so the question always comes to the coach from a media perspective, oh, you change the lines to change something up. And coaches think, and coaches think they have to hide information from everyone. So instead of giving the answer of like, well, I did, like, the true answer maybe is like,

well, we changed the forecheck. We changed the forecheck. We changed the foreshack. We changed our pressure point on the penalty kill here. and that wasn't working, so we just changed the life. Instead of giving that answer, it's like, oh, well, we needed to spark. Like, I think it's just kind of all cyclical in how it all goes where we're missing some, it's sometimes it is the first change. But I think we're also missing the times it's not because no one, within a game broadcast

and within the coverage of the sport, we don't stop to talk about it so people don't look for it all the time. Right. But, okay, so let's play this scenario out then. Yes. Even further. So are you saying then that from a coaching perspective, it's just not. wanting to indulge the media necessarily and actually being transparent because there's no real

gain from it or you know, you're just, you're just being a curmudgeon and you just don't want to be doing it. So you're doing the least amount possible to fulfill your media obligations. And then you're just moving on because I think a common sort of perception for amongst fans is as analysts, we have a certain amount of information available, especially in terms of analytics, right, with publicly available metrics. But teams, teams have such a wealth of information. they have a staff of analysts, they have people grinding all this tape. They have, they're especially in a playoff series. You're breaking down every single shift.

You know your opponent as well as your own team. So you're not necessarily hiding it from your opposition because if you have made some of those structural changes, they will have clued into it already. You're not hiding it from them. You just don't really see the gains of communicating that to your fan base. I think part of it, I flip it on the other side. I think post-game questions suck in general. I say this to someone who was asked them suck.

post-game questions. You go through a game ends and your people and part of the job is to fill out a story and fill out the space. And so you ask, oh, what did you see on that goal and that? Or what do you think of this guy's game? Just to kind of give generic as possible to let the coach answer that way, where you go to after an NFL game, someone will be like, oh, you have 30 and 20, you ran this play. Why'd you do this? Like I think part of it comes from the spot where coaches aren't asked that question. And I think there's, and then there's, there's people who do have those types of questions. And because hockey is such media group think, many times, I think there's so many times where that question, I don't want to ask Derek Hollande too

much about this question in person, not in person, in the public specter, because it's in a scrum. I want to take the time to work on this story myself separately. I don't want to ask Derek the lawn about, hey, you guys run the 1-1-3-4 check. Why does it work differently with this guy? All of a sudden, I do that. That story's in the Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, and M-Live tomorrow.

If I ask it in the thing. Now, me, not asking him, allows me to ask four different players about it at practice by myself, and that I can go do my own thing. I think that's part of the issue. It's kind of, it's a chicken or egg thing here where I don't, I think coaches,

I actually, in the past, I probably was someone who was put on my big, J journalism hat and was like blaming coaches for trying to hide things from us. But I think in general, you want better answers. You got to ask better questions. And I think in general, a lot of hockey questions, most 90% of questions after after hockey games are completely pointless. It's just it's the reality.

I know that's, I know I'm worried that someone's going to swoop in here and take my PhDWA card for saying that. But it's, it's true. Well, no, we and I had a full, full conversation about this earlier in the season about how like the the conventional post-game piece is just completely irrelevant. I just told you, I missed two weeks' worth of hockey when I was in New Zealand. My first way to catch up when I came home was,

all right, I'm going to pull up NHL.com, and I'm going to read the recap from the March 13th game between the Buffalo Sabres and the New York Islanders to find out what happened. Who's consuming hockey that way? Of course not. So if you can actually provide some nugget of information, even if it's a small little parcel,

and then kind of either it doesn't necessarily even have to provide answers right ask further follow-up questions from it I think that is such more so much more useful for not only myself but I imagine most fans out there than sort of the traditional gamer that I think people are more and more moving away from yeah and they should okay uh Sean let's take our break here before we uh before we run out of time to do so and then when we come back uh we're going to keep chatting about some of the other topics we have in our to do list here you are listening to the hockey peteer As always, streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. Discussing the biggest stories that matter to Vancouver sports fans,

Halford and Brough in the morning. Subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back here on the Hockapedio cast with Sean Shapiro. Sean, let's talk about goalies then, because you had a really interesting piece where you got to talk to Ben Bishop about it and kind of talk a little bit about goalie usage. And I think that's an interesting conversation for us to unpack here as well. So I'll give you the four.

Yeah, it's a piece was last week over, once again, over at the substack, Shapshots, you should check it out. We're kind of looking at, we talk so often about the goalie back to back, right? And it's evolved, how it's evolved. And this year, the number of goal times goalies playing both games of a back-to-back is diminished, but that's kind of reflective of the entire NHL goalie usage, right? Like the days of Marty Rodor playing 78 games is now, if someone plays 60 games, you're like, wow, that's a lot.

Like the number. And so it kind of came down to it was a back-to-back situation. Detroit was playing Florida. Both teams were playing the first game of a back-to-back. Going into the game, Detroit was A, we're playing Billy Huso game one. We're going to play Magnus Helberg game two. That was the plan off the bat. Paul Maurice in Florida was more out see where it goes.

it just to me it was just a and it prompted a conversation just in a conversation a discussion of okay how these these goalie back to backs when it comes to a guy playing both I think it's become such a like it's become such a crutch where like oh you can't play it you can't play a goalie both games back to back like you you can't do that that's not something you can do and I think that's faulty honestly I think personally it was I think the research kind of backs up in that story. There's some goalies who honestly probably should not play back to back. It was interesting. Like, Sergei

Gaber Brodsky, if you look at his numbers when he plays both game one and two, like his save percentage dips almost 20 points in game two, but Potter Hellebuck plays more back to backs than he one in the league, and his safe percentage actually goes up in game two, which maybe is a point of conversation for him and his goalie coach about what's happening in game one. I,

it's, to me, it's kind of one of those spaces where we have this old tiny hockey thinking that has slightly evolved, only slightly evolved, where we're starting to see some new thinking with it, but it's still the, you can't play the same goal in both games of

a back-to-back, and you go starter game one, backup game two. And that's just kind of the way it's been. And we're starting to see some teams break away from it, but I don't know. It's just a topic that to me, I just nerd out about it. I've rambled and I'll let you get me back on track here.

Yeah, well, I think there's two ways that might not necessarily be related to look at this, right? One, is performance in terms of whether that degrades with fatigue, and then the other is risk of injury. And I think the second is far more interesting to me and also a bit more of a sort of difficult topic to handle. I did a show with Joe Smith a while back, who's covering the wild now for the athletic, and he wrote up a piece about this, and I'd love to read more about it in terms of how the wild are using these sort of bracelets on their players to monitor, you know,

various biometrics and sort of their fatigue levels. And they've been basically choosing when to hold team practices as a result of it, depending on how those levels are reading to them. And so I find that incredibly fascinating. And that's obviously, you know, as much as you'd like to maximize your chances of winning an individual game, especially late in the season, maintaining player health and longevity and keeping them on the ice and feeling good, and feeling healthy and being able to contribute for the long term is far more important for

every organization. And so I think that's a very interesting component of this that could kind of, you know, lead to a whole separate conversation, basically. Yeah. And it's, it's, and I think from the goal-tending perspective, and I think, I thought Paul Maurice actually had a pretty good take on it. And it kind of lined up well with, I talked to Ben Bishop about it, who, um, technically Buffalo Sabre, Ben Bishop, until his contract is up in, at the end of they should call that guy out they've had some goalie issues this season they they could i mean he told me when he got uh when i talked to them it was right after the day they signed devon levi and he said he's like i'm pretty sure devons above me on the depth chart

but i haven't got a call from uh i have but i haven't gotten a call yet to to to get over there uh Craig and Craig Craig is they got the they got the veteran above me and Craig Anderson so yeah but it was when you look at the goalie back to back it's it's it's it's it's it's not necessarily, and as I've kind of looked at this, it's not necessarily game one and game two of it. It's can you properly manage, can you properly manage the days around it? Can you properly manage to me, the three and four, the three and four is a bigger deal than the back to back, because you have one game, you have one game. The way Bishop put it, you have game one, your momentum and your rhythm is going to continue into the game two. It's going to be fine. It's,

It's how do you handle the first practice day off? How do you handle the recovery of that? And I talked to a goalie coach after that story, ran actually, who brought the point, he said one of the things, one of the reasons that he thinks that we have more and more, as we'll get to, he says he thinks we'll get to the point. His theory was that someday we'll get to more goalies playing both games of a back-to-back because coaches will start to trust young goalies.

His theory was that right now one of the reasons that coaches are so afraid, even more so to do it, is that you can't play a young guy, both games, is back-to-back, because he doesn't know how to make sure he's healthy on day three. And it was something where he's like, this goalie coach brought up, if, hey, as we continue to listen to the goalie coach, and as the goalie coach has continued to get more of the year of the NHL coach, hopefully we get to the spot where we're making the decisions that we're putting the best chance to win on the ice most frequently as possible.

Like if a team's playing a back-to-back game and they have a play Friday, they say they play Friday Saturday, if they don't play, if they don't, and say they play, say they don't play Thursday Wednesday and they play Tuesday, they play Tuesday, right? Like, your starter can play all four games. Like that's not, like that shouldn't be like that's something that now if you have a good 1A, 1B that push each other, great, do it. But if you have a starter, if you're a team like, for example, once again, in a college, I always go back to Dallas just because it's a team,

I know well, but they fit well for this scenario. When you have Jake Ottinger and Matt Murray, like, why are you ever playing, the other Matt Murray, sorry, why are you ever playing Matt Murray when you have a healthy, a healthy Jake Ottinger? But I'm very interested in Ben Bishop's perspective on this. At the same time, though, which player is going to say that they don't want to play every single night, right? Like, I'd be surprised to hear Ben Bishop say that he doesn't want to play all 82 games.

And so for me, you look at it right now. Connor Hallibuck is leading the league, 63 games, U.S.S. is at 63, Andre Basilewski, 61, Gurgaiv and Andra 61, and that's it. They're the only guys above 60. And so to your point of we're now surprised whenever it used to be 70 plus, and now it's 60 plus. And it's like, whoa, that's a big. I can't believe this guy is going to start 63 games. I think there is enough data to show that goalie should not.

be starting more than 60 games. I do wonder, though, the sequencing of the games is interesting to me. I, without having looked at this, I wonder if there's a scenario where it might actually make sense to play that goalie in back-to-back games. The fatigue of playing those two games in 24 hours isn't an issue, but then you give them like a full week off or something and whether that recovery provides their body a better opportunity to sort of recover, and then all of a sudden they'll be better for the following week.

I wonder if that's a better way to approach as opposed to sequencing games the way we have so far. I do agree with you on the YouTube. I think we're at a spot when it comes to overall wear and tear on the body. And I think the sequence is probably a great way to put it. I think that you're going to, my working hockey observer theory is that you can get the best version of a goalie for about 70 games. And the key question is how do you build that you have enough of those games in the post-season? season. So like, how do you avoid? That's what sometimes we see. Because you're, you're hopefully going to be playing 20 playoff games. Exactly. So you're,

you're hopeful, and this is why like that 50 game mark is actually, it makes a lot of sense, because in theory, you're saving your goalie's best health for 20 games. But I think, I think the sequencing is a really good way to look at this and bring this up because one of the one of the development models for goaltending in North American hockey is college hockey, right and that's that's that is what that model is play back to back off for five or not off for five days but you have you play friday saturday then you're off till the next friday like that is a model where maybe we need to be looking more that data point and how college hockey goalies are holding up as more of the space of how can you fit that into an NHL schedule how can you

approach it that way it's it would be you keep every time we and i talk i end up getting more ideas of things. Well, you know, where I was on. You know what? You had a, you had a note in one of your recent pieces. I think it was like one of your mailbacks or something where you were kind of pointing out or talking about the idea of teams having,

uh, changing the way teams carry a third goalie, for example. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I,

I, so using the baseball example, I think there's been a lot of studies that have showed that a, a pitcher, especially like a relief pitcher having to warm up. and simulate game setting pitches to get ready to step on the mound also has a cumulative effect of wear and tear on their body, not just the actual innings they pitch in a game setting. And so for me, for a goalie, I think that applies as well where think of all the mental toll

that goalies goleys go through to get themselves ready to participate in a game, right? And so for me, I'd be really fascinated to see a study on that in terms of like, we know sometimes that if a team decides their starter is not playing tonight, Eric Comrie can give up 10 goals and he's going to stay in there because the backup isn't prepared to come in or whatever, right? And so, and that's an entirely different conversation, you know what I mean, in terms of like goalie preparation for games and whether that has some sort of a mental toll as well that isn't necessarily reflected in in physical workload but matters as well and so not having to worry about your starter on an off night having to come in because backups getting lit up might provide them a

better runway to recover for their next start as opposed to sitting on the bench and worrying about whether they're going to have to step in and kind of back them up and relief yeah it's obviously in the playoffs you would want your number two playing all the time but if it was last week when before the blues sent Joel Hofer back to the HAL to play down the stretch. They basically, as they were going from Hofer to Bennington, they basically had whoever was going to be the next start.

Thomas Kreis was basically serving in that de facto role where he was the taking the extra shots in practice. He was the guy who was going through the bag. He was taking the warm up and being in that backup role. Like it's, the issue becomes like, and we've seen teams,

we've seen teams carry, it only you ever happens in like weird circumstances like we had the St. Louis one where Bennington got the suspension so they carried three goalies for a bet and recalled hope for an emergency circumstances and everything like that or um try to remember who but there was I want to say there's something a couple years back that carried three goalies for a longer than they should have because of they had a waiver situate. Are you kidding me Sean? This is this is one of the first PDO cast recurring topics in and I think our first year.

It was a topic near and dear to my heart. It's the Newark Islanders with J.F. Burrubi, who kept him and the running joke was that I was unclear whether he actually existed because I could see him on the roster. He was active, but you wouldn't see him in any game setting. He wasn't even on the bench. They were just carrying him around. And so, you know, that became a whole running bit for me. And to this day, and he's been very active in terms of switching teams and getting called up

and sent down every single time cat friendly tweets out. he's been assigned or whatever. I get people mentioning me in that tweet being like, oh, here's J.F. Barouba. He's back at it. So I remember that topic far too well. Yeah. I think teams also need, I think right now, and I don't know, maybe if this is expanding the NHL roster spot,

NHL roster size by one or whatever. Maybe that's the way to do it. But I think there should be a space where teams are allowed to do this. Like, it was, it's funny. And like, I don't, I was watching a, I was watching Detroit practice last week after Billy Huso had, uh, Billy Hussupo got, got injured. And so Alex Delfich gets called up and he's not there yet. And so they have the eBug basically is going through the morning skate with the Red Wings.

And it's the space where, obviously, the guy is a very kind guy and they found the best possible ebug possible, but are you really, is that really the best game prep for your NHL players to shoot against a beer leaguer in the morning? Like, wouldn't it make sense to have a third NHL goalie there? Another NHL goalie there, and this was obviously happened because one was on the way, but if you had three on the roster, if you had a guy who was this bullpen catcher equivalent, who was an NHL goalie, and credit to Mike, Mike McKenna was one of the first people I've heard really push this idea. And I think one of the reasons Mike, Mike, pushed it was partially, it probably would have extended a playing role for him in his career,

but that type of guy who, you know what, you don't want them to, you don't, you don't need them in the HL stealing starts from the kid you need to build for the future, but they could play in an NHL game. They're viable. They're used to, they, they're used to these shots. They're used to NHL practice. Like, it's in a sport where we talk so much about finding the next little edge and teams get competitive on this.

this just feels like something where it just, it seems so obvious to me that, yet we go to, and as much as I love the ebug story, like the fact of the matter is the ebug story is, nowhere else would you have the, I guess, the seven six of 49ers kind of proved otherwise in the NFC championship game,

but, but nowhere else would you have such an important position where you'd be like, all, well, it's one, two, and then nobody. Yeah. Yeah, no, I, So you think that in this case, teams would definitely use that third spot on, like, sort of the HL journey win, which would create further opportunities for young goalies to not have to be playing the ECHL, but getting those reps in the HL?

You think that would be the trickle-down effect? Yeah, I think it would be kind of like the 4A guy. You'd get some of those, that 4A guy, you'd get some of those North American goalies who go over to Europe when they're like, like, for example, one guy, I don't think he's playing anymore, but one guy who comes to mind is like the John Muses of the world, the guy who was a good, decent, okay, H.L goalie, good college hockey goalie, but was never really going to be in a team's long-term plans to be the NHL guy, but offer it, but could have had a six, seven-year career of being the number three guy, being part of the team, make it say to, say you make it a non-salary-capped position, make it a, make it a universal like, hey, $200,000, $200,000 position or whatever, just six-figure position. give health insurance, and then it becomes part of,

it becomes something where it's, then you no longer have to worry about, like, it's interesting. Somebody brought up the David Ayer's situation to me after I brought this up in the story, they said, one of the things that we missed

about the David Ayer's situation that I never thought about this is the David Ayer's situation worked because he was the Maple Leaf Sanboni driver. And they put it this way. It's like, what if that had happened in Arizona or Florida or Carolina

where you don't have a guy who practices with an AHL team all the time, a guy who doesn't see those type of shots all the time. For most of these ebugs, like David A. are seeing an NHL player shot. It wasn't the first time. Part of the forgotten success of that story is

he was used to seeing those shots. He was used to seeing pro shots all the time. You go to a, and so it really worked in Toronto because of that. If you go to a market where you don't have that, Like the eb, I don't, and I'm not sure the state of power, I'm not going to power rank eBugs across the league, but that was one of the lessons that was, well, it was a great story and hockey was really cool about it. The thing we missed, as someone pointed out to me, is that was, it could have been so much worse where what if it was another market where you didn't have an eBug would face initial shots before?

And he comes in and he lets up six in a row or gets hurt or something like that where, it's I just I and I love the ebug story I wasn't there a game at the end of last year

with the stars where the ducks used in the dogs yeah I think it might have been and actually I forget if if the game matters

for playoffs season for the stars but I think it wasn't like an irrelevant game it was the third period it was it was a and I actually know the guy who was the ebuck

Thomas Hodges who was a and good story once again fun story, but the ducks, it was one of those games where

I think it was trying to remember who it was, try to remember who the third, the ducks used three goals. It was Anthony Stollars, yeah. It stole ours, yeah. Gibson stole ours and then,

and then basically in the third period, the game didn't matter for the ducks, so they're like, all right, we're getting cranked. And they basically, who knows how they basically said, they're both hurt.

So here he goes. And it's, and it helped the, I don't remember, it came down to, I don't remember if it actually changed whether Dallas got Calgary or not, but I remember that being a talking point of, are the stars now going to have a different opponent because the Ducks said we're going to use this e-book? Yeah, good times. Yeah, and I do think I would love it from the perspective of if you're giving your start of the night off,

they should not be like on the bench in equipment. They should be in the press box or just have the night off completely and allow them to reset. I think that. I'm curious. next time I have Kevin Bullion, I'm going to ask him about this because I think it's an interesting topic to delve into further. Sean, we've got to get out of here. Everyone should go subscribe to Sean's substack shapshots. Go subscribe to EP Ringsside to catch the writing that both of us do. Give the podcast, the PDO cast, five stars, wherever you listen. And we'll be back tomorrow with more of the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the Sportsnet

Radio Network.