The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 100: The Avalanche Have Been Saved By Roy

Episode Date: August 17, 2016

Jonathan Willis joins the show to discuss The Patrick Roy Era following his decision to step down from his job with the Colorado Avalanche, the organization's surprisingly shrewd summer, and where they go from here. We also look into the perpetual blame game taking place in Edmonton, and chat about Jimmy Vesey's options. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 1:08 Patrick Roy's last stand 2:59 Colorado's smart moves this summer 7:38 Roy's outdated tactics as a coach 15:40 Who will the Avalanche hire next? 21:11 A quick rundown of Edmonton's offseason 22:20 The Taylor Hall smear campaign 32:38 Jimmy Vesey's rights as a college free agent Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and can also be streamed right here on the website. Make sure subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new shows as they’re released, and also take a minute to leave a glowing review. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices 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.

Are you ready for the most ridiculous internet sports show you have ever seen? Welcome to React, home of the most outrageous and hilarious videos the web has to offer. So join me, Rocky Theas, and my co-host, Raiders Pro Bowl Defensive Inn, Max Crosby, as we invite your favorite athletes, celebrities, influencers, entertainers in for an episode of games, laughs, and, of course, the funniest reactions to the wildest web clips out there. Catch React on YouTube, and that is React, R-E-A-X-X. Don't miss it. This podcast episode is brought to you by Coors Light.

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Hey, Dimitri. It's always very much my pleasure to be here. Well, I mean, obviously your knowledge and sort of the stuff that you drop when you're talking is one thing. But it's your smooth, silky tones that I feel like an instant favorite on the show. Yeah, I'm sure that's it. So it's mid-August, and typically you'd think that, you know, it'd still be at least a couple weeks away from having anything tangible and interesting or at least new to discuss. But lo and behold, in his final act before retreating into the shadows for now,

Patrick Kualt provided us with one last final mic drop. Yeah, that's got to, I can't remember. I was thinking about it, and I couldn't remember an instance where a head coach had just suddenly resigned in mid-August, in the NHL at least. like nothing came to mind. Yeah, and we'll discuss in a second what sort of the impact that has on the avalanche and how it will affect their coaching search.

But I think that it is fascinating to me that by all accounts, it does sound like Patrick Wall really did leave this team on his own accord. He was potentially kind of pushed out a little bit or kind of, you know, at least shown the door by Joe Sackick over time based on some of the moves they made. But he definitely wasn't fired. And I don't know, it's all sort of speculative.

and Scuttleby at this point, but if you do look at their transactions this summer, that sequence of events certainly would line up based on sort of the thinking that went into those moves. Yeah, it's one of those situations where, well, you saw the reaction from the Aves was a little bit slow. They almost, they seem to have been caught off guard by the move. And if Colorado was going to make a coaching change, you think they would make it much earlier in the summer, just because it's one of those things where if you're going to go hire a coach right now, almost all of the guys who would be, you know, if I were to make a list of the 10 coaches who I would really be interested in, almost all of them have jobs now. And it's going to be very difficult to pry one of them away. So this was, the timing was odd. It really does feel like it was Patrick Waugh's decision. And I think the interpretation that the moves of Colorado made over the summer drove him away to some degree is probably the correct one. It's the only one that really makes sense from the outside. well and you know it definitely sounds like he was a big proponent of making some sort of splash move to

it seems like it's right up his alley right patrick well would obviously want something something entertaining to happen to to really mix things up but instead they i think they actually had a pretty prudent summer where they did a bunch of this small stuff to help on the margins which will really help this team i think because for for a longest time we've been discussing how they have a lot of star power and the top of their roster is really good. It can really kind of keep up with the best teams. But then as soon as you start getting towards the depth there, they fall off the map. And I mean, look, an $800,000 flyer on a stats darling like Patrick Wiracotch or getting

guys like Joel Corborn and Fedor Tutin on extremely low prices to patch those things up and trading their third goalie for Rocco Grimaldi, who hasn't necessarily shown anything at the NHL but has produced the AHL and used to be a top prospect. Like stuff like that really. seems like Joe Sackett kind of took control of the situation, or maybe someone else, but it definitely doesn't seem like, you know, Patrick Wals' fingerprints were on all those moves. Well, one thing I think you can say Colorado did was they, this summer, they demonstrated a commitment to their core players. And maybe that's what the difference is, because not only did

they not make a splashy move and, and like you said, you know, sort of making these smaller value bets, but they didn't, they didn't do anything that indicated they were dissatisfied with the roster of players that they have that they thought these were not the guys to carry the team forward. And that's sort of at odds with things that Patrick Law said over the year. And I wonder if maybe that's where the divergence comes.

Tyson Barry's maybe the best example. They signed him to a long-term contract. And for a long time, you know, well, everybody around the league was watching because there aren't that many right-shot offensive defensemen that could plausibly have been in play. And Barry was one of them.

But part of the reason there was speculation that he was going to go was there was a feeling that people within the Colorado organization were dissatisfied with him and that ended up not being what happened and you wonder if maybe Patrick Waugh thought it was going to go a different way. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And just based on some of the rumblings we're hearing out of that arbitration, it can always be a messy situation where basically if you're the team, you're trying to, you're like telling the player everything you don't like about him

as you try to drive his price down and then ultimately if you wind up coming to terms in a longer term deal. It can be a little bit of an awkward situation. But I guess obviously money can smooth that stuff over. And you look at whether it's Barry or even McKinnon, who they locked up this summer for, what, $6.3 million until he's 27 or Landeskog or Dushan. I do think one thing this management group has done well is get all of their core guys

under contract for their prime years for really, really reasonable prices. Yeah, I think that's fair. and it is something that you don't really generally see NHL teams being given credit for. But signing guys to long-term deals, especially if you have cap space now, it's one of those things that can make for smooth sailing down the road later. Yeah, for sure. And all right, so here's the thing about Patrick Wall. I think that we should preface it by saying that I'll personally miss him.

I think he's going to resurface sometime down the road. But for now, like, his shenanigans were good for the league, right? Maybe they weren't good for the team he was running, but we're always going to kind of justifiably complain about how vanilla some of these players and coaches can be with the quotes they give and the stuff they do. I think we also need to appreciate a little bit sort of how entertaining and how out there he was as a personality.

Well, Patrick Cua has been larger than life since his playing days. He's such a phenomenal personality. He's so interesting. He's so fascinating. From a media perspective, you can't help. love the guy. And I think you make an interesting point about how, you know, we do kind of complain about canned quotes and vanilla responses.

And part of the problem, part of the reason we get those quotes and responses is because when people show personality, they get ground down. Patrick was a good example. I mean, normally the example I would give you is P.K. Saban and the amount of backlash he gets from sort of conventional hockey people. But Patrick was a good example. of a guy who gets hammered even by sort of, you know, the newer wave.

And, you know, maybe, I think you can make the case that a lot of the shenanigans, like you said, you know, they're maybe not good for the team, but they are a lot of fun. And it is nice to see that life in the league. And, yeah, I agree. I'm going to miss him. I don't know that the Colorado Avalanche are going to be any worse off not having him, but I'm going to miss him. Yes.

Yeah. Well, that's elephant in the room, right? where it became clear pretty quickly that he wasn't the guy for the job. It was just in over his head because, you know, I've heard from different people that maybe have spoken to him or know him personally that maybe some of the stuff he was spouting off in the media wasn't necessarily stuff he believed, but it was just sort of his personality to stir things up and build up this adversarial persona. But then you look at the job he actually did on the ice and you definitely raise your eyebrows

because whether it was his man-to-man defensive scheme in his own zone or just his quotes on shot quality and how possession stats were and actually that meaningful all while his team was just getting speed-bagged on a nightly basis, like there was a mismatch there between sort of what he was saying and what was actually happening on the ice. Yeah, I think one of the sort of the interesting things with most coaches that get into this position where their team's getting out shot every night, and especially coaches that are in a position where the team is outperforming their shot metrics, we're at sort of a point in the analytics conversation where it's possible to question how valuable those shot metrics are, right? I mean, I don't think there's a lot of question in the stats community about how valuable they are, at least on the team level.

But if you're in the league itself, this is still something that if you don't come from a sort of a numbers background, you might have some doubts, especially if the team is winning. And so if you are a coach, even if you honestly believe that these shot metrics are predictive and your team's getting hammered, you're kind of in this tough position where you could say, yeah, our shot metrics are bad, our team is terrible, I am a terrible coach, you are right, I'm so sorry. Or you can say, oh, you know, these shot metrics, that's garbage. Look at the wins, man.

And so sometimes when the coaches talk about how pointless these shot metrics are, I wonder a little bit if it's not just self-preservation. And the same sort of thing you do in any other situation where you're going to gloss over the bad because there's no advantage to airing that dirty laundry publicly. I kind of think that that's what drives it a lot of cases, even with coaches who might have some time for the shot metrics, you'll notice that the people who talk about how the shots, you know, Corsi, Fenwick, those sorts of things, the people who talk about how they don't matter, sorry, who don't talk about how they don't.

You never see a guy who's in a top team by the shot metrics talking about how garbage the shot metrics are. Right. It took a while to get there, but that was the point. Yes, no, no, it's a point well taken. I think that timing is everything, right? Because they had that first season

where all the underlying numbers were saying that they were nearly as good as they were, but they just kept winning and winning. And it was a bit surprising, too, because when he took over the team, you know, if it was this slow upper trajectory where the first, second year they missed the playoffs, but they were playing entertaining hockey and winning, you know, we're a 500 team, for example, it might have been a different story, but they came out of the gate so hot that after that I feel like the next two years were just sort of

a courtesy just because they were trying to kind of regain that high. And obviously for people like you or I that were following this stuff, we kind of realized that it was a bit of a fool's bet to be kind of chasing that all over again. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a couple of interesting points worth making there. The first is I think you're absolutely right. They got off to such a great start that they were able to ignore it for a while. The second I'd say is Patrick, Patrick Waugh, what he said on the subject was not dissimilar from what Joe Sackick said on the subject.

Sackick had some very dismissive comments about the whole idea of analytics that first summer because they did play so well. And the final point, I don't think this came as a surprise to anybody who follows the numbers of hockey. Because we've seen this story before. We saw it in Toronto. We saw it in Calgary. We saw it in Minnesota, going a few years further back. Every year, it seems like there is, because this is just the way it works, there are teams that will outperform their shot metrics every year. The shot metrics, I kind of treat them as giving you a probability curve and then you fall in around it.

and there's always, in a 30-team league, there's always going to be at least one team that does significantly better than its shot metrics. And the problem is that it's not the same team every year. Teams don't seem to have found a way, it doesn't seem to be true talent because it's not repeatable. And that's the thing that can get lost because 82 games, like when we talk about it in the summer,

a single season doesn't seem like a long time. But when you're watching 82 games and you're watching each one of these games, it seems like a really long time and when you're good for that long, it's easy to delude yourself into believing that it's, that's the reality. Right. And I mean, you look at these numbers in their totality from when he took over in 2013

until the end of this past season and they're really jaw dropping, right? Like only the Leafs and Sabres gave up more shot attempts at 5 on 5 than the Aves did. And for large stretches of those three years, those two teams you could argue weren't trying to win, right? They weren't even pretending like they were trying to win. and they were actively losing to better their draft stock. And I mean, you go on and on. It's stuff where the abs for a team that was trying to position itself in the standings

and in the media as a team that was contending and definitely had players that are either in their prime now or entering their prime that could help them get there, they were amongst really the seller dwellers in pretty much every other underlying category. So I think the fact that it took this long to happen is really kind of the only surprising thing. well and and i think maybe it speaks a little bit to goaltending too because if you if you arrange these teams by shot metrics and you look at the teams that are you know at the bottom their bottom quarter of the league or so most of them have not had phenomenal goaltending Colorado has had a 928 save percentage over patrick wa's time there and i know patrick waugh has said things in the media about

you know semyon varlamov not being a good enough goaltender for them i don't know if he put it that bluntly, but he has criticized his play. And I look at it and I go, are you kidding me? Like, why do you think you've been surviving the way you have? It's, um, this would not even be close. You would be,

you know, the Maple Leafs or the Sabres if it weren't for the fact that you've had pretty good goldending. Yep. Yep. And, and I mean, listen,

the, the one sort of counter that I think Patrick Walsh supporters would have is that you look at this blue line they've assembled and it's clearly not great by any means. But at the same time, there is talent there. And when you watch this team, it's one thing to not be good enough. It's another thing to just look like you're unprepared and not necessarily have a game plan. And when you looked at them in the defensive zone, there was just so many situations where they were scrambling and leaving guys wide open in the slot area that you do wonder how much of it was personnel based and how much of it was actually coaching.

Yeah. And that's always the tough call with these sorts of situations. But what I would say is if you look at the shot metrics over time, Colorado has actually gotten worse. Like I'd have to go back and run the numbers. But as I recall, Patrick was first year with the team was either the high watermark or close to it. And it was certainly better than this season. And when you see that kind of deterioration over time, it makes it easier to believe that it's coaching rather than personnel. Because theoretically, the personnel is not getting worse, especially with a team like Colorado, which has a lot of young players.

and, you know, with time, a coach should be able to, you know, the first year is sort of a transition year, and then you should be able to instill the things you want to instill and make some forward progress. And that didn't happen with the aves. Well, and I guess we'll see pretty quickly based on, you know, the new coach they hire, whether they have turned to leave here and whether Joe Sackick and the people pulling the strings are a bit more progressive and whether it was Patrick Waugh who was to blame mostly or whether it is a personnel thing. But I'm kind of just looking at the landscape of coaches they could potentially hire. And the timing is rough because it is, as you mentioned, it's mid-August now.

And it's certainly an unconventional time to still be looking for a bench boss. And you wonder if a team like this, if they had pulled the trigger on this a few months ago and been in the sweepstakes for a guy like Bruce Boudreau, how different things would be. Well, that is the problem. And there's sort of an X factor there. I can't say definitively how teams are going to react if Colorado comes and says, hey, we want to hire your guy or we want to interview your guy. We don't have a lot of history of how that works in August.

Because there's theoretically enough time between now and the start of the season that if you have an assistant coach or an American league coach, you could theoretically replace him. But you run into the same sort of problem. Colorado's having right now. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of these teams go, no, you can't talk to our guy. It's way too close to the season. You know, we're getting ready for training camp. We, we just don't have the ability to depart with him. And if that's the case, then Colorado ends up looking at, you know, somebody like Bob Hartley. There aren't very many people

like Bob Hartley out there. Or somebody who's in sort of a unique situation. I think of, you know, Dale Hunter in the OHL or Brent Sutter in the WHOHL guys who, because they own their teams, have the latitude to do pretty much whatever they want. But there aren't that many guys out there. Yes, yeah. And I do wonder if, you know, some of these guys might also be eyeing that potential vacancy in Las Vegas, which still hasn't been filled yet, which adds another wrinkle to the coaching landscape.

Yeah, it absolutely does. And we saw this with, well, the thing about Las Vegas versus Colorado, if Colorado doesn't improve, I mean, Joe Sackick's now, what, three years into his tenure? Well, it's hard to tell because he wasn't named general manager immediately when he came to the team, although he, but the thing is, you don't necessarily know what the long-term future is in Colorado. in Las Vegas, I mean, we've seen expansion coaches get fired right away, but then you look at a guy like Barry Trots in Nashville, and basically he did a good job, and he had a job for an incredibly long time by NHL coaching standards, and you know you're going to get a grace period

because that always happens with expansion coaches. So absolutely, the position in Las Vegas is going to be intriguing for anybody who doesn't have work yet. Yeah, well, I mean, you mentioned a guy like Bob Hartley, And I think that would be literally the definition of a lateral step if they went to a guy like that. And I'm always, I'm always pro giving whether it's a guy in the HL or in major juniors, I'm like that, a chance to come up and prove himself rather than going with a known commodity, which you know isn't that good to begin with.

Yeah, that, I don't, Hartley's an interesting guy. Because Hartley's had success in the past. But the problem is that his, his run in the sort of the analytics era that period since 2007-08 has almost entirely been with Calgary and

I mean there's a bit of time with Atlanta in there but these are not good teams that he's been coaching so it's a little it's you run into the same situation where you're trying to separate the coach from the roster so I wonder a little bit of Hartley's is you know because there's kind of two versions of Hartley like let's not forget he won the Jack Adams

trophy in 2014-15 so the sort of analytics perspective that he's he's not that great of a coach, is not necessarily the consensus viewpoint. And I'm not 100% sure that the sort of the analytics view of him is, is accurate. Having said that, he wouldn't be near the top of my list. Right. Well, especially, I mean, you mentioned he did win the Jack Adams. The track record of Jack Adams Award winners and what's happened to them in the next couple of years isn't necessarily the best thing.

I think that's the strongest argument for ignoring. Jack Adams' trophy voting is how often these guys get fired very, very quickly after. Yes, just sort by the PDO column and figure out. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because it really is the sort of comeback coach or the surprise coach of the year. And usually the reason you're a surprise coach of the year is not only maybe did you do a good job, but a lot of things went your way. Right.

And it's very expectations-based, right? Like if you're expected to be one of the best teams in the league and a contender and you do it, it's like, great, you did your job. whereas if you're a team that wasn't necessarily expected to do anything, and all of a sudden you're right up there in the standings, it's like, whoa, the coach must have done something miraculous here, so let's reward him for it. Yeah, if you're, you know, if you're Mike Babcock or Joel Quinville,

you generally don't get those awards. I mean, Babcock, now that he's in Toronto's got a much better shot at it than he did in Detroit. Right. All right, Jonathan, so you cover the Edmonton Oilers pretty closely, and I think that, let's do it this way. Let's pretend that I just woke. up from a coma that I went into in mid-June and I'm wondering what the Edmonton Oilers exactly

did this summer. Give me a quick rundown, a keynote's version of what happened this summer with them. Okay. So first you're going to want to sit down and maybe pour yourself a drink. So the landmark move here was they traded Taylor Hall to New Jersey for Adam Larson, one-for-one deal. They signed Milan Luchick to replace Taylor Hall. They drafted They had Yassie Puli RV fall into their lap at fourth overall the drafts, so they took him. And they signed Jonas Gustafson to be their backup goaltender, and they also bought out Lori Corpikoski. And that's the Cole's Notes version. So, okay, let's take it from the top there.

So the Taylor Hall thing is interesting to me because obviously, I think we've discussed on this show plenty of times about just marveling at how remarkably effective he is as a player. and the fact that at 24 years old, he's only conceivably kind of entering his peak years right now. But the backlash to this trade has been, or not necessarily the backlash, but the stuff that's trickled out afterwards from the Edmonton media has really caught my eye because it's not necessarily surprising that it happens.

Generally, you see this stuff take place after a big trade, but just sort of the, whether it was the Oscar Cliffbaum thing about how, I think it was a Swedish report about how he struggled against the top teams in the league, or I've seen other Edmonton-based writers question, Taylor Hall's leadership and wonder whether the oilers are better off now without him in the room like I don't know just what do you what do you think when you see stuff like

that come out I think it's a little bit in a lot of situations you see a player leave town and the slagging is sort of instigated in the media immediately I don't know that that's actually what happened here like Oscar cleftbaum gave this report he didn't give it to an Edmonton journalist he gave it to you know a Swedish paper So that, it's sort of organic. You know, nobody was prompting Ben Skirvins to say things about Taylor Hall. Nobody was taught, it's one of those things where, and the crazy thing is that this did not start this season, right? Like, it's not, like the Edmonton media that I've seen sort of questioning his leadership, in some cases, you know, this is going back to 2014, 2015, pieces that were written then.

talking about based on people in Edmonton management saying things like, well, you know, culturally, maybe he's not the greatest fit or whatever. So this is, I don't just hand-wave it away. I don't think it's fair to do that. I don't think it's fair to take it at face value and go, oh, well, Taylor Hall was a terrible person and an awful human being in the room. But I do think it's one of those points cases where if that's what you're focusing on, you're really losing sight of the big picture. I don't have the numbers at my fingers, but over Taylor Hall's career, the Oilers are something like plus five when he's on the ice and minus 200 when he's off the ice. Like it's literally that stark. So don't talk to me.

Don't talk to me about the intangibles. The tangibles here are so massive that I don't care what the intangibles are. And to me, a huge part of it is the product of saddling him with the failures of the Oilers rebuild as a whole. and when you look at his performance on the ice, to me it's ridiculous to saddle him with the failures of this franchise. You cannot blame Taylor Hall for the sins of Leonard Petrel. So that's my capsule view of it. I think the sins of Leonard Petrel should be like the name of some rock band or something. The thing, the trouble I have reconciling sort of the culture and intangible stuff is I definitely think that.

it's a thing, right? It's it, it plays a role because there is a human element to the game and dealing with people on a daily basis. But when there's such a big divide between that and the product we're seeing on the ice, that's where I kind of raise my eyebrow. And you mentioned it, I mean, from 2010 to 2016, which is the length of time Taylor Hall was in Edmonton, whenever he was on the ice, they were a 50.6% a 5-on-5 goals for a team, which is, you know, in the black, barely, but it's still, compared to it. to the fact that they were 43.9 when he was off the ice, like, it's, if, if he was such a problem, wouldn't you see some of these issues start to manifest themselves while he was on

the ice as opposed to pretty much when anyone else on the team was being tasked with, with, with, with, with playing? Like, it's, it's, the, the, the divide there is just something that I can't really kind of wrap my head around. Yeah. I, I think, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're looking at things from a, you know, sort of a cultural leadership in the room standpoint, people will say the results aren't necessarily when he's on the ice. He's contributing to team morale as a whole and looking at it that way, you're missing the leadership part. And I don't know if I can't say that that's not true. If it's legitimately a problem, I can't say it's not true. I do think that there are intangible things that matter and that just hand-waving

them away is probably a bad idea. But I mean, let's have some perspective here. right? Like this is, it's such a small part of, and the other thing is, the way I'm talking, I'm sort of giving credence to the idea that he was, you know, not a great leader or whatever. And that would be a mistake too, because basically what we have are little half comments from people, a lot of times, you know, outside of Clefbaum's comment, which actually, you know, didn't reference character so much as it did on ice performance. Outside of that comment, a lot of this stuff is done by people who, you know, never gave their name to the press. Never, or sorry, never had their names published at the very least.

Like this is sort of shadows and innuendo and rumors. And it's amazing to me how much this stuff forms a life of its own. Because, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. So we don't get to actually see what's going on in the room all the time. So we sort of latch on to this gossip and take it as fact. And to me the idea that you're running out. The most effective player, maybe the only truly effective player of the last six years in Edmonton based on rumors and gossip and innuendo.

It's baffling to me. Yeah, yeah. And then, I mean, kind of flipping it around to the guy they got in return, I always, might not necessarily be fair to Adam Larson as a player, but I always get squeamish just the idea of trading directly for need and giving up value to do so. And it certainly seems like the Oilers did exactly that here because I'm sure that as soon as New Jersey kind of got word that this was the trade, the Oilers were looking for. They couldn't announce this trade quickly enough. Like it just seems like such a no-brainer for them, regardless of how Larsen really does in Edmonton. What are your thoughts on him as a player?

Because it is a bit of a polarizing subject because he was a former top pick. And, you know, he has these tools when you watch him play. and there's reason to be optimistic, but at the same time, he's been in the league for a handful of years now, and we haven't necessarily seen any of that translate into actual on-ice success. Yeah, Larson's a really interesting player. I like him quite a lot, actually.

To me, though, it's one of those situations where I'm always, I always dock a guy for playing with Andy Green. I just do, and Andy Green's a superb defenseman, and I don't really trust a guy until I see what he can do away from Andy Green. So there is that. He had, he played extremely tough minutes last year. Like if you look at how NHL coaches use their shutdown defense pairing, you could make a case that New Jersey put Larson and Green through the ringer more than any other team did with their guys. And Larson's numbers in that context are pretty decent. I guess what it comes down to is,

looking at it independently of the trade. Adam Larson's a great fit for Edmonton. and I just can't get to the point where, you know, he's worth Taylor Hall. Right. Yeah, that seems kind of the weird thing for me. I feel like he was available for much less than the price the oilers actually paid for. Well, I wonder about that. Like, if you're New Jersey and you're talking to Edmonton, who do you take off the roster instead? You know, like, does Ryan Nugent Hopkins get it done for you?

I don't know that he necessarily does. It's a little surprising to me that it was a one-for-one deal. But then this sort of fits Peter Shirelli's MO, even in Boston. You look at things like the Cabrilla trade. You look at the Sagan trade. You look at the, I was looking at their cup winning team the other day. They traded Blake Wheeler for Rich Peverely. And I mean, Blake Wheeler then was not the Blake Wheeler now.

But even so, this is something, and it's something Peter Shirelli did with Griffin Reinhart last year. This is not a general manager who has a, like once he identifies a player he wants, he has a history of pain, you know, whatever it takes to get them. And that to me is, that to me is probably what happened here more than anything else. Like we can talk about, you know, these whispers about Hall's character or whatever. Really, it boils down to, for me, Edmonton was a wasteland on the right side. You hear Peter Shirelli talk about Adam Larson. It's clear that he loves this player. And Taylor Hall was the trade that he could make to get it done. So he got it done. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure I necessarily use.

the Griffin-Reynard trade and the Blake Wheeler for Rich Peverely as two signs of optimism for the whole. Oh, no, I'm, I'm just trying to put it in context here. I don't think that it's, I don't think it's a good trade. I don't think it's a trade. It's certainly not a trade that I would have made in his shoes, but, you know, this does sort of, he has a history of doing this. Right. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think the, I think the Oilers will be entertaining to watch, at least this coming season. Obviously, with whenever you have a guy like McDavid and some of the other assets they have up front there. It'll be reason to tune in on a nightly

basis, but I do wonder if things go sour again, based on some of the holes they have in their lineup, who is going to be the one to blame when things goes south? I don't know. Is it going to be Ryan Nugent Hopkins next? Is it going to be Peter Shirelli eventually? I don't know where the dominoes are going to fall next.

Well, it will be Peter Shirelli eventually if it doesn't turn around. Jordan Nebrile is already sort of transformed from patron saint of Edmonton to to Whipping Boy, so he would probably be the front runner for the next season. But it's hard to know in advance. Really, it kind of depends on which good young player who's been around for a while has a bad year.

Right. Because I mean, like a year ago, it was Ryan Nugent Hopkins was, you know, the savior, and 2014-15, he was great, and you were wondering a little bit about Taylor Hall. And then Taylor Hall had a great year. And, yeah, it's one of those things that you can't really predict in advance who people will turn on. I think it's probably still a little early to turn on Peter Shirelli, but that haul trade, it's so dramatic that things might sour on him if things go south immediately. Yeah, he could sort of call this shot there. Hey, Jonathan, before we get out of here, I feel like we have this obligation to talk about Jimmy V.C.

just because it is sort of the main storyline going on in the hockey world right now. And I think that rather than focusing on the on-ice perspective, because I don't think either you or I would necessarily classify. ourselves as prospects guys and we can sort of look at his superficial numbers and judge him that way. But I don't think that's going to necessarily do us much good or provide a lot of nuance. I think the more interesting aspect of this entire discussion is the fact that people seem to be taking issue with the fact that he's doing his due diligence here and waiting to ultimately pick where he wants to play. Like that's baffling to me, considering that it's his right and it's something that's been

collectively bargained in the CBA in the past. Like, why wouldn't he be, he doesn't necessarily owe anything to the Buffalo Sabres, for example, who traded a third round pick to get his negotiating rights? Like, he should do exactly what he can do for his best interest, right? Oh, absolutely he should. But this is always extremely controversial. The way the NHL system works, you know, once these kids are drafted, basically they don't have any options until they're 27. Like, that's just, that's the system. You are a servant of whichever team takes you until you're 27 years old unless you do something really radical.

So this loophole, and it's not actually a loophole because they know about it and they didn't close it, but we can, you know, it's often called a loophole where a guy who takes that certain route gets to head to unrestricted free agency at such a young age, that drives people nuts because we're not used to thinking about young players like that. You know, your team drafts you, you now owe something to the team. and most players, you know, go along with it. Most players don't have other options. And it's jarring when somebody does. And you go, well, why does Jimmy Vessie get to do that and not, you know, pick a prospect?

Yeah. I don't think there's any, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. You know, he's exercising his right. If I were an unrestricted free agent at the age of 23, I'd certainly consider my options before making a decision. I'd certainly want to talk to other teams. Why wouldn't you? What's the downside? Yeah.

But yeah, you always get criticized. And this has happened. I can't think of a case where this has not happened where a player was drafted, checked out his options, and wasn't, you know, vilified by the team that had his rights. Yeah. And I think the track record in the recent past on these guys has been sort of mixed. You obviously have kind of success stories, but then you have guys that either have lived up to the hype or have completely flamed out. And I think that obviously for the team that's going to sign him, it's a, it's a, no-brainer just because it's essentially a free asset you're paying the the money to actually sign

his contract but it's still it'll serve as an ELC and it'll be capped for him and and you're not burning a pick on him so it's it's a no-brainer to add an asset like that into your system but I do I do wonder like a guy that's already 23 years old I mean we just mentioned taylor hall's 24 for example and people have been talking about him like he's this you know aging veteran who's been in the league forever and Jimmy vc's just a year younger and I wonder what his actual ceiling as a talent will be once he gets to the NHL it'll probably be he'll probably be be an instant contributor, but I just wonder whether people are getting a bit too excited just because it is mid-August and there's nothing else to talk about.

That's part of it. And part of it, I think, is the way the system works. I remember reading a story about the NHL restricted free agency, unrestricted free agency system. And it was talking about back in the 90s and the, I mean, take this with a grain of salt, because I can't remember where it came from. But basically, the, you know, the argument was made within the NHLPA, according to this story, that unrestricted free agency, the way it worked having a narrow trickle where guys only made it at the H. 31 was the best possible

outcome for the NHLPA because it artificially inflates these guys. You know, if the only players you can add without giving up an asset or making a trade, the only guys you can add for just money are all 31 years old, those guys instantly become way more attractive than they would be if you have access to guys who are 26, 27, 28. And, no, that makes sense. Well, it's the same thing with college free agency, right? Like, how often does an NHL team get to add a, you know, what would you place Jimmy Vessy's value at?

A first round pick? Maybe, you know, maybe a late first round pick. High second, late first, whatever you want to call it. That's free. All of a sudden you get, you know, if you can get that for free, that's a big win, especially with how crazy the draft is these days as a, you know, you know, know, like the draft is what teams build on. And you hear this all the time from NHLGMs.

So you get the chance to add a free, call it a number 40 overall pick. Yeah. You get that as chance to add that for free. And there's only one of them out there. Of course it becomes a crazy bidding war. And of course the player gets overhyped. Like it's just a product of the system. Yeah. No, that makes sense.

Jonathan, thanks for taking the time, man. It was fun as always. is the part of the show where you kind of plug some of the stuff you're working on and where people can follow you online and check out some of your great work. Right. Well, I'm going to plug my Twitter account then at Jonathan Willis on Twitter, and I write all over the place, but everything gets published there. Sweet.

Well, I'm sure we'll have you back on sometime in the near future, and we'll catch up on everything that's going on in the hockey role then. It was always a pleasure, and, yeah, thanks for having me on today. The Hockey PEOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at SoundCloud.com slash HockeyPedioCast.