The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 113: So You're Saying There's a Chance

Episode Date: November 8, 2016

Bill West joins the show to discuss how Sidney Crosby is still holding onto his claim as the league's best player, how the Rangers are trying to emulate the Penguins style, and what it's been like covering Mike Sullivan. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 1:00 Sidney Crosby is still the best 10:45 The difficult Metro Division 16:00 Creating a high number of scoring chances 21:00 Mike Sullivan's emergence from Tortorella's shadow 25:30 The battle for the crease This episode is brought to you by Freshbooks, an online accounting service designed to save time and help avoid all of the stresses that come with running a small business. They’re currently offering a free 30-day trial to listeners of our show at Freshbooks.com/PDOcast (just remember to enter “Hockey PDOcast” in the ‘How You Heard About Us’ section). Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and can also be streamed straight from this website. Make sure to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss out on any new episodes as they’re released. All ratings and reviews of the show are greatly appreciated. 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.

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Welcome to the Hockey Pee-Ocast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Bill West. What's going on, man? I'm doing all right. And recovering from the West Coast swing and, you know, having a day off. It's always always nice after a pleasant but certainly, you know, long, long trip. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, as you just mentioned, you're your finger all over the Penguins Pulse as the team's beat writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. And I thought it would be interesting to have you on because obviously, you know, the Penguins have all these stars and they won the Cup last year. So there's a lot of angles we could take in kind of just discussing them. And the first one that I thought would be interesting was Sydney Crosby, because as I was tweeting this weekend, I feel like, you know, with this whole youth movement in the NHL with players like McDavid and Matthews and Line A coming along,

obviously they've made the league so much more fun to watch and follow as a fan. But you have one of these kind of weird minor subplots where people are just really wanted an anoint Connor McDavid as the best player in the world just because it's sort of like the shiny new toy syndrome like he's just the new guy and he's so amazing to watch and you just want it to be the case already but I was kind of making the point that regardless of all that I still think that Crosby's the best and I don't even know if that's a is that like a controversial statement to make at this point or is it just something we all agree upon no I don't think there's any controversy you know my my big frustration and this happened last year a little bit at least

from my vantage point when you get into B. Carlson or even Shea Weber and P.K. Subon, we're always trying to define the absolute best and you pinpoint superiority as if it's something that can be, you know,

quantified and really, you know, nailed down and this guy is without question, superior in every way. That's really hard to do. And I think with Crosby, you know, if you want to compare Crosby and McDavid, who of course they'll be going against other on Tuesday.

I'm sure I don't know when people are listening to within the next 24 hours of this recording. It's just the difference of styles right now. Crosby is playing such a complete game. And that's really something I think has come along in the past, you know, season, season and a half, I'll say the defensive side of the game for him, partially because they need him to do that right now. and they trust him to play both ends of the ice at such a high level. It's just really amazing, and McDavid might very well get there. But I think right now, McDavid, you're just seeing a really talented,

you know, athletic young guy that is making highlight real plays. So they can both be the best in kind of different unique ways. I don't have any qualms with people saying that, but, you know, I tend to get a little tired of the – McDavid is the best because he's clearly – I don't know, more, you know, just exciting right now. Well, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's just so different.

The way they approach it is so different. I mean, you could kind of sit someone down that's never really watched hockey before and have them watch an Edmontono knows game. And right away, they would just notice that Cottonberg, David, is just faster and more skill than everyone else nice. So it just sort of like beats you across the head, just like realizing just how, like, the otherworldly talent this guy possesses. But with Crosby, especially at this stage of his career, it's, it's more sort of methodical and subtle.

And I feel like for hockey nerds, like when you watch him kind of striding through the neutral zone and someone, and like his defenseman throws an outlet pass and it's kind of off, but he just, you know, casually gets it from his skates to his stick without really breaking his stride or some of the stuff he does like the other night in California when he was lost a stick and he was just kind of casually cycling the puck in the offensive zone

and getting it to a teammate, you know, while fighting defenders off and making it look so effortless. So I think it's, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of that just because I always make this point with Henrik Lunkwitz, for example. He makes it look, he's so good and it's been going on for so long, and he makes it look so easy that you kind of just naturally become

a little numb to it, and you just sort of expect that greatness as opposed to appreciating it every time he does something crazy. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, it's, you know, when he was cycling the puck and just using his feet, like that is cool, that is noticeable. I think people say that. But yeah, with Crosby,

there are just so many things that he does so well, but they're subtle, and they're really just not sexy. Even the way Crosby plays overall, certainly when he's at his best and playing the style of the game he prefers, it's still kind of a grindy game. He likes to go to the net. He likes to use that body and possess the puck,

and he plays a very fast game and likes to go north-south, which is exciting. But I was thinking about this on the flight back from there because for years in Pittsburgh, there's always been the debate about, you know, who's better Malkin or Crosby. And as I just said, I'm not a big fan of the who's best in an absolute term. You know, I feel with Malkin is kind of like the McDavid thing. I think Malkin is a better shooter and he's always had higher potential or likelihood

to give you that like just incredible highlight. You know, last year, the best goal I saw was, you know, purely from like an excitement and talent standpoint was, you know, Malkin did. a kind of backhanded spinneroo against the oilers now, if I recall correctly. And it was just a sick goal. I mean, it's, you know, if you take away significance and timing and things like that in terms of when it happened in the season, it was just an awesome highlight. So, you know, again, I think does Sid play like that?

Usually no, I think he can. He's plenty capable. But he just doesn't usually take that route. He makes kind of the more simple and, you know, I guess you could argue effective play a lot of times. But there are still so many crazy things. Like I said, they're just smaller, whether it's handling the puck with his feet a lot. And certainly he does do that. You know, the other night against, wasn't it anaheim game, I think so.

He throws, you kind of get to lose puck down low, spins backwards without really checking to see what's going on back there. You know, throws a bounce pass off the wall behind a defenseman right on the Tang's dick for a one-timer. And as Latang's taking this one-timer, Crosby circles back, goes to the net, gets a rebound scores. Like, it's just a chess game for him. And, yeah, there are just so many other guys that are kind of playing checkers out there. Yeah, yeah, I've always thought that, you know, on any given night, Malkin's kind of upside or what he's capable of might be a little bit higher just because he is such a freak. Like, there's no one else that can really do some of the stuff that he can at that. size of that skill level, but just like over the 82 game season, chances are that, you know,

more nights Crosby is going to bring it. And I don't know, like, the thing that's fascinating for me with Crosby is I remember there was that one season where he scored 50 goals and it was just like became kind of clear that he had decided, I don't know if he set personal goals for himself or what, but he was just going to shoot more and score more. And so far this year, I mean, obviously he's not going to keep scoring on nearly 40% of the shots he takes, but it has kind of been a little bit obvious that he's been shooting more and it's and the goal scoring has been more of his contribution than it has in the past. Do you think that's something that's going to sort of continue or do you think it just kind of like a six game fluctuation and it'll kind of

even out and he'll get back to being more of a playmaker instead? It's certainly an intriguing point to me. That's what I wrote about in today's paper that yeah, his shot rates, whether it's attempts or shots on goal scoring chances. All that stuff is at career highs and like you said it's six games for him. So, you know, it's very vulnerable to fluctuation and, you know, could easily regress over the next six games. But if this is something that

stabilizes or, you know, comes close to what it's been lately, yeah, you're going to see Sid's score a lot. And, you know, the penguins aren't going to complain, especially the other part of the story, is Malkin and Phil Kessel, who have had, you know, 12 games each show,

a slightly more meaningful sample size, I guess, aren't shooting much at even. and strength. They're both kind of at career lows, or at least since they've gone back to, you know, tracking shot attempts in 2007. So the penguins kind of need shooters right now are certainly high-end, talent shooters, because it's fine if Matt Cullen is creating more offense than,

you know, anyone expected, but you still don't really think Matt Cullen's going to become a, you know, a 25-goal score anytime soon. So they might need Cid to do it. And again, Sid just can do anything. You know, when you talk to teammates, when you talk to opponents, that's always the point they make. And that's really why, I guess, if we're going to talk about best and things like that with Sid, it's just completeness. Sid can play any style, you know, at an elite level. And if that means he has to be a goal score for some period of time and, you know, really take a lot of shots, I think he's 100% cool with that.

Yeah, I mean, Crosswee's reached that, you know, really rarefied era of pro athlete where if there's ever been a summer where people have kind of been nitpicking something about his game, I remember early in his career, it might have been after his rookie season when people were like, oh, he, you know, he can't win face-offs. He's struggling so much of the circle. And then he just, like, goes into his lab or whatever in the summer and just reprograms himself and comes back, just being really, really good at making a point of being awesome at that one thing, people were nitpicking. So I think that, I just can't, if I was, if I was, if you were asking me, like, what does Crosby not do well?

I honestly couldn't even give you an answer. I feel like he does everything better than like 95% of the league. Yeah, I can predict what people would have an issue with is Sidney Crosby isn't enough of a gun. I'm sure there are people out there like, well, you know, he doesn't agitate enough, he doesn't fight enough, he doesn't hit enough. It's like the stuff you don't really want your star doing anyway, but I'm sure there are people out there like, well, yeah, but you look, you know, I'm trying to think of

a, you know, the more irritating, Brad Marchan, he's irritating. so it should be more like that. It would truly have to get absurd at this point, though, yes, to find something that Sidney Crosby doesn't do and do well. All right, enough about Crosby. I feel like 10 minutes worth of us saying that a really good player is really good is not the type of analysis that people came on this podcast for. So let's move on.

The Metro Division is looking like it's going to be an absolute slugfest up at the top. I mean, the Penguins are obviously going to be really good, but then the Capitals last year's Metro Division champ are looking as good. good as ever and the surging rangers and i wanted to talk to you a little bit about uh team building philosophy here because i can't help but notice the parallels between the penguins and the rangers where uh it's obviously the rangers don't have guys like crosbie and malkin so they're starting a bit behind the curve but they're both teams that can roll four lines without much drop off they play incredibly fast and they kind of keep their opponents on their heels constantly and have

great goaltending and it makes up for what some might view as suspect blue lines um i don't know Have you noticed those parallels? And I guess people always discussed it being a copycat league. And I just wonder if, you know, last year the Rangers were kind of embarrassed in the first round by the penguins skating laps around him. And I wonder if they went back this summer and they were like, how can we make sure that never happens again? Yeah, I absolutely think.

I don't know if the penguins deserve credit for it. They're the easy one to point to because they won the cup and they did follow that approach. But, you know, Tampa Bay's had really solid forward death for a while. they also have some fantastic defensemen and good goalies. So, you know, it's easier to maybe overlook that because they have so many complementary pieces. And, you know, Florida, I think, is kind of following a similar blueprint. I know you had written about that in terms of just putting together the best forward corks you can as opposed to always trying to, you know, find at least three guys that are out there to be agitators

or, you know, defensive specialist, PK guys, whatever. Yeah, I think what New York did, I was really, encouraged isn't the right word, but I just approved of the moves that the Rangers made during the offseason to improve the speed up front. And like you said, when you have kind of an iffy defensive corps, if you bring in guys that can play good two-way hockey as forwards and forecheck well, back check, do all that stuff, it does lighten the load on your defensemen. You know, the defensemen in Pittsburgh talked a lot last year, and they still say this year about their jobs are pretty easy.

They have to play a pretty simple game. They're really just going to go back, get pucks that are dumped in because the back check and forecheck from the forward is so good that they don't leave teams many other options. So you retrieve the puck and then you move it back up to the forward as quickly as you can. And that's it. It's about maintaining pretty good gaps and, you know, really just. being good with your first pass, but it's not a a pretty demanding role. So the Rangers, it's a question of whether they have enough talent.

They don't have quite the stars of the Penguins do, but it might not be necessary. If you just play good team hockey and abide by the system, you can go pretty far. Right. I mean, it's all about just kind of squeezing the value and optimizing your lineup. I mean, the one thing Penguins have done really, really well is, aside from the star is that, you know, they have regular contributors all across their lineup and they haven't really conform to those regular hockey conventions, as you mentioned, of sort of your bottom six looking like bottom six types. I mean, they have guys like Shiri and Wilson and Rust who are

all regular contributors in that bottom six that are, you know, below six feet tall and weren't really hot commodities coming into the draft or anything. I mean, some of them were undrafted free agents. Some of them were like six or seventh rounders. And they're just kind of stepped in and provide enough skill and do enough things where you're not kind of throwing away shifts by just sending guys out on the boards to go and just throw a body check and then hope that, you know, they're not getting scored on. Like it's, it really kind of puts pressure on the opposition, knowing that they're never going to have these shifts where they can rest up. And I think that's where teams like the penguins and the sharks and the Rangers and the lightning are,

are really kind of ahead of the curve just that they don't have any noticeable drop off all across the lineup. Certainly the talent's out there at this point. You know, spoken to, I tried to write a little bit about the beginning of the season. There's, I don't think, a good reason to go out and get the guys that play with jam, unless that's what you really want. Because, as you just said, Connor Sheree was a, you know, undrafted college free agent. He was available to anyone, but he was small, and, you know, he played well when he was at UMass, you know, UMass, you know, U-Mass Lowell. or no, not Lull. Whatever the main... Amherst, there you go, the main campus.

You know, it's, there's guys like that. I think Alex De Brinkat this year, right? Isn't he one of those guys that was kind of knocked for similar things? You know, people passed on him, even though the projections like him. I think there's just, there's going to be players that, you know, teams for one reason or another still don't trust quite enough. I think in Toronto, like Mitch Marner is not a knock against him. He's not big enough. and as we're seeing, it's a league right now that doesn't really give a damn if you're particularly big.

As long as you can skate and still kind of figure out how to win puck battles, then you're probably going to be pretty effective. Yeah, I mean, obviously the positional demands used to be different, as you mentioned. And also, I feel like there was just the whole supply and demand thing. I think that there wasn't enough skills. So teams had to resort to filling out their lineup and trying to make do. But now there's so many guys just kind of toiling away, whether it's in Europe or the HL, probably could step into most

lineups and produce, you know, at normal fourth line levels and they're just never getting the chance because, you know, they're small or they don't fight or they don't do stuff like that. So I'm glad that the penguins are kind of bucking the trend there. I wonder to pick your brain about something. I'm writing about the Rangers in longer form this week. And the thing that I've noticed with them is

their ability to generate scoring chances has been kind of significantly outpacing their ability to generate regular shot attempts this year. And I wondered if some, some of that is early season fluctuations or if some of that is sort of their style of play making it more conducive to that. And I think that there's a lot of stylistic similarities between them and the penguins right now. So when I look back and both last year and early this season, the penguins have sort of followed the same blueprint there where they've been a good puck possession

team, but their shot, their scoring chance differentials have been significantly more impressive. So I don't know, do you think that is sort of a stylistic thing that's going to lend itself to that where they're playing so fast and they're putting so much pressure on the opposition that, they are creating more scoring chances than your typical team? This is a well-time question because two nights ago after the San Jose game, I asked Mike Sullivan about that. Listen, you know, you guys are winning these games, but you're not out-shooting your opponent. You're not even really matching the shot totals they had last year.

That's kind of been not a concern, but something that's popped up early this season for the Penguins is their shot production is slightly lower. He didn't quite rip me, but he made it very clear that scoring chances matter way more to the team than shots. And they often both Sullivan and his players point out that the shot clock can be misleading and what they care about more scoring chances. So, yeah, the penguins, you know, I can't speak for what the Rangers, you know, feel internally. But I would guess it's probably similar attitude that, you know, getting those especially grade A or high grade, whatever the preferred, you know, lingo is that's that's the the priority um you know they they know that there are teams out there like the kings for example that you know regularly rank among the the best shot metric teams but

aren't necessarily um you wired the same way in terms of getting good looks of the net and getting the slot things like that so yeah maybe that's i guess the next big uh divide if you want to call it that in hockey now that everyone knows that possession is important is trying to define line, you know, really what proxy for possession or what proxy for effective offense is better, scoring chance versus shot attempts. But I agree with you that I think both the Rangers and the Penguins fall on the side of scoring chances is way better. Yeah, I'm a little torn because, like, I understand that, you know, not every shot is the same.

But, I mean, you watch some of these games and guys are scoring from such weird angles when you least expect it and, you know, the puck's bouncing all over the place. and goalies are so good these days that chances are if they can see the shot, they're going to probably stop it. So that's why we preach puck possession so much because generally if you keep shooting the puck on net eventually, good things will happen. But it'd be foolish to say that every shot is the same. And every team is going to convert the same number of opportunities because if you have

a far more skilled team like the Penguins do where you're rolling four lines that can all score, but you also have the upper echelon finishers in the league, chances are you're probably going to be shooting a higher percentage than the LA Kingswell with guys like Dustin Brown taking most of those shots. So I think there is going to be a little bit of a divide and a little bit of an argument there, but I think it's going to be something worth monitoring as the season goes along. Yeah, you know, Sullivan, when he gave me the answer, and again, he didn't come out and say explicitly, but the implication was our shot quality is way better this way.

And again, that is still one of the hot topics and probably will always be. a hot topic among hockey analytics fans because it just we we don't have a way of you know effectively measuring or determining what that means you know is we I know just because of some of the work Ryan's you know Stimson those guys have done we have a slightly better idea as far as passes across the Royal Road and passes from behind a net and these lead to better opportunities so you know we're getting closer to figuring out what it really means to have a good chance or a quote unquote good shot. But yeah, you know, maybe just still, I don't know, do you think five years away from having, you know, concrete mathematical proof, if that will ever

exist of, you know, what is the proper way to shoot? Yeah, yeah, I think we're, we're still a ways away. I'd like to think that we're making a lot of progress, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I wanted to ask you, what's it been like covering Mike Sullivan? Because one of my favorite recurring things on Twitter has been you putting out these long form quotes from him just for us to digest like the other day when he was discussing how defensemen can contribute offensively without necessarily showing up in the box score. I do enjoy it. It's become one of the best parts of the job. As long as you eventually accept the fact that Mike Sullivan doesn't really like dealing with the media still, yeah, that might be easy to misinterpret, you know, fans look at that

and think, oh, you know, he must be great to cover. He's great if you enjoy, you know, again, what I just call the wonk part of hockey. If you are someone like, I assume both of us are, that likes to get into the details and really just the process of the game and trying to, you know, just understand the subtleties and all the little things that, you know,

make a player great or team great or, you know, systems great, then he's your man. So it's not always necessarily witty stuff. Some of it, I'm sure, is boring or dry to people that just want to hear, you know, Cindy Crosby can do anything. But, yeah, it's been really refreshing to the lengths he'll go to, to, again, explain how a defenseman activating. It doesn't even have to touch the puck on a rush can be a difference maker for the team offense, simply because now you're attacking with four men instead of three.

or he's spoken about possession several times or again the shot metrics versus possession or just how to how to play defense through possession and it's all just really just different you know I can't speak to listening to every other hockey coach in the league but I've certainly heard a you know good I don't know dozen or two of them at this point and there just aren't many guys like that there or even if they believe it behind the scenes, they don't say it publicly. They would rather just kind of stick to the usual cliches that you hear in hockey.

So, you know, hopefully more coaches like Mike Sullivan are coming. I know a lot more think it behind the scenes. You know, the conference stuff I've looked at, there are college coaches out there that pay attention and think this way. So it's encouraging for the future in terms of people who speak about the sport

in a really intelligent way. Yeah. It's been cool seeing as America. as sort of a top flight coach in this league because it felt like he'd been around forever as Torturella's right-hand man and you just naturally assume that, you know, them working together, you'd think that Salab and himself would have a similar mindset or approach to the game, but then now you look at it in the big picture and he's only 48 and that's younger than guys like Bill Peters and Dave Haxthal is the same age, but they just forever, whatever reason

we think of those guys as being sort of like, you know, the young new head coaches just because they haven't been around in our public eye for his long. you know, Sullivan is, is one of the best young coaches in the league right now, and he's become a legitimate asset for both the penguins, but I think also us as hockey fans who just crave hearing actual sort of thought-provoking things as opposed to just those hockey clichés, as you mentioned. Yeah, and, you know, you mentioned Tortorella. Like, that's what makes me wonder, because they did work together so long.

Tortorrella doesn't say this stuff publicly, but does he think it behind the scenes? Does he really, you know, kind of understand the game that way? the way he encourages his team to play. I'm not so sure. Columbus is seemingly getting their act together a little bit this year. But it's just, again, that's kind of the big curiosity of me. Because you'd have to think if Sullivan and Tortoella

worked together that long, they have to have some shared philosophies on how to play, right? Like, they can't truly be, you know, just like water and oil when it comes to stylistic hockey, yet they work together for more than a decade. Yeah, the entire time. Mike Sullivan was just like, oh, God, I hate being here. I disagree with everything this man is saying.

Yeah, that just seems like personal hell. And I just, you know, Sullivan, again, he's a guy that I think likes the, you know, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger kind of thing. He's big on adversity and learning from it. But that just seems like a cruel thing to do to yourself in terms of your career, Pat. Yeah. Okay, there's one final thing I want to talk to you about before I let you go. And at least up until now, the reason why I felt better about Pittsburgh's chances to repeat or at least not fall off after their cup season than I typically do the year after a team wins the cup is just because of their rare ability to really just bring the entire band back together.

I mean, you typically see teams, they make long playoff runs. They've either had a lot of rentals where they went all in at the trade deadline and they lose all those guys or they just lose players because of the numbers game because of the disease of more. You just can't make the money work and you eventually need to. to siphon off talent like we've seen in a in chicago but the penguins for whatever reason haven't really necessarily needed to combat yet that yet except for uh this looming thing on the horizon between uh mark and dr flurry and matt murray where it's pretty clear that you know murray is going to be the guy they just gave him that extension and and flurry is looking like a pretty obvious uh expansion candidate um how do you see this sort of playing out in the net this season

because there was a lot of talk that Flurry might be traded this summer, but then Rutherford came out and said that, you know, they don't necessarily feel very confident with giving Murray all of the starts right away at this point of his career. And also, it is going to be a condensed schedule because of the World Cup. So they kind of want to even those things out. So how do you see that playing out in that? Yeah, you know, Rutherford, as you said, he kept, he still insists that the goal is to keep both goalies for as long as possible, you know, through the draft. Now, whether that's just a little. a public, you know, maneuvering on his part to make it sound like they really won't take anything less than a, you know, blowout offer for, for Flurry. I don't know. And again, the question with Flurry is he has that no movement clause. So will he waive it or will the Penguins arrange some sort of trade so that the Las Vegas team takes Flurry that way or takes someone else? We don't know. The Penguins are being very coy with what they want to do. But the short term, in terms of how things do play out this season

over the next few weeks, it's increasingly looking like Matt Murray becomes, I guess you would argue, the number one starter, just because in his first two games back, he's looked so sharp, and the Penguins have played well in front of him. That helps. He hasn't had a game yet

where they've just truly left him out to dry. But he just, he's another one of those players that makes everything look easy and simple and really doesn't get too flust, doesn't ever seem like he's way out of position. It's just, Mike Sullivan talked last year about Matt Murray has kind of a calming effect on the team.

I don't completely buy that, whether it's Matt Murray or anyone else, I don't think one player's demeanor unless maybe Sydney Crosby can have that much impact, but maybe Matt Murray is on that echelon when it comes to how he carries himself. So I think Mark Andre Fleury has to be, least a little bit better and yeah maybe prove that he is in that same you know echelon because you know

his his career aside and he's certainly been a valuable part of the franchise for a decade more than a decade but in his past few performances he's looking looking a little shaky and I think on the aging curve you know it's it's not hard to imagine that that just is is bound to happen sooner than later so I think Matt Murray if you see a couple more starts of each of them playing the way they have recently Matt Murray becomes your guy and Mark Andre Fleur will play more than

I would say a true backup maybe a 60-40 split something like that but when we came in the season me and my fellow beat writer Jonathan Bomboli we debated how we thought it would play out and we thought it would start Flurry 60 Murray 40 the Murray injury complicated

it matters a little bit. But once Murray came back, we still thought that might be the case. And I think maybe that switch where Murray becomes your priority is going to happen much sooner than we had guessed. Yeah. I think it's pretty clear from just the organization's perspective. They probably want Matt Murray to play well enough to seize that role, right? I mean, it just makes sense for where the franchise is headed and the commitment they've made to him financially. But I wonder what the market is for a guy like Flurry because –

he is aging and he is making a nice, you know, 5.75 on the cap is definitely none than a sneeze at. And there will be other options for a team like Vegas, whether it's like Jimmy Howard or, or I don't know, you know, Ben Bishop type. So there are going to be some very, you know, highly thought of goalies available with high price tags. And I wonder if they'll be able to really get anything for Flurry at this point and whether it's an asset that's kind of been depreciating and it's been sitting on it. Yeah, I don't know. And so much of, the Penguins' perspective seems to be, well, we want to win now, and we have a better chance of winning when we have two, you know,

starter quality goalies on our, you know, roster rather than one starter and one, you know, career backup or even worse, a prospect. You know, they had Mike Connan there, and I guess Mike Conn would have been soonable, but now that he's gone, I don't know if they consider Tristan Jari the next man up. Jari's, you know, a less polished 22-year-old. So he's still probably in AHL form and really not ready to be anyone's backup at the NHL level. So in the Penguins mind, I don't know. Do they see the reward if they win another cup is worth basically giving Flurry away for nothing

or for a really marginal trade? That's the calculus they have to settle with. I think they're trying and or will try to make. move flur at some point during the season because there probably will be a team that's in the cup hunt and feels they can swap upgrade goalies give the penguins a more marginal guy that's still a decent cap hit. It's going to be just a fascinating storyline that really is going to pick up. I think we were all waiting for it at the start of training camp and again Matt Murray's hand injury kind of delayed it. But now that they're both healthy, they're both playing again and

Matt Murray certainly doesn't look like what he did last year was some sort of fluke or aberration. It's going to escalate quickly on the Murray versus Flurry front. And Penguins fans are probably going to be very uncomfortable with it because they just, they don't want to pick sides. It kind of, I think, breaks some people's hearts to talk about Flurry as a figure in the past, so to speak. Yeah. I think it's a good problem to have, though.

I mean, as you mentioned, it is a team that's trying to win and win now. And it's always good to have two reliable options because injuries do happen, but also with the condensed schedule and all the back-to-backs and stuff. You really don't want to be just kind of giving away games whenever your starter can't go. So I think it makes sense for them to at least sit on it now and see if Flurry can, you know, rattle off a good stretch here. Maybe it'll increase his stock and they'll be able to move them for something that will actually help the team rather than just kind of giving away his contract.

Bill, where can people find you online and find some of those great Mike Sullivan quotes you tweet out? They can find me on Twitter at B-West underscore Tribb. That's B-W-E-S-T-R-I-B. And if you just, I guess, Google Pittsburgh Tribune review, you'll be able to find the site since the web address is somewhat illogical, I would argue. It's triblive.com, if people actually... want to go straight to the site. But yeah, I tweet most of my work.

So if you follow me on Twitter, it's great. And that is certainly where you find my big chunky Mike Sullivan copy and paste quotes. Well, excellent, man. I highly recommend it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate a beat writer that actually contribute something to kind of looking at the game from a different perspective, as opposed to just, you know, live tweeting the game when things are happening. And then just kind of coming back at me with all these cliches from coaches and players. So I appreciate all the work you do

And I'm sure that everyone else does as well Thank you yeah I enjoy it I don't know if you know I should be doing it differently I'm still well behind the follow account on Twitter and stuff For you know I don't know if my heavy analysis style is You know just too much for the people that do want to know who scored the last goal But it's it's been fun so far and again it's kind of how how I feel the job should be done So we'll see if we'll see if we can give you the the PDO cast bump online although I don't even know if

that's really a thing. I'll buy it. PDO bump seems very real and appropriate for a variety of reasons, so I'll take it. All right, man. We'll make sure to get you back on as the season goes along. Thanks. I appreciate time. Thanks, Dmitri. The Hockey PDOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovic and on SoundCloud at SoundCloud.com slash hockeypedocast.