The Hockey PDOcast - Biggest Takeaways and Themes From the Past Couple Nights of Playoff Hockey

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Thomas Drance to talk about how the Oilers, Canadiens, Devils, and Blues all got on the board in their series after getting back home, why the Wild have posed the Golden Knights so many problems through three games, and the biggest themes of this postseason so far. 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.

since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovin. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dimitra Filippovich and joining me is my good buddy Thomas Trans. Tom, we're not in studio, although I guess we're in a little bit of a makeshift studio. We're own ears in Palm Springs. What's going on, man? Not much, buddy. It's been an interesting week of hockey, a first week of the playoffs. I would say electric. Honestly, we got fights on the bench. We've got heinous coaching challenges. And we've had a handful of games early on. It felt like it took a few games for the playoffs to settle in, other than Jets' blues,

which was incredible, an absolute brawl right off the hop. Some mid-January feel to some of the early games as these series sort of, you know, I think had a feeling out process. But now every night, these games are incredible. They're incredible. And that's why it's a luxury for us, though we've got the next 100 minutes or so here, to get into everything we've been seeing in these round one playoff games with the past couple days,

the storylines, the matchups we found most interesting, all that good stuff, some big picture kind of theory stuff that we've seen as well coming out of these games to think about. So it's going to be a fun show for us as we get into the Palm Springs series here too. As I said, I think the listeners are really excited about it. We've been watching these games from the comfort of your couch. We've been hanging out poolside. We've been indulging in some long drinks, as I think I've said on the show last year. clearly my second favorite finished product

ever to be released right after the great Sasha Barkov so no it's going to be a fun one here let's start with Oilers Kings because that's fresh on our on our mind it's the game we saw most recently we got to see and why I think really really ate up every second of it right it pretty much had everything you'd want to see from from a great playoff game the twists and turns the the pushback from both teams really

kind of trading punches showing us their best throughout the game. I thought it was an incredibly fun game. It made a compelling case as well for this to be the most entertaining round one series, right? I know you and I have been really high on Jets Blues throughout game three was less competitive and we'll talk more about the Blues performance in that one. Less competitive, but in some ways more impressive or like super impressive from the Blues. Yeah, when you see a team throw their fastball like that, especially right out of the gate,

it's definitely going to catch our attention. But this game with the ups and downs, the mistakes, and then, And the way that both teams were able to capitalize on those errors, you know, the Evander Cain stuff, the penalty, which was just wildly undisciplined. But then he breaks the game wide open. I mean, first off, with that awesome hook pass to set up the third Oilers goal. But then, you know, his central role in one of the most bizarre coaching decisions we've seen in a long time in the Stanley Cup playoffs. This game had it all. It had the fireworks.

It had cool goals. It had high level operators running the show. And now I think most importantly, for our purposes, it's a 2-1 series with Oilers having this game 4 on Sunday night in which they can tie this back up after everything that transpired in the first two games and how bleak it looked even at points in game three and ensure this is going to be a long series and we're going to get at least six or seven games out of it, which I think, you know, the Kings wouldn't necessarily be very happy about because they had a chance to really kind of like step on their throats here. But for our purposes, as fans, I think, would be much needed because it's. seems like we're going to get at least a couple shorter series around the league. Well, we deserve as much McDavid as we can get. And yet, you know, the environment that this Oilers team is creating, you know, at a team level in this series, I think looks materially different than some of what we saw last season from them.

I think you can see this. And we see this a lot. The San Jose Sharks, like I'm talking to Joe Thornton-era, San Jose Sharks, bumped into this in a lot of playoff series where, and I'm not talking the ones where they fell short, I'm talking the ones that they'd win before they fell short. I was going to say that. I don't think there were too many, I can recall,

where they didn't ultimately fall short. No, but there were a lot of series where that power play was just eating their opponent alive. And you could tell that the impact of every call being devastating on a team, I do think psychologically makes it even more difficult to remain discipline. And I think you're beginning to see that from the Oilers.

which is kind of ironic because we've seen it year after year from the Kings in this matchup, like in this matchup with that Oilers power play, just picking their teeth with the Kings in playoffs past. You've seen it become more difficult, the reactions, the body language to every call. And it felt at times last night that you were getting that but from the Oiler's side, like as if the sort of kings were beating them with their own game. Well, you know, you watched that the first 10 minutes of that game and maybe just because that that blues jets game three was still top of mind for me.

As you'd expect a team down two nothing in a series, dropping the first two on the road, heading home, you expect an uplift and performance, right? Kind of that like one last stand at least in terms of in front of the home crowd, you're juiced up a little bit. There's clearly a more urgency for that team to try to get back in the series with their season functionally on the line. And we saw that from the Oilers here where the first 10 minutes, they were all over the Kings.

They generated the two goals. They had other chances. It felt like the puck was just entirely in the king's defensive zone. And then he were commenting as we were watching it, how the Oilers were somewhat surprisingly, like having no real trouble with the Kings forecheck early on. And I think part of that was like they were just having these extended exhausting shifts grinding the puck down low.

So the Kings would just get it out and be very happy to dump and change. And that would buy the Oilers some time to just essentially fuel the counter and come back the other way. But then unlike that game we saw in St. Louis, I thought, especially after like, not even the second TV timeout, the Kings really like got their, got their sea legs a little bit.

Warren Fogle got that breakaway right out of the TV timeout, didn't score on it. But then they generate a couple rest chances and finally through a pushback of their own. I thought the sequence where the goal you were describing of Andrew Kane to Connor Brown, I believe the ties at 3-3, and then right off the next draw,

the Trevor Moore. One of the better one-handed goals I've seen because he like took it to his forehand and then almost like, He, like, passed it to himself within one motion and then tipped it through the legs. It was incredible. I would say he executed a one-hand, backhand, forehand. Yeah. Which I've never seen before.

With a defender on his hip. Like, it was tremendous. Incredible. Yeah. Incredible work. What a clever player. You know, there was also a sequence that I remarked on in real time, but he'd been checked in the corner and the puck went and sort of rimmed around behind the net.

And he got back up, surveyed the ice, and you could see him make the quick decision to just stay back door, knowing, like, recognizing that it's a 50-50 and realizing that actually the most dangerous thing he could do is to remain dead set fixed in place because of the panic that it would create in the event that the puck possession was retained. He'd forced defenders to panic and skate to him. It was actually like a Mitch Marner level read. You know what I mean? Like I'm talking like hockey genius stuff, a really high level offensive read from Trevor Moore. And you know, as he's gone through his breakouts over the past couple years, the skill to pull off a forehand, backhand, and deke one-handed, the reed to just sort of camp on that sort of weak side

waiting for the puck. I mean, you're seeing like an increasing level of high-end stuff for more, which I think dovetails into one part of this that we need to get into, which is that at some point, I think the Oilers core and that organization need to take a really hard, long look at why do we never have home ice advantage when we are the team best suited to destroy everybody if we only have home ice advantage? I mean, home ice advantage in hockey matters, but like it's not like basketball, right? It's not one of those, you know, it's going to move the line, you know, by like, 5% either way. It's more like 2%. And we saw this in the Stanley Cup final last year. I think we saw it when this series shifted. And all of a sudden with the ability to dictate matchups, I mean, they got McDavid on the ice a lot against Kuzmeco and Kopitar. They were able to pick at the soft underbelly of the king's lineup in a totally different way as the game shifted to Edmonton. More obviously is part of the matchup that I think the oiler should be wanting to avoid. And it's just like,

once again, McDavid, this absolutely transcendent force, you know, more a force of nature than a human being out on the ice. And he's been like that all series long. And they're just not positioned in the like best, they're not giving themselves the best opportunity to succeed because for whatever reason, usually goaltending or, you know, that they get too slow in terms of their lineup decisions or go too old or prioritize the wrong things. the Oilers find themselves constantly in these series where they're making McDavid run uphill where boy if you had four games on home ice the ability to dictate matchups feels like this team would be very close to unbeatable even if the you know lineup is composed suboptimly after that top line well beyond Jim Hiller's decision to challenge the tying four four goal we can get to more than a second but watch while we're on this I want to give you

a few stats to hammer home that point you're making that was the biggest difference in this game to me, especially watching in a real time and then looking at the numbers after where the Oilers got McDavid out there for 8-18, 5-1-5 in this game. I had to head against Kopitar and Kuzmenko after playing less than six minutes combined in games 1 and 2 in L.A. with that matchup, and it was massively in their favor. Shot attempts are 21 to 5 Oilers, shots on goal, 10, 2, goals, 2-0. And it was very visible, especially watching, like, on these shifts, though, the Oilers would get an initial chance or two and then the puck would kind of squared out to the half wall and it would just be sitting there

and you'd be like oh the king's have a chance to like diffuse the situation get it out clear change you know live to fight another day and then you'd watch usually coppeter but sometimes because vanco engaging in this 50-50 sprint to get to the puck and then you just be like oh god this is so painful watching it and that's why it was so bizarre and you knew midway through like two strides in you're like oh he's going to lose that puck back yeah he's not getting there first and then coppatty did win one against Corey Perry late. Yeah. And then Colby Armstrong on the TNT broadcast

was like, oh, winning another battle. I'm like, he just found the one guy in the league that maybe he can beat there, aside from Brent Burns, potentially. I thought, yeah, I thought, you know, I love both those players, obviously for very different reasons in Copartan, Kuzmanko. And we've seen the impact Kuzmanko's had on this team's power play, and we can speak more about that as well.

And Kopatar certainly still has so much, like, veteran guile, and using his body and the playmaking, the goal he set up for Kempe to really kind of blow it opening game two where Arbiton misplays it and he just retrieves this loose puck because he was close to it. And then like scans over his shoulder to see where Kempai is right before he retrieves it. And then in one motion is able to get it to him with his nifty backhand. It's like Kopitar's still in that small area game kind of like not to keep talking about Joe Thornton, but he still certainly has that in his bag. But I think he's much more limited in what he can do physically at this point. and this is a nightmare matchup having to chase around McDavid. And so the Kings need to desperately avoid that.

Obviously, the Oilers with Whole Mice can leverage a little bit more. I mean, for the series. Do they, I'm curious to see, too, if this persists. Like, if we see this same trend line in game four and we get a game six. So I'm already asking a pretty significant parlay to hit, but bear with me. You know, if this happens again, even through the first half of game four, do you have to consider giving Copa, our two speedier linemates,

just to make the matchup less of a liability from the King's perspective. I was going to say, I'd almost consider when we saw Jim Hiller go to this nuclear option for a brief moment in the regular season with how well I think Fial and Bifield have been playing, and then how Kempay's been playing, I'd almost go with that,

and then maybe, and I thought Laferrier was awesome as well, so this isn't like a demotion, but I think from like using and leveraging his skill set more. If you go with him to know and more, I think you basically can shore up two lines that you should feel pretty comfortable being able to hang with McDavid, relatively speaking, as much as any mere mortal can. Well, De No, for this series in these three games, 25 minutes at head against McDavid.

The Kings have outshot them 8-7, outscored them 2-0. So I think they're pretty as comfortable as you can be in that matchup head-to-head with Nilelym against McDavid. They just weren't able to get that as much in this game, and it was much more Copitar and Kuzmenko. And it's difficult because on the one hand, especially late, the broadcast was talking so much about the Kings, you know, they got to get their big. guys out there. And so, and that's been Kopitar for so many years

now. That's just not really the case with the way this team is assembled now. The issue though is that one of the guys in that line is Kempai and I do want him out as often as possible. So if you're trying to kind of like manufacture these minutes and hide those matchups, I don't want that to be at the expense

of Kempai minutes. In fact, I think I want to give him more. So I think that would be an interesting little wrinkle for Jim Hiller to employ. We got to spend a little time, a little more time just unpacking campaign's brilliance, right? He's unbelievable. I was, I was, I was lamenting to you. I was like, I feel like no people with a public platform have been higher on this guy than the two of us over the past three or four years. And still, I wish I had more stock. I wish I had sold all my

other assets. I should have bought high. I should have sold all my other assets and just bought as much as I could have because this is the fully realized version of everything I've ever wanted from a hockey player, I think. Like, he's just been unbelievable. 65 minutes and three, three games, four goals, five assists, he's taking 25 shots. And I think the development and growth in his game as well, Q being the power play now on this five-man unit, where before he was such a one-track mind in terms of like, I get it, I skate fast, and I just shoot the puck as hard as I can.

And then now you're seeing him operating this nuanced way where like early on that power play, he's up top, he fakes it, he's going to shoot, and he sends this cross-scene pass bullet that they don't wind up converting on. But just like... Oh, that was the Kuzmenko. It just illustrates, like, that just isn't something that he really had in his bag before because he was so focused and prioritized on shooting. And now he's leveraging that to open up other areas of his game.

He had one off the wall early on where he passed it out to Kopitar in the slot and Pickard made a big save. So his playmaking has grown leaps and bounds. And then obviously it feels like when he steps downhill with that shot now, as he did four on four and beating Pickard cleanly, short side. Like, it's automatic at this point. And so I don't know what more to say about him. Like, he's just, he's such a rock star. That short side finish was so nasty. And, yeah, you know, the profile, we've seen it before, big, fast, north, south,

you know, sort of world beater. That's a super valuable profile. But when you throw in this sort of power play utility, I do think it changes the complexion of, hey, this guy's a, you know, star first line winger to this guy can maybe be the best player you've got on a team that absolutely can beat McDavid and Drysidal with the way the series is going. Not that they will, but that they can. I also think we got to talk about the five forward power play. The Kings obviously lost, but they got to within what, seven minutes of putting the

up three nothing, yeah, of being up three nothing. And that means, that means really that the two teams that we've seen roll out like five forward power plays in this playoffs, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the LA Kings, you know, got to within seven minutes of being six and O in the playoffs, with their power play being probably the sharpest part of their arsenal in terms of building that lead or giving them control, putting them in the driver's seat very firmly in their respective playoff series. Pretty interesting.

And I thought the goal that Fiala scored, the wrist-shot goal, which tied the score. So that was the power play goal off of the Evander Cain, penalty, which was... By the way, another brilliant, Adrian Kempe, a little nifty zone entry to quickly regroup on that as well. But also, I think it's a read we don't see much. Like, if you watch the Fiala goal and go back to where, you know,

Fiala and Kempai can't quite keep the... Or sorry, it's Bifield and Kempay can't quite keep the puck in at the offensive blue line. There's a quick regroup, but it's Kempay... Or sorry, it's byfield who's further a little bit deeper. And because Kempay is a lot... forward, he makes this incredibly aggressive decision, even though he's, you know, quote unquote, the defenseman, where he stays shallow and he, like, immediately sees Byfield's the

first guy back, and I'm going to turn up ice already. Byfield hits him in stride, and he's actually, he doesn't even have to accelerate. He's actually got enough space because he's kept himself so aggressively positioned. He's cheated for offense, but it's power play. Of course, you should be cheating for offense right at the blue, and he's sort of able to just navigate space, kind of at half pace. He's even upright. He's not even like, you know, we're so used to Kempe burning, but this is the level of nuance that's now in his game, and he hits Fiala, and Fiala has the space and time to make a perfect shot. At the end of the day, a defenseman's instinct is always going to be to go support the deepest player in that position. Like if you have, even

Quinn Hughes or Kale McCart, like even the best. best of the best power play defenseman. I think it's pretty rare because they don't think of... They're just programmed that way. They're programmed that way. That's how they think the game. That's how they see the game. And I do think like, honestly, I think that's a clip that if you have a defenseman

on the power play, that's a clip that every, every power play coach in the league should be sending to their defenseman of like, hey, we got to start thinking about this because this was a pretty, like by the time Kempe receives the pass, it's actually a relatively low effort, given the difficulty of entering the zone with control in the NHL playoffs. It's a relatively simple entry for them that results in a quality chance and a key game-tying goal. And it's created by having a back-end player, the sort of top of your one-three-one, be wired to think like a forward.

I just thought it was an instructive example of the advantages that you can begin to accumulate if you're approaching five-on-four situations a little bit differently. Yeah, I thought Byfield, you know, he didn't score in this game. I thought he was destructive with his speed as well. And there were a couple instances where he'd kind of get a puck in the neutral zone near the offensive end up, be one-on-one with an oiler's defenseman gapped up pretty tightly against me, tip it by him. And it felt like he was perilously close to breaking through for a breakaway or a great rush

opportunity a couple times. It just didn't happen in this one. But I feel like if he keeps playing this way, it will. But to your point, the success of the 5-4 powerplay is one of the biggest themes of this postseason, right? Because you've seen between the Leafs and the Kings, they've combined for 12 powerplay goals in under 28 minutes of that of an advantage time so far. And it's looked apart too. This isn't one of those things where it's like, I mean, it is a small sample, of course, but it's looked very legit in terms of the way they're operating within the scheme of that and like the looks they're getting and how they're attacking. And so that's really fun to watch.

You know, the Kings with the, and they scored the two powerplay goals in this one and ultimately fell short. but I was thinking about like how beyond just what a feat it would be for them to to win this series and finally after losing three straight years that oilers actually do it and slay the dragon doing it in this fashion as well which is essentially beating the oilers at their own game after what the oilers did tormenting them for years with with as you described just kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy of like you score once early on on the power play and then it just feels like an inevitability that the team's going to do something stupid take another undisciplined penalty and it's immediately going to cost them.

And that's the way it's felt except the paradigm is just, and I know the Oilers scored, you know, to their credit as well. I think they were two for two on the power play in this one as well. And they pose their own set of challenges, certainly. But the Kings doing this just for three straight games now is really interesting. I really hope for their sake this wasn't a situation where they let the Oilers completely off the mat. I think it's a disappointing loss for them.

But I think the Kings did enough in this one where it's like, all right, you come back in a game four, you keep playing this way. you feel pretty good about your chances to at least hang and try and take a controlling lead in this series. I think what made it, you know, disappointing is I felt like in the first two games, they were so much more composed and kind of controlled in terms of how they were handling disappointment, whether it's, you know, in game one, obviously it snowballed a little bit with that dramatic Oilers comeback. But then the sort of like resiliency to come right back and score immediately to win that game. in game one, game two as well.

The Oilers had a bit of pushback, and the Kings just kind of were like, all right, we're going to take this punch, and then we're going to throw one of our own. They did it in this game as well. And then I felt like after the Oilers tied at 4-4, Jim Hiller just kind of very, just rashly just being like,

all right, we're going to challenge us, even though I think it's clear. We saw so many replays because they already reviewed it. Yeah. So we had the benefit of having time to sit on a marinade, see a replay like 20 times ourselves, and seeing that clearly it wasn't goalie interference for him. And I get what a crossroads moment it is, right?

Because for every reason, they take that goal off the board. It's a massive swing, certainly, in your likelihood of winning that game. I just felt like that was a very poor decision. And then obviously the order to score within 10 seconds to take the lead and it's over at that point. And I felt like that was the first moment in the series where I really felt like the previous versions of these matchups where the Kings allowed the moment to get to them a little bit because I thought otherwise, and I know there's been a lot of talk about early playoff officiating and all that, but I thought the Kings were doing such a good job of kind of almost outfoxing the Oilers

a little bit in terms of like gamesmanship and like drawing the right kind of penalties and staying away from taking dumb ones themselves necessarily and really kind of walking that fine line of being physical with McDavid and Dreisaito but not doing too much to catch the official's eye. And then this was the one moment where they kind of reverted back to I think some of stuff that cost them in previous post seasons. Yeah, the leverage of being right would have been significant. I just didn't think there was enough on tape to justify a call.

Like, it was just too volatile a call to make when, you know, on the, like, the upside of being right in that situation is massive. But the downside of being wrong is, or the downside of being, yeah, the downside of being wrong is obviously cataclysmic. I just think even if you, even if it's just four, four and you have an opportunity with, you know, a small sample left of game, like very little time left in regulation and overtime, to smash and grab one on the road, that's a great spot to be in. You have to like your goal tending more than theirs. At that point in the series, too, like you mentioned the Oilers going two for two on the power play. Well, they'd only scored one power play goal in the series at the point that they gave,

you know, the Oilers that opportunity, and Bouchard scores the winner immediately. you know, not giving life, not giving oxygen to that Oilers power play unit, I think, would have been worthwhile, right? I mean, just that. Leave them thinking that their only way to score is Bouchard through Laird traffic, right? That's a win for you and has been in this series. So I do worry that the Kings have, you know, look, you're coming at the King. You're coming at a guy like McDavid who can do stuff like we saw him do in game two.

you best not miss, and I do sort of worry that the Kings, a team that have obviously struggled to get past this Oilers team repeatedly, you know, may have just missed. I think what I love so much about this series and why I have it, and maybe later on if we got time, we can rank all the round one matchups in terms of our interest level in them. I think what's captivated me so much about this one besides all the goals and fireworks, as we mentioned, is what a stylistic difference it feels like it is between these two teams. with roster composition and construction, but also how at this point of their arc, they need to play to be successful. And I thought you could really see that hammered home in this game, right? It felt like the Oilers were having so much success,

working the puck down low, kind of leaning on it, grinding the Kings, and then working it back up to the point, getting a bunch of traffic and sort of doing that all over again, this kind of ground and pound approach. And then the Kings, every time they just get out on the rush, it would feel like this adrenaline shot, right? And I think Mike Kelly had a stat where through two periods of this one,

scoring chances off the rush were 10-1 Kings. And I don't think that changed that much in the third period because it really kind of grinded down into a half-court game. And we've seen that throughout. It's kind of similar, I guess it has parallels to stars' abs as well, right? Where the stars are trying to do what the Oilers are doing in terms of just kind of taking their legs out a little bit, slowing it down, using their size and strength to force the puck into the net at times.

And then as soon as the other team, the Kings in this case are the abs. series are able to get out on the move. It's like, oh, God, like, we got to hold on for dear life and not make sure this doesn't happen again. And so I love that, I love that matchup. And I thought that, you know, you would have thought heading into the series, one of the differences this season might be that the Kings with how well Darcy Kemper had played down the stretch, that would be an edge for them. We saw the Oilers make the goal goalie change going on Calvin Pickard in this game. I thought, I mean, he's Calvin Pickard. I think we know what he is at this point. I thought he made some competitive saves to, especially later on, to keep them in it.

Also, every time the Kings shoot the puck, I'm like, oh, this could be a goal. I'm not sure. I'm not feeling incredibly comfortable in it. Darcy Kemper gave up five goals again, though. I think it's like an 860 save percentage in this series. I thought he was swimming a lot. He made that one ridiculous save where he kind of dove across and got his arm on it. But I think we know that as a goal, you don't want to be in the position where you're

having to make those because it generally means you're out of position. and he was swimming around and wound up costing him on that ofander cane tying goal. The Oilers hit a couple posts. And it really feels like Doylers have had a lot of success here. Even in game one, when you think back to it, like, McDavid had that goal where like him and Nathan McKinnon can do it and probably no one else in the world in terms of that superhuman one-man effort where he reloads, gains momentum in the neutral zone, and then just dances through the defense. But otherwise, look at the goals they scored in that game to mount that comeback. A lot of it was getting the puck low and then sort of getting these two on little, you know, download two on ones or three on twos. We're able to execute some passing and kind of work that down low game.

And so I just find that sort of very compelling how like differently I think these teams are operating and seeing the push and pull of who's going to come out ahead. I also think it's interesting from the perspective of the familiarity we have with these two teams and the sort of separate storylines, the separate paths that they've both taken across. the four years in which we've got to watch this matchup year after year after year. And there's a sort of interesting dynamic here where the kings have always been the team capable of creating an environment where they're more likely to score the next goal than their opponent, but lacking the finishers to really get them over the hump, especially when they're lined up across from McDavid and Drysaitle, the two guys you know you'd most want to invite over to eat.

You know what I mean? Like if you had a bunch of leftovers, like there's no guys better at cleaning out a fridge. We need to finish this pizza. Yeah, exactly. In terms of capitalizing off an environment, then McDavid and Drysidal. And so the kings have sort of gone through this process

in terms of trying to elevate the, you know, their ability to feast off of the incredibly set table that this team, you know, consistently. across multiple coaches has been able to create. And Kuzbenko, I think, has been, you know, a big part of that story. I think Byfield's coming into his own, his sort of second half of this season breakout,

has been part of the story. The improvement in terms of the nuance and sort of attacking venom that you're seeing from Trevor Moore is part of that story. I think Laferrier is part of that story and his sort of massive, the massive step he's taken in his second year. but yeah the power play right so that and then kempay kempay on the power play especially so you sort of go through all of these things that have worked to narrow the gap i think in finishing talent in true talent between the kings and the oilers over the years and how that's manifested itself

in terms of putting the kings on the front foot and and sort of in contrast with that this kings or this oiler side that's you know been able to treat the kings like a foil right that the kings are just good enough to make us sweat a bit, but not good enough to actually beat us. It's kind of been the overall frame through which this rivalry has lived the last four years. And now we're at a point where maybe the gap is close enough in terms of finishing talent for the Kings to actually have a shot. It certainly looks like that through three games. And I think the Oilers effectively have seen their environment, right?

because the kings have been you know frankly through through many of these series like the more impressive two-way team maybe with the exception of last year but having lost guys like fogal who's now on the other side and mcclough and holloway and broberg and obviously eccombe the eccombe to loss is massive it just feels like without mac david on the ice you know when you've got those ryan nougan hopkins hymen minutes when you've got trent frederick and pod colzin on the ice not to mention some of the Oilers defenders, I think you're at a point where to some extent it just feels like the Oilers have allowed that environment

to be compromised, maybe overrated or overvalued the guys they had last season or during the playoffs last year like Henrique, like Connor Brown, like Corey Perry. Yanmark. Yeah, Yanmark, who were able to capitalize off of the environmental improvement that I think was being driven a little bit more by your McLeod Holloway tier guys who have departed. And I think that's left this Oilers team vulnerable,

especially as a result of what the Kings have been able to add in terms of actually conversion, actually converting on their chances. So I've found that sort of relationship. Because at this point, your fourth consecutive playoff round to head to head, it's like a relationship. It's like we're watching this conversation

that's sort of unfolded between these two, and it just feels so different this year in a way that's, I think, making for really compelling watching. Well, I think tying into that, I think heading into the series, you would say pretty comfortably, you'd give the edge to the Kings in terms of depth, right? Right. It's been kind of a conversation of the top-end talent of McDavid-And Dreisdil versus the King's depth and what's going to win out. And the high-end talent, as we talked about in the postseason, generally matters more now in today's

environment than ever. What I do find interesting is you look at how these games have progressed here for the Kings, and Jim Killers, or Jim Killers, Jim Hillers, uh, erosion of trust in some of his depth. Because in this game, he had four guys who played less than five minutes. Yep. Um, and Malad had, had that had that great scoring chance that for some reason, the T&D broadcast chose to never show us a replay of to see what actually happened,

why he didn't tuck that one home. Yeah. Pass Pickard. Brand Clark as well, who I thought, uh, had moments, yeah. Was dynamic with the puck yet again. Every time he got it in this game is stuck at, 11 to 12 minutes per game on a good night at this point. And we were laughing because, you know,

we made so much of that Leif's postseason where every time Mitch Martin would do something in the offensive zone, it'd be like, oh, and the puck gets to Joel Edmondson. Now all of a sudden he's the decision maker on this key offensive zone possession. And that happened in the third period of this one as well, where Branclar gets the puck, he dances around a couple of other's defenders, he creates space, he dishes it off to his partner. It's like, Joel Edmondson has it at the top of the point.

How's this going to go? I'm like, how does this keep happening every time he's so involved offensively? But there has been that erosion of depth in terms of they're just not really utilizing, you know, we saw them, they went 11-7 in game two, Jacob Morvara, like literally did not play a single second until the game was out of hand. And I don't think it matters necessarily that much in the context of round one, because you're not getting to the point where everyone's getting so exhausted. You're having all these injuries.

They're still relatively fresh. They haven't really had anyone banged up up front. I guess other than not having Tanner Gen O, but, and Alex Thurcott as well. But, yeah, it's interesting to see because it's not really that sort of conventional, like,

all right, we're a deep team, so we're just going to roll our four lines and we're going to get everyone involved. Really, we've seen, and I think this speaks to not only how well the King's top guys have been playing, but also maybe the desperation and urgency

the Kings are feeling in terms of this having to be the year. They finally get over the Oilers, that they're really just doubling down, on using their top guys more and essentially just shrinking the bench really early on, even though it hasn't necessarily cost them yet and it's not like they have to. They're just choosing to do so because they think that's their best path to victory. Yeah. Having Turcotte and Jeannot just feels like it would be a huge deal for the Kings,

not that they're more banged up than an Oilers team that's down a top pair defenseman that really makes everything click into place for them. But you know, it does, you can feel the seams of that. You can feel those absences in terms of their overall use. By the way, I do think, though, that the guy who gives me the most, oh, the pucks on their stick in a key moment, and you know that it's going wide, or you know that it's not going to be as dangerous as scoring chances it should be in this series. I still think is Trent Frederick. He had a Cody Cici-esque shot from the slot in this game, and that's game one to six Cody C.C. Not game seven C, because he didn't bury it. But yeah, I think that's a point well taken. Not to be confused with Star Sniper. Game 7 C.C.

Yeah, absolute. Mr. October, Cody C. All right, Tom. Let's take our first break here. And then when we come back, we will jump right back into it. We're going to move on. We did 35 minutes here on Oilers Kings. I think deservedly so.

That was such a good game. So fun on Friday night. We're going to cover some of the other stuff. When we come back here, you're listening to the Hockey P.D. Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the Hockey Padiocast, joined by Thomas Drance. Tom, let's move on from Oilers Kings. I think we did our due diligence on that.

We're going to bounce around and cover some other series, especially the ones we saw on Friday while they're fresh on mine. Let's talk Habs Caps, which was a wild game as well before that one. We saw both goalies on each side get hurt and leaving this game. The Logan Thompson one just taking a friendly fire cross-check to the face from Dylan Strome as the puck was going into the net. We saw Tom Wilson and Big Josh Anderson spilling into the bench. after the second period with Tom Wilson

providing us with reaction memes that are going to last us a long time. The Tom Wilson fake cry. He was doing it for so long. So long. Imagine someone doing that to you and it's Tom Wilson so there's literally nothing you could ever do about it and it's just like, this sucks.

What a bully. The visual of them and the visual of the referee like rolling around on the ground. Spencer Carberry is like is the Spencer Carbby, the coolest person on the earth? I think so. Because these guys are like barreling at him and he for a second, he kind of like takes a step

back and he's like a bit surprised, but he's like so nonchal and then he just kind of like looks over to his side and is watching it on full like completely undisturbed. Vancouver Islanders, man. They're so chill. He's on island time in his head in that moment. The overall visual of that though, you know, every now and then you get just a stark, you know, usually Marshall or I'm thinking like Lavillette, you know, standing up on the bench back in the day, but just those like visceral visual reminders of the stakes and the nature of playoff hockey and they stick with you. And there's something elemental about them for most hockey fans. And that was just perfect.

Everything about that was perfect. I hope there's nothing that comes out of it beyond the 10 minute penalties because it was just so funny. it was, you know, two guys in Josh Anderson and Tom Wilson, too, who have, like, been around. They're obviously crossing the line, but they're crossing the line in a pretty controlled way. You know what I mean? You know that those guys are not actually, yeah. So anyway, I loved, I'm going to stop short on my defense of Tom Wilson's ability to find the edge and stop. But I just loved it.

I felt it was so fun and so funny, everything about the clip. So the Habs out shot them 40 to 20, 20, in this game. And I thought it was a pretty, pretty impressive offensive showing. We've seen flashes of it, right? The third periods in the first two games when they were down.

It was much more uniform in this game, though. It wasn't necessarily like score-based and like it was in those. It was a top-to-bottom performance. I think here's, you know, you're mentioning earlier, sort of the importance of home ice and controlling head-to-heads

and how it can sometimes be like a fun talking point for us, but it doesn't necessarily matter that much towards the outcome as it might in another sport. This is a series similar to what we talked about with Oilers Kings, where I do think it actually has a fundamental impact, though, because I'll give you these numbers. Nick Suzuki versus Pierre-Luc Dubois through three games. FI-15, 24-40, head-to-head.

In that time, the shots are 12-10 Washington, high-danger chances are 3-2-2-Whington, and there has not been a single goal scored. Nick Suzuki has played the exact amount of time, 24-0-2, so 38 seconds, less away from them five-on-five. Shots on goal 30 to 11, Montreal. High danger chances 14 to 4 Montreal, and they've scored three goals in that time. And that's about as a massive with or without you explanation, especially with the way the haves are constructed in terms of how

Marty St. Louis smartly, like a lot of top teams do, tries to sync together as minutes with Suzuki-Goffield and Hudson out there, how much they've done in terms of offensive creation. to get them to this point, to get them into the postseason from Four Nations on, basically. And also speaks to, I think, the defensive brilliance of Pure Luke Du Bois throughout this season, something we've been documenting in terms of just what a destructive force he's been there, how Spencer Carberry at home especially has been able to use him to just sick him against the other team's top center and just play them to a draw or even win those minutes territorially. And that's happened here.

And so the Habs come home. They're able to get away from that matchup. I think they only played a couple minutes. to head the primary matchup here instead was Suzuki's line against that Ovechkin-Bauvilliers-Strom line, and that line was able to create the rush goal, of course, in the third period, to tie back up momentarily. But I think that would not be a combination of players that I would necessarily want to be using in a defensive matchup against the other team's best guys, especially with how well Suzuki and Goffey had been playing. And so you saw all three of those guys for the HABs score in this game.

They combined for 25 shot attempts, I think Coffey themself, accounting. for 12 of them and so it was a monster performance by them and it was really cool to see the crowd was absolutely amazing as you'd expect and I thought it was just it was a really really fun playoff game right like the series has been really competitive really close we got the overtime in game one we got that late push from the habs in game two that almost tied it up and then now we see it it's two one still for Washington I think they should feel still good about where there are here although we'll see the prognosis on Logan Thompson but when the habs are able to control matchups like this, this top line can really cook and make a dramatic difference the way they did in this one.

Yeah. What we'd seen from the Canadians in game two, for example, late, was impressive, but you know, we haven't seen a lot of this HAB's team in the playoffs. We know that this Capitals team can have some limitations in terms of how they control things five on five. But also, you know, their veteran team, they're grinding out a win that they're with a lead, you expect some crooked shot numbers to occur. So I didn't know how much to read into it. But the way that the have set the tone early and then overwhelm them in the third period, that, that to me was a pretty significant declaration of intent. At the very least, it shows you that, you know, I think the haves are in this series more than the just getting our feet wet playoff experience.

type series that we sometimes see a young team that's just breaking through, participate in. And that's a really cool development, especially with it being Slavkovsky and Suzuki and Caulfield and Hudson, who are, you know, coming up big for this Montreal team on a game in game, night in night out basis in the series. I mean, you've just got to be thrilled at this point if you're Habs management, St. Louis, players on that team are obviously fans of this team. It's been an impressive showing, even though I do think ultimately the caps are going to figure this out. They have some answers too, like some things they haven't tried, some last they haven't broken in terms of how they're lining up. You know, you're still seeing

Beauvilliers play top lines, stuff like that. Yeah. That's like how not having protists there is as a massive X-factors also big. No question. So I still think there's some, I still think there's some twists and turns to come. But yeah, I think that the point, too, about Home Ice mattering so much. That's why you got to go out and win the east the way the caps did. I think, do want to do this conversation here? Because, you know, I want to talk a little bit about themes as well. We talked about the

five, four power plays and what an outsized impact that's had. A trend that's been developing all year and we've spoken about it is how the game is fundamentally changing in terms of the way teams are creating offensively, how we've seen them trying to

squeeze out more efficiency than ever before. You just look like as recently as two years ago, I think the average was like 31.5 shots on goal per game in the NHL. This year was down to 28. At last check in this postseason, it's under 26.

We're seeing a lot of very low shot counts, I think, of the Florida Tampa Bay series where it's like first team to 20 shots wins and the lighting were able to get to that point in all of game two. This series hasn't really had that. As I said,

we just saw the HABs get to 40. In this one, I think game one was incredibly high event. I know it went into overtime, but both teams were in the mid-30s. And so it's interesting because this has been, you know, we've seen some high-scoring games in other matchups. And, you know, there's cases we just talked about has been pretty high-scoring because of a lot of defensive breakdowns in the offensive talent. But this one has actually been one of the more, if not the most high-event series

in terms of actually generating looks on both sides and getting opportunities. And so I think that's an interesting. development. It's been really fun to watch because it's been pretty back and forth. Yeah. And so, I mean, there's so much going on when we start to talk about how the game is evolving and changing. And I do think the nature of lower event games from the perspective of shot volume anyway and not the perspective of goals, I think speaks to an alignment of incentives effectively between what teams are looking to do in the NHL right now in terms of attacking, where there is a prioritization on quality.

There is a prioritization on conservative puck management, limiting rush chances against as a result of mistakes you're seeing in terms of assessing the value of chance creation, certain passes into the slot, certain shots you're taking. I think you're seeing players and, teams evolve in terms of what they're looking for. They want to take shots through layered traffic. Those are safer in terms of what you're going to give up the other way.

If it doesn't work out, so, you know, more discerning in terms of a pass into the slot versus a pass low to high. And I think on the other side, you're seeing teams really focus, too, on keeping – this is classic hockey stuff. This isn't a big change, but just like keeping teams to the perimeter. And as a result, you're seeing an agreement effectively and how teams want to create offense and how teams want to defend. And that have resulted in, I think, a little bit more offensive zone possession that maybe is on the outside, that is sort of trying to a little bit more like deliberately and slowly create the looks most likely to result in goals as opposed to just challenging goaltenders from wherever. the way we saw a little bit more of five to ten years ago. So I think that's partly what we're seeing.

I think back to the four nations face off, because that was where the trend really started to catch my attention, where you put these super teams together, four super teams, and the shot counts were all 22, 23. Like it had no resemblance to an All-Star game, and that's because you've got such a focus and attention to detail on the defensive side of the puck and making the wrong. right play, and elite players will obviously adapt to that. If you're asking Nathan McKinnon

to back check, he's going to be the best, best back checker you've ever seen. So that was where it sort of really began to be a trend that loomed in my imagination. And I think where we get to, in terms of like what this means and implications, is last year the two best teams at generating shots for five-on-five were the Florida Panthers and the Edmond-Jon Oilers, and they contested the Stanley Cup final. And I'm in the regular season. I'm not looking at this in the playoffs. I'm talking about over 82 games, a large enough sample that we know who you are, which are the teams that generated shots the best. And I think where what we see in the playoffs and what we're seeing in the playoffs is these environments get so chaotic, right? You need to be

exceptional defensively as like a barrier to entry to be a high-end team obviously. But I do think what separates those teams that we should look at and think, man, they have a real chance here from those that don't is how they generate shots on goal. Right. And so I think it allows you to overcome the inevitable like slings and arrows of outrageous playoff fortune. I think it is a barometer too of just like which teams have the players capable of unlocking the teams that defend as well as your contemporary NHL teams defend. I think that's that skill level, right? That team level attribute more than any other, I think is what we should be looking at is signal for like the true

talent level, the actual ability of teams to be more likely to get that next goal that we see matter every year. Well, it's so interesting because I think we've been so conditioned. with everyone just hammering home the idea that defense wins championships, right? Yeah. And I think that's true to an extent. And obviously, I think the Panthers are like the best defensive team in the league when they want to

as the Lightning or finding out in the early on in this series. We'll talk about that, right? Because they're impossible. We will. And we saw them ride that, especially with Barkov and Foresling and how destructive they can be in absorbing everything you do offensively all the way to a championship.

Back-to-back Stanley Cup finals. They're poised once again to get back there this year. But I'd argue that it's kind of all, a prerequisite because I think part of why you're seeing the shots go down in the playoffs as well is because all the teams that are bad defensively are generally just the worst teams in the league. They're the younger ones, right? You think of like the blue jackets and some of these teams that didn't make it. And so they concede a lot and you get those out and filter them out. I think you need to just to get to this point, need to reach a certain threshold or baseline

defensively in terms of how much you can suppress. Now all of us, sudden you get to the playoffs and you're playing those teams over and over again. Yeah. And so if you're a team that struggles to generate offense in the regular season, you come into this environment where not only does the game slow down, real estate becomes so much more difficult than the interior to break into, but now all of a sudden it's like, all right, we struggled against Columbus in the regular season to generate meaningful offense. Now we have to play Florida. Like, what's your, what's your plan of attack? What's your, what are your routes or your outs here to generate offense and get the job done? And so I think,

I think you're you're bang on there. Like I think the differentiator for the top teams is having guys and it doesn't necessarily have to be spread throughout, although we do see like role players and third liners chip in with huge goals that make a big difference later on during a playoff run. But just at least having one line or one set of players that regardless of their situation if you need to, if you're down or if it's a tied score, just go out there and give you a shift where you just generate a high danger chance whether you score or not. And that's, I think that's almost imperative, right?

At this point, it kind of goes without saying. But I do think that's like something worth hammering home for us here. And I guess to this series, we're talking about haves, cabs, the haves do have one of those. Yeah. Not that I'm saying that it's going to be their blueprint to winning the Stanley Cup this year, certainly. But just having, like, what we've seen from Suzuki this season, in terms of being able to elevate and just create consistent offense and win his five

and five minutes, that's what we're kind of talking about in terms of that type of player and what you need in the playoffs to, once you go up against different defensive competition and the game slows down, they can still create to the level we saw in this game three. Yeah, and what's interesting about Montreal is their profile over the course of the entire season has not been a team that generates a ton of looks, but they've done it in this series. And I think when you're talking about a team where all of the best players are basically are 25 and under, it's not impossible to imagine. that they are a different team today, they look like a different team today, than the one that we

saw in November, right? And even December. And so I think that's exciting, right? Because if this is a sign of, you know, whether they advance or not in this year, if this is a sign that they have that level of juice in their lineup, that they're actually going to be able to, you know, become a team that generates 28 to 30 shots per hour, five on five, then we're really going to be cooking with gas, Right. So I'm pretty excited to see sort of that evolution from them and just generally track this around the league. I just think in this world where goaltenders are not stopping 920 from a safe percentage perspective at 5 on 5, but instead are at 900 or below. You know, in a world where you can live with 905 goal 10, you're just like, oh, thank God. You know, in that world of 5-4 playoff games, I think the ability to generate that.

next chance, that ability to score and threaten and apply pressure is the ball game. Like, I don't think we're, I don't think it's ridiculous to suggest honestly, especially with what we saw McDavid doing the playoffs last year, especially with what we're seeing from, you know, some of the best offensive teams across the most, like the last four or five years of hockey. Yep. But really accelerating the last couple. I don't think it's, I don't think it's too far to suggest that the old, like, defense wins championships bromide, is, if not out of date entirely, at least a far less true today than it was in the, you know, Scott Stevens era or even the, even the mid-aughts.

Yeah, it's just, it's different. I do think, like, if you're an incredibly loose team that's just having to win five-four every night, like in the regular season, that's not the formula, certainly. But I think you do need to be able to win different ways and also, in these types of environments have actual answers for what you're going to do offensively. And I think, you know, we're also at the point now where all the best players in the world, the biggest difference makers, can do both. Right. Like it's becoming a very exceedingly rare. I know we like to nitpick some of the top guys in the league of like,

oh, their effort here or defensive metrics there. But you're just even seeing this evolution. I mean, just think of what Leon Dreisel did this year, right? Where there was a time where it was like, oh, well, he's such a one-trick pony in terms of powerplay scoring and playing with McDavid and he's a defensive liability, you know, the effort's not there on the back check. And then you watch him this year and the level he takes his game to where all of a sudden now he's just, he's dominant all over the ice. They're winning all those battles. He's so much better defensively. And you're getting to this point where you are seeing that buy-in from those top guys and they can do both things. But most importantly, they give you that offense that

you're so desperately craving. Yeah. And the idea, too, of like learning how to win, the Steve Eisenman story, right? The way that hockey fans have talked about breaking through in the playoffs for a generation, right? And think about then, like if we're talking defense versus offense to go back to our Oilers Kings conversation. I mean, that's been the story of those series the last four years and sort of is again this year. It's not that the Oilers ever had to learn how to defend to win in the playoffs. I mean, they did. but like they didn't have to do it to beat the kings anyway.

It's that the kings had to graft this level of offensive juice to properly threaten the oil. That tells you a lot. That evolution, I feel like that's the example of what we're talking about where, you know, not that the pendulum is entirely swung, but that the dial has been turned a little bit toward prioritizing that. And then there's, you know, some other fun referendum series within this vein that we can track over the next couple weeks because I'm sure we'll get into at some point that the Dallas-Colorado dynamic and that would be like another interesting example of you know a pretty pure clash

that will effectively test this hypothesis and you know not not it won't be definitively proven one way or the other but it's certainly a data point that we should be watching for closely with this sort of conversation in mind i don't want to spend too much time on devil's gains i did want to just quickly shout it out because it was the third game on the on the friday slate and we got to see a double over time which is always really cool uh it was also a phenomenal moment i thought for Shimon Nemitz. Yeah. Because I was, you know, I did a show with our, with our pal harm, uh, after game two of that

series. And he was thrown into this spot where he struggled all year. Sheldon Keefe has been very public about his distrust of him at this point and not wanting to rely on him. And then they have to throw him in because they have the injuries to Luke Hughes and Brendan Dylan. And I thought he looked like a fish out of water in that game. Like he was just didn't, didn't really seem to know where the puck was.

Like every time the cake. the Keynes were attacking him. He looked like he was completely out of position. And it was a really tough spot for him. And so I was critical of him, but also noted, like, this is a guy who has a lot of extenuating circumstances this season with a new coach, the injury before the season, how good he was last year. I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And then he scores this awesome second overtime goal, kind of dancing into the offensive zone and beating Freddie Anderson. And it was a phenomenal redemption moment I thought for him. And that's what the postseason is all about. And so I was really happy to see that for him. And, and, you know,

the devil's coming home. I think that's been also the theme of today's show, right? It's, it's team who started on the road losing the first two games coming home, just putting together a much better effort in front of their home crowd and making this a series finally instead of going down three nothing. And so you could lump the devils in there as well because that's exactly what they did after blowing that two nothing lead, but but being able to close it out and get a win here against the hurricanes. Yeah. I mean, this this series I think we know is is something of a mismatch, but to be able to eke out a win in dramatic fashion, create a playoff memory like that. I mean, that's what you want for every team in the Stanley Cup playoffs. And now we're at a

point where other than Ottawa, we're not going to see any sweeps, right? Like, Ottawa could get swept and that'll be it. And I think that's a good thing, too. Like, you want the first round to be competitive. I was a little bit worried that in this world where I think star-level talent is driving outcomes more than it ever has that the, you know, not that the fun of the first round would be minimized. But it would be NBA style, just kind of an inevitable or like sort of just write a passage for the better teams to get into deeper into their postseason. I was just a little worried that we might not have the same level of chaos and unpredictability

that makes this time of year the best for hockey fans. And I think what we've seen across the last 48 hours is that thankfully from my perspective anyway, such worries were kind of unfound. All right. let's go to break here. We're about an hour in. Then we come back. We'll get to the other series.

I want to start off with Jets Blues on the other side. And then we're going to get into some of the other stuff we've been seeing. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. We're back here on the Hockey Pedyocast, joined by Thomas Drans. Tom, let's get into Jets Blues. The final, you know, we got the four other series that we have games for here on Saturday. So I don't want to spend too much time on the most recent showings we've seen from those particular ones, just because it'll become dated pretty quick by the time people listen.

And we're also doing another show, I should say, Sunday night. So I think we'll have a chance to circle back and cover those more extensively. But Jets Blues, we have a little bit of a break here until game four. And it fits perfectly into this theme as well, right? We're very impressed with the Jets taking care of business at home the way they did, winning those first two games. the blues just come out and completely blitz them right off the top. They score 48 seconds in.

A big playoffs, by the way, speaking of that, for guys kicking the puck towards the net and then getting their stick on it. We saw Vanderkane do it. We saw Bichnich execute it there as well. And they score three minutes in again. We saw the Bichnich Hattrick in this one. Camp Fowler was phenomenal.

He finished with five points. Yeah, I mean, I don't really know, I'm curious for your take on this, because on the one hand, I thought it was a very impressive showing from the Blues in coming home and just delivering such a decisive punch like this. At the same time, though, I do think we see this annually in the post seasons, right? Where like this context of the series script of like, it's two nothing, you come home, you win, and then you don't want to throw it out.

And I do think those first two games were so close, especially game one, that the blues are clearly in this and this is a very competitive matchup and I'd expect a long series from this I never would have expected the Jets to just summarily sweep them by any means. No. But if you're the Jets, it's like, all right, you lose this game,

it's ugly, Hella Buck gets pulled, you're in a house of horrors in terms of the Blues just running up the score, yet at the same time, you're still up too wide in this. All you really have to do here is take care of business in game four and all of a sudden you're heading back home where you've been very successful

with a chance to close out the series and get over the hump. So it's not necessarily, while it was like aesthetically, it looked quite bleak in this game. Yeah. I do think like taking a bit of a step back and I'm sure that's what the Jets are trying to do internally during this extended break between games. Taking that sort of perspective of like it's just one game, you're still up in the series and not buying too much into what happened.

Obviously you want to go through the tape and address some of the stuff and especially you look at the way the blues were creating in this one the way they do when they're at their best. And we've spoken about it was stretching out the Jets defense and then getting within it and getting a lot of these very crisp opportunities from in tight to Connor Halebuck didn't really have much of a chance on. Yeah, when I think about why this series has captured my imagination to such an extent, because it has. This series has been the most much, this series has felt the most must watch to me. You got it over Oilers Kings? You got it over Oils Kings? That Oilers King's Game 3 is such like powerful recency bias,

whereas the last time we saw these teams play it was so lopsided. But I don't think we should let the crooked lines we're seeing on the scoreboard take away from just the playoff intensity. Like the classic, here's what I love about this Jets Blue series is we've seen it unfold. And one of the reasons I was so impressed with what the Blues were able to do in getting back in this series in game three, as much as like Helibuck's comfort level has been a storyline, I just feel like there haven't been,

we haven't had a lot of like deflection goal off a point shot. We haven't had a lot of, you've had to work really hard to score if you're on St. Louis or Winnipeg in this series. I think both goaltenders have made some incredibly difficult saves. And I think everything that's being generated that's really dangerous is like so hard earned, so tight inside. And I think that's been, I think this is just a really well-played series by two teams that have a pretty high gear. The only thing that I come out of game three nervous at all about is that the Jets push truly never arrived.

There was never a stretch where they were controlling play the way like Montreal did in game two in Washington. There was never that sort of like deck. that we can get back in it. I don't love seeing that just from... Or what you saw from the Kings in Game 3, right? Where they go down 2-0, nothing, but then all of a sudden they start getting rush opportunities. They get back into it,

and all of a sudden it's a very competitive back-and-forth game. Yeah, that level of zone time just never arrived in the second or the third. So I'm really curious to see what Game 4 looks like because I do think the Jets should go into it feeling like they've got something pretty significant to prove just with how dominant the Blues were, not just in terms of the goals that they put up, but the fact that they kind of never relented, never started to allow the jets to rack up easy OZP.

Like it was pretty much, you know, foot to the floor the entire way for the blues there. Well, another series where a big storyline has been the power play efficiency as well. Now the blues obviously aren't running the five-forward unit the way the kings and the Leafs are, but they've been lethal there as well. And in particular, I think it was the Buccanevich.

It was the second goal, the sort of high tip off the power play that they executed in this one was really well constructed. Yeah, I think for the Jets, and obviously, you know, this made things so much worse in terms of overextending anyone, everyone, but not having de Mello in this game. Yes. And kind of bumping everyone up higher than they need to be really presents a problem, especially because, man, I love Luke Shen as a guy. And he's carved out an awesome sort of second stage of.

his career here as like a third pair of vet who obviously I you know put a lot of work into extending his career by working with adam Oates and skills training and and he plays a thoughtful game getting himself to a level where he's not just a big physical guy but if he needs to make a short little breakout pass he can do so he's really struggled with that in this series and then you know like the final nail in the coffin in this game was like he's got an endless amount of time and space to break it out he's holding the puck along the wall and then radic fax are just absolutely destroys him, causes a turnover, they quickly score and it's over. And so that's been a recurring theme here in terms of the Jets blue line personnel in particular,

both with and without the puck and what they're capable of doing. So I think that's something to watch here. But yeah, you know, just full marks to the blues top players in particular. They came to play here. Their top six was from Fowler to Thomas and Bichnevich. Yeah, the Kairu had the snipe goal as well. Like they did exactly what the top players on a team down to. Nothing should do.

Like they took this very seriously. and came out of the gate and delivered a statement. And the sort of statement that you wonder if it can shift the momentum in a series. I don't really buy that momentum exists game to game in the playoffs. So the Jets coming out and sort of making a statement of their own is what we should expect game four. And honestly, I think they need it. I think they need it in game four, especially without Demello, the way that that top six versus top four matchup looked in that second game,

gives you some consternation, I think, if you're coming out of this as a Winnipeg Jets fan. That said, you steal one on the road here and you feel very, very good going into game five. So that game feels pretty big. That game feels like a pretty seismic pivot point. It's also such a high leverage game, not only because obviously the difference between 3-1 and 2-2s is very obviously huge with the series shifting back to Winnipeg, but also, as we've talked about, this series is the one for whatever reason. spaced out so much scheduling-wise where there's an extra off-day pretty much between every game. So you look and, you know, game four is going to be on Sunday, the 27th, game five is going to be

on the 30th. So you've got an extra break there as well. So all of a sudden, if you have a repeat performance like this in game four, I do think all of a sudden you get a lot of, a lot of noise and a lot of like, oh God, here we go again from the Jets perspective. Whereas if you're able to come back and really tighten things up and play a much better game four, regardless of the result, feel like you can feel much better about it, heading back home with that time off, getting a bit healthier, getting ready, and trying to either close out the series or go up. So, yeah, no, I think I'm really excited. Like that Sunday game four is going to be must watch.

And I'm really curious to see how the Jets respond to that. Yeah, they're going to need a response or they're in trouble. And not because of, you know, their side of the puck necessarily. Just because this Blues team is legitimately very, very good. Like this blues team, I think, put it this way, regardless of who advances and who departs from this series, I think these teams should both, I think these teams are both like absolutely in the same weight class as the best and the last. There's no question in my mind. Let's close out.

We've got about 30 minutes or so left here. Let's kind of run through the four other matchups that are all happening on Saturday. Just in terms of like thematically what we've seen from them, if there's any bigger picture, takeaways as well. I want to start with Golden Knights Wild, and I don't know if this is just the West bias in me speaking, but in thinking about the ranking the series with most entertainment value, I would honestly have Oilers, Kings, Jets Blues, and Golden Knights Wild, like, right atop my list. Yeah, I've been blown away by how fun this Minnesota, Vegas series has been. I don't think that's not West Coast bias. That's objective.

Well, Montreal Caps is the only Eastern Conference series. think a lot of the national attention necessarily would reflect how fun those series have been. Let's put it that way in terms of talking points and how much airtime is being devoted, respectively. I'm very impressed. You know, you talk about how impressed we were by the Blues game three response. Just lump in game two and three from the wild here because I think you and I both, we recorded right after game one last Sunday.

And we were talking about how just well-oiled a machine, the Golden Knights looked, how many answers and problems of their own they had to provide to whatever team they played and how well poised they were for a long playoff run and then they come out in game two they they blitz the wild for the first five or six minutes of that game it's like all right here we go again and then the wild responded in that game their top players really came through offensively they jumped out to a lead and then game three they did it all over again and when we talk about power versus power sort of this idea of top of the lineup versus depth and what ultimately matters what veils in a playoff series, this is a great example of that, right? Because we'd think that the

Golden Knights are one of the deepest teams in the league, talking about their blue line and the personnel they have there, the forward talent they've accumulated, and how many different options they have there. And after game one, I think we actually did speak about how Bruce Cassidy, because of that, I think reflecting it, had chosen to have a very sort of laissez-faire approach to the matchup game at home. And he was using the fourth line against Caprizo, Boldy, and Eric Seneck. And he was fine with that. And he was trying to free up the Iko line to create more offensively against some of Minnesota's lower lines.

And throughout these three games, I think the story for me has just been how Caprizov, Boldy, and Erickson, have just completely kicked in the teeth of Iko, Barbersheb, and Stone. I mean, the minutes are outrageous. There's 24 head-to-head minutes five-on-five of Bolshev. Goldie versus Stone. So let's use those as kind of the proxies for their respective top lines. Shots on goal 18 to 3 to 3. Minnesota. High danger chances. Seven to one, Minnesota. Goals, three nothing. Now, Vegas hasn't gotten a single 5-1-5 goal out of that Ico line. Three three games. We know what Boldie and Capriza have done offensively. And so that's a very

interesting development here, right? Because a lot was made of Minnesota just loading up that top line instead of dispersing it throughout the lineup and having more depth in the top nine. Instead, they just loaded up their three best players up front and they're like, we're just going to play them. And what can you do to stop it? And right now the Golden Knights have simply had no answers regardless of who's been out there.

As the series has gone on, Bruce Cassidy's made a more concerted effort to get Aikl out there, and it just hasn't mattered because they've been absolutely cooking every time they're on the ice. The Matt Boldie storyline, the Matt Boldie glow-up, looking a little like patch readyish now at this point just in terms of the shot volume the length how disruptive he's able to be as a four checker as an f1 but also how he's able to use that length to protect the puck and then he also plays at such a massive speed that it's that it's been fun what what i what i really like about caprizov with boldie and y'all erics and ac

there's a comfort food element, maybe something that's elemental to me as a hockey fan, of the composition of two elite wingers with big hulking pooper-scooper center, who's probably not an elite, like an elite first-line offensive center on his own, but fits in so perfectly with those wingers that it, he does the yeomen's work effectively. Now, the pooper-scooper line is literally a direct quote from Artemisima. who described playing with Panarin and Kane back in the day as I chased them around the ice with a pooper scooper, right? I clean up the messes. And I feel like we've seen that.

How many the Caprizov goal, right, that's shot sort of against the grain from the point? Yeah, cycling up to the high high point. And it's just Yol L. Erick's neck, a complete wall that there's no world where Aden Hill can see around it. I think you're seeing this just all over the ice, the way that Yol L. Erick's in neck is getting open in the slot. Just, again, he's not taking enormously skilled shots. These aren't, he's not the guy driving, but he's in position.

He's working to find the quiet ice. He's screening the goaltender and he's winning a ton of battles. Like his retrievals are a big part of what's fueling some of the creative stuff that Caprizov's able to do in zone. And he's, you know, he's just good enough offensively to keep up with those guys while being such an ace in terms of doing all the grunt work, all the digging that allows them to retain possession and get as many touches as they're getting. It's been a lot of fun to watch.

And I think additionally fun because we've seen what this combination of players looks like in the past. Like we know that this works. And it's like we're getting this fun, updated version of it against, you know, one of the best defensive engines that this league has in the Vegas Golden Knights. And right now, anyway, Vegas needs to find an answer for it. Yeah, Bollie's been incredible. the goal he scored in game three where he hounds no hanifin into his stake comes around and beats aden hill uh in game two obviously a lot of the attention uh deservedly so was given to that outrageous saucer pass that caprice of essentially throws from blue line to blue line or like lands it

flat yeah on boldie stick but you watch that play and boldie is holding off shade theodore on his back is able to do something with it and beat aden hill the connection between those two has been phenomenal. And I think, you know, you and I spent a lot of time coming out of the Four Nations because I think, you know, we watch those games so closely. I thought they were a true litmus test of where we're at in the league right now in terms of how you have to play what the best guys in the best guys are like. And then we were so fascinated by the development of some of these younger guys who haven't really been on the stage that much, haven't necessarily had this exposure opportunity, getting a taste of that and benefiting from it. We identified some of the Ottawa guys, which obviously hasn't necessarily worked out this postseason. I think, Boldy is the natural sort of successor here as the Four Nations riser because we were boldier Binnington. Well, it is. I'm sorry. But Whittington at least already had the Stanley Cup and had at least some sort of a

playoff resume there. But the shine had come off, you know, in the years since. And he reminded everybody, oh, right, I'm a sick clutch goaltender. And then absolutely dominated down the stretch. So I feel like it's Bennington or Boldie, man. Wow. You're ready for the Hockey Night of Canada panel. the take my gap.

The boldy of it all, by the way, this is like one of the most fascinating frames for me to think about the composition. I know this is playoff time. There's no need to get into Team Canada roster construction for the 2026 Olympics. But the boldy factor, the fact that when you think about what Canada looked like at the Four Nations tournament, the truth that being that there was no like big fast winger skilled enough to really keep up with, you know, what guys like Boldie, what some of the American forwards are able to do, was something that really loomed large in our conversations about that Canada-U-S matchup and has loomed large in my

imagination, especially because I think there's a ton of candidates that are exceptionally fun to watch across the league, whether it's Dylan Gunther, whether it's Adam Van Tilly, whether it's Quentin Byfield. And I think like that that frame is something that I've been considering a lot, especially as we've watched Byfield just go nuke, you know, over across the last two and a half months. Yeah, he's got four goals to assist in this. I mean, just completely destructive. I think what, you know, obviously the shooting talent and stuff is one thing, but I do think that that reach and range you are mentioning and just how, like,

he just eliminates so many of your plans and he's a nightmare on the forecheck and on the, like, he just, he's been doing it all. And I think has closed the gap with a guy like Zuccarello from a, I have a mind meld with Caprizov perspective, right? Because that was something that Zuccarello and Caprizov have really honed. There are some intricacies in their passing game that, you know, I'm not going to say it's at McDavid Drysidal levels, but it's not too dissimilar. It's at least on that continuum. And I think Boldie's actually like fitting in in a way where he's bringing a lot of those same elements, which I think is a testament too to the fact that he's not just the range guy, is not just the shooter,

he's not just the big forward. There's an awful lot of attacking nuance to his skill set too. Well, it's interesting about this series is you've got that element. of the power versus power and how Minnesota has been winning out through three games there. You've also got the playoffs. We spoke about this with the Jets a bunch of times, but how some of these teams who rely on sort of precision, I guess, and passing efficiency to just move the puck and really function as a team,

how sometimes the playoffs, the script flips, right? Because all of a sudden there's so many more breakdowns. It's much more chaotic. there's more pressure being applied, and all of a sudden that strategy becomes a bit trickier to consecutively and successfully pull off. Mike Kelly had this really fun staff from Sport Logic, where in the regular season, Vegas gave up the fourth fewest goals against off of turnovers, and turnovers being described as this 10-second range, I guess, right following a change in possession.

They've already given up by my count seven of those. Minnesota scored seven goals off turnovers in three games this series, So that kind of speaks to like how some of this chaos and pressure they've been applying has discombobulated Vegas a little bit all of a sudden. And they started to show some cracks and some seams there. And the other thing for me is I think you're also a big subscriber and looking at final 25 games or so of the regular season and using that as a predictive measure of kind of where we're at in terms of team strength and kind of how it's going. And that's it, you know, we're early in the postseason, but that's been a bit of a tough one for this one because I think obviously the wild were a bit of an extenuating circumstance. because for a lot of those 25 games,

they didn't have Caprizov and Erickson X, certainly, and that makes a massive difference. But, I mean, you got to see, we got to see them in that final week, right? How much they struggled in Calgary in that game? And then the second of the back-to-back, you saw them live in Vancouver, and they had to really just, like, grind out

and steal a game late in that one. And then even just to stamp their playoff ticket, like barely holding off Anaheim, almost blowing it, winning in an overtime. I thought it was generally pretty unimpressive limp into the playoffs. And then all of a sudden, you get into the postseason and just looks like an entirely different team. It looks much more like the Minnesota Wild.

We saw the first 20 games of the season when they were healthy and they were generating a ton of offense and we're doing a lot of the stuff they're doing now. And then same with Dallas, Colorado, which we can segue into here in a little bit where you look at the final 25 games of Dallas and it's like defensively, this is such a nightmare. And now you're playing one of the most dangerous offensive teams in the league. This is going to be a bloodbath. And then it looked like it in the first game.

In the first period, really. And then after that, it was a bit of a, you know, even in that game, like Colorado got a couple of those lucky bounces off of bodies and ELEC and Lekinin with a bicycle kick. But otherwise, like, I thought Dallas played a pretty good game, and then they just ramped it up in games two and three. So it's been interesting for like almost throwing out the, our impressions laid in the regular season in terms of what that actually means

once we get into the playoffs. Yeah, and I think we knew with Minnesota, though, that the Caprizov, Yoel Erickson-Eck factor was so significant, right? they sort of became a team that was completely dependent on Jonas Gustafson, who I thought, by the way, was in... Philip Gustafson. What did I say? Jonas Gusen.

Oh, my God. The monster. Yeah, the monster, right. Long-time Detroit Red Wings backup. That's how everyone knows him. Anyway, the... Sorry, the Philip Gustafson factor here. Because down the stretch, they really were so reliant on Gustafson,

while also making sure that Mark Andre Fleury got like enough starts toward the end of his career. and to preserve Gustafson, right? And so it was a really fascinating situation that I think, you know, John Hines and Co. had to manage, and I think they managed it mostly the right way. You know, Gustafson having to start that game in Vancouver was like obviously not scripted, not how they would have preferred to do it. But so it goes.

The truth, though, I think is that, yeah, recovering from their late season stagger with their top players in, I do think they've looked like a different team. With Dallas, I'm a little bit more jury as out here in terms of their defensive issues or the right side of their defense falling beneath a functional level. I still think is a concern or something we could yet see shape the outcomes of this series.

Let's take a break here, our final one, and then we come back. We'll jump right back into the Stars app, I promise, a little bit of a tease here. You're listening to the HockeyPedio guest streaming on the Sports Net Radio Network. We are back here on the Hockey Pio cast Tom. Before we went to break, you're mentioning Av stars,

and we're going to see Game 4 Saturday night, which I'm really excited about the most remarkable stat of the postseason so far that I tweeted out. The stars have more wins in this series than they have minutes spent holding a lead because I think they've led for just over a minute, and they're up to one through three games. I do want to... The auto senators are like, we also don't lead. What's going on?

Yeah, why don't we have two ways? The details within the overtime winner in game three, and we watch that game three, as I said, on the Palm Springs couch here. And I just, I want to break it down for a second. Because first off, you get that Mason-Marchment, four-minute double minor at the end of regulation. The stars have to kill off the power play,

you know, bleeding three minutes or so into the overtime. They get a glorious two-on-one. And I was like, oh, my God, Colin Blackwell is going to score again for a second straight game in overtime. Essel and Del was phenomenal defensively, and we've spoken a lot about, you know, the outsized role he has to play with Cody Cic, and essentially a matchup role against McKinnon's line.

In this one, he saved two goals, including getting out in front of Lekkonen's shot in overtime, and towards the end of regulation as well, prevented kind of a cross-ice tap in for the a abs that would have won the game. Yeah, Esselandel. in a foxhole defensively has got to be elite. Like, I'm not saying he doesn't manufacture elite defensive results because he spends too much of his own zone.

Because he's an absorbed defender, yeah. But when everyone else is running around with their hair on fire, and you've got chances and puck's being thrown cross seam and on and on, like if you need a desperation defensive play to break up a possession or save a goal, I feel like Esselendell. There's not many people on the planet that I'd pick ahead of Esselandelle in that very specific situation. And hey, it's an important thing

to be really good at as a defender. The overtime winner was such a redemption arc for so many being involved. Because first you get rantin and just outdogging, McKinnon, and then Drew in. 65 seconds into his shift and getting the puck out of the zone. Of course.

Then you get Mason Marchment, who took that double minor, bringing the puck down low and holding off Devon Taves, which is, if you watch Devon Taves, defend 101's, an impossible task. And then you get Tyler Sagan coming in, going with this agile, skate the stick finish.

Yeah. After missing, what, 60 games having this, like, brutal hip surgery. And I mean, I think the lower body injuries that he's had to work through over the last few years, I mean, you know, that this is for all the conversation that used to surround Tyler Sagan as a younger player to remain as good as he's remained through the injuries that he's had to deal with. like you can't do that if you don't absolutely love and are 130% like a mathematically impossible percentage of committed to the sport of hockey.

Like that is who he is now. And I think it's important to note that. Just don't ask him to be on time for a team breakfast. Like, yeah, wild stuff. The abs power play, you know, they had huge opportunities. I believe they had one in overtime in game two or at least the end of the regulation. and then in game three here as well, as he mentioned, had 10 minutes or so,

a power play time in game three and wasn't able to score. And I thought the broadcast with Ryan Callahan on the color commentary did a really good job of identifying this for whatever reason. He's been great, by the way. He's been really good. I like it. Sometimes he repeats a lot of the same stuff, like the play-by-play guy says something,

and then his initial response is just verbatim, just say back exactly what Bobbush-in or whoever he's doing it with says. But when he's actually, like, breaking down some of that stuff. Yeah, he's insightful. And he was such an elite penalty killer for so long that I think he can really speak from an area of expertise here, which I very much value. I hope the kids don't forget how sick playoff Ryan Callahan was back in the head. He was a dog. He was one of the original dogs.

Yeah, he was. He identified kind of how, for whatever reason, Colorado on the power play was been very reluctant to work the puck down low and kind of get that low triangle going. And that was something they had a lot of success with post-Martin H's trade because him, and McKinnon are so interchangeable, so they would essentially swap roles on that left side of the ice and then alternate. And Dallas has essentially been pressuring McKinnon on the flank whenever he gets the puck and not letting him, like, early in game two, he scored a powerplay goal because they had so much time and space. McCar got it over to him and he just stepped into a shot and beat Odinger. And since then, they've been really crowding him and pressuring them. And it's really thrown the Ais PowerPlay for a loop.

They haven't really had any workarounds around it in terms of getting it down lower and kind of attacking. from closer proximity to the net. So I think that's some of the watch because, you know, the margins this series, as we said, have been so tight in terms of the two overtimes here in games two and three. And Colorado needs to be much more efficient there. So I feel like that's like, that would be my first identifiable thing of like what needs to change in game four.

I do think though you're seeing some identification of that from the abs. I just don't think they're making hay of it yet. What they have been doing with the aggressive Dallas front and I'm thinking about like that McKinnon chance where he basically is able to pass up high, right? And then when the fronting defender moves, he moves further down toward the goal line and gets the return pass from a car. And then he had that chance where he basically like came in in front and this was really late in regulation and got that like spinning backhand off and sort of tried to test Ottinger top corner with the backhand. So I think that there is, I actually think you're seeing them start to work around it. But it requires a pass off and then a charge at the net from sort of the goal line level.

the problem is, is the havoc that they created off that in the overtime frame and latent regulation was swallowed up by Esselandel. You know what I mean? Like at the end of the day, Esselandell made two incredible plays on sequences like that. So I actually might suggest to you that the a Vs actually kind of found a partial answer. They just didn't make hay out of it, partly because Ottinger made a key save late in regulation on McKinnon, and then Esselandell made a key save and also broke up a tap-in for Druand off of a, movement based off of effectively going around the fronting defender.

So I actually think there's solutions there for the abs. I thought the biggest factor in game three was that Kalmaqar was way off. Yeah, especially then the regulation. They had that one shift where he kept just trying to get the puck out of his own and was failing to do so. It was very unlike Kelmacar. Look, we all have bad days at the office, even the absolute best of us, which Kelmacar is and neither you or I are. But he was way off in game three.

and I think the truth is that if games four, five, and six, like if after games four, five and six, if necessary, result in the Aves controlling 55% of shot attempts and 53% of shots for and having two goals at five on five with sort of the top end of their lineup on the ice, the stars are going to be in the driver's seat. And that's where we are after three games. The Avalanche are winning those matchups, but they're not winning them by a wide enough mark. margin given the composition of this of their team and frankly given the some of the limitations for the stars at the top of the lineup so like really this is on Colorado's best players I think to produce in a way where you're not dependent on like jack derrory to be your source of offense

yeah that's interesting I it still could happen I went into this series expecting as I said it to be very one-sided especially from a for a possession perspective and it hasn't happened through three games even after game two and i thought game two was an incredibly impressive performance by the stars at home where they were like especially as that game progressed just flat out the better team on the ice out of the two i was like all right well we're going back to colorado gay lanisoggs making his triumphant return that crowd's going to be crazy at altitude we're going to get a game here in either game three or four where it's a seven one Colorado just boot stomping where they're just flying around and just peppering them with a barrage of

rush chances. And we didn't see that in game three. And regardless of what happens to the rest of this series, I do have to say this is quite a feather in the cap of our guy Pete DeBurr, who still looks incredibly miserable and sad every time the camera pans to him. And I do think the, and I think ESPN's been covering at least two of the games this series, regardless of the broadcaster, I think the cameraman has to be a listener of the show, or at least follow me on Twitter and being on the bit, because there's been some, like, dramatic extended zoom-ins on pizza, we're on the bench more so than I ever see for any other NHL head coach, like, just like, let's pan over to him for no reason. Like, there wasn't a goal against, there was nothing.

Let's just see what he's up to it. He's just, like, got this, like, miserable, like, oh, my God, did I leave the stove on face? And, uh, and you and I think very highly of them, especially. I think he's the best X-as-in-os coach in the league. For me, especially, I've had some quibbles in-game from him, and I think it's much more difficult because of how fast everything is moving to micromanage in-game. For sure. But game-to-game adjustments, he is phenomenal at the top of the class. His team's always going with the right plan, I think.

This effort to even be up to 1, even if they lose the final three games and lose in 6, what an effort it's been and what a testament it's been to, like, Not only the game planning, but I think the execution from everyone involved to do this, given the personnel and all of our qualms with the right side and who they're facing is incredible. Thomas Harley, though, I don't think we need, like, Thomas Harley is absolutely on that Devon Taves thing where it's like we started talking about his impact on Hayskinin, but really he's a standalone elite player in his own right now. And I think we have to recognize it. He hasn't been on the ice for a Av's goal against it.

five on five yet, 70 plus minutes of ice time. And I think there's just a level of control that he's had in this series that has been an absolute weapon. You know, you want to understand why the stars are up in this series. Like, here's, here's the truth. Thomas Harley's been the best defender in this series. And that's something that's got to change if the avalanche are going to come back and win it. Quickly on Panthers Lightning, because they're playing the early game on Saturday, game four, for game three, sorry. There's nothing more difficult in pro sports. I'm pretty confident, then going anywhere on the ice sheet that the Panthers don't particularly want you to go.

Yeah. They are, their down ice pressure, their ability to force teams away from the slot, the way that they just attack as a group off puck, like the fact that they're also generating shots in the elite rate, like whenever they trail, they can turn it up is almost gravy.

They are defensively one of the most imposing, sides I've ever seen across like 160 feet of ice. It is wild watching this Tampa Bay Lightning team that is so good that is filled with so many guys that don't just play incredibly skilled hockey and have exceptional physical tools, but also are like the hardest working guys, just have like no dog edge and no space to work against this Florida defensive front and neutral zone forecheck. It is beautiful hockey what Paul Maurice has this team executing right now. Yeah, I thought a defensive effort. I mean, in game one as well, obviously they needed less so because they went out for six goals.

But game two, getting that early goal from a noted goal scorer, Nate Schmidt, who has three this postseason already. And then with the circumstances of, you know, Tampa's down one-nothing in the game, they're down one-nothing in the series, they're at home. And for them to hold them under 20 shots on goal and under two expected goals generated and really limit the scoring chances. Braiden Point had a couple where he shook loose. But for the most part, it was a pretty routine. effort from from from from from bobrowski was asked to do and what the the panthers did defensively I thought it was incredible and a reminder of just like what a scary the team uh this is when they're firing on all cylinders now obviously a lot of the talk coming out of that game is going to be the the brandon

haggle hit on barkov that he got suspended for one game and got the major in this game and barkoff's health and all that I just I love watching this panthers team when they're at full health they're going to be getting ecblad back here for game three and I just want to see them. I mean, on the one hand, they're so destructive that it eliminates a lot of the juice in terms of competition and like how viable an upset is and sort of what the games look like because they just decimate you defensively. But as an appreciator of hockey and great hockey at that, I find them so compelling to watch in terms of the way they execute there. And so I just want to see them at full health and getting to see a lot longer run of this because I think they

could once again do pretty special things. Yeah, there, look, I think they have reminded everybody that they should be the Stanley Cup favorite. And there was a stretch, you know, entering the playoffs where like Dallas peaked ahead of them and on and on. Carolina's ahead of them right now. Well, Carolina probably should be just given their route relative to this, this Panthers route. but, you know, I think we've been served up a pretty significant reminder that the Stanley Cup, like the road to the Stanley Cup still goes through Broward County. Well, we'll talk more about this series after Game 3. We'll watch it on Saturday and then we'll reconvene on Sunday.

We'll get into it. You got any quick parting shots on Leafs Sends here? We're going to see Game 3, game four of that as well. The Leafs are up 3-0. The Sends are on the ropes. I mean, being on the verge of being swept because Max Domi and Simone Benwa get overtime goals against you, is a pretty tough spot for a fun Senator's season to have landed, but that's where we're at.

I do think the Leafs have been materially better. That series more than, you know, I talked about the Winnipeg, St. Louis series being like, you have to work so hard for your goals. It's felt like this series you haven't. There have been a lot of point-shot goals. There have been a lot of sort of, I think, goaltending errors, and then obviously the Leafs have just absolutely feasted on the

power play. And that's really the story. Every Sen's penalty results in a goal against, and I think that dynamic has spotted the Leafs a continuous lead, and then the Senators haven't been able to get it done in overtime the way like Dallas has, right? I mean, what's the difference between the Dallas versus Colorado and Senators versus Leafs, right? Dallas has spent the entire series chasing, but they've been able to grind out a couple wins with a couple key moments,

and I don't know that the senators have. I do think within those games, though, like Dallas has done such a good job of getting the puck low and generating meaningful looks from in tight. Like Blackwood has had to be phenomenal in that series and has been genuinely tested. Whereas you look at... I think Stolars has been really good. Yeah, but a lot of it is...

An unscreened rush-rish shot and a deflection goal to tie those games. They're not generating... A lot of it has been perimeter looks that he's just been absorbing. The Leafs have been blocking a ton of shots. Like you look at the shot attempts compared to what's actually gone through to Stolars and it's night and day. I just think there's, it's, that's been both ways. Right.

With the exception of the Leafs power play, I think offense has been, like, the truth is, is that the goals that are being allowed are, like, of a softer variety in my view. There's been a little bit more randomness shaping these games. That would be my take. Well, I mean, the Leafs are executing the perfect, like, vintage peak Rangers. Right. Blueprint here. Yes.

Efficiency, power play dominance and goal-tending. Hey, look, a team. that public analysts don't buy that makes it deeper in the playoffs than they're expected to. I think a lot of Maple Leafs fans will take that given their long history of having a team with a really high gear that underachieves once they get to the postseason. I'll be really fascinated to what that looks like if we do get a- Granger's. That's a great comp. If we get a rematch of Panthers Leafs round two from a couple years ago, though,

a lot of that winning battles in tight and controlling the home plate area is all of a sudden but it would become much more difficult for them. We saw what the Rangers, you know, offense looked like in the Eastern Conference final last season, and that was the President's Trophy winning Rangers. They had absolutely no answer. There was no oxygen in the game at all. So I know what way I'll be picking, if that's what we're headed toward, given that those two teams are up a combined five-nothing in their two respective playoff series.

But suspect, you know, these stories aren't exactly written yet with Florida, Tampa, and Ottawa and Toronto playing again tonight. All right, well, this was really fun. These games have been really fun. We've got another great schedule ahead on Saturday. And then Sunday, of course, you and I will be back Sunday night with another mega show to break down everything we're seeing. We'll focus more on those series we didn't get to today.

You got anything to plug here on the way out? Just everyone follow you online. Connects off-season coverage at The Athletic. I'm sure there'll be some Rick Tocket News to break down across this week. So it should be fun. All right, buddy. Well, this is a blast. We're going to get out of here.

If you want to help us out, please leave us a five-star rating and review. wherever you listen to the show, those are greatly appreciated and help us out a lot. That is all from us. Today, as I said, we'll be back Sunday night with another two-hour show to break down everything we've seen. Enjoy this weekend's games, and thank you for listening to the HockeyPedocast streaming on the Sports Net Radio Network.