The Hockey PDOcast - Development Plans, Utilization of NHL Edge, and AHL Affiliates

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to talk about Leo Carlsson's interesting development plan, the NHL Edge data that was unveiled by the league this week, and Carolina's lack of an AHL affiliate.This podcast was produced by Dominic Sramaty.The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovin. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And back for another appearance on the show is my good buddy, Sean Schiapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? Not much, man. It's been a good week of hockey and it's more importantly, a good week of life.

So I'm happy. I'm happy to be here. Yes. We're going to see, I don't know if we're going to necessarily be able to get through 32 thoughts today, but we'll see how many thoughts of our own. that we can get through because there's a variety of topics that I wanted to bounce around with you, stuff you've written about recently, stuff that's come up this week and hopefully we can have some fun with it and see how much ground we can cover in work in our way across the league.

Let's start with this one because it came out a couple days ago and it caught my eye. And so we started talking about it off the air and I figured it'd be a good intuant to this conversation for us today. It's Leo Carlson and the Ducks and kind of this news that came out about how they planned to monitor his workload, I guess, moving around. forward for at least the next couple of months. They've assigned to the title, his development strength plan.

And so apparently they have already sort of scheduled games in the first half of the season or so where they are going to give him mandated rest where he just will not dress and will not play. And it's going to give him an opportunity to, I guess, train and build up strength and endurance as he acclimates himself to this league. It feels like it's very reasonable,

given his age, given the team's aspirations for this season where they currently stand and also, you know, the commitment they made to him in terms of draft capital, but also like how big of a part of this organization he figures to be moving forward. So it makes sense that they would ease him in. It seems like a natural extension of this concept of load management that we've seen not only across the league, but across sports, especially in the NBA, of course, in the past however many years. What do you think about this and kind of let's parse this out a little bit in terms of what this means for Carlson and what the ducks and whether this has kind of become more of a thing

because the example's been brought up of sort of what the lightning did with Stephen Stamke's because I guess in his rookie year, right? Where they were healthy scratching him at times. They were playing him under 10 minutes as he's, and then he struggled in his rookie year to adjust and become the player that he wound up eventually becoming. Carlson's interesting because we've only seen him two times so far

and we were chatting about how good he looked in those in particular. So it's not a matter of, you know, giving him two games and being like, oh, maybe we should rein it back a little bit. but it seems like this has been in the works for them for a while now. It isn't just a spur of the moment type of decision. Well, it's really interesting, too, on the timing because we were denied the, by the Ducks plan. We were denied the Carlson versus Fantilli game earlier this week, right?

We had the first part part of this plan was he was healthy scratched against when they played Columbus. So we kind of missed that. We didn't have had that opportunity. I know people have brought up the Stampco's thing, but the thing that's kind of popped for me on this and the way, that they're managing an 18-year-old. I think he turns 19 in December. Last time I checked that or whatever.

It seems almost like they're trying to give him that. One of the biggest things when guys come into the league, right? Like, when you talk to players, and I actually talked to Adam Fantilli about this two weeks ago, or however long ago, I was in Columbus when Detroit played there. I think it was about 10 days ago or whatever, about how the benefits of the college hockey schedule, where when you play the college hockey schedule, you play games Friday, Saturday, you get to hit the gym Monday through Thursday. You get to do individual skill work and everything like that.

And sometimes we hear the narrative. And it's true in a lot of the cases where guys physically coming from college hockey are, like if you look at Fantilli, Fantility is physically built for the NHL. He is physically built for the NHL right now. I'm saying that's not saying it's the best path long term one way or the other, but this season, Fantili is better physically built for the NHL. And when I talked to Fantili about it, he talked about kind of, being able to do the college hockey schedule at Michigan,

where you could hit the gym Monday through Thursday and play on Friday and Saturday. And you look at, it would be interesting to see how the Ducks structure Carlson's schedule with this. But like he plays, I got his game log here, right? He plays on a Thursday against Dallas, plays a Saturday. The Ducks played Sunday, Tuesday. He doesn't play.

I'm assuming he's going to play tonight against the Bruins. and if he plays Thursday, Saturday this week, they're basically kind of trying to give a European guy a bit of a college hockey schedule for at least the first half of the season, it feels like, where you're playing two games, you're playing a weekend schedule in between, you're bulking up, you're building up.

And I think it's way more about the, I don't think it's about the physical, like, seeing the game and reading the NHL speed because watching him play, like, he sees the game, the skill is there, Like to me, I think it's more and more of the, they're like, okay, we want him to be, we're trying to get, take away a rookie wall that he might hit physically by basically turning him to a gym rat for four days a week and not having to worry about having to recover from a lift on Sunday and play on Tuesday. Like that's how I read into this. Like I see the standstill thing.

But to me, it's more of taking a European guy and trying to give him a college hockey schedule to try to find the benefits to both. and he's 18, so it fits in the human development timeline and everything. And it's interesting. It really is interesting. Well, and also if you look at his schedule from last season in the past couple of years playing in the Swedish hockey league as well, right, it's much easier to manage, I guess, as well in terms of the pure volume of games you're playing, where you're playing, like somewhere between 40 to 50 league games, probably playing or another around 10 to 20,

depending on your schedule international games. And so you come out around that 60 game mark. And that probably is the right amount of games for any hockey player to be playing. 82 regular season games is probably a bit much regardless of your age or experience level. I think also, I mean, there's no necessarily foolproof process here where if you follow one path, it's going to guarantee success because you can carefully manage the minutes and the exposure in game settings. And then he's taking a couple games. He plays one game. You take a violent hit or you take some sort of an unfortunate spill and

you get hurt, right? Hockey's a very. physically straining and difficult game, regardless of how much you're playing it. But I think a lot of the studies would show that once you start becoming fatigued, whether it is mentally or physically, you're probably more prone or the risk profile increases of something bad happening because you suddenly start to overcompensate. Maybe you're putting yourself in more compromising positions. And so it makes sense. I think it's also, they're probably viewing it as they're already a bit ahead of schedule with him,

right, because I remember in the pre-draft process, despite the fact that his game already profiled as very NH already from like how detailed he was on and off the puck and playing and successfully playing in a pro league the past couple of years. The consensus seemed to be like, well, he's going to go back and play another year there, right? We're not going to see him actually play in NHL this season. And then he impresses so much in camp and in the full process. And they're like, all right, well, let's just keep around here.

Let's keep him playing here where we can kind of. control him more closely. And so he already is ahead of schedule in that regard. And the fact that we're seeing in NHL games is probably something that a lot of people didn't think would be even considering back in June or whatever he was drafted. Yeah, and that's fair. And I think the slightly ahead of schedule thing is a fair argument. And it's also a space too where the ducks have the luxury of,

but the ducks have the luxury right where whether leo carlson plays every game or not that's not going to impact fan interest ticket sales all that stuff like while there are people like you or i who are very hockey nerdy that want to go watch that would they'd be like oh i want to see lilio carlson play at the end of the day whether people are going to see the ducks play or not is not going to be determined whether leo carlson plays he got to he's a good prospect he's not what Bedard is. Like if Chicago was doing something like this and all of a sudden they were, they were, they were completely changing national TV schedules around like, like, like, badar's getting, there would be a ton of outcry because it was this. But

Leo Carlson kind of gets to live in that soft middle of a playing for a team where the, it's the rebuild as well known. Pat Verbeek is getting a ton of time to work on this. And on top of that, he gets a bit of this, but he gets a bit of the, the buffer of the entire hockey world and the entire all these people coming to watch hockey this year because of connor badard are coming for connor badard and he just kind of gets to live in that soft kind of space where no matter what happens it's it's cool like i think there's people who don't even realize that he went number two at times like hockey people know but i think there's people who still think oh fantilli went two well fin tilly went three i think that sometimes even gets missed

in the conversation sometimes so it's it's a it's a it's a it's a if you're you're Pat Verbeek, I get it. You take advantage of it. It is interesting to me that they got Carlson and his agent on board for this, just because that's the other thing. That's the long-term implication that's interesting, where if he has, now maybe, maybe this is the best thing. And Carlson goes off next year in his second season and it's great and everything like that. But if you're, if you're Carlson and you're his agent, you're also to look at it sometimes and be like, did we, are we leaving money on the table potentially by doing something like this too. It's interesting to see how everyone is involved.

And if they're willing to take advantage of it, go ahead, I guess. Well, selfishly, I get what you're saying. And that's probably true for the vast majority. For me, I just want to watch them ball. I just want to watch Leo Carlson play. And especially based on what we saw from the first two viewings. And it's interesting because we're talking about how they were going to carefully and meticulously manage his workload.

He plays 19 minutes against Dallas. he plays 21, 33 against Arizona. And so if it's going to play, if it's going to be a situation where when he's playing, he's actually going to be used essentially as a first liner, which he was playing with Trevor Zegris and Troy Terry in those games, then you know what? I'm for it.

If we only get to see that 55, 60 times, and it seems like this is probably going to be more heavily slanted towards the first half of the season and maybe assuming health, we get to see the full workload in the second half. Yeah. I'm okay with it because you watch the three of the, them together and especially, I mean, in that Arizona game, I think the three of them combined for 33 shot attempts, like they were all over. They didn't generate any goals against Dallas. They held up as a

team, but especially that line in particular, admirably well against a team we view as a Stanley Cup contender. And so far in 25, 5-1-5 minutes that Carlson Zegres and Terry have played, shots are 138 for Anaheim, high danger chances, seven to three goals, two-nothing. And so that's very exciting. And I guess that's kind of like the shame of this for me because just what I've seen in the little breadcrumbs we've been given so far, I'm very excited about it. And I just want to see as much of it as we can. Like I would have drink through a fire hose here and get as much of it as I can. But it seems like we're only going to get little tastes here and there, at least for the next couple of weeks and months. It's going to be interesting how they start structuring this and they start thinking about

this from a, like there's sometimes where it's obvious, right? Like you did. it's uh you go to um you have the home game or sorry you have the back to back um so you're gonna you play that you pick that game or whatever but it's going to be interesting as they start to like structure this like i look at the duck's schedule right now right and uh they play on next week they play monday monday and wednesday right and mondays on mondays on the road of pittsburg wednesday's in anaheim i'm interested to see how they start to structure this because if I'm a duck season ticket holder, and I know sometimes season ticket holders can feel over entitled,

but at the end of the day, those are your loudest supporters and the people your biggest financial. I do wonder, of those home games, how many you try to make sure that he's playing at home? Because that is, I think, a draw you want to keep, because that is, I do wonder if Pat Rubik gets that call from ownership at some point or anything of like, hey, we can do this.

This is great. We're all on board. But we can't be, we can't have a, we can't, it's hard to sell a Thursday night game against the sharks of Leo Carlson's not playing. True. I will say though, and listen, we see this time and time again where young teams generally start off pretty competitive, right? Like you, you get those first couple reps.

And then as the season goes along, the rigors of the schedule take its course, the talent and balance and, and probably your motivations as well, you're like, all right, well, we're not really incentivized to try super hard here, actually field our best lineup every single night. Let's take some losses. Let's improve our draft odds and we'll fight for next year. And so that probably will happen here. But I will point out that they've played, what, six games so far.

The first four were about as difficult of a stretch as you're going to get in the NHL where you're going to Vegas, Carolina, Dallas, Boston, and those first four. And compared to last year where they were an absolute abomination in pretty much every phase, but especially a 5-15 where they were just had no game plan. It seemed like it was just a group of guys that were dropping in on a Wednesday evening to play for an hour and get away from their families before they go back to their regular life. This actually looks like a team with a game plan, a structure, an objective that they're trying to accomplish. And it's pretty exciting where they're actually an about like a net positive 5-15 team.

Really the only issue so far has been the fact that they have one power play goal in 36 minutes or so. And with the talent in place, especially on the top unit, you figure that'll, normalize a little bit here as we get along in the season. But the fact that we can actually evaluate these players now, and you watch someone like, you know, Jackson Lacombe has been good too, but Pablo Minchikov, like, already looks like a star. I might need to give him a full episode of a deep dive treatment

because he's been that impressive so far. I like him. He's a good player. I love him. He is special. And so there's enough pieces here to watch where you're saying like, all right, well, if Leo Carlson is in the lineup, why should we tune in? Well, you got Terry, you got Ziegres, you got Minchikov. Like there are pieces there certainly.

It's just that you want to see them all growing together. And that's why I want to see Carlson getting as many of those reps as he can with them. So I think overall, you know, this start has gone about as well as it can go. I know that Zegris got benched in the last game as they came back and won an overtime against Columbus. And that became a big story. But it seems like Greg Conan is doing a pretty good job there, especially compared to where they were. this point last season. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Like, I mean, they're, they're in kind of that win-win situation of a season, right? If the wheels fall off and they're in lottery again,

that's okay. If they, that's fine. Yeah. Oh, I will say, I was, I was in preparation for this. I went back because I just wanted to watch the two Carlson games again. I watched them live, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something to see like, all right, am I overstating this? And you watch that Dallas game and I mean, he shows the power. He scores the goal, right? But like, even a couple times, you see. the physical tools in terms of like him powerfully moving up the middle of the ice and just commanding so much attention or off the puck sitting in the passing lanes and intercepting passes and turning it back the other way and it's like man he looks very good already so um i'm

very excited to watch him the rest of the way and see how this uh story develops as the season gets going all right do you want to talk a little bit about an hl edge now because that's also been the other big story this week um We've had a couple days now to test it out, play around with it, tinker with it. What are the early returns? How are you feeling about it? What are the streets saying? Where are we at with it and kind of let's talk through some of the, you know, the unveiling of it, I guess, and kind of the use of it because clearly people are very interested.

And this is something that we've been clamoring about or for years now. It feels like and we finally got it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's to me, the two things that. actually have the most, not the most use, but the two things that are quantifiable and usable, but don't actually help us, they don't actually help us in our analysis of the game, but they at least help better connect the game with other people, is the, now is using the puck tracking for skating speed and harder shot. I know, I know that doesn't help us break down

the game any further. It doesn't do anything that, but I do think it is something that it's, it's a connection point. It's like for me, I'm watching a baseball game, right? And I watch a baseball game and I can't watch a baseball game. I can't tell the difference between a fastball and a curveball. But I know 100 miles an hour is impressive. Right? It's around. Yeah. It's yes. Yeah. Like I know that's I know that's impressive. And when all of a sudden you can be, you can use the data, be like, oh, this guy skates so fast as fast as you're driving your car sometimes. Like that that's the type of stuff where I think this can be the current entry. I think it. I think it's a lot. I think it's a lot of. I think it's it's a good entry point for some to kind of give an idea of people how fast the game is.

The other tools I'm still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't and what we actually have as opposed to not having before. That's the other kind of the other kind of thing as you as you dive deeper and you play with this. Like I think it's cool. Like I was able to talk to Jake Walt Allman about it this week. He had the second hardest, third hardest shot in the league last year in a game. It's good story fodder. It's good story fodder. You should be at the All-Star game in the hardest shot competition. That's good story fodder. That doesn't say whether he's a good defender or not. So I kind of look at it is it's good quantitative data. It's the type of stuff that hopefully more people can use for certain things. But it also doesn't update quick enough for usage

in a game where like, like I'm at the Detroit Seattle game on Tuesday night. You're like, oh, that'd be kind of cool. If in the moment, I could be like, oh, they score. scored this goal and they scored this goal and it was a 88 mile an hour shot or whatever. Like that's good quantitative data you could if you could use instantly. But since you don't get it instantly, it becomes difficult. So I think it's a good first step. There's still a ways to go and we got to play and play all this stuff. But it's still it's not a finalized package in any sense at all.

So it's interesting that you bring that up. And I agree 100% in the sense that you see so far the stats that have been most cited are skating speed and shots and shot speed and those are probably the two most useless metrics from like our perspective as analysts right?

Because like we're going to certainly suss this out and kind of play around than a test stuff. I would venture to guess that they are not really relevant at all and telling the story of who's actually good at hockey as has been brought up right? Like for for skating speed

I'm much more interested in like and they do have some of this they're unveiling it's you know in the early going, like the bursts of like how quickly you can accelerate and how often you can do that. And that probably is more meaningful in terms of actually being able to get open

and then capitalize on it as opposed to just skating really fast in a straight line, which you don't really get to do that often, especially with the puck at the NHL level. And then the shot speed. Now, we did kind of play around with this last year, and I'm still all for it.

And I hope the league does it, where you just take the whatever, six fastest or the hardest shots in the year and those are the six contestants in the hardest shot challenge in in the all-star game and the goalie should be the one who is qualified at the lowest say percentage as punishment and it'll be a tough sell for the NHLPA I'm sure but you know what if we're looking to grow the game and generate fan interest and all that uh I think it's a it's pretty good you know what we can we can get some sort of car sponsor or something and give the goalie a fresh new set of wheels or something like that.

I'm sure we can arrange that. But that would be something that I'd like to see in terms of practical usage of these stats. Yes, yes, I agree with that. And you get the actual fastest skating, the actual fastest skating top six speeds and everything like that. I mean, the other interesting thing with this whole stuff

that was, I talked to someone about this the other night, it was the, there was so many hoops and loops and loops and everything that had to be jumped through. on all of this because while this data teams have always had this data, the PA is not, the PA doesn't, the PA doesn't want it out there as easily as possible for access for everyone because they don't want it to become a spot, something that gets used against players. It's the same reason that, remember when they did the Seattle expansion draft, there was the bit of the, there was the bit of the time where they were like, oh, we're not going to put who the list is.

We're just going to only tell you who got drafted. That's it. Like, so that's something, too, that I think people sometimes forget about, like, the NHL does a ton of stuff. But there's so many times where they have to work hand in hand with the PA on something like this, where I can't, I can only imagine what some of those phone calls are like where it's like, oh, well, we're going to put out skating speed. And they're like, well, an agent's going to use that against my guy in an arbitration case.

And then they have to go back and forth on that. And then they have to talk about, well, like, so there's so many loops. and things that had to be navigated before this even came out, where it's almost amazing we actually got this when you think about some of the, when my brain starts going down some of the path to some of the pitfalls there could have been. Well, you can correct me if I'm wrong,

but is it the case still where in those like arbitration cases or I guess specifically, but contract negotiations in general, you're only allowed to use the stats that are actually on the official league website? I believe that is still the case. Right. Now that's not that's an arbitration case. Now that's not like for free for a UFA. It's obviously different. But yeah, that's that makes sense. I did I did have one thing that I brought up. I have a good friend of mine who's a physical therapist. And he brought up an idea of how this could be used from someone his role. And he brought up the fact. And it's actually interesting we talked about Carlos Carlson earlier. He's like one thing you could do. And this is the type of data. He's like, and they already have a bunch of this data. This is the type of. This is the type of.

data that from a team perspective, the tracking and everything like that, you got a guy who say he's, say game five, he has six bursts of 20 miles an hour or more in the game. Game 20, he has zero or something like that. Or like it drops. It's something where he's like, that's an entry point to a conversation with a player or as a staff of how can we figure out Is it a, A, are you not getting as explosive because of an injury or rest or something like that? So that was just an interesting data points that were brought up to me the other day of how this could be used by teams. That doesn't help you or I. It doesn't help that.

But it is an interesting point of how there is a slight real world application to do some of the things that are fun, really more fun broadcast tools. And I did actually see that from a fan perspective. I can't credit the source because I don't have it open in front of me. but I saw a Sabres fan bring up the fact that because there was some question with the slow start, especially at the top line, whether Alex Tucker was 100%. He kind of didn't look like himself to start the season. And then the stats sort of bore out that he was skating slower than last season and hitting that max burst less frequently than last year. And so obviously after only a couple games, it could be entirely random.

And I'm sure like one game where you're just not in a position to fly around as much could, could drastically skew the outcome. But yeah, that's an interesting note. And I guess that that's important because while some of this stuff is interesting, and I think for a casual fan or for a broadcast, just being able to show how fast a guy is moving or how hard that most recent shot was, like, that's a good storytelling tool. But I think for people listening to the show, we want a peel back a couple layers and

be like, all right, why should we care about this stuff? And that's when you get into descriptive versus predictive and all that. And I don't know, it's fascinating because you mentioned the teams have had this available for a while now. Obviously everyone approaches it differently in terms of how they synthesize it and how they use it and what they care about and kind of what they're looking for in this stuff. But that's, that's interesting to me. And then also from a team versus player level where I think, and this might be born over an offseason thing, because it's tough in season where you go back to backs and you're just the grind just keeps going and you never really

have chance to fully like practice and actually absorb a lot of this stuff because you're just so in the weeds. But in terms of offseason usage, it feels like from a player perspective, there would be a lot of application here in terms of identifying either strengths or weaknesses and then working on them accordingly. Yeah, I agree with that. The other thing, like, I,

like to give you an idea of what is still tracked that is, we're getting the, we're getting the kids version. That's what we're getting. We're getting the kids version of it. We're getting, we don't actually get to play with this. We actually don't get the real thing. Like, I, like, for example,

two or three years ago, I got to see a quick demo of what the coaches actually get to see. I got to see that about two or three years ago. And there's things that, have you ever, I always love looking at the passing charts that come out for a European soccer game. They have the actual passing charts where you can see the impact of a midfielder and you can see all the passes tracked and everything like that. and puck and player tracking does track that for hockey. Like you could, in theory, you could be like, okay, I'm going to go look at Connor McDavid's shifts and I'm going to be able to give myself a, I can chart every single pass.

Like, that's the type of stuff that I know. It's kind of funny because we know that type of stuff is in there. And that's the type of stuff I want. But then I all of a sudden get the like, all right, well, this is, I know you're, I know there's cool stuff behind the wall, but you're not knocking the wall down for me. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff that we could do with the passing data, I think, obviously, and it might be a bit of a pipe dream for now, but at some point in some future, you know, those memes where it's like, oh, like this would be society if this happened and it's just like this like beautiful oasis, that would be if we were able to have passing data to the point where you could actually apply expected goal outputs or inputs, I guess, to. each potential pass or decision and then actually aggregated over the course of a game over a

season to actually show the impact of what a player was doing in terms of how the opportunities they had in terms of making passes and then obviously the decisions they made accordingly because with each time it's not as simple as oh I'm just going to I see a guy open I'm going to pass to them generally especially on a power play let's say when you're working the half wall you have a couple different avenues you can explore decisions you can make and then we judge it generally based on the decision the player did make but sometimes just as important is the decision they sort of they chose to forego right the one that they didn't explore and so if we were able to at some point in the future do something with that I think that would be obviously a nerds dream but that seems like

it's it's many years down the line at least pipe dream is a good way to put it pipe dream I think the other thing though that is much more realistic because we do have access to of this with NBA stats is is flare gravity right especially seeing like proximity of defenders and then being able to especially on a power play I guess um be able to actually quantify how much attention someone is drawing how open their teammates are as a result of it because they are drawing so much attention themselves that would be cool and I think that would be a way to also like not only show who's who the true superstars are or not but also how their peers feel about them right because actions speak louder than words

and seeing the way other teams choose to prepare for their opponents is very telling in terms of how they view who the best players are. So I think that's something that we actually could get pretty soon. I hope that would be nice. Anything else on NHL Edge before we go to Break here? My one thing is on the user interface. The one thing disappointed is like the user interface is not good enough, right?

Like even you didn't have to give us more data. this date, like right now I want, if I click on a team, it's if you're like, oh, I want to compare this for all 25 players on a team. I have to go to each player's individual profile and do that. Like the fact that there's not a good, sortable user interface for it is one of my biggest qualms with it because, and then the fact that it updates. So even if you tried to do it and try to keep track of it so you're beat right, you're covering a team and you'd have to like, okay, I'm going have to go check that every day to update it. Like I think it's creating more roadblocks sometimes that a good user interface would

have made this, would have made this more applicable and used and everything like that because you want people to use these tools. You want people to use them. You want even the simplest data to be used because that opens more people talking about and gets more people demanding extra data to be available. So user interface, I'm not that. That's for whoever, whenever you have a tech guest on the show, you can ask them about that. However, however difficult that is that that's that's my biggest qualm would be hopefully version

2.0 or whatever of this comes out sooner than later with, okay, hey, here's a very easily sortable chart by team and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, especially improving the filters and kind of just the responsiveness of it certainly. Yeah. I mean, I guess a good example of its value and its uses. So like the flames are off to a two, four and one start, right? And Nikita Zerob recently comes out and is you know, making comments about certain players in the room and kind of why things are unraveling again. And this becomes a big story. And then you look and it's like, all right, well, they're 26th in offense. Their 29th in shooting percentage. It seems like it's a repeat of last year. And then you look and it's like they lead the league in shots from what NHL Edge classifies as

long range, particularly from their defenseman. And it's like, yeah, this is sort of, I know it's a different coach. A lot of the same players are in place. It's a bit of a repeat stylistically from last season. And so while I know the vibes were better heading in, a big reason why they struggled so much was because of this exact issue, and it seems to be a recurrence of it. So I thought that was kind of like being able to sort of find stuff like that and then actually quantify it is pretty useful and kind of a good early indication

that this is going to provide value to us. So I wanted to end out on a high note. So there we are. Yeah, I agree with you on that. Sean, let's take a quick break here. And then when we come back, we'll pick it back up. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Breaking down the top stories in the NHL every day.

The Jeff Merrick Show. Subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back here on the HockeyPedocast with Sean Shapiro. Sean, let's get into a few stories you've written about here recently over the past week. They're both about Chicago teams, I guess. Which one do you want to start with? because you were in the building live to see Badaard, I believe, against the Golden Knights, but also you wrote about the Chicago Wolves and, you know, their connection to the Carolina

hurricanes and the hurricanes now not having an AHL affiliate and what they're doing with their prospects. I guess maybe that's kind of the more interesting one or notable. Let's start with that one because that one is we can talk as much, I mean, lots of Baderd shows, right? So we can always, we can always, we can always, we can always get to Bedard afterwards. Let's let's, let's talk Chicago and Carolina first. Yeah, there's quite a few shows talking Connor Bardard. Not as many talking, uh, HL affiliates.

So exactly. Um, this is how we differentiate ourselves, certainly. All right. We'll give us, give us the content because you and I have spent a lot of time talking about this in the past last year in particular. We spoke quite a bit about this story, which was kind of coming to ahead of the time, right? And now it's finally, um, It's bubbled over, and we have someone to work with here, tangible.

So let's kind of talk about this from the hurricane's perspective and I guess kind of the situation therein and why it's so troublesome and sort of the actionable pieces of it moving forward. Yeah, and it always, it always randomly, for me, the reason I wanted to write the story. And when I got the, when I told JD over at the EP Rinkside to fund my travel to Chicago for this, I basically came from, I always, you would see the reaction. every time the hurricanes send a player down right now, you would inevitably see the response on Twitter or whatever from someone being like, wait, where they don't have their own HL team or why is this guy going there or whatever, right? And so I was really interested in

trying to write the actual story of what happened between these two, these two teams. And basically, for the first time since, from an HL perspective, for the first time since the 94-95 season, we have an unaffiliated team. A lot of people have been using the word independent, and that's not the right terminology, because there are actually 11 independent teams in the NHL, independent in the 8th are 11 independent teams in the HL. Independent simply means not owned by the NHL club.

And so, like, all the time we hear people like, oh, the wolves are independent. The wolves have been independent since 1994. Like, for example, the Detroit Redwigs and Grand Rapid Griffins are going to be together forever. the griffins are not owned by the illich family the grand rapid griffins are technically independent they could be a fill they could they could go anywhere and so um there and so there's a big difference between independent and unaffiliated and so chicago is the first unaffiliated hl team since

94-95 um we've had teams not have a proper age an a hl filled from the nashl side um a couple years ago st louis had one basically once the n it because the nchl expanded before the a hl did So we had a little bit of a kind of a spill over there. But this is the first time we've really had within the full. There's 32 NHL teams, 32 AHL teams. And we've got two teams in those leagues that don't have a partner on the other side. And it's a spot where for Carolina, we see it now often where you see Peter Kachakov gets to end up spending some time in Syracuse when he gets sent down instead of going to an affiliate.

it. The hurricane sent some prospects who normally would be playing in the AHA this year back over to Sweden and Finland, I believe. They had discussions about having to send some guys to the ECHL because they couldn't find an HL spot. And it's an important story because, A, it's not going away. That's the other thing where it's like, and that was kind of the whole big thing that I went through the story of it's not going away because Chicago and Carolina, it's not like all of a sudden you're like, oh, well, there's five other affiliations up next year where they can just, Carolina can partner with someone else in Chicago can partner with someone else. Like, it's, these two teams are kind of a staring contest and they're both struggling because

of it right now for in various ways. So how do the hurricanes get themselves in this position then? Because I think that's, that's, for our listeners, that's probably more interesting than the future of the wolves, right? No, no, 100%. I agree with that. Yeah, 100%. And it's Carolina was a.

Carolina had a 10-year affiliation with the Charlotte Checkers. They actually won a Calder Cup with the Charlotte Checkers in 2019. No, 2019, yeah, they want a Calder Cup with Carolina prospects. And essentially, as that 10-year affiliation agreement or that affiliation, they'd been together 10 years, it wasn't a 10-year affiliation, but it was a, as their most recent affiliation was coming to an end, Carolina and Charlotte. even though being in the same state, having the same color scheme, everything that makes geographic sense, could not figure out a partnership. Charlotte actually went on the, at the time put out a pretty, it was a statement saying they hadn't heard from the hurricanes at all.

And, and Don Waddell, who the hurricanes for this story have decided not to comment. They've decided to be to just kind of buy guns to be bygones and whatever for now. But when it came to Charlotte, Don Wadell at the time said it was time to move on. from a basically Carolina and Charlotte basically got into a financial dispute is what it was, where it was they couldn't come to agreement on what the right financial ramifications were for both sides. And Carolina needed. And so Charlotte ended up catching out with the Florida Panthers and everything I've heard

that's gone very well. Obviously, it's not the same drive Charlotte to Charlotte to Raleigh, but it is still southeast right there, easy flights. and at the same time, Carolina was, as Carolina was looking for a thing, basically this also connects to the growth of hockey in Vegas because the Golden Knights never planned on having an AHA team in their market.

They came in and they're like, this is a one, like we can't, we can't, we can't diminish our product by having another pro team right here. We can't do it. But with how well Vegas did even before they won the cup, right? like Vegas turned into this crazy hockey market and adding an HL team actually made sense.

Like I talked to I talked to Carrie Bubbles who's the, I apologize to Carrie Bubbles, who's the, I apologize to Carrie for probably mispronouncing his last name here, but he's the president of Vegas. I talked to him during the cup final about how the Henderson Silver Knights are kind of the southern or southeastern outpost for the Vegas community, while the practice facilities in the Northeast. then T-Mobile's in the arena, like, Team T-Mobile arena is right in the middle of Vegas on the strip. And like, that was never part of the plan for Vegas. It was always to be, our HL team would be somewhere else. But this market proved to be so good and everything like that. So San Antonio Rampage, a team that used to be near and dear to my heart because I saw them play all the time when I was in Texas, got purchased and moved and Chicago was left on their own again. And so then you have Carolina and Chicago come together as basically the last two unaffiliated

teams and this is where we get into a spot of we've heard and I want to be fair and kind as kind as possible and I say all this right like Tom Dundon is a bit of a brash owner who believes in doing things his way he got grouped up with the one eight with an AHL team who was a very similar owner in believing to do in the same point and those two sides came together it worked to win a championship, but even in the year they won a title, the seeds already start to get sewed of Chicago doesn't think the hurricanes are doing enough for development. They don't start, Chicago doesn't think the hurricanes are doing enough to win games. They think the hurricanes are putting too much development into the development model and

they're not winning. And it's, you get, you get two capital B billionaire owners. One owns an HL team, one is an NHL team. And essentially, they couldn't, they couldn't stay together because they have different goals they have different definitions in their mind of what the hl is so that that's how we got to this spot and carolina is obviously they're not they're not Carolina should have still been with charlotte that's at the end of the day like Carolina geographically should be with the charlotte checkers that is on the hurricanes that they couldn't figure that out and they put themselves in this situation too well it's difficult to make this next point without having um them commented on the record and even if they have they had

had, I assume you probably, you would need some truth serum to actually get how they truly feel about it. I know the teams around the league have very differing opinions on the value of being able to like closely manage your AHL situation, right? Purely from like a development perspective in terms of how you use it to track young players that you've drafted and then are incorporating into your organization to eventually groom them to prepare them to play for your NHL club, which is the end goal, right? Some of them won't make it or won't have full-time roles or will wind up moving on to other teams, but that's sort of the best case scenario and what you're striving

towards. And it feels like the hurricanes who generally get lauded for their drafting, right, they've invested quite a bit in terms of their analytics department and their scouting staff in that regard to try to kind of mine gems, a lot of those guys typically are like fourth and fifth round picks from playing in Europe that are kind of undervalued by other teams it seems, right? And that's why

like hockey hipster, people on hockey Twitter are like, I love that pick. That guy was really high on my list compared to where NHL teams had them ranked. And so maybe they just purely are like, you know what? A lot of these players are probably playing overseas are going to be playing for their pro clubs. And that's where they're going to develop. And then when we need them,

which is the case of the guy like Alexander and Ekesian, right, who was, who's viewed as one of their top, if not top prospects, who they didn't want to give up in the reported Timel Meyer trade at last year's deadline and will theoretically come over and help them at some point soon. They're viewing it as, all right, well, it's not that big of a deal, and we don't want to invest in it that much because this is the route we're taking and we feel like this is the inefficiency, right? They're clearly an organization that puts either a monetary figure

or like some sort of a value on literally everything and everyone. and if the ask exceeds it, they're just simply going to move on. And we've seen them do that with players on their team. We've seen that do that with staff. It's just the way they operate, whether you like it or not. And so I wonder if that's kind of what's going on here as well and how they feel about it. But we'll never know. But I think one thing we can do, and I feel confident in saying this,

one of the things that for Carolina, the value of winning, and this and this is I can talking to the Wolf's GM, Wendell Young, you read in how he says, he talks about how the team is being run this year. Like he was, they try to be kind of coy about what the actual grievances were, but when you talk about how this is how the team's being run this year, you're kind of really showing what you mean.

And for Carolina, while winning a Calder Cup is nice, when he play off games is nice or whatever, right? Like at the end of the day, the role of the HL team and getting those roles out of players is, you're that fourth, fifth round pick from Carolina when you come over, you should be getting power play time. You should be getting penalty time.

You should be getting all of those things. So you're learning it on the fly. So whenever you get to Carolina, you can, if you have to step into roll, that's fine. And that is where one of the biggest differentiators where Chicago wants to sign. Chicago signed a lot of the players they normally would sign. Like people think HL teams are completely assigned by NHL teams. There are still, like some of these independent teams, even when Chicago was affiliated,

they still signed six to seven players themselves. Like Chicago has Rocco Grimaldi right now. Rocco Grimaldi's a player that Chicago would have probably either way. They want Rocco Grimaldi on the power play. If I'm Don Waddell, I don't want, I don't need Rocco Grimaldi taking power play time

from my prospect who could be something and I won't know if he doesn't get power play time. And that's the most interesting thing about this is for everyone I've talked to both on the record, doing some other calls around the league and everything like this. This wasn't a money thing. Carolina and Charlotte split because of money. Chicago and Chicago and Carolina basically split basically over,

well, we have to play logistics. Yeah, logistics of who's playing on the power play. And if, and it's sometimes the like, and who is starting in goal, right? Well, it's like stuff like that. That's why it's a very tricky line to walk or kind of find the balance because in an ideal world, you would probably want the person who's constructing the AHL team to be your assistant GM, who's very comfortable in their position.

And also the head coach probably would be someone who at least has some sort of a path to move. up in the organization and potentially one day becoming an NHL assistant on your team and then eventually an NHL head coach. And that's obviously a very difficult thing to guarantee. But whenever you have different agendas or motivations, of course, an AHL head coach is going to want to try to win games because that's how they're going to be evaluated and potentially either continue in that role and get paid accordingly or move up and potentially get an NHL promotion. and like sure where it's going to get out in terms of how they're dealing with the players and how young players are developing under them and that's certainly what NHL organizations care about.

But at the end of the day, if you're losing a bunch and your team looks bad because there's a bunch of young prospects that the NHL organization cares about, but you don't really are floundering, then you're going to be out of a job. And so that's why you get into these kind of staring contests and these power struggles.

And that's, I think, what's kind of what you're describing here that are happening with these two organizations. Well, yeah, and for an HL coach, assuming like 99% of them they want to move up and coach in the NHL someday, it's pretty easy to look at the evidence of every single spring. Whenever a coach gets fired, we get like those lists of like, it's like, oh, here's 10 names to watch. Yeah. It's the past two coaches just to win the Calder Cup are always on that list.

Right or wrong, they're always on that list. So it's, you're, this is the path. You win HL games. And it's, it's an interesting thing, too. because for a, for two, the other, the other thing that's interesting about how this all goes to is because let's to focus on Carolina here, right? Dundon has the money and people I've talked to in the, in the league and everything. I've, if you're Carolina, okay, they just want to get this over with them. They just want to buy their own AAHL team. Now, the issue is the AHA has been so steadfast right now on

they want to be that one to one development model. Well, technically, the board of government, governors in the AHL could approve, okay, hey, here's an expansion franchise. That's really not on the on the appetite right now. So it really comes down to if Tom Dundon's going to buy an HL team, there's not many options. He's not going to buy the wolves because that owner is, I mean, unless, I mean, that would be, that would be the ultimate coup at some point, right? Like if eventually they, they have the long staring gods, eventually Tom Dundon buys the wolves. I highly doubt that that would ever happen. But so are you going to buy, like, independent teams that would actually,

that you could actually buy are teams like Milwaukee, which is really well entrenched with Nashville. You have, you have Syracuse and Tampa, and we hear all the time about how Syracuse and Tampa love working together and everything like that. And so the number of independent teams that, that he could actually feasibly buy is,

is very small. And so I, it's funny. Like I got to talk to the Scott House and the H.L. and CEO about all of this. And it's, it's, I'm going to interject my opinion on this. I'm going to be clear. This is my opinion.

It's not a good look for Chicago when the AHL president is going basically saying, this goes against everything our league stands for. So like this is, this goes against what our league stands for. Our league is a development league. And I feel that when you, when you kind of read between the lines on that, it feels like at some point there's going to be a conversation of sub-sort with, But like, look, this is Development League. You're either into develop or you're not part of this league.

And that's what feels like the long, kind of the long term play here at some point. Well, the good news is I've heard that I've heard some rumors that they're actually re-uping the show Billions for another season. And it's going to be Tom Dundon trying to his pursuit of the wolves and trying to get back into the H.L. So looking forward to watching that next year and when the fall schedule comes out. All right. Sean, this is a blast man. As always, it was great to have you.

on to talk about a lot of this stuff. People should go follow you on Twitter and read all of your work on both substack and EPIR ringside. And we're going to have you back on soon. Thank you to everyone for listening to us. We'll be back with plenty more of the HockeyPedio cast as always streaming

on the Sports Night Radio Network.