The Hockey PDOcast - Changes Patrick Roy Can Make & Why This Jets Team Is Different

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jack Han to discuss what Patrick Roy can do to make the biggest difference for the Islanders, why the way the Jets are playing this season is so different compared to previous versions, and how players like Nils Höglander producing down the lineup might be the best spot for them to keep doing so. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Philippovic. Welcome to the HockeyPedio cast. My name's Dimitri Philpovich and joining me is my good buddy, Jack. I'm on Jack. What's going on, man? We're getting some actual winter weather here in Montreal. I'm in a really good mood because of that. Yeah, we got some in Vancouver last week and it totally shut the city down for a few days. So I totally get that.

I imagine our standards for what qualifies as winter weather, though, are slightly different based on our locations. But this is our first show together of 2024. I think it's terrific timing because we had already planned to do this show. But since then, over the weekend, the Islanders made a coaching change. And since generally, when I have you on, we talk about systems and tactics and coaching and player usage and all that good stuff, that makes for good content for us here today. So let's talk a little bit about the Islanders and then replacing Lane Lambert behind the bench with Patrick Waugh. They made the change on Saturday while coached his first game Sunday night. It was an overtime win against the stars, obviously way too soon to tell.

I imagine there's also going to be, you know, it's going to take some time for there to be actually any sort of implementation of different strategy or tactics. If Wa's even going to do that this season, just because they're going to need actual practice reps and time with the players. So it's too early for that. But I'm kind of curious for your take on it and just Islanders as a whole, because I haven't spoken about them much this season, but I think there's a few interesting wrinkles that we can get into with them. So I've watched the Islanders a few weeks ago during my research process for the next Hockey Tactics eBook. And the thing that really struck me is that defensively, they're very passive.

So we remember during kind of like the Trots era when they had a lot of success playing like a 1-1-3 and then blocking a lot of shots and then, you know, scoring off counterattacks and being sort of that team that gets outshot a little bit, but that still are able to. control the quality of shots on both ends of the ice. We don't see that anymore. My rule of thumb is generally speaking, if you're kind of like an average to below average team, then it's difficult to be aggressive all over the ice because you don't necessarily have the horses. But at least you either want to be aggressive in the neutral zone and then more passive in the D zone or vice versa.

And what you don't want to be is passive at all situations because then you're letting the other team inside your zone and then you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. And I think for the Islanders, like, you know, because of what I do and, you know, I'll watch all 32 NHL teams and I'll watch maybe a dozen teams from other leagues and other parts of the world. And they just seem to me like one of the more passive teams through the neutral zone and in the D zone, which isn't a good recipe because then you're relying on your goal tending to cover up a lot of those holes and then you're hoping to score, sorry, off the counterattack once in a while, but long term, that just wasn't going to be a sustainable thing.

Well, it's interesting to see how perception tends to lag behind reality, right? Because I think I still see people talk about the Islanders as if they are that team from the Trots years. And that really just, it wasn't the case last year, but it certainly couldn't be further from the truth this year. There, you mentioned some of the stats. they're 32nd in expected goals against by Sport Logic, 32nd in slot shots against 31st and inner slot shots against. They're conceding about 35 shots per game. And the concerning part is it's not just that volume

because I remember, especially in that first year when shots took over and they were having a lot of success, we had all these wars about how good this team actually was because at that time, I think we were still valuing just raw shot attempts and kind of controlling that and using that as a proxy for possession. and we were sort of programmed to think that equated to how you should play hockey back then. And that team was always, I think in that 1819 season, there were 26th in shot attempt share. And that clearly distorted how good they actually were because if you just kind of trim the fat and you looked at it,

there were 20th in shots on goal, 12th in high danger chances. And it just basically as quality increased, they got better by that metric. Right. And so I think that reflected their approach and the way they were trying to play. this year, that is not the case. They're bleeding volume, but also they're bleeding quality against Ilya Sorokin has a 9-10 save percentage and is giving up, you know, by conventional metrics, 3.1, 7 goals against average.

And you look at that and you'd be like, wow, that's not very good. Well, he is amongst the league leaders with nearly 20 goals save above expected in his 34 games, right? He's been remarkable. And in particular, at the start of the broadcast last night, I was watching the MSG feed against the stars and the broadcast had this stat which I believe was from SporeLogic that sort of illustrated these concerns particularly what you're talking about in the neutral zone and off the rush where they're giving up about 7.9 rush chances against per game which is worse than the league and this morning in preparation for the show I went back and

rewatch that game against the stars they gave up eight rush chances which is just in line with exactly that average right in particular if you look at them they're all really high quality grade A's that kind of left their goal tender out to dry. And so it's just one game, but I imagine any sort of tinkering or adjustments or things that Patrick Walker do to

salvage the season and improve things is going to stem around improving that and finding a way to make sure they're just not so porous against the rush. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned the first year of the Trots era. And that, you know, that was five years ago.

Like tons, tons can change in the span of five years, except this Islander's team, like they made some upgrades, but also just as a whole, I think it would be generous to say that they're an average team in terms of true talent, aside from goal tending, which obviously is the most important position when it comes to influencing the final results. But, you know, like, sure, like, I think Patrick Wauer, any kind of coaching change and any sort of an update in their mentality is going to pull them toward average, but I think that's, that's what we're headed toward. Like they're, they may not

be 32nd defensively, but they, they may end up, let's say, 25th or 23rd or something like that. Like, they're going to get pulled toward the league average, but I don't think they're all of a sudden going to be an above average. Well, and I think a big part of that is Adam Pelick missed like 20 games or so, and he just came back recently, right? And at his prime during those years, he was one of the most aggressive players at contesting at the blue line and breaking plays up with his reach, right? And so just having him healthy and playing the way he's capable of when he is healthy would go a long way towards that. I think the more interesting thing here from the coaching perspective, though, beyond what we just illustrated with the defensive environment,

is how they play with the lead. Because I think that is probably if you're going to make the sort of optimistic case for the islanders being better than they're really. record illustrates and they're 20, 15 and 11 this season, 11 overtime losses already. So that's 26 actual games where they lost versus just 20 wins is that there's a number of those were games where they were actually had a lead at some point. They were playing particularly in the third period up and things just completely fell apart. They've had a ton of demoralizing losses where it was sort of last second defeats where they blew games in very tragic fashion. And so So I'm curious for your take on that because the last time we saw Patrick while coaching in the NHL, we tend to think back on that era as what he did aggressively when they were trailing when the avalanche were, right?

Because he sort of brought in vogue the early goalie polls. But whenever that team was up, I remember them being far too conservative and sort of parking the bus defensively and just trying to hold on for dear life. And that was a very frustrating point of contention for me. and that's kind of what this team has been doing this season. So I think Patrick Walker coming in here, one area for improvement is just figuring out how to play more strategically when they're defending a lead because that's just been, I think, the biggest issue for them this season.

So that's one area that I don't think I'm very concerned about because, you know, people who coach in the NHL, they're smart people for the most part, I think for the for the vast majority of cases. And they, they do a pretty good job of learning from their mistakes, especially when they've had some time and some perspective. You know, Patrick Wausman coaching in the QMJHL for the last number of years.

You know, I saw Scott Wheeler tweeting out about how last year's Memorial Cup winning Ramparts team was the most organized, the most kind of, the soundest team that he's ever seen at that level, which I would agree with. like I watched that team late in season and they were very good. And, you know, you don't become a Mem Cup winning team and a dominant junior hockey team without playing a lot with the lead.

And I think that's an area that I wouldn't be super concerned about with Gua in a second stint as an NHL head coach. But the one thing I will say is like there's this phenomenon of people, you know, like teams hire, let's say very successful coaches out of the junior ranks or out of maybe, college or minor pro and i i don't think we should overestimate how much uh of that winning gets brought over to the nchl because for example if you look at the ramparts there were such a loaded up team like pretty much half the kmjahl contributed players to that team and they ended up being a juggernaut you know after the trade deadline um but like you know that that's not really

as much coaching it as as it is just you know having a really strong roster. And I think certainly part of the Rampart success last year was having a very solid understanding of, you know, playing with possession and playing with pressure, but also they just have better players. And this is a situation that's not going to repeat itself now with the Islanders. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how Patrick Waugh compensates for having just an average roster best now. Yeah. It's also been like that Ave's tenure was nearly a decade ago now. right so we talk often about how coaches can also evolve and adapt and learn as well and develop certainly behind the bench so i'm curious to see that because under lay in lambert so they led games for the 13th most amount of time so far this season and in that time they were just almost like catastrophically bad defensively like if you just look at how many shots chances goals against expected goals against they were surrendering when they were playing with a lead it was always always all bottom five. Now, the other teams in that tier were San Jose, Columbus, and Chicago, right?

Like the worst teams in the league. And their samples are significantly lower because they haven't really played from up that much this season. And obviously, we know about score effects and psychological effects and all that about how the motivation and incentive for how hard you're going to push offensively is certainly going to be dictated by what the scoreboard says. But it's just such a delineation for them between like how they play in tied. game states, for example, where they're kind of breaking even and everything. And so I think just figuring out whether it's being too conservative or whatever the issues were, figuring out how to manage those leads a little bit better, it goes without saying. But I think that's like where you can

have the biggest gains. And so that's why I'm actually kind of optimistic about the Islanders moving forward. Dom has them at about 35% playoff probability. And a lot of those Metro teams in particular are kind of bunched together. Now you look at they have a minus 18 goal differential for the season. So you'd think, all right, well, this team is not very good. They actually are lucky to have as many points as they have because of those 11 overtime losses. But I'd actually argue, like, considering how often they've had third period leads

and how they've actually looked pretty good for the most part in those situations, I think there's more juice to be squeezed here from that orange. And so I'm very curious to see how Patrick Waugh sort of navigates that. Do you have any other notes on the Islanders or kind of areas that

his impact could be felt, I guess, with this team, right? Whether it's the defending we mentioned, or whether it's just how they use their forwards, right? Because I think in Lane Lambert's second last game coaching this team, he was using Matt Barzal with like Cal Quarterbuck on the third line. And instantly we saw Patrick Guad just go back to full-time usage of Barzow, Horvatt, and Lee, and those three have been awesome together.

And so, yeah, I think if he's just going to do that all of a sudden, just not messing with a good thing is probably going to be the way to go. Yeah, so I think those are, I would say, the biggest low-hanging fruits for a while. So first of all, you know, play your best players more. And second is just have your players contest more pucks, whether it's on the Ozone 4 check, whether it's a neutral zone, whether it's in D-Zone. You know, they may not be able to contest every single puck in every single zone, but I would look for some sort of a tactical switch where they become more aggressive

than at least one of those three zones. I had a question on the Discord from a, from a listener named Curtis a while back. And we did it in a mailbag, but I'm kind of curious for your take on it because I haven't had a chance to talk about with you. It was essentially, to paraphrase, it was kind of bringing up the concept that we generally tend to judge coaches based on on their team's PDO, right, in terms of like what the percentages are like. And then essentially, when things fall too low, teams start losing, they start making a change. and then all of a sudden a new coach comes in and those percentages tend to regress generally and the team starts to win a bit more

and just trying to figure out sort of how much of that is a new coach coming in and actually making any sort of adjustments that result in that regression or how much of it would have happened anyways or how much of it is sort of this human element of players are just motivated because there's a new voice in place.

Maybe they're all fighting for, it's a clean slate essentially for them. they're all trying to become the coach's favorite and get more ice time, right? And they have the opportunity to do so right out of the gate. And so they're going to play harder and they're going to play better. How do you sort of weigh all of those things? And I'm kind of curious for your take, especially with your coaching background. Yeah, I mean, I would say it's a mix of all those things.

Like certainly, I think if you think about it in any other industry, like when you are working with a new boss, you want to make the best impression. and you probably work harder the first two weeks than you did the past two weeks. I think that's just human nature. That's just completely normal. You have certain players or maybe we're in the doghouse who get a clean slate and who get more opportunities just because the new coach's aesthetics is not the same as the previous coach's aesthetics, right?

Like some coaches love these hardworking guys who are just giving it all and going 100% all the time. and then other coaches, maybe they like players or a little bit more cerebral and slow things down at certain points or make more control plays. So when you have a change, sometimes just the style of play that you naturally gravitate toward it becomes more or less valued.

So that's a factor. A second factor is, I think, certainly when you are on a bench, it's actually a really difficult place to gather information from just because everything's happening so quickly. And the fact that you're working 70 hours a week on the same things and you see the same people, like it's actually quite a difficult place to make changes from because you don't have that perspective. And then when you have a new person coming in, sometimes those tweaks do get made, whereas

the former coach maybe like he was too close to the action to really see what was going on. And then the final thing, it's, yeah, like a lot of it is random, you know, luck or happenstance where, you know, sometimes, like, you just can't explain those things. Like, I remember one season that was with the Toronto Marley's in the HL and we had catastrophically bad goaltending in the first half of the season. Like, it seemed like we're giving up goals on the first shot of the game, like every single game. And we ended up making no major changes.

Like, we didn't change our coach. We didn't change our goaltenders. And then in the playoffs, we actually got above average goaltending. We made the conference finals. And this was back in 2019. So sometimes things just, they're self-correcting, but sometimes they're not. And it's too much of a case-by-case basis to say for sure. Yeah.

I'm optimistic about this because I think like if you especially watch towards NAA Lambert's 10-year-old was actually kind of sad. Just anytime something bad would happen in the camera or pandemic, and he would just kind of just stand in there ghoulishly, not that I'm expecting him to all of a sudden be like yelling at players and trying to get fixes in that, right? Generally, this stuff happens like between games and in the locker room and intermission and all that.

But I think for our concerns about this team lacking aggression, I guess, in certain areas of the ice or defending leads, I think a guy like Patrick Waugh coming in midseason is going to help in those specific areas, right? So I think there's a reason for optimism here, and I'm excited about it. Now, the MSG feed last night, I get that it's kind of a novelty, but they had like an ISO cam going while the game was happening of Patrick Guad, just behind the bench, like, tracking him talking to players as they were coming back off the ice. And I don't think we need to go that far.

Like I'm cool to see if there's any sort of blowups or interesting interactions, but I don't think we need to be like going zooming out of the game to show that. But yeah, I'm going to be tracking this closely and I think it's a fun story. All right. Do you want to do some Winnipeg Jet stuff because you had a interesting thread on Twitter about it? And it's certainly a team that I've been talking about quite a bit here in the PEOCAS recently. But I think for all of our concerns in terms of what we just said, defensive issues for the Islanders were.

you could almost, I guess, sort of take the exact opposite of that and apply it to what's happening in Winnipeg right now, where they've just been phenomenal in terms of suppression. And it's not just the goaltending. I think the play in front of it deserves a lot of credit as well. Yeah. And ever since I guess the second month of the season, I've had people who ask me like, oh, like, you know, can you do something on the Winnipeg Jets? Because I think they're playing better and stuff like that. And I've kind of been putting it off because I wanted to see whether that trend is going to maintain itself. and I think, you know, 40 games in, like, yeah, like they're, they're really good defensive team.

And for the reasons, the same reasons why the Islanders weren't a good defensive team, which is Winnipeg is aggressive in the neutral zone and they're aggressive in the D zone. And they've had the personnel to make it work. And they also, I would say more importantly, they have really good chemistry on the defensive side of the puck. Like the fours and the D's, like they really trust each other. And it's like that old Bill Belichick saying, do your job, right? Like everybody's doing their jobs. and then everybody's trusting their neighbors to do theirs.

And I think that's something that's really helped and something that's really surprised me, given that it's basically the same core from, you know, the last number. It is. There are some personnel changes. But since December 1st, they're 18, 2, and 2. They've given up 36 goals against in those 22 games, which is just astonishing to think about.

Now, Connor Hallibuck has a 945, say, percentage in that time, which leads a league. And second is his backup Laurent Brassoa with a 944. And to put that into a perspective, the league average, say, percentage in that period of time over the past two months is 902. So if Jets goalies were performing at that level, they'd have given up like nearly 30 more goals against than they have in these 22 games. But still, I think what's happening defensively is almost more interesting to me because, yeah, it's like Connor Hallibuck sort of bouncing back and having this season is a great story. but you mentioned sort of how much of it with relatively the same personnel just looks night and day compared to last season. I think in transition in particular, it's really interesting to see, to watch them play and then see how some of the stats bear that out where it feels like off the puck in particular,

like you can just sort of see the backtracking from the forwards and their play there is allowing the defensemen, which are the same. defensemen they had last year to all of a sudden contest much more aggressively in the neutral zone, step up at the blue line, force turnover is there, and then allow them to flip the ice quickly. And so I think that's been really cool to see because you're right, same players, same coach, yet they're just playing drastically differently than last year. And this was a team that even dating back to the Paul Maurice years, I think one of our frustrations was too conservative. and I remember you had a piece in particular that was sort of looking at how they almost didn't ask their defensemen to do anything, right? Like they put so much of the burden on their forwards to carry the play at both ends of the ice.

And now you watch and they've got the fourth player into the zone, whether it's Josh Morrissey, obviously, but even guys like Brendan Dillon and Neil Pionk flying in off the rush and getting opportunities themselves. and it's just cool to see sort of how all of this stuff ties together and the dividends to pay for them. Yes. And I think that what you hit, you hit the point that that's, I think the biggest change is that it seems to me that the coaching staff trusts their defensemen way more now than before. Like the thing that really struck me when I watched Winnipeg the past few days is that they're

trusting their defensemen to make a lot more plays, like defensive plays one-on-one. So whether it's when defending an entry, whether it's in the D-Zone, pressuring a puck. And it seems like these players, like the more trust were given to them, like the more they kind of gain confidence in their own ability. And the thing that really, I think, helps Winnipeg is that their defensemen now, they're able to make these one-on-one defensive stops. So whether it's on a zone entry denial, whether it's on a low cycle, like when you have, let's say, you're the mellows and Morrissey's and Dillens and, you know, Nate Schmitz, like they're actually making stops now instead of just like collapsing to the net and waiting for something to happen, you know, maybe blocking a shot and then surviving some zone time and, you know, letting Hella Buck, you know, stop the puck. they're way more aggressive now than before.

And the thing that's surprising to me is that like once you have a defenseman with maybe around 30 years old, like they kind of lose that extra step that actually really hurts them in the D zone because they're not quick enough to make that transition from defending that front to going for a puck in the corner or, you know, hitting a guy and then grabbing that loose puck. And it seems like they're right now, they found a sweet spot between playing aggressive and safe at the same time, which, you know, again, it kind of surprises me because I, like, Sandberg is a guy who I think is in his prime physically who can do that. But, you know, like Schmidt and Dylan,

like I thought for those guys, like they were going to spend the rest of their careers as sort of passive shop lockers. And right now, they're doing far more than this. But don't you think that this stuff is sort of inextricable in a way in terms of evaluating the forwards and defensemen? Like I think part of a struggle for us as analysts is just like isolating and evaluating defensive play for individual players because of this. And what I mean by that is like, yes, the defenders certainly deserve a lot of credit. They're making more plays one on one and all that. But I think it helps.

I mentioned how I feel like the forwards have done such a better job of like cohesively backtracking and providing support. But even in the defensive zone in terms of like set plays, one, a big issue for them in the past was, especially on these extended sequences where they were kind of hemmed in and get tired, the effort level would drop off so much for the forwards. And then all of a sudden, they'd become so vulnerable to some of these backdoor plays in the back post, right? And then all of a sudden, you look now and the wingers in particular are so much more involved

at shutting that down and jumping in those lanes and protecting both the defenders, but also Connor Hellebuck as well, right? And so that's one change where they have made because they brought Gabe Valardi, who's phenomenal of that. Nino Nieder Rider, who is well, his attention to detail off the puck's great. I mean, even of Vladimir Nesnikov, who's obviously playing down the middle for them, but certainly excels at that. So I don't think it's necessarily that big of an accident that the defenders look better

when all of a sudden they're getting more support and they're not necessarily on an island. So they're making more plays one-on-one. But I think because of what's going on around them, I just think they're in a much better position to actually excel at that than they were previously. Yeah, and I think Winnipeg is an example of a team where like everything that can be going right is going right. Like I think their biggest weakness as a team is, you know, they're not the most creative playmakers.

Like, well, if we talk about Boston a little bit later on, like Boston is a completely different approach. But like Winnipeg, I would say is the sort of the sort of team that coaches really like to watch just because they do all. the things right and without a lot of fluff and it's not overly, you know, it's not an overly fancy game that they play, but all the things that coaches really preach, which is whether it's playing fast, whether it's playing tight defensively, whether it's, you know, pressuring the puck, like they do that really well right now.

Well, defensively, their fifth and expected goals against third and fewer slot shots allowed, only Vancouver gives up fewer chances off the rush, but also offensively, they've jumped, I think Corey Schneider's tracking had them 20th last year in, chances off of entries, basically off the rush. This year they're all the way up to third, and that sort of illustrates that the point I was making of how their defensemen are getting involved in turning some of these three-on-threes

into a numerical advantage with four-on-threes all of a sudden. And I think just watching them, it just hammers home the value in kind of creating kinetic energy when you play, right? Like we always talk about movement and having players involved. And every time I have Gerald Belfrey on, seems to be talking about this as well.

But it really seems like if all of a sudden everyone is much more likely to receive the puck and factor into the play offensively, I think there's going to be a trickle-down effect where all of a sudden everyone is moving. You're going to be much more active, much more involved defensively as well. And it seems like those two things are kind of combining for this Jets team. So yeah, it'll be certainly interesting to see them. I think their next three games before they all-star break are at Boston, at Toronto, and then a home game with a back-to-back against the Leafs as well.

So a lot of these defensive stats we've mentioned and goal suppression and this streak of two or three or fewer goals against that they're on right now is going to be tested during this stretch. But, man, I think there's just beyond those results. I think there's so much to like when watching this team play compared to previous seasons where last year it felt like for large stretches. It was kind of a slog. Even when they'd be winning games, it'd be like, bad.

I feel like they're leaving a lot on the table with the way they're playing. And this year, it seems like they're maximizing everything. Yeah. So for all the coaches out there, like now is a really great time to get all your defensive clips, just grab up some Winnipeg Jets games and look at the way that they forecheck, they back check, they play the DZone, like great, great examples there. But when you think like obviously they're different teams and I think their aggression levels certainly aren't the same, but when you think of teams like the Panthers or the avalanche

at their best who have more sort of individual skating talent, But even like a team like the Flyers, it seems like they've stumbled upon a successful formula here where they're very aggressive at closing off the walls and then empowering their defensemen to be more active and jump up and try to create turnovers and actually be involved in the north or south game. And then they're just getting significantly better results out of players who previously didn't look quite as good. Like, don't you think there's a little something to that?

Well, the thing in hockey is like the great equalizer is how much and how often and how while you're willing to sprint for the puck or sprint to defend. And it's something that is easy said, but not easily done. Like yesterday I went out to, you know, the local outdoor rink and I played hockey with a bunch of young kids and I just couldn't do it anymore, man. Like I know that I'm supposed to be sprinting up and down the ice. I know I'm like, and I was playing against 10 year. Like after 15 minutes, I was completely gas.

So it's just like it's so easy to say, oh, well, all you got to do is just sprint all out down the wall and let the puck hit you and keep the puck in the zone. And then if the puck goes over, you just sprint all out back to your zone and defend. But, you know, we're talking about some of the best condition players in the world, in which case, you know, that conditioning element, it washes out because everybody's in great shape. everybody's a great skater and the teams who can sort of leverage that as an enduring competitive advantage like they're few and far between because once again everybody knows what they got to do and everybody tries to do it but to actually be able to use that as a competitive advantage means that you got to go one step further yeah i just think if you're a defender on this jets team like even as recently as last year but especially two three years ago

if the puck's in your own zone and it's like coming up the wall for you it's like all right I'm not really going to do anything here so I'm not going to try very hard because it's probably going to go to Kyle Connor and then he's going to try to make six different moves and try to get it out of the zone and then do something

on the move and I'm not really going to factor into this at all so what's the point of me sprinting up the ice where now it's like all right Gabe Volardi is definitely going to knock this puck down make a sweet little play in traffic and then get it to me as long as I'm on the move in the right place. And so yeah, getting rush shots

and trying to score goals, even though I'm a defensive defender is still cool. That's going to motivate me. And so it makes sense, I think, that all of a sudden you're seeing these defenders try a little bit harder and get the results for it. So sometimes hockey can be very complicated

and difficult, and there's a lot of things we don't know and don't know how to quantify, but at times it does boil down a very simple concept as well. And so I think what's satisfying about the Jets team is we're seeing that play out before our very eyes. Okay, Jack, let's take our break here. And then when we come back,

we'll finish off today's conversation. You're listening to the Hockey-Pedio cast streaming on the Sports Day Radio Network. Catch up on what happened in Vancouver Sports with Halford & Bruff in the morning. Be sure to subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back here on the Hockey Pediocas with Jack Han Jack.

We did Islanders and Jets off the top. Let's talk a little bit about the Bruins. You sort of hinted about it when we were talking about the Jets. We got a question in particular from Dr. Sanchez asked, how has Boston adapted so well to losing both Bergeron and Creachie? Is Charlie Coyle really a first line center and quality player? Or are they doing something clever to get away with it? Well, I mean, is Charlie Coyle a first line center?

No, he's not. He's, I think, a very good middle six player. And the thing that Boston is doing, if you, it's actually not a big secret. Like if you look at Jim Montgomery's press conferences, like he talks a lot about holding on to pucks and then getting the puck sort of into the middle of the ice or making a better play, which is something that is going to increase their shooting percentage because they're getting better looks. it's going to actually decrease their shot volume because presumably they're not going to convert every single bad puck into a good puck.

But also it's going to reduce the opposition shot volume just because Boston is able to hold on to pucks and control the tempo a little bit more. And the thing is that depending on what your roster is like, the more you hold on to the puck, the more you control the game and the more you control the game, the less you have to transition defensively. So actually, if we go back to our discussion about the Winnipeg Jets, it's sort of the opposite approach, where for Boston, for them, if they can control the tempo with the puck under sticks,

that takes away from a lot of the pressure defensively. Yeah. Well, okay, first off, just to answer the listener's question, Charlie Coyle isn't a first line center quality player, but they're not even using them as such. Like, if you look, he's fifth on the team amongst their forwards in 5-on-5 usage. He's actually playing less than Trent Frederick, all situations. They're using Powell Zaka more than him down the middle.

Now, you wouldn't know it because they are 28, 8, and 9. They're actually playing the aforementioned Jets tonight, Monday evening for first in the NHL, both in terms of points and point percentage. But they have slipped a little bit defensively, right? And certainly, I mean, last year they were historically great, and it makes sense in particular, losing the unanimous Selke winner in Patrice Bergeron that they fall off a little bit, but they're giving up about half a goal per game more than last year. They fall into 16th in expected goals against 26th in inner slot shots surrendered.

Now, it hasn't really mattered because their special teams is just freakishly good. Their fifth, impowerable efficiency, sixth in penalty kill suppression. their goalies are both phenomenal. Both Jeremy Swayman and Linus Almark are in the mid-teens in goals save above expected, and they just never give up bad shots, bad goals against that they're not supposed to save. And then offensively, I think people don't really realize how much, like when we talk about the MVP, obviously the season Nathan McKinnon is having and Nikita Kuturov and Konner-McDavid coming on now, like those guys are going to be at the top of the discussion.

But don't sleep on how important. David Pasternak is to this Bruins team. He's on pace again for 55 goals and 120 points. He has 23 more points than anyone in the Bruins. And they just funnel everything through him now. And he's become their decision maker both in terms of shot pass. And so you put all those things together. And yeah, I'm surprised that they're once again competing for number one in the entire

NHL. But all those things combined, it makes a little bit more sense while they've been able to essentially eat the losses of their top two centers and still keep winning games. Yeah. So, you know, again, like in the NHL, your success or at least your win loss is going to be driven a lot from the top of your lineup and your goaltending. And I think Boston still has that, right? Like they've lost Critejian and Bergeron, but they still have Pashterach and Marcia and

McAvoy. And so, so, you know, like they have good players. and then now their bottom players, their bottom, bottom six, you know, third pair of players, they've been coached to hold the puck a little bit longer, maintain possession a little bit more, and at least they're more or less breaking even so that when the big dogs come back, they still play a continuous sort of possession game, and they're able to actually make a difference.

But if you look at Astronach on and Pasternack off, it's like when Pashtonac is on, the Bruins are in, an elite team in terms of possession and in terms of goals. And when he's off, they're sort of this low event team that kind of just treads water. Yeah. I imagine if he missed any period of time and knock on what he doesn't, them trying to score enough goals to keep winning games would become a pretty uphill battle for them. But I do think, you know, Marchen is on pace for 36 goals and he's nearly at a point per game pace.

But you look at his 5-15 metrics, and it's pretty clear that he does miss Patrice Berger. on quite a bit, right? And then not only in terms of points where on a permanent basis, he's as low as he's been in like a decade, but his shot and expected goal shares have both dropped below 50% for the first time since like the early 2010s, which is just a very uncharted territory for him. And I mean, it's remarkable that he's still playing at this level given the miles he has on him and the hip surgeries and all that. But we shouldn't pretend like they've just been able to sort of keep on moving without missing or feeling the impact of not having version on the lineup.

But you're seeing it, you're seeing kind of the cracks of it in different areas. But because of all the stuff we've talked about and you mentioned there, they've been able to sort of paper over it for now, right? And so credit to them for having the kind of infrastructure in place to make that happen. I think a lot of organizations wouldn't. But yeah, it'll be interesting to keep kind of an eye.

tab on this moving forward. Okay, anything else on the Bruins or do you want to move on to the next topic or listener question that we have? No, we still got a few more. So let's move on. Okay, we've got to pander a little bit to the local crowd here because the Canucks are playing phenomenally well. And I want to ask you about a player in particular, but also we can sort of zoom out and use

it as a bigger picture of thought exercise. Matea says, it's been so fun watching Neal's Holglander move around and snipe for his bottom line competition. The shifts are electric and opponents can seem to keep up with him. As a skilled forward though, why hasn't he found as much consistent success when being elevated in the lineup? Now, he's playing on sensibly a fourth line here with Sam Lafferty and Nealz Amon, yet still producing a ton of offense with his Canucks team. In their most recent game on Hockey Night and Canada against the Leaves, of course, scored a beautiful goal where he did exactly that snipe won right past Martin Jones. but you can see the abundance of skill that he certainly flashed as a prospect and early in his career.

He's sort of bounced back in that regard and he's posting awesome numbers. Yet the listener is right. Like when we've seen him sort of get moved up the lineup and play with Elias Pedersen or play in a top six role, it hasn't been able to transit and he hasn't been able to sort of scale up that production. I think it's an interesting concept, right? Because we see this all the time where I think of a player like Daniel Sprong, for example, where his scoring numbers are really good, and especially if you prorate on a permanent basis,

it's borderline elite. Yet, year over year, he doesn't either get the opportunity to play that top line role or when he does, his coach doesn't like it, and all of a sudden he gets back to it to what he was previously, and then he keeps producing at that level. I'm kind of curious for your take on both Hoglander here, but also just this concept of sort of bottom six

or even fourth-line players who produce really well, but maybe that's the rule they're actually best suited for. So I've actually followed Hogrander for a number of years now. When he was up for the NHL draft, I interviewed him at the draft combine for the Maple Leafs and we did some video analysis with him. And prior to that, I'd seen him on playing games on video and his draft here a fair number of times. And I really liked him as a prospect because he was a skill player who also worked extremely

hard. You know, he's not the biggest guy. He's not, I would say he doesn't have like the, the most speed for someone, especially the size. And what we're seeing now, I think is just his inherent limitations as a player. And, you know, back when I was in Toronto, like I, we were really interested in players who at skill, had intelligence and, and who worked really hard as well. And I think the biggest downside to having those scouting criteria was you ended up missing

guys who were, you know, bigger, had a more projectable physical tool kid and who ended up, you know, becoming more impact on each other is because of their physical strength. So when Niels Hoggner plays against fourth liners and bought impaired defensemen, you know, we see that work ethic, we see that skill. But then when he's in a tougher situation, playing against, you know, a number one center or, you know, a number one defenseman, I just find someone with his physical package gets knocked off the puck a little bit too easy. And he doesn't necessarily have the speed or the shot to be an outside threat. So he's got to play inside and that's his game.

And that's a great way to play the game. But when you're up against somebody who's legitimately, you know, bigger, stronger, better than you, than you don't really have a lot to fall back on. And one comparable player, I would say, is Nick Robertson for the Leafs. And again, like I see on Twitter time and again that, you know, people say that he should get a bigger role. And I think, yes, like, you know, he hasn't gotten consistent minutes in top six, but same thing with Hoggander, which is when he gets elevated in the lineup, all of a sudden his work ethic and his intelligence and, you know, his shooting, like they don't become

factors because he's just not able to win enough battles and enough foot races to really leverage those strengths. I mean, he's got 14 5-1-5 goals this season, which is tied with Kuturov, Pastor Neck, and Crosby for eighth most in the last. league, the Canucks are up 29 to 15 with him on the ice at 515. Now, he's shooting 25% himself at 515. So that certainly helps. But for a player who's making $1.1 million, regardless of how many minutes he's playing or what the role is, just getting any level of production even resembling that is a massive whole run and such a net positive, right? I'm with you on that. I think in particular, like his unique skill set, though you mentioned of the most, like despite not having

the elite speed, the motor and the work ethic, along with enough skill to reward that work, once you get the puck in advantage of situations, makes him such a problem for lesser opponents, right? Whether it's going head to head with a bottom six line of the opposition, but in particular, I think going up against a third pair defense group, all of a sudden, they go back to retrieve a puck, they're going to be much more likely to botch that retrieval or make a mistake and turn it over or do something that keeps them hemmed in their own zone and then all of a sudden him and the raw speed of a guy like Lafferty

all of a sudden now they're just causing havoc and then they're turning that into scoring opportunities and he does actually have enough skill to sort of take advantage of that when he's able to get the puck in tight, right? So I think it makes sense that he's been very productive like this. I get the natural inclination to sort of see this and be like, man, I want more. Let's get him higher up the lineup.

But sometimes players are more suited for this because of their particular skill set. And I think Hogletter might be that. But he's still, what, only 22, 23 years old. So certainly not closing the door on a very bright future for him moving forward. Okay. One last question here from Theo, who keeps posted in the Discord asking for first Likovsky analysis. And I said, next time I have Jack Haun on, we're going to talk a little bit about him. and reward Theo here.

Notes that he's playing on a first line with Caulfield and Suzuki, the point production hasn't necessarily matched the eye test yet in terms of how effective he's been or especially compared to previously. So I'm kind of curious for your thoughts on Slavkovsky, the way he's playing, the way that line is working, and sort of whether we're seeing enough positives from him here recently. So I recently wrote a newsletter post comparing Slavkovsky to about Nishushkut. Because I just think in terms of their build, in terms of their play style, in terms of what I think

Slavkovsky ultimately is going to be, I think Nishushkin is a really good comparable. And the thing that I've really liked from Slavkovsky playing with Caulfield and Suzuki is all of a sudden his game makes sense. Okay. Like when you play him with two grinders who don't really have a lot of offensive upside, you know, Slavkovsky doesn't, there's really no point in him winning a puck in the corner and then giving to somebody else because the play dies right away. And also there's really no opportunity for him to get the puck back with speed and with space

to use his shot or uses puck handling ability. Whereas with Suzuki and Caulfield, every time that Slavkovsky is able to use his size in his reach to win a puck, all of a sudden he's giving it to a player who actually knows what to do with it. And then eventually, you know, that materializes into a more interesting offensive sequence. The thing that I'm still kind of not sold on is despite what his physical patch package suggests, Slavkovsky is not a very good forechecker. Like, he's quite good with his skating when he's dictating. So when he has the puck on his, on his stick, he accelerates really well.

He uses crossovers. He can use cutbacks. But when he's forechecking someone and he has to react with his skating, it seems like he doesn't really quite turn, you know, well enough to really close and to create turnovers. And this is something that I think in the next couple of years, like he'll get better at. And then once he does that,

he'll be one of the better play driving wingers in the league. because right now with two skilled players, like his game just makes sense. Yeah, it certainly does. He also still 19 years old, right? I imagine that in terms of sort of anticipation and reads off the puck is going to come with more reps and he's getting very valuable ones playing on that line. And they're breaking even at 5-1-5 and all the important metrics, right, on a team that's not very good.

So I think that is highly encouraging. And I know the production is still like in the grand scheme of things for a first overall pick. it's nothing to necessarily write home about. He's got the six goals and 18 points this season in 46 games. Four of those goals and 10 points in last 15 games. And I think there is a lot of encouraging stuff you're seeing in terms of him actually sort of leveraging some of those physical tools into functionality, right?

And actually making plays with that line. So I want to watch more of him certainly, but I think it's very encouraging. And yeah, I think especially compared to if we had answered this question, maybe, you know, a month or two ago, I think, the perspective might have might have looked different. So yeah, very encouraging. Okay, Jack, let's get out of here. I'll let you plug some stuff on the way out,

let the listeners know either what you got in the works or whether there's a 2024 hockey tactic update. I'll give you the floor here. Yeah, so I'm juggling a few different things right now. Our baby's nine months old, so I'm a little bit slower at updating. whether it's my Twitter feed, whether it's my newsletter, but I'm trying to make progress every day.

And also in the next couple of months, I'll have Hockey Tactics 2024 released. So as usual, it's the e-book with all the illustrated X&Os and system sheets of all 32 NHL teams. This year, I'm going to also ship a bonus chapter with PWHL teams, which I'm really excited about. I've watched a lot of games. think this is an area of the game that has a lot to offer.

So perhaps next time we'll talk about that a little bit. But keep your eyes peel for that. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter, J-H-A-N-H-K-Y. Yeah, that's about it for me. Awesome, buddy. We'll keep up the great work. Looking forward to having you on again soon. If you want to get questions in for next time, we have Jack-on,

whether it's player development stuff or strategy or tactics, both on an individual and team level, hop in the Discord. The invite lake is in the show notes, and you can post the questions there, and we'll use them next time. We have Jack on in a couple weeks. And that's going to be it for us today. We'll back Wednesday with Kevin Woodley in studio doing a goalie episode. So looking forward to that. In the meantime, thank you to everyone for listening to the HockeyPedio cast, as always streaming on the SportsNed Radio Network.