The Hockey PDOcast - Avalanche vs. Jets Through Two Games, and Playing Styles in the Playoffs

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jesse Marshall to break down the first two games of the Avalanche vs. Jets series, while taking a league wide view at the impact of forcing your opposition to change the way they play and strategies that seem to be especially effective in the postseason. 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.

2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dmitri Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man? Good to be back. Nice to see you. Happy playoff season. Yes, happy playoff season. Indeed. So the plan for today is you and I are going to use this off day between, or extra off day, I should say, between games as the series shifts from Winnipeg to Colorado to break down the first two games of Avs Jets, a series that has been immensely eventful so far. And I think very satisfyingly also lived up to all the hype that I had built up for it as like the first round matchup that I was really fascinated to watch play out tactically, right? Because these were two teams that

were obviously very successful this season, but did so in not only different ways, but ways that could give each other big time trouble. And we've sort of seen that throughout both these games as they've sort of traded haymakers. It's fitting that they split the two games and now they're heading to Colorado. And I think the dynamics of the series certainly could shift quite a bit because of that home ice now being in favor of Colorado. But I want to get into it all with you. So what kind of stuck out for you just watching these first two games, whether it's something that reinforced your preexisting beliefs on either team or something that kind of caught you off guard and you weren't necessarily expecting? How about a little of both? I think I don't, I don't

don't think anybody expected Winnipeg, Dimitri, to come in from an offensive perspective and be able to successfully trade Haymakers with Colorado. But I also think that, like, the story being Winnipeg's goaltending and Winnipeg's Team D is their identity was a little overblown. And this is a team that was like top 10 in the NHL and 5-1-5 goals in the regular season. They, I think, do a fantastic job of maybe not so much in this series, but usually controlling the neutral zone, right, and funneling plays to. where they want them to go using that to kind of counter and play offense, right?

So it's not like a, they don't play this like suffocating, nightmarish defensive system. I think they're just good in their roles. They understand their roles. They're deep. And they have a little bit of scoring everywhere in the lineup. And it's not an overwhelming amount of, they don't have a superstar goal score necessarily within the roster. But the sum of the parts is, you know, is the important thing here.

It adds up to quite a bit. So they have to find a way. And I think they did it more last night, and then you had some things go wrong, unfortunately, with, you know, that the misplay from Connor Hellebuck. And I'm going to include, you know, Pionk in that because I think he kind of had a little bit of hand in that turnover behind the net to Cogliano that sort of kickstarted that whole thing. But outside of that, I thought once that happened, they sort of lost control of. But I think you did see them control the neutral zone a little bit better. But that to me is it. That's what has to happen here between the lines.

They have to make sure that they are not giving Colorado any sort of like free. pass to come in with speed on a line rush because they want to play that way. That's like that's sort of, and I think Colorado is a multifaceted team that can play in a lot of offensive styles. But I think you look at the way Nathan McKinnon's playing right now and the North South niths to his game and the runs that he's been going on through the Neusers on are just straight ahead, right? They're coming right at you with speed.

And it's an overwhelming thing to deal with. And if you don't have forward support and you're not aligned in your preferenceed way, you've just made handling those oncoming rushes that often include a really talented defenseman also carrying the puck alongside the forwards. It becomes a little bit of a nightmare. But back to my original point to be true, I go back to Winnipeg can score, right?

I don't think that got enough attention before the series started. It made it seem like it was just this, you know, offense versus defense war. But in the meantime, the jets have been kind of, you know, outside of pockets of time, have been kind of scoring goals all year long.

Yeah, they certainly. can and it is a team effort. And I'm glad you started us off with this because I was initially thinking, all right, let's start off with some other topics. I'll work my way into getting riled up. And then later on, I'm going to drop the hammer. But I'm glad we were going to talk about this now because I think it is kind of the elephant in the room. And it's this idea that, you know, all the talk after game one was people citing Winnipeg's expected goals numbers by the public models, which had them like under two expected goals generated in that game. And then Alexander George, I have obviously giving up the seven in the seven six loss and everyone being like oh my god if only colorado just had

a league average goalie this would have been an entirely different story this would have been a wrap for them and i'm just totally pushed back on the idea that it's as simple as that and also this idea that you could watch that game and come away from it believing that winnipeg generated less than two expected goals worth of offense i had them down for 19 scoring chances in that game with a large concentration of them coming from that net front, not only high danger area, but like specifically from very locations just outside the crease, which is where they live. And that was a matchup that we highlighted heading into this series that I thought was going to really dictate the terms of engagement for the two because Winnipeg, obviously, with the size of their forwards,

loves to play there and create offensively. And Colorado was one of the worst teams in the league all season at defending there. They just, whether it was a lack of effort or attention to detail or they were just looking to sprint out of the zone and get moving offensively. They just weren't really picking up their assignments there all year. And you sort of saw that in game one. You certainly saw it a bit in game two as well, less so. I thought Colorado would get a much better job in Prano Giorgio. But I just, I don't know, like, I don't know if you feel the same way, but it goes much deeper in my opinion than just, oh, well, the goalie just needs to make saves because he faced 22 shots or whatever and he gave up

seven goals. Like, yeah, obviously that's a horrible, unacceptable, save percentage. But I think you need to look at the context of kind of what's happening, how the game's being played out, and sort of one team's strength against another team's weakness. Well, yeah. I mean, I mean, you nailed it, right? I mean, we can simultaneously acknowledge that George E. wasn't great in that game, right? But that when a pig, like, also played well offensively, I think.

Like, I think those two things can exist synonymously together. And we can kind of talk about them in conjunction without sort of making it all about the goaltending, right? Yeah. So as far as the expect. did goals piece goes. I think what surprised me most about that? Because we talked a little bit before the show last night about like, hey, what do we want to cover in the series? You brought that up and I was like, really,

I'm going to take a look because I didn't, I guess nothing like I just over my head when I was looking at the numbers. But I was kind of surprised too, overall, especially when you look at where of the shot, you already mentioned this, but where are the shots being taken from? Now, I know like type and there's other circumstances that play into this that we're not

taking into consideration. But you know, from an Offensive perspective, the Jets beat up the goal line so well, right? They triangulate their forward sort of on the corner of the net down in the center of the ice by the sort of off center to the net. And they get that cycle rolling. Their defense are active and, you know, they can jump in and move back up and keep it going. They provide support along the wall.

They live in the areas that are reflected inside of the shot map that you look at. And it's like a one-to-one in terms of like if you drew up where their players exist offensively, structurally speaking in the offensive zone, like the shots that they generated in game one were almost an exact match to that. So I guess there was something lost on me there as well, is that what about those shots was such quality that only led to, you know, that mediocre, fairly pretty low, expected goal total, discounting the performance of the goalie, right? Like discounting the performance of the goalie, throwing all that aside and just looking

at where they were taking the shots from. I mean, it was a bevy of chances from some really extremely high danger areas. To the point that I think, you know, high danger, save percentage was a piece of the narrative from the Colorado side, right? Like, look how bad this is, you know, that didn't seem to get an acknowledgement in many other circles. So, you know, I agree with you. I thought that the discrepancy was great after you mentioned.

I went and took a look at it. And I was surprised, you know, just based on location alone, you would have thought that that number would have been a little bit higher at even strength. Yeah, it's shocking that. I think they expect the goal total for these two games is 9.6 for Colorado and 4.6 for Winnipeg. And that just not remotely close, I think, to what it actually is in reality. Now, I got the scoring chances 52 to 41 by my hand tracking for Colorado. They've certainly got, I think, the larger volume of it.

But it's important that you also noted the goal line work for Winnipeg, right? Because like with their top two lines in particular, and then they can throw that Lowry line out there that certainly has a bunch of size of its own. They do such a good job of attacking from that very sort of awkward piece of these. ice for the opposing goalie as well that I think throws them off a little bit and probably heightens the quality of the chances as well. There's a lot going on there. But the point that I was trying to raise there just beyond all of that is I'm really happy for for Georgia. You know, often people are like, oh, like you're rooting for this team where you're rooting against that team. And honestly, I couldn't care either way who wins or who loses. Like, I just want the

most entertaining hockey and the most entertaining outcome for the rest of the postseason. Certainly, you want to be proven right with a lot of your takes before this stuff. But just from like the personal level, Georgia, I've got beaten up so much after game one because of that performance. And in it heading into the series, you know, it was such a big talking point, him versus Hellebuck, who's going to, I think, almost unanimously win the Vezna Trophy this season.

And then he has this game two where the first 15 or so minutes, Winnipeg came out so hot. I think scoring chances were nine nothing until Colorado got their first one with about four minutes left from the first. George, have kept it at one nothing. And then they were able to kind of work their way back in. And ultimately,

wound up out playing Winnipeg as the game went along. And there were so many, like, Winnipeg does such a good job of these kind of like shot pass redirections as well that I thought Georgia did a really good job of coming around to. And so it was a heck of a performance, right, given the circumstances, given the pressure, given the fact that if it had been another blowup performance, it's very possible that with Usa Santernan getting healthy and not being sick again, he could have taken the crease in game three. And then all of a sudden, not this necessarily is indicative of what the rest of the series is going to play out like.

but I thought it was a really sort of rewarding performance for a guy who really was up against it heading into it. No, I agree. Redemption story is great. There seemed, I think, like, on Twitter, which is a tough place to base your opinion on. But I think on Twitter there was this almost palpable disappointment that used to stand in and wasn't available for that game, for game two. Like, there wasn't even a let him get in and try to play his way out of its sentiment. It was more of like stop now. Um, like don't know further.

Like, do not pass go, do not collect $200. So make no mistake about it. Like there, you go back and look at the third period of last night's game. There are what, three saves you could probably look at that he made that if he's in game one form, maybe they go in. Like a couple really quick, um, you know, bang, bang plays that he had to make smart reactions on. And, um, you know, his pads were down all night long really quickly.

He seemed to be, uh, much more aggressive. Um, him that's, that's to me now is one of the most interesting aspects to this entire series is that you had him come through last night and play this sort of redemption arc and you had Connor Hellebuck sort of misplay this puck and, and sort of have this like this moment, you know, um, where people are like, oh, he's human, you know, for a minute. Uh, because he, I mean, that last, in game two, I mean, there were several moments where he had stood on his head as well and, you know, looked like his typical unbeatable self. So the narrative around the goalie's going into game three is completely juxtaposed, I think, from what you may have expected it

have been after game one. And I think watching how the rest of this develops now is going to be extremely interesting. Yeah, I thought how Alex's reactions beyond just the giveaway there that led to obviously the back breaking goal. There was the wood one where he was kind of like slow to react on a shot that you'd think he should have. There were a few others that he didn't even get beaten on. but I'm no Kevin Woodley, so I'm not like necessarily viewing this from the most technical perspective, but it seemed like for a goalie who, you know, prides himself on being so, like, positionally sound and, like, making boring saves because he's just always in the right place and can absorb shots cleanly, he looked like he was kind of chasing it a little bit.

And the reason why I note that's interesting, and, and listen, like, Connor Hellibuck is, phenomenal. He's one of the best goalies in the world has been for so long. I fully expect to bounce back performance from him. But I was listening to this interview that Steve Aliquette had, and he was talking about Georgiev and kind of how one of his concerns was that they had all just overplayed him in the regular season. And you could sort of see that in that kind of processing and reaction time. And it might be as much psychological and kind of mental wear and terror accumulated over a season as it is actual

physical burden of playing 60 plus games. And Hallibuck is another goalie who played 60 plus games. We're watching someone like Jeremy Swayman, for example, in another series, he just looks so fresh and so dialed in right now, and he notably faced like 500 plus fewer shots this season, I think, than either of these guys did. And so kind of putting that all together and kind of thinking about this sort of the byproduct, I guess, or the trickle-down effect of playing your goalie too much

and exposing them too much in the regular season, what that can look like in this playoff setting. Might just be a one-off, might be something to keep in mind. But I think it's interesting because, you know, the abs have to feel great. You're talking about the Jets offense to begin. The Aves offense,

which clearly gets more pub and more attention heading into the series, has scored, what, 10 goals now on Connor Hullabuck in these two games? And the reason why I think they have to feel great about that beyond just 10 goals and two games being good regardless of opponent, especially against Hullabuck, is that Nathan McKinnon himself hasn't really necessarily even gotten going offensively. And part of that might be because of the way Winnipeg has tactically defended him, but they've actually gotten a lot of production two goals out of Miles Wood,

another one created by Cogliano and Parise and Trennan. Josh Manson scores the breakaway goal. Josh Mason out of the box. Yeah, they're getting all these contributions from kind of depth or supporting players, which is an important note because you and I did a show last year during their first round series against Seattle. And all we could talk about was when McKinnon's on the ice,

the abs have a good chance of scoring. When he's taking a break, they're not going to score. They have no chance. Their best results here is not getting scored on themselves and coming away from a neutral. And in this case, McKinnon actually got played to a draw five-on-five in these two games against the lottery line. And yet, Colorado was still able to come out ahead because they were getting all of this offensive contribution from guys down the lineup. And so I think that is relevant for a team that has clearly been seeking that for the past couple seasons.

Here's how relevant it is. That depth has forced Rick Bonas to bust his stop watch out. Have you noticed this, Dimitri? His presser last night he talked about zone time. That's what he focused on. He said they only had six minutes and one second of zone time total in the Colorado zone. Maybe I think a total for that night. And it kept going on and on about zone time.

Not like from a shot-based metrics perspective, raw zone time. And the focus I thought, if I'm interpreting what he said was, it's not in one area. We're getting it across the board, right? The depth of this team right now is deeper than what we have. They're outplaying what we have. They're spending more time in the zone. And as a result, we're having a hard time sustaining that offense. Again, that's what the Jets are good at, right?

They're a heavy cycle team. They love to live in that low zone in that corner. They can't do that if they're playing defense, right? I mean, that's, you know, from my perspective, when I thought about this series, I wrote about it for McKeans to meet you. I'm covering it for McKeons. I said that I thought one of the easy keys was Adam. Lowry on Nathan McKinnon.

In the regular season, and this is again, you mentioned how interesting this series gets now that it goes back to Colorado. They don't have to worry about that now. They can put Nathan McKin on whoever they won't. It becomes much harder for the Jets to get that Lowry matchup. And I wonder, you mentioned, you know, McKinnon maybe hasn't had to shoulder much of the load. Does that change if he gets a line one versus line one matchup in Colorado?

Does he feel like that's better? Historically, I think it has been a little bit for McKinnon. against Lowry, he's definitely not struggled, but hasn't been as good, which is a high bar, by the way. But I don't know. I just, there's a couple elements to that that I think are now interesting going into game, too. You've got a coach that's really focused on getting his team to gain more time in the zone, seems eager for them to dump pucks in, which, you know, stylistically has been the go-to for a lot of teams in this playoff.

You've seen a lot of goals scored off high momentum four checks with dump pucks. Real quick, little time spent in the neutrosome, just like the old Ricky Bobby slingshot maneuver, the shake and bake, past the red line where somebody just tips a rim out in, waves the icing off, and gives two skaters the chance to just go full bore after it. Yeah, that works.

You've seen it all across the league this year. So that's what the jets have been good at. And I think that the abs have been discernibly taking that away from them by just dominating in their own cycle. And not really honestly, to meet you're creating a lot of turnovers on their own. We expected the Jets to be the team that would kind of like, you know, flood the puck side and then counter in the neutral zone. But really, I think we've seen Colorado actually walking away with a lot of the turnovers.

Some of them have been in the Jets defensive zone off the strategy we just discussed. And there's nothing fancy about it. It's, you know, it's the old rubber band technique to get into the zone and get a chance at a dump puck. Let's put a, let's put a pin in that because I actually want to circle back and talk more about that just in terms of like the league-wide scope for this postseason, because I think that's a really interesting note. But on the on the topic of zone time, I saw this note from our pal Garrett Hole who tweeted out the zone exit stats for the Jets at 515 in the series. And now it being only two games, right? But it's highly alarming that Josh Morrissey,

as you'd expect, is the only Jets defenseman out of the six they've used that's a 50% controlled exit rate. This is the other five. Brennan, Dillon 30%, Dylan, Dillon Sandberg, 25%, Dylan Demelo, 20%, Neil Pionk, 13% with a 35% failed exit rate, and then Logan Stanley at 11%. Now, I think the obvious move there is just to replace Stanley moving forward with Schmidt and get a bit more puck moving and someone who can break the puck out a bit more cleanly, particularly skating it out and beating that Colorado F1. But I think that's why Colorado has spent so much time in the jet zone and actually think, like, Rick's on it there. Like, that is sort of the story of how this series is kind of shifting in Colorado's favor and when Winnipeg's.

gotten in trouble because Colorado being able to kind of stack together these sequences where it's 90 seconds spent in a row in the zone and they're getting shot after shot and building on it is so dangerous because they move around this offensive zone so much, right? So the first 15 or 20 seconds of that, everyone's kind of in the regular position.

Then as you keep going, all of a sudden Nathan McKinnon's moving around. He's popping up in new spots. The puck's bouncing around. They're retrieving rebounds. And you're going to cause all sorts of defensive miscommunications and breakdowns. And that's how you get really great A looks from those extended offensive zone shifts.

And so that's something Winnipeg I think really needs to fight against because it's going to be easier said than done because Colorado applies so much pressure. And they're so good at retrieving pucks across the board. But that's something I think that they have to figure out a way to get the puck out and start working from a more advantageous territorial position because it's really been noticeable just how many of these shifts they've been kind of spent, pinned, just trying to try to get out failing and then having to do it all over again. Yeah, there's a lot of like what you would call hope plays from them, right? Where like they just go high and off the glass and hope that there's a forward up ice that's going to be around like to go get it. Right. And that's not, I mean, like, you know, I don't want to speak for Nikolai for Eilers, but like I don't think that that's the way he prefers his breakouts to start. You know, he's he's looking for something that's a little bit more tape to tape and allows him to maintain his forward momentum.

them. But that's, that's to me the telltale sign of like a team that's shaken up by somebody else's forecheck, right? Is that there's not even an attempt to make a play, to pick a head up and look around. You know, it's just, you know, for right-handers, it's that old nine iron whack. You know, just come in and give it a chop on, you know, try to get air on it and, you know, maybe rim it around if you can. But that's, you don't know. where it ends up. That's why it's a hope play, right? There's no discernible end to your sequence. You're just hoping someone's going to be there. They have to find a way out of that. And I don't think you can really even blame their forwards, right? I don't know, you look at the group that they have. There's a lot of

really engaged defensive players in that in that group. I mean, look, Adam Lowry, Sean Monaghan, and Mark Schifley are arguably three of the best defensive centers in the entire conference and they're on the same team. So I don't know. I think that they're there. They're ready. to help, right? But, you know, again, that connection has to be made. You have to pick your head up. Sometimes you're going to get hit, right? And most of the time you're going to get hit. I mean, I know we're not talking about Tampa, Florida today, but we can have some of the same conversation about that series right now. You know, it's that sort of get rid of it as soon as I can, mentality that leads to a lot of turnovers and a lot of extended zone time, you know,

operating under duress like that. And, you know, it's not surprising that Josh more if these results are where they are, he's such a good skater, right? So the default mode for him is if he sees that pressure coming or he's in trouble, he'll move in himself, right? The rest of that cast, that's not really a trait that you would associate with some of those defensemen. So you either develop it or you just accept the fact that you're going to, you get lamb-based and you try to make a tape-to-ta-tap pass. But yeah, you know, I think back to, again, Nathan McKinnon in that north-south way he's skating right now, Dimitri, that's just a nightmare fuel. You're turning pucks over in that transitionary period of your game, right, where you're trying to get out of your zone,

you're trying to play offense, everybody's skating the same direction. Any moment like where you give McKinnon the puck and you have to stop and turn is just nightmare fuel. You'll have bad dreams about that for months. He's skating so well. You know, I'll tell you, not to change the subject, but one of my favorite moments in the series was game one when you had that sort of one-on-one, McKinnon-Hellibuck moment where he scored that goal and just outweighed Hellebuck, opened his body up to give that illusion he was going to distribute the puck and then shot it with almost no motion off the stick. I felt like that was one of those rare organic moments in hockey where you have arguably

the best in the world at one position against arguably the best in the world at the other mono and mono and sort of watching how that develops is fun. But at the end of the day, yeah, they got to clean up those breakouts, those zone countries have to change. Otherwise, Colorado is just going to continue to camp out in there. Well, related to that, I think the best player for my money in these first two games, cumulatively, just in terms of impact when he's been out there, has been Valenachushkin. And he's played 44 and a half minutes in these two games. He's got the two goals. But I've got him for eight scoring chances taken, six scoring chances set up.

And the reason why he's so impactful is because of this exact kind of thing and concept in how this is impacting and influencing the way the series is being played, because he's such a destroyer of plans, right? Like he's able to just go and just terrorize these defensemen into making mistakes, and especially when you've got him out there with Arturi Lekinen, and then you've got middle stats, playmaking off the wall, turning those at turnovers into scoring chances out front, all of a sudden you're cooking.

And I think that's given Winnipeg a lot of problem. That's what sort of distinguishes this Aves team from last year's one that struggled, giving them that kind of second line that can tilt the ice like this. And yeah, it's giving them real problems. and whether it's a bit more forward support, whether it's, I'm not sure what the answer is because I think the best way to beat it

is to go head on actually and try to make the F1 miss and then try to get it out as opposed to just passing it out because they're so good with their length at reading those passing lanes and blocking them off and kind of getting you hung up on the wall

and that's where we're seeing in these games and Winnipeg doesn't, with the construction of their defenses, as you noted, beyond Morrissey doesn't really have that much talent in that regard. are to sort of try to account for that and try to beat it. Look, I agree with everything you just said.

I would say, you know, don't, I don't want to say like black sedasically forget about the F1 puck battle, right? But the second, that's, the F2 is the one you got to win. You got to win. I did a video last week on earlier this week on YouTube of Vancouver from game one when they scored their go-ahead goal and how that all came to be. it wasn't so much the fact that the Vancouver's first four checker

eliminated the puck retrieving defensemen it's that the F2 did the same thing right they did the same thing they came in won that second battle and then now if you have no defenseman active they can help you right everybody's been eliminated you know you can live with getting outskated to the first

to that initial puck battle as long as your your janitorial cleanup duties are there right that has not been there for Winnipeg they're not just losing that first engagement. They're losing these subsequent engagements. And that, I mean, you just get exposed. There's no, now you're relying on forwards and trust, again, they have some really good ones defensively, but you shouldn't be in a situation where you're relying on your first forward

back to be the Hercules of the situation, right? So I would argue this to be just, you know, hey, if you're, if you're confident you're going to lose that first battle, just concede it and and focus on the next step, right? Like, don't, don't commit all your resources to an area where you're getting destroyed. Try to cover it up and cause some turnovers from that. Let that guy sit behind the net by himself. You know, I don't see any reason to, you know, they're just commanding so many resources to that, to that second battle that they're also not winning,

that it just, it leaves you completely vulnerable. Well, that's probably because of what I just said, about Morrissey being the only guy that really threatens you in terms of actually being able to win that first battle by himself, right? And that's why I think Schmidt, for all of his flaws in other areas, just has the skating ability to potentially at least make you think twice about just committing everything to that F2. And so I think that's what would be an interesting sort of wrinkle to see. But obviously you're kind of grasping at straws if that's your big solution to tilting the series. All right, let's take a break here, Jesse. And then when we come back, I want to jump right back

into it and keep talking more about the forecheck. and some of the developments we've seen, not only for Jets Aves, but the rest of the NHL postseason. Looking forward to that. You're listening to the Hockey-Pedie Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here in the HockeyPedioCast,

joined by Jesse Marshall. Jesse, we're talking Jets Aves, and I've got a few other notes on this series, but we're going to try to extend it to a league-wide perspective as well, to loop everyone in. You're talking before the break about this idea of how much offense has been created so far this postseason off of very sort of simple concepts, right?

Just get the puck in deep, go win a battle, and then quickly turn that sort of chaos that ensues when all of a sudden someone's out of position, they're not where they're supposed to be, into a pass out front for a scoring chance. And in particular, I think we've seen notably a couple specific examples of that that have really tilted games in the team's favor

in both that one with the Canucks Predators they referenced, but also shortly after the second Jordan Martin goal in that comeback by Carolina, where it was an initial goal. And then essentially the immediate sequence after that was a dump-in, forecheck, turnover, scoring chance out front goal. And there's obviously a lot at play here, but I do think it's interesting in having a conversation about kind of what works in the postseason versus regular season from an offensive creation perspective,

how sometimes some of this stuff because of the chaos of the postseason, of all of the nerves, the pressure, right, the crowd noise, momentum, even as we get later into post season in some of these ranks, I think you're noticing kind of bad ice as well, right, where the puck is sort of like very unpredictably balancing all over the place even more than it normally would and how that can sort of benefit this type of an approach where you're essentially counting on the fact that your opponent's going to make a mistake and then you're going to directly and immediately benefit from it. That's it. Yeah. And those bad,

ice situations that you talk about, like, do you have less of a success rate and carrying it arduously on your stick through three lines and then generating your offense, those imperfections in the ice, that extra snow? I mean, those are just obstacles, right? You're dangling through an obstacles course, right? I feel like the cool thing about this, Dimitri, is everyone's doing it the same way, right? So the center will win the draw, okay, and then immediately skates to the to the near boards. And then they make a run, like a crossing route in football, all the way down the blue line,

waiting for that play to matriculate. And they never stop moving. They're moving the whole time. The far winger will loop. Just do a quick loop back, about 5, 10 feet to gain ahead of speed through the neutral zone. You win the face off back to D, D to D pass. Now the play is shifted from one side of the ice to the other. That far winger that we didn't mention just sits along the boards.

just stands there waiting. The second defensivehood throws it to him. He tips it. Doesn't even touch it. Like, attempt to make a play on it, to meet your most time. Just get a stick and keep that puck moving forward. Those other two players that we mentioned on the top side of the ice have gained, have ones come across the blue line.

The other's loop back. They take off. And the jets go. And in every single one of these situations, what do you notice? The defenseman turn around. The first thing they do is face the wrong direction, right? Because they have no choice. They can't continue to face to face somebody who's got a full head of steam and a 15, 20 foot head start on them.

You got maybe two skaters in the league defensively. You can keep up with that kind of thing. And I don't think either one of them are in the playoffs. So ultimately, now the defense turns around and now we're in a puck battle game, right? That first four checker, usually the center, the crossing route, he comes in and just eliminates that first defenseman. It's not even attempting to play the puck. Just put a body on them and eliminate them from the sequence. the second guy who had that same head of steam coming to F2 now comes into the play he's going for the puck right he's coming in to win the puck and now that third F3 that you forgot all about the one that was sitting up and tip and made the tip in the neutral zone that's the third man in who scores the goal and it's just like wash rinse repeat like everyone's doing it like I love I love seeing it right because you mentioned all these things if you think about the attributes and adjectives that we use to talk about playoff hockey and wax poetic about it we talk about it's intense tough

Every hit matters, body, you know, checking is up. Penalties are, you know, officiating all this, all the narratives that go into it.

Like all, that sequence contains all of it, right? It's quick breakouts, quick strikes, D-D-D pass, everybody goes up. And it's all hands on deck.

I think that over time, we've seen these four checks get more and more and more aggressive. They've become like our four checks, right? That, you know, in the back in the old days,

Dimitri, you'd a one-two, where you'd say, one center up by themselves to dilly dally around with their stick half out, just waving it around at laxedazically and then everybody else is sitting in the neutral zone, those days are gone. Like, you don't see that much anymore now. It's how many resources can you commit to the forecheck without turning the cup, spilling the cup over and exposing yourself?

And for teams like Florida, I think for teams like Vegas, for teams like Colorado, the answer is three forwards sometimes. Like it answers everybody. They can send the whole house and they're D. are mobile enough and competent enough that they don't end up in compromise situations. So, yeah, I think that's been the tenor of it, right? We've seen less fanciful stuff and less like, you know, elaborate breakouts and zone entries. And we've seen more of it like, you know, power eye formation in football.

Everybody get down and go, you know, it's been kind of fun to watch. Yeah, teams you're trying to establish the run. Yeah, it's, what I find amusing about it is I think generally some, some concepts or tendencies that we associate with like less talented players in terms of offensively dumping the puck in and then going and getting it and then defensively blocking shots are two of the sort of most invasive parts of this postseason so far right because on the other end we talk about what Nashville did in game two against Vancouver and protecting that lead or what Vegas is kind of doing to Dallas and we can talk a little bit about that

series later if we still have time, but it's teams that are very by design doing this stuff to frustrate the opposition, right? And it's not necessarily because they can't do the other stuff, but it's because they're finding that it's most effective to create some of these mismatches and problems for the opposition. And I kind of find that interesting and sort of looping it into the Jet Tabs conversation, maybe that's partly why a guy like Nikola Eilers hasn't necessarily broken through yet. I know he's gotten a couple chances. I think the broadcast has been too harsh on him. I know I'm kind of biased and I'm always going to defend him because he's one of my favorite players in the league. And I just think he catches so many unnecessary strays.

It's like Kyle Connor can do no wrong. But Nikolai Ehlers, he keeps messing up. And it's like, they're kind of doing the same stuff at times. And sometimes I'd argue Eilers is doing it even better. But he's had a few sort of blue line turnovers or kind of like neutral zone situations where he's gotten stopped up and then other teams and then the apps have been able to push back the other way. And I think about that within the context of this conversation because the abs are so aggressive and gaping up with their defensemen and sort of protecting the blue line, right, and defending against the rush. And Eler's is so programmed to challenge it. But in a kind of round, weird way, this series is one where you're almost better suited for just simplifying it

immensely because where the abs struggle defensively is playing dots down and protecting in front of their own net and sort of holding up there into the bargain. in that area of the ice. And so in a way, just getting it deep and then getting into that cycle and then attacking around the goal line is the way to go if you're going to beat this avalanche team as opposed to trying to beat them with speed through the neutral zone, carrying it in and making a high level play right off that entry, right? And so that's what Eilis does.

And that's what he's going to have to do. And I'd argue he's still created certainly some chances both for himself and his teammates, but I think that's where you can get into some trouble. And I think it's a byproduct of the way this series is being played against this specific opponent. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. When I brought his name up earlier, I kind of was thinking that exact same thing, is that, you know, we mentioned the frustration, I think, for him

in that Winnipeg can't really sometimes get out of their own end and get him the puck in spaces where he likes to get it, where he can generate speed and have a little bit of a runway to take off through the neutral zone. But on the flip side, yeah, I mean, they're gapping up. They're really aggressive at the blue line. And in those situations, like, you know, he may not have the physical sort of acumen in to win necessarily a lot of puck battles against certain physiques, but he's got the speed to get there first, right?

I think, or draw a penalty in trying to get there first and, you know, maybe get an interference call or something. So I think you'd like to see more of that from him and more in that making people turn around and go get the puck because those are, those are races he can win. I also think it's interesting, Dimitri, that, like, coaches, some coaches will trust their third liners to execute the most simplistic plays in hockey. that are, you know, maybe one or two-step processes that are really geared towards, like, dumping and going to get it. But they won't give that freedom to their top line players

who are obviously more skilled and more faster and talented and have better skills overall. There's that reticence to give that up, right? But you get the sense that, like, this is a situation where, like, the avalanche staff has a very good pulse on what their team is looking for, right, and what they're yearning to do. I look at the way that they played down the stretch and some of the goals that they scored led by Nathan McKinnon. They were exactly like they were just those quick North South plays where there wasn't anything fancy about it. Some of it is actually freelancing on the forwards part, right? And just making it up as they go in support of each other. But if your third liners can do that, you're top, I mean, you trust

that your skill players can do that too. I mean, you know, the penguins aren't playing right now, but they had a heck of a rundown the stretch to me. They went 13 or 10 and unbeaten. And that's the way Sidney Crosby was doing it exactly like that. It was no different for him, right? It wasn't this fanciful approach. It was dump it in. I'll go get it and take care of it and I'll win the puck battle. You know, if your third liners can do it, your top liners can do it too.

And I credit Colorado for having the lack of pride to say, I don't want to do it like this, right? It's sort of that like, that's not, that's too, you know, we don't want to play like that. You know, like we don't want our star players in the mud like that, you know. I mean, it is what it is, right? I mean, I think if the situation calls for it, it calls for it. And look, we've talked about it like five times already in the show. Winnipeg is really good in the neutral zone, right? Not in a trapping way, right?

Not in like a boring trapping way, but they're very disciplined. I think their forwards are more than willing to help out back there. They're super eager to be involved in the process. Between the red line and their defensive blue, they're tough out. They're tough to get around. You don't have to worry about that if you're just sending it past them, right? you neutralize one of their major strengths. So I 100% would say that's as much tactical as it is anything else.

I mean, that seems to me like there's intent behind that from the Colorado perspective. Yeah, and I was texting about this, but I do truly believe there's, like, there's just a shortage of defensemen to go around in today's game that can reliably go back and play a pluck under pressure and not make a mistake every once in a while or increasingly so, especially in a series like this, where you just know there's going to be. be punishment coming your way and you start hearing the footsteps and then you start making self-inflicted mistakes there aren't even necessarily there to begin with. And so you're kind of, not only you're pressing down on that, but then think about it from Winnipeg's perspective,

the one sort of way that you can help your defenseman then if you're Colorado, if that starts happening, is you start asking your forwards to come lower and providing more support. And then what that does is that grounds their rush attack themselves because that all of a sudden now Nathan McKinnon is just having to start from further out. He's, got more ground, he's got to cover, more bodies to pass through to get into the neutral zone. And then all of a sudden, it makes it easier for your rush defense and your neutral zone defense against Colorado's biggest strength as a team. And so all of that kind of stuff in terms of like one thing you do, what it forces your opposition to do. And then what the result of that

is is, I think what makes playoff hockey so fun. And here's the thing, too, that I think this is especially true of coaches of a certain generation, not to be like agist, but I think guys that we're here for the two-line pass, right, and live through that era are more inclined to look at the situation where things are going wrong and say the answer to this problem is more defense. Just like you said, right? My solution to this problem and my fix is to get a bigger investment in my own zone when sometimes I think the reality is the opposite is true, right? If you take the reins off a little bit and you let guys get creative and you take yourself out of those situations a little bit more, I mean, look at the number of times you have a code.

installed in a place that you feel like his championship caliber doesn't get it done, somebody else comes in and immediately wins, right? Like, the changeover from Mike Johnson and Mike Sullivan for the Penguins, right? Like, this is one that comes right to my mind of somebody just took the reins off and let them play a little bit more offense. I mean, I think there's dozens of examples of that where it's just, you know, beating back that old sort of trope about needing to shelter up and play more defense. I mean, you're, you know, you're, the worst thing you could probably do in today's

NHL is invite more pressure. Willingly say to another team, yes, we're, we're protecting our net front. Come on in, right? Like, can't get past this. We've collapsed on our net front and we're, you know, converging on our goalie. That's just unlimited zone entry work, right? Like, so I agree with you. I think that Winnipeg has shown in this series the ability to play creative offensive hockey,

right? if you present Colorado with the same forecheck that you're receiving from them, how many more opportunities to play that style of hockey do you think you can get? Right. And I think that's the question that I think needs to be asked for the rest of the series. And as we go back to Colorado, what, if any response do we get? I mean, Rick Bonas is obviously looking for more zone time, right? I mean, he mentioned at least three times last night.

He needs more zone time. How does he find it? That's the question. I look forward to seeing what his potential answer is. Well, in this idea of kind of the effect, I guess, that something that you do that's giving your opponent initial trouble, like the dividends it can pay if you're just truly preparing for a long series that's going to really grind is something I keep coming back to you, right? Because look at what Vegas is doing to Dallas defensively. And I think, I don't think it's kind of this narrative thing. I think there's something like there's a reality to it that their ability to protect certain areas of the ice, but then also like, like you watch game two and when they're protecting the lead, how they get their sticks on everything and kind of how frustrating that must be when you feel like you've got an opportunity. And then in the last second, it's sort of taken away from you. And that's by design. And it just

keeps happening over and over again. There's a human element to this stuff. Right. I see like, I imagine eventually it seeps in. There's frustration. And then that forces you to change the way you play. And all of a sudden, something that you were doing all season, that you got great success at up and that's why you're here is something you're no longer leaning on anymore because the opponent forced you out of it. And then that's, I think, when you truly win. And so that's what we're kind of talking about here in terms of what Winnipeg would have to do to Colorado because I don't think like they're good and well-rounded enough that they're going to give them a series regardless. And we've seen them in these first two games, but they kind of need to dictate it a little bit more. They can't allow

Colorado to kind of get pretty much everything they want offensively. Yeah, 100%. And let's take that that psychological aspect to step further. I mean, you think about some of the situations that these women and peg defensemen are finding themselves in. There's a psychological effect on going back behind the net and taking a beating every single time that somebody has his own entry. You know, you get less and less and less inclined

to want to go fight for those bucks as time goes on. And that's where the mistakes creep in. You know, it's like wearing somebody down with the jab, right? And eventually the door opens and you can come in with that haymaker And, you know, I don't, I think especially, not, maybe not so much in game one to me, but especially in game two, there wasn't enough of that response from Winnipeg, right? There wasn't enough of that, like, pushback and like, we want to do this to you too.

You know, there was that, you know, again, sort of like that mad scramble in the face of it that sort of not only neuters you defensively, it neuters your offense, too. You can't create any sort of discernibly good breakout. And shout out to Colorado on one other thing. If you're going to beat Connor Hellebuck, you've got to try to do it in ways that are completely disadvantageous to him. And they're low to high work in this series. The only other note I had I wanted to share with these features that they get these pucks deep.

They go get these pucks. You sort of have this accordion effect from the Winnipeg group where they're collapsing Puckside to try to break that up. And I think both of these teams are running the same defensive structure. Puck side, very simple Puck side overloads. go to wherever the puck is, right? That sort of collapsing effect has opened up that blue line for Colorado for them to send it high and get shot opportunities. I think they've been very patient in their selection from up there, and they've waited for their screens to fully realize themselves before they shoot the puck.

That's important in this process. But make no mistake about it, Connor Hellebuck's the best goalie in the league, and he's having trouble right now, I think, with some of the traffic he's had to deal with. And that low, high work from Colorado has given them a lot of quality. looks from the top of the key up by the blue line where they've had a chance to settle it down and take a breath and let things develop before they put one on net. Well, it's interesting also, I think, how much Colorado puts on the plates of their defensemen in the offensive zone in terms of like how involved and active they are and how much they move downhill as well, right?

I think everyone understands that with Kel McCarr and Devon Taves, and we've all talked about that kind of five-man approach they have there. We're even seeing it in this series, certainly with Sean Walker, but like Josh Manson in these first two games, I think it's probably covered more ground than he did for like months at a time previously in his career. And I think that's also, I think you're seeing the side effects of that sometimes in his own zone where he's making some like careless mistakes or being out of position. And I think that's an accumulation of just how much he's been having to do at this point of his career. But it certainly makes for, for entertaining hockey. And that's kind of just true to

what Colorado is as a team. So I don't think that's necessarily something you can change. It just is what it is. And so that's going to, I think that'll be helped a lot if Sam Gerard can come back and give them some, some useful minutes, right? All of a sudden, you're going to be asking guys to just do less themselves. But my one final note on this is as the series shifts back to Colorado, we can see games three and four there. We've talked a lot about this matchup, but I'm curious to see how much McKinnon versus Lowry we see because Lowry's been out there for 18 and a half out of Nathan's 33, five and five minutes so far. I suspect we'll still see a lot of it because Bednar doesn't really line match.

Like he senses guys out there based on which zone the faceoff is in, and he really gives the top line a lot of offensive zone starts, uses other guys for the D zone. But he's going to play his top line regardless. So I think Rick Bonas, who loves the line match and seek that out, will probably still be able to get that. The man,

if Colorado is able to get that McKinnon line out against the Neil Pionk pair, and even against the Shifley line, which they haven't really gotten much to do this so far the series, I think they can really press down on this advantage and McKinnon can break free. And all of a sudden, that's where it gets scary for Winnipeg when McKinnon is just running wild and he's stacking together these highlight real sequences. That's where Colorado gets truly scary. They've done a really good job, despite it being one-one of limiting that so far in this series. I think it's going to be a lot tougher to do in these next couple games.

Yeah, and the situation you just described, I think, is where McKin really starts to hurts you off the rush. That's really where he starts to cash him in. Yeah, I, so I'm my, I think for me, the best solution to this problem, so first of all, let's go back. I went back and looked at the regular season and I tried to get a sense of like a small sample size, right? I mean, like three games. But when they played in Colorado, it was one V1. So you didn't have the Lowry matchup in the games that were played in Colorado. I mean, you had a little bit of it, right?

Like situationally, I'm sure there were times where. bonus was calling him on and throwing Lowry right out whenever he had the opportunity to do it. But the glut of those minutes was much lower. I think, to your point, we'll still get some of it. But that's the point I want to make is you don't want to create situations for yourself where Nathan McKinney can run downhill on you like that. And I, you know, less astute players defensively might have an even harder time picking him up and marking him than Adam Lowry has.

So it's just, you know, the way he's made. moving right now and the patience in his attack, the manipulation, and the way he opens and closes up his legs and his body. You never really have, I think from a defenseman's perspective, you know, you're looking for tells from people in their posture and in their hands in terms of what they're going to do next. Good luck. I don't know anything you get a lot of that from Nathan McKinnon right now. His shots coming off of his stick with very little motion. Again, everything he does with his hips is very deceptive. You know, you again, to your point, you get them out against that second pairing, you might not be getting much longer out of the series.

No, certainly. I think the thing about the Shifley line is, if you get that head to head, is him and Connor are going to be so much more willing to engage in a rush game and maybe potentially open it up and trade chances back and forth. And that's where it gets really scary when all of a sudden McKinn is getting that type of room to navigate, which he doesn't really get as much up against Lowry. Jesse, we got to get out of here. Everybody go follow Jesse online and check out his work during this postseason on McKean. We're certainly going to get him back on for more of these breakdowns as the postseason goes along. That's all for today.

Thank you for listening to us. We'll be back soon with plenty more of the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.