The Hockey PDOcast - Draft Retrospectives and Lessons Learned

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Mitch Brown from EPRinkside joins Dimitri Filipovic to talk about lessons learned from revisiting how former prospects have developed, what's worked and what hasn't, and how to apply it to future draft evaluations. This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty.  The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Lessing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey Piediocast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey Pee-Ocast. My name is Dimitra Vipovich. And joining me is my good buddy Mitch Brown-Mid. What's going on in? Not too much. Just watching some Maddie Baneers and being very excited for what we're about to talk about.

Oh, Maddie Baneers tape. That's really exciting. I feel like I have this whole list of things that I want to talk about with you. But then now that you just mention Maddie Baneers, I feel like we need to talk about him quickly and just put everything else the side and we can we can jump into my original planned content and program in a second what do you what do you see in on baneer's tape well so the first thing that stands out is just how good he is at turning defense and a offense how he gets down low how he supports the play and then what really

stands out about him especially compared to most most players in the n hl not just rookies is how he instantly knows the next play he instantly takes the puck off the board steps to the middle he manipulates the forecheck, then he tries to gain the zone. You see a lot of like east-west movement from him, but it's always full steam ahead. So just an incredibly intelligent manipulative player who's able to turn what seems to like relatively uninteresting situations in the defensive zone and to high danger offense in a moment. It's wildly impressive to me how advanced his game already is, right? I think that's going to be kind of a theme that we hit on throughout the show.

But for me, like, watching him step right into the league, he played the 10 games or whatever last year out of college, and then now this is his first full NHL stint, just seeing that exact thing you mentioned, where he gets super low in his own zone, and he must be, like, his defenseman's best friend. Like, they need to take him out for dinner every single night whenever they're on the road because he makes their life so much easier.

Like the number of times he makes himself available for these, like, short, high percentage. breakout plays where they relieve pressure if it's a contested retrieval for them is off the charts already. It's something that sounds super easy, right? It's something that you think every coach would just preach for all their centers and every time they're doing tape, every time they're practicing every time they're preparing for games. All right, hammer this. We need to do this. But that type of discipline is so tough when you're moving around so quickly. I think everyone, especially in today's offensive environment, wants to fly the zone and wants to play higher up so they can get a head start

on the rush attack and for him he's still getting his goals he's still going to get his points but for him to be that discipline to that area of the game deserves all the praise and i know you're starting to hear commentators talk about it during some of these cracking games but it's something that like it genuinely warrants all the praise he's getting yeah and it's it's very atypical to see a player at any level do this kind of stuff and it from a scouting perspective it really makes you think that there's something that's really important about doing the seemingly basic monoton of stuff that might not seem to matter to some, but when you look at players like this in junior hockey don't really exist. Players who do even basic things like sprint the middle of the ice to create space

behind them are very uncommon in the CHL or in the USHL. And yet, when they get to the NHO, they don't really lose any component of their game because they already have the basics down, so they're already in position to be able to use the skills when the puck arrives on their stick. But he is a perfect example of that. Yeah, no, he certainly is a really fun player to watch. All right, well, let's pivot to the first thing that I wanted to talk about here, and it's kind of, we're going to use a listener question as a launching pad for us. William Gifford asked us, what do you watch for when you turn on a game?

Oftentimes I find myself watching the puck, and then eventually something interesting happens, but I'm not really sure why, because I didn't see all the plays leading up to it. So how do I become a smarter spectator? This is a good question for us to tackle. We're going to talk a lot about prospects, a lot about what we're seeing on tape from them, how they develop, how they translate a lot of these skills. And I feel like this is a good entryway for us to talk about some of those.

And then it in Benneers is a great example of this in terms of the positioning and how he sets himself up off the puck. That's clearly something that I think your average viewer at home doesn't need to be paying attention to and isn't like going to tell the biggest story for the game. But certainly if you're someone like William and you want to kind of get a better understanding or a peek behind the curtain of how the big plays are happening, what are we watching for, what are you looking for when you turn on tape and you watch someone like Baneers?

The very first thing is predict what you think is going to happen. So when a player has the puck on their stick, predict what they're going to do next. That is the very, very, very, very first thing. Oftentimes you will be wrong, but you will soon come to realize that over time, you will see the game in the same way, in the same way that NHL players do. you will see that player streaking down the weak side who's becoming a passing option. One of the biggest things for scouting is being able to figure out where the puck is going and how it's going to get there.

And so you have to constantly flip it back and forth between watching the puck, watching the rest of the game. Again, easiest way to do that. Just simply say, where do I think this puck is going? Yeah, and well, easier said than done, right? I think back to, I talk about this all the time, but there's so many interesting things. nuggets to come from it from from from del belfry's coaching uh workshop where he generally was was praising players and highlighting good performances but that at the time he unfortunately for barrett hayden showcased things hayden was doing poorly early in his age all now at least over the past couple weeks you know

credit to hayden he started to play meaningful minutes he's actually started to score some goals and hopefully that continues for him but at the time last year he was showing how you know hayden is a player who doesn't necessarily have that initial burst or quickness to his game. He's more reliant on his skill. And unfortunately, not only was he playing with players who, you know, weren't necessarily out there to play a skilled game, but whenever he was in a defensive zone, he was almost always a step behind and always chasing the game, right?

It was like his inability to kind of anticipate where to, where to be or where the puck was going to go relegated him to kind of like, like the cat with a laser pointer, right? where it's like, all right, the puck's over here. So he goes over there because that catches his eye. And then all of a sudden, by the time he gets there, the puck's back to where he was before, then he has to pivot and go back there. And he's kind of just playing this game where he's never actually involved in the play. He's always chasing it. And that's a really difficult way to play in NHL. And obviously, if you're chasing the entire, you know, 45 second shift in the defensive zone,

you're not going to be able to do what you're paid to do and what you did at lower levels so successfully. and so that anticipation and that ability to get to where the puck is going to be before it actually gets there is huge. And I wonder how much of that is how much of that is something that you can get better at over time as you work with pro coaches and as you get more kind of reps and experience under your belt. And how much of that is something where you're almost not born with it, but at a young level, you're already, as a junior, you're already kind of, you've got that in your bag a little bit. What do you think about that? Well, the most common reason why players fall behind the play is because they don't look enough.

So players will watch the puck and then make a decision based on where the puck is. But just like as a viewer, you will want to be able to make a decision based on the options that the puck carrier has. So someone like Hayton, his issue is that he just burns a hole with its eyes through the puck. He's never actually like looking around him. So in defense's own coverage, you want to see a player look over one shoulder, look over the other's shoulder, then try to split the difference between where they think the puck is going or commit. And so it's about gathering information. All of these players, a guy like Baird-Hane, who is so incredibly talented with the puck on his stick, like, my goodness, like the stuff that he's able to do is incredible.

He knows he can be that rapid-fire decision-maker. He knows how to make quick decisions, how to anticipate the play and all that. He just doesn't have enough information available to him in the defensive zone to be able to find the right or to be able to find the right space or to figure out what the next play is going to be. So that's the number one thing is scanning, information gathering, so on, whatever you want to call it. So to answer your question, I actually think that, like, yes, I like it is very coachable. I don't think, I think part of anticipation is certainly innate, but for the most part, the players who innately understand it are the players who are scanning the most, looking across the, looking across the ice the most. So there's a very strong relationship there.

Well, do you think, I wonder if, I think it would be like you need to, and to be fair, if you're in the NHL, you probably already reach this threshold, at least to some degree. But it feels like you almost kind of need to have like a baseline level of innate ability in that regard. And then you can get coached up and more experience and you can kind of hammer down on those details a bit more. Whereas if it's not something that comes naturally to you at all, it's a bit difficult once you get to the NHL. The game's moving so fast. You have so many responsibilities. We always hear all the time how you want these players to just sort of like do and not think, right? like you don't want to just be spending the entire time like going through the motions of like,

all right, this is what I need to do, this is my checklist. It's something that kind of just needs to come natural to you and it needs to happen in real time incredibly quickly. So if you're all of a sudden being forced to stop and think every time you have to do something every time you have to do that shoulder check, all of a sudden, I think that does become a bit trickier and probably slows you down and makes you less effective in other areas. Well, you also have to ask the question, how did these players get better at doing the thing at being able to react based on the variable, presented to them. And it's the same answer to how do players get really good at skating? Like surely,

some of it is like innate athleticism, but a lot of it is because they built up very slowly. They maybe had some one or two elements that were better than other players and then over time between tape, between doing reps that were slow and perfect and that adding speed and layers to it, they were able to make their skating better. Similarly, when you talk to a lot of players, their offensive decision making is conscious. They are thinking about what they want to do. They just think about it so fast at such a frequent level because it is so ingrained in them at like a patterns-based level

that the decision-making process isn't a second. It's a fraction of a second. And you can surely apply that same logic to the defensive end whereby they're so good at identifying patterns or say chess, for example. People don't memorize every single thing that happens in chess. They do with memorization in chess. chunks. They remember that this move leads to that thing and that thing and that thing and that thing. And so for a hockey player when you're playing on the defense event, knowing that the

puck is in position A and the next player that the puck could go to is across the slot and then there's also the player on the point, you're going to be able to instantly know what the next probable option is provided you have all the information you've built up enough reps to get there. So I would say it's definitely teachable again. When you're dealing with athletes at this high level, there is like an incredible amount of it that is innate. Like I, for example, am never going to be a high-end athlete at any level no matter what I do. I am simply too slow with a body that is not conducive to that. But if you can achieve that level, which many people can, you can continue to build upon that

and learn and develop new ways, which I think will tie into a different conversation that we're going to have, too, about decision-making and in place. in the offense event and how it improves and how it doesn't. Okay, well, let's do that. That was actually going to be my next point. So we're going to hammer some of the, you wrote about this at EPIRN site, so people should go check that out as well. But we're going to unpack it and had a bit greater depth or detail here in this conversation.

It's about the draft retrospectives that you ran and kind of lessons learn how to apply them in terms of, I think it's a really good exercise, just in terms of that sort of introspection and reflection on like, all right, these are the things we got right, these are the things we got wrong. What do we miss on? What do we need to focus on more and then apply that into future analysis and evaluation of players? And so one of my favorite points that you brought up there is a player's ability to create flavorful favorable situations. And that being more predictable of future success than the actual results in terms of what they choose to do once they're in those positions. And I think that's a really interesting distinction to think about because

generally for a lot of people, it's a very result-oriented business, right? And you can get into serious issues, especially when you're evaluating prospects and junior players in terms of just purely looking at how much they scored or what the results were because not necessarily, a lot of that won't necessarily apply once you get to the next level and you change the environment, you change the surroundings, you change the level of competition and level of teammates. So I'm kind of curious about having a conversation on that in terms of that, that favorable situation and how you get yourself into that repeatedly and how you do so and how that translates as opposed to what you do once you do once you're actually there.

All right. So let's distinguish first. What is decision making or a play selection? So the basic idea here is when do they shoot, when do they pass? A very common example, particularly at lower levels is the guy who just comes down the wing and fires the pocket net even though there's a teammate in the slot. Not exactly a play that is going to lead to high value offense in the NHL or even at lower levels, but a lot of the players can score from those positions in junior hockey. It's like the classic, there's a guy in the OHL who can shoot 25% from the top of the circle. Most players shoot 5.5% from there in the CHL, and so he scores all of his goals, and then when he goes to the NHL and players only shoot 4.5% from there in the NHL, he can't score because

the shot isn't nearly as much of an advantage at the next level. So decision-making, play selection, all of that is a product of A, the tools that they have available to them, and B, the environment that they're in, decisions do not exist in isolation. However, a player's ability to create favorable situations to get themselves in position to score, to get the puck to the middle, to be able to find teammates in the slot, is oftentimes not really all that linked to the environment. So now you're a huge part of Scouting right as context, understanding the environment that they're in. If they're played against professionals, you don't expect the same level of offensive contribution as you would in junior hockey and so on. But that can even go on to like a more

macro or to a more micro scale, where some players, because they want to hang, they want to be able to float at the professional rank, they just dump the puppet up every time they get it. That doesn't mean that they can't make control plays on the breakup. That doesn't mean that they don't have skill. It just means that they're trying to find a way to stick at this level that they clearly want to play at. So there was an interesting, the most interesting thing that I found for sure was through watching 50 plus players over the course of a few months, and it took a very long time, was that everyone, whether they are projected fourth-liners or projected superstars like Connor McDavid, their decision-making improves a ton. The decisions from those favorable situations they

create completely change. Like, Cal McCar, not even recognizable in the decisions that he makes from those positions. Clayton Keller, who I think most people who watch him regularly understand that he's one of the best playmakers in the NHL. In junior, he literally just skated down the wing, took low percentage shots randomly through pucks blindly into the spot, dumped the puck in when he should be carrying it. So like, he also had Keller, that is, and all of these other players, had the tools to be able to find different ways to create, or they already did all the translatable stuff, all the stuff that you would see eventually in the NHL, they just did it out at a different volume. And as they stepped up to the next level, those favorable situations continued to be

favorable situations, and they realized that they could get more value out of them, or those favorable situations were harder to get. And so by natural adjustment, they realized that they should probably be making the more effective decision or a more efficient decision from that spot. Well, a guy who ties into this conversation that I'm really excited about and he's not someone that necessarily gets a lot of national conversation because on his team, he's got Jack Hughes, he's got Jasper Brad, he's got a lot of exciting players that are going to kind of, you know, hog a lot of the attention is Dawson Mercer. So last year, we see him come into the NHL as a 20-year-old, right?

He has a very productive season, like 17 goals, 42 points for any players, pretty, good for a 20-year-old making his first kind of foray into the NHL fantastic. If you go back and watch the tape, I'd argue he left a lot of meat on the boat or left a lot on the table, and that's not a bad thing, right? Like, he was messing up in very productive ways, in my opinion, because I think he got away with a lot of stuff in Major Junior just because he was so much better than everyone around him that it kind of, you know, he was able to do whatever he wanted. He comes at NHL, all of a sudden he's similarly testing the boundaries of what he can get away with. He's trying all of these crazy plays, very ambitious.

And some of it didn't work. Some of it fell short. Some of it was unlucky that, you know, it didn't complete, like a great move. They led to a shot and just didn't score on it. But it's stuff that you like to see from a young player because he's almost experimenting with what's going to work and what's not. And already this year, you're seeing that growth continue predictably where he's scoring at a slightly better rate.

He's, you know, generating high-anger shots at a higher rate. it's all going to come together for him, I think. I think patience is key. And when you watch him, it's like a perfect blend of he's got that worker bee mentality where he works so hard, his motor's relentless. But he's also got that very ambitious offensive skill set as well. Now, if the devils are going to insist on playing him as like a third line winger bumping him down the lineup, I'm not sure if that's going to get the most out of him moving forward. And they have a highly skilled, highly deep team. So that's a bit unfortunate in that regard. But if he's given the chance to really grow into that. I think there's something special that's kind of beneath the surface there

that's going to come to. And you see like a goal he scored the other night against Carolina where he weaves through the defense and winds up putting it home. It was just a beautiful individual effort. And I think a lot more of that is in his future. And I don't know how many people are necessarily aware of that just because he's going to score like 20 goals this season and isn't going to capture anyone's attention, like I said. But it's there. And if you watch it, you can kind of see where it's going wrong and how it can eventually go right for him, I think. I'm so glad you brought up Dawson Merse, because he is. It's another great example of play selection, proving as you rise levelables because he creates those favorable situations.

And he's also a great example of something very interesting. That if you are a very step defensive player and you are a very aware defensive player, very engaged, you're going to get more leeway to have fun on the offensive end. You know, what's great about Dawson Mercer, if he cuts in and turns the puck over two seconds back, he's stolen it back already, and then he's back on the attack and doing the same thing and trying to be more creative. And so when you look at NHL players or you look at top prospects, a lot of times their turnovers are the result of experimentation, just as you said, which is something that we add a little big prospects talk about all the time. How do we weigh the disguise? Is he making poor decisions or is he just trying to test his game a little bit? Is he just trying to expand his game? And I don't think there's anything wrong with Veronica Neon a player's game, especially at lower levels.

A lot of times what you see in junior hockey is that their game narrows. So they get picked in the first round because they're good at many different things. And then throughout junior, they rely more and more on plays that aren't going to be the plays that get them to the NHL or aren't going to plays that they score on the NHL. That's the most common one. But there are lots of players who then use that extra time in junior to then start experimenting, seeing if they can add new components to their game. Some of them fail miserably.

Others take up. like Logan Stancoe over this year, Dallas Star Second Rounder, has become a fantastic playmaker. Before, two years ago, he was just a game in the zone and let it fly guy. And now he's creating scoring chances at a near historical rate in junior hockey. He's well over two points per game. And a big part of that is because he made a conscious effort to become a better playmaker. He could have just continued to score from the top of the circle forever until he has to go to the NFL. But he decided to become better, and now he's one of the best prospects in the world.

I mean, he should have been the top 15 pick. Yes, well, undoubtedly. Well, yeah, that experimentation is a fine balance, right? Because obviously, if it's happening for the wrong reasons and it's happening continuously, that that could be worrisome. But I generally give young players a lot of leeway because it takes time to find the right combination for the sequencing and for how you want to utilize leverage, right? Like, you watch Connor McDavid now, and it's obviously unfair to compare anyone to.

to him, but he does a lot of stuff where like the puck positioning, right? He wants to be a defender into exposing themselves and opening it up. So he like kind of puts it in a vicinity where they can, they can get it. But he's quick enough and he's confident enough in his skills that he'll be able to still make a play from that position. If a young player that's not caught him, McDavid, is trying that, that's often going to be a turnover. It's going to make them look bad.

And I think a misunderstanding of what they're trying to accomplish there can really like, inhibit them moving forward if all of a sudden you ask them to completely dumb down their game or stop trying to do that. I think it's necessary to make some of those mistakes. And, you know, if you're a young player coming to a bad team, there's like pros and cons to it, but at least in theory, you'll get more leeway to make those mistakes because it's not like it's costing you important games. If you jump into a non-favorable situation where all of a sudden you're on a competitive team and you're playing a bottom six role and you can't afford to waste those shifts, I do wonder how that can potentially kind of stop stunt development for an otherwise,

like very, very creative young player, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a major consideration, I think, as junior hockey continues to get more progressive in its tactics and its coaching, we're going to see that become less and less of an issue because that experimentation phase is going to be built in at a younger age than it is now. So teams like the Saginaw Spirit University of Michigan Wolfgreens, these are teams that let their players push their game to the limit, let them experiment. And if it works, they kind of build it into the structure.

They build it into the environment, like, Pavlman-Jucob, Anaheim Ducks, 10th overall pick. This man spends offensive zone shifts playing the bumper at 5-on-5. He's a defenseman. He'll control the game from the corner of the offensive zone. Again, he's the defenseman. He'll skate straight down the middle of the offensive zone with no backup, with no support, because it's the best offensive play in that situation. And because offensive decisions also are linked to defensive decisions.

if you stay at the point and your teammate has no passing options, that's a bad defensive play. It is a bad offensive play, too. It's going to lead to a turnover. And so whether you're back there or not isn't going to really make a difference, it's going to be a two-and-long-on the other way. But if you jump down the middle and become a passing option, now you're easy to hit. You're going to create a scoring chance, and the odds of your teammate turn the puck over have dropped significantly. And so if all these little decisions play into the experimentation idea, play into how players are going to be able to, improve, push their games, expand, or become more translatable, become more projectable in the NHL. The earlier this process happens in hockey, the better. And the more reinforcement they get

from their coaching staff at a younger age, the better. Well, I think we've come a long way in that regard, but hearing you talk about Michikov, like, on the one hand, it's very exciting. On the other hand, I immediately, my guard comes up and I get nervous that he's going to come to the NHL and he's going to be asked to play in a way that isn't conducive to that skill set or the way he's been playing the entire time. Now, the Ducks almost, like, statistically cannot get worse defensively than they are right now. So it's like anything would be a net gain, I think. I'm really curious to see how they incorporate and integrate a player like that. They obviously got, you know, Owens El Weggar as well.

They've got Jamie Drysdale, who's been out this season, but he'll come back. So they've got this infusion of young defensemen. They've got a lot of skill. they've also been making a lot of mistakes and I'm really curious to see how the next few years go for them in terms of incorporating all those guys and seeing if they're patient enough to see that experimentation phase through. If the ducks don't have the most modern offensive structure from their defense like, say Colorado level in a few years, there is a huge disconnect between their drafting and their actual NHL coaching. You do not draft Paveleman Jukop, Olinzelwager, Heisen Hines, Jackson-Lockeholm, Henry Thrun, if Jamie Drysdale, if you're not trying to create an offensive structure where your defense are driving the play. You don't.

Those are all guys who just learn value comes from being involved, jumping in, creating, getting scoring chances, playing like forwards, proactive activation, add Ian Moore into that mix too late. The list is unbelievable. So if they don't do that, they're crazy. They need to look at their entire organization and start and start asking some serious questions. Yeah. Oh, well, we'll see. I hope you're right and I hope it works out that way.

I'd love to see it in action. All right, Mitch, we're going to take a quirk breaker. And then when we come back, we're going to keep chatting about prospects and the draft retrospectives. You were listening to the Hockey P.D.O. guest streaming on the SportsSide Radio Network. All right, we're back to you on the Hockeypedo guest with Mitch Brown. All right, Mitch, let's keep the conversation going. and hopefully we'll rattle through as many of my notes here as we can, although almost certainly we'll not get through all of them, but that's okay.

Next up on the list. So you had a point about how players rarely develop ran new ways to create offensively, or just in general, not necessarily limited to offensively, after they've been drafted. Instead, they already have existing skills or traits that they learn how to build on, how to adapt, how to refine them, and add some of those layering and detail components, it. I'm really curious about that because I think I've totally changed the way that I think about

this stuff. I remember when I first started covering hockey, I was much more, um, I was much more sort of just like entranced and fixated on one skill. And generally, unfortunately, because it was the easiest to identify visually. It was the shot, right? So you'd watch a guy, you could shoot the buck incredibly well, as you're mentioning. You watch them at lower levels. They skate into the zone. They have a bunch of time and space. They're going up against an inferior. goalie, they pick their spot in the top corner, they hit it, they score a bunch of goals, and you're like, wow, this guy's going to come into the NHL and have an awesome career. And then all of a sudden, they make it to the league, suddenly much less time and space

to operate. They have difficulties getting open, actually being able to use that shot and utilize it to great effect, and they struggle and they quickly either kind of get relegated to fourth line roles or eventually wind up going play in Europe because they just can't make it at the NHL circuit. And so that's something that I've come around to a lot more in terms of, by the only diversity of skills, but seeing stuff that's more kind of projectable and translatable

and how it can be sort of built upon, right? I'm really curious about your take on that and kind of some examples as well for the listeners that kind of hammer that point home. So stuff like higher level stuff, more so skills rather than tools, like tools like skating, shooting or whatever, those things will change and evolve.

over time. The actual way that they use them, though, might not necessarily. For example, either players do manipulate opponents, which is, say, will define it as they do an action to force a reaction out of opponent and then do the thing that they had forced that reaction for. So being first and third in the exchange, bring it the puck in one position, waiting for the defender to poke at it, and then point it back across the body and walk it through them. They manipulated that opponent. That's manipulation. For the most part, players either know how to do that or they don't. And after their draft year, if they don't do it, they won't do it at the next level. That's a pretty continuous thing. That doesn't mean that they won't be NHLers,

but it means that they won't necessarily be creating high value offense in the NHL because they can't do it. And there are some players who do it, but they can't translate it because they only do it one at a time. They only do it through, say, look up, rather than combining the puck position, where their eyes are and where their feet are moving. So my favorite example of this far in a way is Calamacar. Cal McCar and the AJHL, which is where he was strapped out of, is not the Camel McCar that we see in the NHL today. His signature move, the thing that he does has every single game,

virtually every single offensive zone sequence that Colorado has the puck for a while. He takes the puck in motion, steps to the inside, wait for the defender to turn their feet, and then goes in the opposite direction. You see smaller variants of it. You see larger variance of it. Sometimes you just see him bake that he's going to do that or whatever. But the idea here is that he didn't do that in his draft year. The only time I watched like 20-some games, the only time that he did it was in the very last game of the season.

He scored a goal doing it, or at least he created a score and chance that then led to a goal. He did it sometimes in transition, say on rigor groups or something like that, where he's backing out of the zone. The puck comes to him. He fakes out the incoming forecheck and goes the other way. So he didn't learn how to manipulate opponents. He just repurposed something that he did at a very small sample, in a very low volume, into a much greater part of his game as the competition ramped up significantly in the NCAA. He realized that if he wanted to get the same opportunities that he was getting in the HGH,

create those scoring chances, he had to manipulate an opponent. So he started doing it. And you go through up in the list every single article that we wrote for draft retrospective or even the ones who didn't quite make it. it's all like this. It's all players who the answers for problems in their games were already existing. They already had the answer just in a position where they weren't using it. It was hidden away

locked in a different zone or locked it in a different play. And then once they learned how to repurpose it, then they figured out how to create. But if they don't have it at the start, they usually don't have it at the end. Well, I guess part of the complicating factor is trying to decipher for yourself, though, how much of the reason why some of those traits are remaining dormant for large stretches or aren't being utilized with the frequency that you'd think, how much of that is on the individual and how much of that is on the environment, right? And that's such a complicating factor because for all these young

players, it's such a wide array, not only of level of competition, but I think, you know, a level of teammates, like a working theory that I've had for many years is, like, sometimes it's going to be really difficult to evaluate really slick puck-moving defensemen whose skills aren't necessarily very visible in terms of physical trades and they're just skating incredibly quickly or in terms of high point totals but they move the puck from point A to 8 point B in a very efficient fashion if they're playing with inferior players all the time who either can receive those passes cleanly or struggling to put themselves in a position where they're going to receive those passes you're not going to see that as often as you probably would otherwise.

And then you see them coming to the NHL and all of a sudden they take off because they are playing with those players all of a sudden and it meshes much more with their skill sets. I think that's something that's really kind of difficult to contextualize and to decipher how important that is in terms of being a complicating factor. And that's clearly why I think a big reason, amongst many, why drafting is so difficult because you have to suss out, like how much that actually matters. Right.

And this ties into like the broader theme of scouting in general. If you just rely on isolation tape, you're going to miss half the picture. Because you need to understand what their teammates are doing the environment that they're in, what the opponents are doing and so on. You need to have an understanding of the level, what they're being asked to do. How many of these plays are a consequence of them making a bad play or a consequence of the structure? Because there are lots of structures that are very restrictive still. And now as for that player archetype you were talking about,

a great example is Seattle Crack and second rounder Riker Evans. He went undrafted in his first year of eligibility. But he played on a bad team. That he had a ton of breakout skill. You see these like crazy in motion like look off split passes through two four shackers, you know, the stuff that is going to translate. But because it didn't result in anything, no one really watched him. I think we had him ranked way too low.

Then he gets picked the next year after get this. Connor Bedard is on the team. And they develop great chemistry, some really great forward defense of chemistry. between them. You know, Ranker Evans now has a player that he's starting to pass the puck to create the crack and then pick a older D plus one reentry high in the second round, and I just saw the other day he was named to the AHL All-Star team this year. So there's a guy who fits that description in great example why it's important to understand the environment when you're projecting players. Definitely. Yeah, and I think a big one, which is almost impossible

of for us to know, I guess unless, you know, you made the point of Jason Roberts and I know how much he dumped the puck in in Major Junior and then how it's like in isolation, that would be concerning. And then you take a step back and you look at the team structure. It's like, all right, he was actually their most efficient player in transition in that regard. How much of it is, is what the coach is asking him to do. And that's obviously going to change from point to point B in terms of playing on one team. Then you go to another league, you play for a different coach. It's become much less universal. There's much more abhorience in that regard. And so, And NHL itself is adapting as well.

Like you make the point of projecting where the league is headed and rather as opposed to what it is right now, that's another complicating factor as well, right? Where like just because you're playing at your current stop a certain way, what that's going to look like three years from now in an entirely different environment is a huge question mark. Right. And the example that I used for that one was Devon Pave. So I went back and I watched some very old BCHL type of Devon Taves. He was underrafted two years in the BCHL.

It wasn't until he goes to win a Piac, and there's D plus two that he gets picked. In the BCHL, he has an awful stride. Now he's one of the best skaters in the NHL, but you can see it through his edges that he will eventually become that. And his game is just activation. He just joins the play a ton. He does the vast majority of the same stuff that he does in the NHL today, you know, going down the middle, jumping into the rush,

sending up teammates, lots of, well, spreading ahead of, springing up the ice before his forwards, It's like way, some really proactive, futuristic stuff. He's doing this way back in 2013. Then he goes to Quinnipiac of an environment that has always been way out of its time, and he starts doing it more. And it takes him a really long time to get to the NHL. But once he's there, suddenly the game has changed enough that player is like him are now super high in demand.

And he fits perfectly in Colorado Amalan structure, which asks him to like, hey, you know all these things that you were doing back in the NCAA? A. Those are things now that we want to do consistently every single game. We want to have our defense of doing them. I mean, they're Stanley Cup final, three minutes left in the last game. Devon Taves is active in any straight down the middle of the offensive zone. Like him. This is what this he was, it's a great example of perseverance. Don't get me wrong. He stuck to his game through all those years. He improved the stuff that he needed to do. Like, he never deviated from what he wanted to become. But it's also, again, as you said, a great example of project where the game is going.

And as we, as evaluators and as fans, the game becomes more exciting. It's okay to start being like we can rank these small guys really high. We can rank these defensemen who look more like winger's really high because they're going to have a place in the NHL in a few years. It's a copycat league. Teams are going to start copycatting what the Tampa Bay Lightning have done with their defensemen jumping out of the point. And same with Colorado.

Yeah, I mean, DeWont Taves obviously a great situation that he went to to unlock a lot of that. his habits are so exemplary that I'd recommend like any young player try to try to watch and soak up as much of Duan Te's as they can I think and you know to bring it home to what we were talking about earlier his pattern recognition is off the charts right like his ability to kind of quickly figure out when they're in the offensive zone if they're about to lose possession of the puck how the other team's going to break out where they're going to go what the player's going to do and then kind of just mirror them stride for stride and get there before them is remarkable. And, you know, doesn't necessarily have physical traits that are through the roof, but his ability to be the one of the best shutdown defenders elite just through that approach is so cool and I think so rewarding. And I can't recommend enough just like trying to incorporate as much of that as he can and Danny defense in the game.

He's going to be one of the most influential players of this generation. Like right up there with the best, you know, Carmen David, Austin Matthews's shot and subsequently Connor Bedard's small guy variant of the same shot. Cal McCar's activation from the blue line. He's going to be right up there with those guys. It might not necessarily be as obvious in 20 years or so, but the tactics that he employs, the decisions that he makes, the relative uniqueness of them are assuming to become ubiquitous in the sport,

and it's going to have a through line to him, just like how we have forgot that a lot of what modern defensemen do these days is because of what Shane Gothis Bear did in the Frozen Four many years ago. You know, he doesn't get the credit for it. It's Camel McCar, Quintagher, as these are the guys who are revolutionizing the game. But do they do those things if they don't see the Shane Gauthus bear? Do it? It'll be the same kind of thing we're going to be asking ourselves with the Von Taves in a few years, I think. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, one final thing here. I'm kind of curious about skill development, right? Because you know, you have a point in there as well. And we kind of touched on

that a little bit here. But I'm curious for your take on that in terms of, you know, once players get into the league and skills they already have, how they can build on those and how they can grow on. And we talked about the adaptation and repurposing at different levels. But in terms of like individual skills, I kind of want to talk about it, especially like a shot, for example, which I brought up. Or we can use skating as an example as well and kind of how that can grow because that used to something that was such a roadblock for a lot of long players. You beg, oh, well, watch this guy's skating stride. That's clearly not going to work in NHL. And then they come into the league and there's a bunch of success stories of you get them with, you know, high level skating coaches. You get them

working on their craft and all of a sudden you can unlock. They might not become the best skater in the world, but they can get from point A to Point B efficiently enough that it allows all their other skills that they clearly have to play. And it's not as big of a concern as it was before. Right. So skating is a great example. Shooting is also another great example. So when you're evaluating shooting, oftentimes it isn't so much about the exact mechanics of the shot, but more so about the skill around their shot. So are they able to corral tricky passes, shoot it in motion? Do they try to shoot off either leg? How are they able to hold their outside edge of their skate while they shoot? Austin Matthews, for example, the guy who has had a revolutionary shot, shoots completely differently now than he did his dress. draft year. The basic idea is the same that he shoots off one leg or the other. Every time he gets the puck, he's always on one leg or the other, so he can shoot instantly. But the actual way that he shoots has changed considerably. Similarly, the way that McDavid skates had changed significantly

from the time that he was in junior even to his first season in the NHL, whereby for McDavid, he realized that you can't just skate in straight lines. I think he learned this lesson against the Ashawah Generals in the playoffs, that you can't just try to burn and strain up and down the ice, you're going to get caught no matter what, no matter, you know, that's just defensemen or too good. It doesn't matter how fast you're where you need to change pace. With McDavid, he became better at deceleration. Also with acceleration because he got stronger, you got more physically mature, but he got better using this outside out of his being able to stop, quickly cut inside inside.

When you cut inside, oftentimes what players will do, they'll use their outside leg, and then kind of like draw a semicircle, and that's how they cut to the middle. McDavid puts his inside foot, jams it into the ice, and then suddenly he goes out and his turn is like a 90 degree thing. It's more explosive, it's more sudden. It creates more distance. So we found a way in the NHHL to basically add a new skating skill, which they completely revolutionized the way that he could create offense.

Yeah, his ability. Oh, sorry, I was going to say his ability to access those different gears with the speed he does is so unfair, right? When you combine it with the actual raw speed in terms of getting from point A to point P. Yeah, exactly. And so there are all these like little tiny things that you can look at, Like, of course, David is able to pick that up because he is already a, let's call it, a skater who you can't mimic as an average athlete. You won't be able to do the things that he does with his ankles, but you can then take the plays that he does, the plays that he uses to be able to get from point A to point B to the back of the net.

So it's all of those little things that you can kind of find a through line to. I think Jason Robertson is a great example of something in a little different. way where Jason Robertson was this incredible bull in junior hockey, this guy who in a second could take the puck off the boards across all the way around the net to the far side of the post and score. Stuff you don't see, Andrew or hockey, just incredible athleticism, but oh, well, he can't skate. It doesn't really matter when you can do that, when you can do it that quickly when you're that much of a shooting threat. And then he just learned how to pass and then his outside edge skating skill in time was a good indicator that his try would improve too he's still

an ugly skater i don't think anyone's going to deny that but he's so intelligent and he has just the right amount of finesse that he can bold those his way through anyone and if he can't then he'll just out finesse them i'm i'm really curious were you were you doing draft evaluations for keandria miller's draft class i believe it was 2018 yeah yeah i tracked a bunch of dad on him in his draft here and he was one of the best, or still is, one of the best trapped, probably in top five of all time, top ten of the whole time that I've ever tracked.

So, yeah, I was super high on him. I mean, you combined the defensive range, very intelligent, proactive activation, a strong shooting game, and the breakouts. The breakouts were pristine. Of course, this is a time when breakouts were more about stretching the ice, and so people saw him just bombing the puck and being like, oh, well, that was a dumb play.

But that was the style. You needed to stretch the ice, make long-range plays. And if you can find, you can make three-line passes through three defenders to a teammate, you can surely make the short-range pass off the cords to the middle for a more modern breakout, right? So, yeah, we were super high on him. I was big, big, big fan. And the data was, the data suggested that he could be a potential top pairing defenseman, for sure. Yeah, I've been so fascinated by his progression, right, because he turns 23 this week.

He's been in the league for a few years now. they put a lot in one sense they put a lot on his plate in terms of like last postseason I think no defenseman played more five one five minutes than him throughout the rangers run like they've they've relied on him quite heavily but at the same time his like individual skill set versus what he's been asking to do has has left me wanting more on the offensive side of things as he's kind of going to grow into what he is right now in the nchel and you're seeing it a lot more this year where he's flourishing he's going to i think crack like 40 something points he's being much more involved offensively, but I've always been so tantalized by, you see the individual rushes,

you see the ways he can play. And there's no reason in my opinion why he can't be an offensive gamebreaker to go along with the defensive side of things where he's already, like you mentioned the range. I mean, his ability to just kill plays with his reach and his skating and how much grounding in cover is so destructive to the other team's offense. And if you combine those two, all of a sudden, you have one of the best defensemen in the league. And it's been a slower progression offensively, but I really believe that's there, and so I'm really curious to see if he can keep tapping into that more, and if, you know, Gerard Galant and the Rangers allow him to do so. Yeah, and his two years with Wisconsin weren't exactly productive. If he was a bit on an island

there, they played a structure that did not align with what he did at all. And so he kept doing the things that he had always done, but no one was prepared for him. There were tons of turnovers. Again, he had more great event data results, but still, there were some reason to be concerned just because what he did didn't mesh. Then he goes to the NHL and like there were growing pains. I still think there's a long, a long road for him ahead. But you don't get players who have that level of range, intelligence. And like, this is a player who wants to be in the middle of things at all time, at all times. Like, he relishes the opportunity to take that puck up, beat a guy and then come back and steal it right off him again. He wants to be a difference maker out there and that can't be underestimated.

Yeah. No, I love what I'm seeing from last year into this year and so hopefully that continues. Was there any other young players that you want to talk about in terms of development? I mean, this has been a great season for development success stories, right? Like, whether it's, you know, what we saw from Roberts in last year, obviously in terms of the offensive jump he took, but, you know, everything Page Thompson has basically done. So far this season, I'd even throw in Jack Hughes. It's kind of unfair to say, okay, the first overall pick who clearly had a ton of offensive talent. At the same time, though, like his ability to be as aggressive as he is right now,

and he's amongst the league leaders in terms of his own shock creation, which I thought would come along more slowly or potentially not even be there. I've always thought he'd be much more of a playmaker and distributor at this level, and all of a sudden you're seeing, and he's just like on the puck and generating shots at well. There's so many kind of examples of guys who have just kind of come. into their own and, you know, maybe ahead of the curve and also kind of done stuff that maybe we didn't even think they would be doing at this level. Well, honestly, I kind of, I think there's a great angle with Dylan Strump, to be honest.

Like, this is a guy who was labeled a bust pretty quickly. Didn't really, didn't make the NHL in his draft plus one, even though we score it and saying like 130 points or whatever. He was not very good in the NHL in his seven. game since the next year and then it took him a very long time to get to the NHL and even become like an effective player beyond the power play he's in Washington now he's scoring now he's doing the Dylanstrom things he was drafted too high there's no dispute in that but that shouldn't be held against him right he took advantage of a favorable situation in Erie was very good an incredible player

and he realized that what he did was never going to work in the NHL so instead of accepting that he was going to go back and forth he rebuilt from a ground up because he already had the off-puck game, the intelligence, and the vision. He figured out how to repurpose all those things into making his game more offensively nuanced, so his timing improved. He started shooting off the past more. He learned how to make decisions quicker. And as a result, he goes from a player who was on the cusp of not making any gel to becoming a player who realistically probably should have gone somewhere in the 5 to 15 range. and now he's a perfectly adequate player in that draft range.

I mean, he's a very solid player. He's a success story in his own way. We often look at the players who were drafted too late, and then they beat the odds and became incredible. And I think he's a great example of sometimes even the players who you think just will never make it, figure out a way to do it. Yeah, well, he's certainly carving out what's look like it's going to be a long productive NHL career for him,

which is also kind of funny why when teams, teams and then they've gone away from it a bit here recently and then one wizened up to it but there was an era in an hl drafting where teams would draft role players incredibly high and they'd be like well this guy's going to be a great fourth liner for us or something and it's like no like if that's already what he is he's probably not going to be in the NHL generally the best role players are guys who are very productive major junior players and had to you know take their lumps and and adapt and grow and do essentially exactly what Dylan Strom has done over the past couple years to reinvent themselves and find a way to stick in the league. And so drafting purely for need

gets you into so many issues, but I think that's one of them. Yeah, and there are so many guys that can go up and down the list. I think Trent Frederick was the one who had that famous quote where we drafted this guy to be a third liner. And everyone was like, oh, I can't believe they said that. It turns out he's a perfectly reasonable third liner because as history showed, he was actually you a very skilled player. And in the NHL, like, the average fourth-line in the NHL does things that you would not expect most first-line OHL scores to do. Yep.

And Trent Frederick was in an environment where he didn't get to show off those skills. He goes to Wisconsin. He shows them off. And then he makes the NHL and the exact role of the Brune's projecting Mass. And so we can look at that as then having a poor philosophy, which arguably it might have been. But in this particular case, I kind of like to see it as they were being realistic. That's a very glass half full of you, Mitch.

All right, this was fun. I'm glad we finally got to do this. I'll let you plug some stuff right now and let people know kind of what you worked on and where they can check you out because I've been ending a lot of shows in the past by using this as an opportunity to promote your work. So this is a good chance for you to actually do it yourself. So let the listeners know where they can check you out.

You can follow me at Mitch L. Brown on Twitter.com if it is still alive, which I think it seems to be. doing okay. This is doing okay. So good, good for Twitter. And then also had to E.P.Ringside.com. You can read all of our draft retrospect. It wasn't just me. It was Lassie and David St. Louis, who wrote a lot of great ones like on Capocco, Elmer Soderblum, for example. Check those out. Subscriptions aren't too, too bad, and I'm sure that you will find that our work is very enjoyable. So go over there. Oh, and also check out our YouTube page. Elite prospects. I have a Lane Hudson video coming out soon. We have quite a few more of the videos. And there's a 16-minute video on the evolution of Camel Carr on how we went from this sort of raw AJHL to the best defenseman in the NHL. Talks a lot about what we talked about here just in a much more, I guess, visually satisfying form. Let's put it.

I love it, man. Well, this is a blast. I'm looking forward to continuing to work with you and looking forward to having you back on the show. Now that we've done it once, we've got to have you back. on again. So looking forward to that. Thank you to everyone for listening to the show. We're going to be back tomorrow with another one, another episode of the Hockey PEOCast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.