The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 144: Turning On The Jets

Episode Date: February 24, 2017

Garret Hohl joins the show to discuss Patrik Laine and whether he'll annually break our expected goals calculations, whether Paul Maurice is the right coach for the Jets and why they're playing so slowly, and what we can learn from Evander Kane's career arc. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 0:50 Patrick Laine's rookie season 3:10 Laine's Sky High Shooting % 7:40 Matthews vs. Laine in Shot Differential 10:00 Evaluating Coaching 17:00 Pace of 5v5 Play 22:25 Dustin Byfuglien's Usage 25:10 Jacob Trouba's Breakout 26:45 Goaltending Woes 29:10 Mathieu Perreault as Trade Bait 34:40 What we can learn from Evander Kane 43:10 Hockey Analytics Conference Every episode of the podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play, and Stitcher. 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 are also 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 HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitra Filippovich and joining me in studio right across from me in And my living room table is Garrett Hull. Garrett, what's going on, man? Not too much. Thank you for having me over to your lovely abode. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to hype it up as this fancy studio, but it's really my living room, my dining room table, but...

I'm not going to lie, though, it's a nice dining room table. It's a nice dining room table. IKEA hooked it up, and not a sponsor of the show, but if they're listening and they're interested. But I should say that we are, we're testing out some new equipment here. Our producer, Matt, is in studio as well. and we're testing out some new mic. So hopefully the audio quo will be better than usual.

But anyways, let's see if the actual content is as good. Garrett, what do you want to talk about? I know yesterday you were texting me about the possible, or two days ago you were texting me about the possibility of talking about Patrick Lining, scoring goals. Yes. All right, let's get into it. We can start with that because I just brought it up.

Yeah, I feel like that's also a good thing to like suck people into this. that I was like talking about like Paul Postma or something. Just tune out right away. So I have a few thoughts on Lainey. The first point I wanted to make, and this came up during the game the other night against the Leafs. I know a big topic of discussion has been sort of the quality of players he plays with

compared to a guy like Austin Matthews who's sort of dragging along his linemates. I feel like, you know, line A has gotten to play with Shifley lot here and Matthew Perrault and he's bounced around with pretty much I mean you can't go wrong with a lot of Winnipeg's top forwards but it's like I think I think it's kind of overlooking the fact that he is he's so well suited to I know this is gonna be funny thing I say he's so well suited to play with good players like that they can get on the puck just because he's like one of a few guys that can actually really make the most of those opportunities like that first goal he scored against Toronto was such a great example where he's basically just like hanging out in the offensive zone

holding his stick up just waiting for Shifler or pass it to him and you're like what does he say I do it and then all of a sudden Shifle gets it to him and you think like the fender is in good position but he just no hammers it past both sides seven Anderson and he's just like well fair enough it's interesting because that's the line that I've been wanting to have together since the beginning of the season and they just got back I don't know if that's their second or if that was the third game together I think it was the third game they played like 60 minutes or something like that together and it it totally makes sense like what is I mean pro despite the fact that he's a little smaller. He's

always been noticed as a shot differential guy because what does he do? He's like the most ferocious you know, four checker that's five foot nine or whatever. Yes. And he he's also like the home plate king of the NHL. Yeah. So he gets the puck. He'll retrieve the puck. He'll get it to Shifley and then he'll go

straight for the net. Yeah. Which opens up space for Liney and Lainey does what he does best and that's put the puck in the corners. Right. And so I think a good pivot from that is the shooting percentage discussion because he's shooting like just under 20 I believe now. I think it's like 19.9 or something for the year.

It's high. Yeah, and it's one of those things where at the sudden I'm not going to go on this podcast and say that I think Patrick Lainey's going to be a 20% shooter for the rest of his career. But I think he might we're at a risk of making any proclamations 150 shots into his career. Like we still don't really know

what kind of player he'll be. I mean, we have some ideas. He seems like he's going to be a pretty good shooter. But I feel like he very well could be one of these sort of Stephen Stamco's guys that just completely obliterates our expected goals versus actual goals calculations. So perfect segue there with the Stamco's example. So don't tell me about Hart has his expected goal model, which is a little bit different than the Corsica version because the fact that he accounts for shooter quality, right?

Yeah, he accounts. Well, they both try to account for shooter quality. but the version on Corsica is just specifically looking at the shot in terms of it doesn't matter who's taking the shot. So it looks at the, you know, where on the ice it's occurring, what the handedness. I think it does do the handiness as the shooter may be, but that's about it. But DTM, he goes a little bit further and he regresses shooter's previous history.

Now, the problem with Patrick Lainey, of course, is we don't have history. Right. I mean, all we have is like what he's done so far. But Stamco's is the guy who scores the most amount of goals relative to what you'd expect when you remove all the other variables. Right. So like if you look at the shot location, if you look at like all the stuff that Corsica looks at, Stamco's on average finishes about 49% extra more goals than you would expect. And that is.

That seems pretty good. And yeah, that is the largest. And he's been doing it for years. Yeah. And exactly. And he's, that's the largest difference. Now,

the only problem is that Patrick Liney is doing an additional 179%. So, wow. So the best shooter in the world is, and I'm just talking about even strikes. I'm not looking at power player or anything like that. But like the best shooter in the world is finishing 49% more than expected. 179% might be a little bit more than we could expect,

even if Patrick Line is better. than Stamco's. Yes. Which he potentially, I mean, like we all knew he's coming into the league before he even started. He's probably going to be a big finisher. Right. But. And I mean, there's some wiggle room there just in the sense that he's 18 years old.

So I think it's fair to expect that in the next handful of years, the shot volume itself will probably increase a bit. Like I... He was a big shot volume guy in the Liga. Yes. And he, we talked about this in the preseason when I had you on last on the show, but it's like... Oh, your memory's going to. He gets compared a lot to Ovechkin, and I think, like, that goal I was referencing against the leaves, it was, like, very, Ovechkinist, just, like, the way he wound up and just hammered it home.

But, like, we kind of sort of made the comparison of maybe he's, like, a bit more like, Colichuk, because Colvichuk was a high-volume guy. Like, I'd be like, he had a couple seasons over 300 shots for the year. Yeah. While also being, like, a high percent of a 15 or 16 percent shooter, which is well above average. Yeah, he was one guy that always made the old-school sack guys, like, scratched their head because he was always finishing way more than expected, but he wasn't like, you know, back then, you know,

the high-end finishers were guys like, you know, Tangay who like only shot maybe like 40 times in a season. Right, yeah, basically shoot when you know what's going in. Yeah, only one 100% chance. Yes. But yeah, and the crazy thing about Linae, though, is, and this is what reminds me more of Kobichuk, because I feel like Ovechkin still gets a lot of his shots in tight, I feel like.

He, like, positions himself closer on that, on that circle, Whereas Kovulchuk, I feel like I always have these memories of him, like, shooting from these seemingly impossible low percentage angles. But his shot was just so, such a laser that it would go in. And that was what we saw with line on that goal where it's like he's like fading backwards on his back foot and still just generates such insane velocity and precision that it's like you can't really compare it to a lot of guys. Imagine how like did you see that shot that he almost took but didn't take with like six seconds left in the third period? Yes. When Nick Bittan passed in in tight, could you imagine if that went in how like crazy. the internet would have gone.

Yeah, yeah. And he warrants all the, all the craze, man. He's a lot of fun to watch. I think that, you know, just in terms of the call to discussion with him and Matthews, like, I know that early in the year,

he was struggling a bit of the 5-1-5, sort of the, yeah, just shot metrics and trying to elevate his line mates. I feel like he's done better at that as the year is going on. Oh, that's the big thing. Like, everyone's like,

oh, he shot differential suck, and it's like, yeah, but it's almost exclusively the first two months of his play. And that's kind of expected for, you know, someone who's like, he's also quite a bit younger than Matthews. No, I'm not arguing that he's better than Matthews. Don't worry, guys, just because I talk about the Jets. I'm someone who actually put Matthews ahead of line A prior to the draft, and that hasn't changed yet.

But he is younger than Matthews. And a lot of my own research has suggested that it's less about development and it's a lot more about age when it comes to, like, how well players going to perform relative to their future peak. Right. And so we expect line is like one, Matthews was well known for his two-way game. And so we expected line at a two-way game to kind of suck. But we also expected it to improve quite dramatically. And it has.

I was now, you're kind of talking earlier about line mates. And the nice thing is, again, talking about the same guy, don't tell me about heart. He has a what's called an XPM model. what xpm basically is it's coarsey but it also adjusts for shot quality and it also adjusts for um usage so it looks at you know all nine players on the ice um for every event it's not like uh it's like one of the big problems not to go too deep into it with quality of teammates is usually when we're looking at quality teammate teammates metrics we're just saying oh what was that player's average over the entire season this is a little bit different this is looks at every single event that happens

every time a shot four shot against occurs who is on the ice for that moment. Right. And so adjust for that. And it still has Matthews is the better player. But what's interesting is, um, it's,

it's, the gap is not as tight as people, a lot of people, people have been in arguing, or sorry, no, it's not as tight. It's tighter.

Yes. Then what a lot of people have been saying. It's shrinking. Yeah. It's shrinking fast. And also he's past Marner and Nylander in those metrics. Yeah. All right.

So, uh, what was I like 10 minutes of Patrick Lainey's good talk? Yeah. Okay. So the other day I was sitting around watching a Flyers game. And in this game, Andrew McDonald was playing heavy minutes. Shane Gostis Bear was healthy scratched to learn a lesson, apparently, I think.

And Michael Neuyerworth was playing both legs of a back-to-back. And I went on a bit of a Twitter rant about coaches. I think it's still ultimately a player's leagues. and the level of quality of players you have will ultimately determine how successful you are as a team. I feel like sometimes we kind of lose side of that. And when we go on our coach rants or whether a guy is doing a good job or not, it's like it ultimately matters on the chess pieces you have to work with. But I think like just in terms of the teams that actually have high level talent that aren't optimizing it

because of curious coaching decisions or personnel decisions, I put Dave Haxstall as my number one guy in terms of I was just like, my mind's blown. Anytime I see like something he does, I feel like he's done a horrible job this year. But number two on that list was Paul Maurice. How do you feel about that? I find coach is so difficult because the fact that we tend to judge, as you're speaking, we tend to judge coaches on the obvious. And yes, to be honest, those obvious things are ridiculous, the fact that coaches aren't, you know,

improving upon those things. Right. The things are the low, there's a lot of low hanging fruit, and so you can point those things out, and those are things that definitely coaches need to prove upon, in my personal opinion.

But there's a lot that we don't see that a coach impacts the game, and we can't really measure because directly. So it makes coaches always difficult to judge, and it's why I usually try to avoid judging coaches as much as possible, because of the fact that there's a large circle

of things that a coach has taken part that impacts how a team plays. Right. The systems they play, how they run their practices. Also, like, you know, there's, there is something to say about how a team is performing in the future because of, you know, the decisions that players make based off of, you know, the decisions that coaches reacted to your previous decisions. Right. Because those are creating incentives and disincentives.

But at the same time, I've always been someone who's kind of said that the role, of the NHL coach kind of has to change a little bit, in my personal opinion. If we were like to be like super revolutionary and really prove a team based off of what you could do, I was watching something and there's this guy, his name, he's, his nickname is James the Thinker. And he's actually, he's a high, high end, I guess you could say personal trainer, but he's like a strength and conditioning coach for the American Olympic team. And a lot of, he's worked with a lot of NFL teams and NBA teams. And I think he's worked with one NHL team. And he was on a podcast I was watching and it was actually a powerlifting podcast. So it's like, I'm going way out of

left field here. Yes. But he said the thing that coaches do best is to inspire a team. And that's, that's something that's difficult to know about how he does. But there's a lot of things that coaches are in charge of that might not necessarily be a coach's strength. And I think when it comes to that, like when you're looking at the decisions that coaches are making, which players to play, which players are scratch and sometimes, maybe coaches aren't the best for that job. And I'm being a little bit critical here. But I just think everyone should play the strengths. And when you look at coaches, like when it comes to systems and practice, that's a completely different skill set than when it comes to evaluating players in their overall impact. And so, I mean,

some coaches might be good, might be different than the standard. coach. Maybe they're bad at systems and training and inspiring players, but they're actually good at evaluating talent. And so I think that's kind of like, you have to look at those two jobs differently. Now, to Paul Maurice, yeah. Well, okay, before, I was hoping that I would think of an answer by the time I got to that point. I was delaying for time. Okay. Before we get into Paul Maurice thing, I think that's an interesting point you made about, you know, putting people in a position to succeed in your organization based on getting them to do stuff that plays to their strengths and kind of not to their weaknesses.

And I think we're still a long ways away from this, just based on some of the conversations that you see people still having on Twitter and on public forums. But I wonder when the first time we're going to see an analytics type on a team's bench, not as the coach, but as like an in-game advisor on the fly. Yeah. because I understand that, you know, hockey is a faster, more free-flowing sport than something like baseball or basketball. Well, we've already started to slowly see, like in basketball, for example, teams now have, like, an assistant coach that is one of their analytic, part of their analytic staff that's like sitting behind the coach or something like that during the game. And you can kind of bounce ideas off of each other and sort of, and it's another pair of eyes to basically recognize what's going on or if there's something that you should adjust in terms of usage or something like that.

and it's like, I feel like we're probably still. Oh, yeah, we're. A depressingly large amount away from that happening in hockey. But I think like that's something that people don't talk about that would potentially be an interesting little advantage. But yeah, it's just exactly as you said. It's not like to say like one person's better than the other. It's just different people have different strengths. It's like if you look at a carpenter, carpenter's going to use the right tools for the right job.

He's not going to use a saw for a hammer. He's not going to use a hammer for a saw. It's not saying that the saw is better than the hammer. It's not saying the hammer is better than the saw. You just got to use the right tools for the right job. you're pulling all sorts of analogies out to just dismiss the fact that we're not talking about Palmerie's. Yeah, so I'm working on it. I'm, okay.

A lot of metrics say that Paul Maurice is average. And so whenever it comes to like an averageish coach, I mean, I'm pretty sure that my guess is, I have no way to say this for certain at any point of time. But my guess is a lot of the population of coaching is fairly tight to the median. I think a lot of coaches are probably very similar in terms of impact. They might have different strengths, weaknesses versus the other. But most of them are probably on aggregate. There's not too many Babcocks who are like elite elite. There's few difference makers or guys that'll completely drag down.

And there's very few guys who are just absolute dog terrible. But yeah, it's tough to. And then you have guys like Willie Desardin or Jeff Blashill who you can't really argue they've done a good job or like have optimized the talent they do have but then like you look at the roster composition and it's like it's a coach not a magician like there's only so much you could conceivably do with this level of talent how many wins is a NHL coach really worth yes but the reason why i bring up maurice is because i know this is something you've written about in the past and something that has caught my eye um i've been infatuated this year with the idea of pace

uh in terms of how fast teams are playing at five-on-five and and I know it's not like the most scientific way to look at it because like you're just basically adding shots for and shots against the rate of which are happening. And it's like you have teams that appear in the top five like the Arizona coyotes or the New York Islanders. And I'm not sure they're playing fast as much as they're just getting brutalized in their own zone. So it's like it's, you know, if they're just giving up a ton of shots, it looks like they're playing fast. But maybe they just can't ever recover the puck. Yeah, exactly. But with the Jets, it's, it's, I feel like there's something to the fact that there have been bottom five all year basically.

And the other teams are all these like, like the Canucks and the Red Wings and the Devils. And it's like teams you'd expect that are either not talented or are old. And you'd expect that they'd play slow. And then you see the Jets and then I'm like, I feel like they could be playing the style of game the Leafs are playing where it's like they're just, at the top of the chart, they're just playing this frantic pace. but they have so much skill that the more opportunities you create, the more likelihood they're going to capitalize on it because they're probably more skilled than the opponent they're playing. Yeah, I definitely, as you said, I did write about this earlier.

And I think it's a combination of, well, okay, I'll, I'm going to partially guess and partially be, it's educated guesses. There's some stuff that I've heard and some stuff that I'm making assumptions about. But the Jets goaltending in the beginning of the season was absolutely trash, atrocious. terrible. I mean, it wasn't necessarily worse than they normally get. Yeah, I was going to say,

it sounds like Winnipeg Jets Golden. Yeah. So Conor Helibioch was basically performing as Andre Pavik normally does. We normally expect Conor Helbiuk to be better. But he was being basically Pavlik. And then Pavlik, who got called up, and Hutchison were being worse than Pavlik normally it is. So the Jets were not doing very well.

and I think a lot of it was like Paul Maurice was like looking at like where it was it was terrible and he was trying to fix that so he was being I mean one of the things that the Jets were doing very well and the start of the year was they were one of the teams that was allowing the least amount of scoring chances against I hate bending shots and looking exclusively at scoring chances but I'm going to throw it out there right and so I think a lot of it was the fact that he was just like trying to because he was he didn't trust his goalies so he's doing whatever he could to try to limit that. And I think it ended up hurting him more than it ended up helping them because of the exact

same thing that you said. The Winnipeg Jets are a fast and big and scoring skilled young team. They're built to be quick and quick on the puck and move the puck out and score as much as possible, as fast as possible. The only issue about that is the fact that I don't think their defense is exactly built for that, especially because their left side is so slow. Right. The right side, I think can play that game.

Buffaloan is slowing a bit down, and his passes aren't as elite as it was maybe in like 2011, 2012. But he's still a good puck mover. He's still a unique talent. And then Truba is God. And Postman is underrated, but their left side is just, well, I mean, Morrissey's been great for a rookie, but the rest of the side is just trash. Yeah. How do you feel about Ben Chirot? I feel like Winnipeg Jets Twitter is not,

is not very happy about his performance. Yeah, I wonder, I made this analogy on Twitter as well, but it's like, it reminds me of the Science Feld episode where George Costanza is sharing his theory on how he always looks annoyed at work because then if it was like boss walks by,

he just assumes that George Costanz is working hard because he just looks like he's like up to something. It's like thinking hard. It's like, the camera always just pans to Malmaris and he's just always like, he's got this like vein on his forehand head, it looks like it's about to burst and he always looks like so irritated with something. And you're like, wow, like the wheels must be spinning in there.

Like, he must be up to something. But there's like, I feel like this entire season, I've had these insane complaints about usage or things that are going on with the team and it's like nothing's really changing. So I feel like, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of it is, I mean, coaches are risk averse and sometimes to a fault. Yes. And I think that's what kind of happened to him. on top of it they don't because of that risk aversion they're also they'll you know let's say

there's some sort of lineup shake up or whatever and it's it just so happens that they win they're they're a lot more result oriented than they are process oriented in terms of like lineup selections which is kind of interesting because they're not that way and when it comes to you know practicing and and when it comes to systems they're very much process oriented so it's kind of interesting you'd have to i'd want to do like a psychological so on that or something. But yeah, I like Andrew Kopp in the top six

calling up Andre Pavlik and there's been a lot of weird decisions with the Winnipeg Jets this year. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned Buff, and he's gotten a lot of flak this year, but I think... Here's a fun study.

Do a poll on the satisfaction of Buff and then put it right beside the Winnipeg Jets team save research and see what happens. Yes. Yeah, I think that would be a fun thought experiment. I think, listen, he leads the league in ice time this year at like 27 and a half minutes. And I think that a lot of that is also the first couple weeks of the year.

I remember he was like routinely playing 30 something. Yeah. When Trubel was out of the lineup and they just basically had to use him. And I think that, I mean, he's always been one of these guys, or at least the past handful of years while he's been on the blue line where it's like for he just seemed, like, you keep thinking like, there's no way this man should be playing this much and look this effortless on the ice just based on like how. How is his linebacker playing 30 minutes of hockey? Yeah, just like how is he like, how does his body, he's not just like disintegrate at this point. And he kind of makes it look everless,

but I feel like a lot of his, his struggles this year or perceived struggles are just like he probably is being stretched a bit too thin, I'd imagine. Like I don't think in an ideal world, him or Paul Maurice would want him to be playing as much as he has so far, but maybe a lot of it is just out of necessity.

Yeah, I think a lot of it's out of necessity. one because like as I spoke about before the just left side's been pretty weak and so you have sometimes buff and Truba playing a little bit of extra and then of course Truba was out for the beginning of the year. Bufflin has been worse than he typically is like I mean normally you're looking at Buff in war metrics and he's around top top 20 you know he's usually not in the top five he's not normally like a Norris guy but he should be somewhere in and the guys that are good, but not quite Norris good. And this year he's been more of a fringe number one, number two guy.

And the only problem that I have is basically the fact that the Jets have, in my opinion, a bona fide number one guy who's slightly better than Buff and it's Truba. And solely Trubist ice time has been catching up to Bufflin. Like, Bufflin's usage has, his minutes have gone down. I got like the smooth ice time by Michael Blake McCurdy in front of me right now. So it has gone down and Trubas has gone up. But as you said, the problem is that the Jets don't really have any bonafide top four guys who are performing at good top four levels outside of Buff and Trubas. So, you know, you got to get that ice time to someone who's good.

And even though it might be hurting Buff, it's probably helping the team overall. Yeah. But yeah, he is a unique guy. He's the only guy in the top 30 who's below replacement defensively. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, yeah, just one of those things where he brings it, or at least in the past, he's brought to the table so much offensively that it's like, it doesn't matter. Although he's super unique.

There's nobody like him. Yeah. I mean, Chris Tenev's like the closest thing to being him, but he's, but Chris Tannes is the polar. Yeah, he's the reverse. Oh man. If you just had like a, we should just have like a Buflian Tannap pairing. I would love to see that. Oh, man.

Yeah, the, uh, should we pat ourselves in the back for Jacob Truba? Not that, you know, you and I are necessarily the only people that are fans. No, we weren't the only people, but we knew. But before the season, I remember because he was still holding out and we were having a discussion, you know, and there was all these trade rumors and it was like, yeah, let's see what he looks like when he's not playing like 60% of his minutes with Mark Stewart. Yeah, sure enough, you get him playing with guys like Anstrom and Morrissey who allow him to just like, he's like nearly quite literally just been like unchained on the ice where it's like he's just not allowed to like, he's allowed to roam around and do Jacob Truba stuff. And he's been really fun to watch. I love how often he does the spinnerer when he's like zone.

exiting. He's so, he's so talented. And like for a while, they just felt like, I don't know if he was bummed up by the fact that he knew that like the guy playing with him was incapable of doing anything or like he had to tone it down just to kind of compensate for that. But like it's been, it's been amazing to watch this year. Yeah, I think last time I checked he was like 10th and five on five points per 60. I think he was, that's about a week or too old. So that might be out of date. And I think he was like fifth or six in XPM, which is like that super gorsy that I was speaking of earlier. Yep. So he's tracking as a the top 10 defender right now.

Yeah. And he's doing it for pretty much peanuts financially. I can't wait to see what that extension is going to look like. Yes. I'm sure he's going to give them a good deal though, right? They were in so much goodwill with him. Glad that they saved $1 million now to spend extra $8 million in the future. Great way to do business.

I don't even want to talk about the goldending. I know we touched on it a bit. I have it on my notes here in terms of stuff I want to discuss, but it's like, I'll summarize it. Connor Helbeck's starting to look a little bit better, but he's still not great. There we go. Pass. Done. Well, I think the only thing that's, the thing that's amusing to me is how quickly people have, like, turned on Helleboig. Like, it was one of those things where he was like the top prospect and he was putting up these insane numbers in the NCAA and the AHL. And then he came up and he's been

like roughly league average, maybe slightly below in the grand scheme of things. And it's like, that's better than what. they were getting before, but people just kept making these excuses for Andre Pavlik. And even we've seen it this year where he comes up, plays eight games, gives up at least three goals in all those games. Timely saves. And people just, yeah, he's giving the team the confidence it takes to win games. Andre Pavlik does timely saves.

That's why they never win when they don't score four goals or more. Yeah. Well, I mean, he could make all the saves, but he doesn't want to. That one's not timely enough. Yes. Kevin Shettle Dayoff. So this is a sixth year in Winnipeg. Mm-hmm.

I should say that I'm a fan of organizations being patient and sort of following through with continuity and not being super reactive. Yeah. I was talking with our producer Matt here before we went on the air about Vancouver in terms of how everything was great. And then as soon as they stopped winning as much as they were before, people were like, well, we need to get rid of Gillis. We need to get rid of Alainvignon. know, we need to make changes. And it's like, that probably was not, I mean, at the time, it seemed stupid. But now especially it's like, boy, it'd be great if they were those Canucks again.

Yeah. Even if they were losing in the first round, like that's still a step up from what's going on right now. But it's with Winnipeg, it's like, Shelday off six year. I think Maurice has been there for like three and a half or four of them. They have zero playoff wins to show for during that time. They've made the playoffs once, got swept in the first round. The team looks so good on paper. Team looks good on paper.

I mean, they've drafted it really well. I like a lot of their players, but it seems like whenever we hear these conversations about people being on the hot seat or something, I feel like Kevin Shiladayov never gets brought up, which is weird to me. I don't know if it's just like,

because he just like sits in the back and never makes any sort of move so people just like forget about him. It's a process. Yeah. That's his favorite term. It's a process. And that's the way, well, I mean,

from what I heard is Kevin Shavledayov came with his plan. He's like, this is the only way that we can, as a small market team, we'll be able to contend. And it'll be all through the draft and development, as if apparently only that team drafts and develops. But let's not get into that. But yeah, so I think the fact is he sold a plan that looked like more of a long term than a short term. And so the ownership is going to take it a little bit easy and slow with him.

Yeah, Brambert, cut the five-year plan, he cut one to show the day off as a lifetime plan. basically Do you think they're going to do anything this at the deadline? I mean it's interesting that the guy that seems to be generating the most buzz in terms of a guy that could move on the Jets

is Matthew Perot whose warrior extension hasn't even kicked in yet. Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that he's, you know, has an extension on his contract and everyone's like talking about him. I think the biggest reason

why people are talking about him is because of his low PDO and low shooting percentage right now. Yes. Which has been dramatically rising in the past three games. So, yeah, and I mean, yeah, playing with patronage money is going to do that. Yes.

And as we said, those two are perfect for each other. Yeah, so that's what I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people are forgetting about the extension. There's someone who is throwing, you know, the Panthers were interested in the start of the year. I'm like, I think a lot of teams should be interested in him. Yeah, I think a lot of teams are, but I don't think he fits in like, I mean, he's 29, it's got a four-year extension. He's a good player. I was talking to a scout that I can't speak where they were from, but yesterday, literally about Perrault.

And he kind of suggested he's like, he said, pro was the player that was so undervalued for long, for so long that now he's starting to become noticed because everyone started pointing out that he's undervalued so much. And so now his value is basically what it is. I thought you're saying he's a bit over a while, you're kind of like Louis Erickson, where it's like after five years of everyone saying he's the most undervalued player in the league. Not so much that swing, but just judging by his next contract and everything.

Like, he says, he said, teams don't want to find pro. Teams want to, or not teams want to, but teams shouldn't look for pro. Teams should look for the next pro. And we kind of saw the same thing happen with Puyat over in Eminton. You know, he was an underrated player. He was a play driver. And they also scored. And they paid him to be like his absolute ceiling.

Yeah. And now all of a sudden he's not exactly, you know, he's not an undervalued guy. anymore. He's properly valued and there's like nothing less sexy than being perfectly valued and described. Great, I know exactly what he is. Yeah, you're not getting anything special from him. Before he was, he was a great player not just because he's driving results,

both pro and Puyah. They were great players because they're providing results better than what their market value was. Yes. And so I think a lot of teams are cooling off on pro. just because of the fact that, you know, his extension basically properly values maybe a little bit, maybe still a little bit cheap just because of the fact that, you know, he's more of a shot differential driver than he's a shooting percentage drivers. And they tend to be a little bit over or undervalued.

But, yeah, I think, I don't think that he's actually has much interest. I think that's mostly a TSN-driven thing. Yeah. I think that it's possible that the Jets will try to move some of their veterans. I know that people for some reason have been interested in Chris Thorburn before at the deadline and the Jets held on to him. Yes, that doesn't make sense.

So maybe that's still the case. I mean, he's three years older than when that last happened. He's expiring. I feel like he could definitely go for like a third or fourth or something. I want to really blink an eye. I think they'll look to shed those type of guys, whether that's, I can see Thorburn. I don't think anyone's going to be on the market for Mark Stewart.

the game's like gotten too fast for him but I think they're going to probably look at potentially moving Drew Stafford he's basically the opposite of pro he's a guy who tends to be sometimes overvalued by teens because he's a goal scorer but terrible play driver and I think that's not much some people have talked about the Jets potentially being buyers

in terms not in terms of renters but in terms of buying just because of the fact that the left side defense is terrible and the team kind of knows it Yeah. So I think they might try to try to find a young left-handed guy, but the problem is the expansion draft makes it a very short list. Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

Well, I think the reason why I brought up the potential for, you know, like no one's, no one's going to get excited about Chris Thorburn moving for a fourth or something or more extort or whatever. But for the Jets, they have done such a good job of drafting. Like, I've been like, just look at something like, whether it's like a cap of tan or a jan or a jesterner. and Harkins or a Michael Spachick.

And it's like all these guys, like, I feel like maybe you and I would get pretty excited if they just got like extra third round picks to play with because they seem to be doing really well with those. But I think they tend to do better with thirds than they do with seconds. Maybe they should get a third. That seems, yeah, it seems very scientific and definitely. It's actually correct. I wanted to talk to you about Evander Cain a bit.

You used to play for the Jets. The reason why I think he's interesting is because. Because I just think he's a fascinating player in terms of how his career arc is gone. Because, you know, he was his top prospect and everyone just thought the world of him. And then he had like a bunch of injuries and he underperformed and he got traded. And then people just kind of forgot about him in Buffalo a bit. But then this year, he's been incredibly productive when he's been in the lineup. And part of it is the fact that he got out of shooting percentage hell somehow.

I'm not sure how he did it. But I know that like, I wrote it down here. I mean, for his first seven years of his career, he was like an 8.5% shooting guy. And that was, that's obviously very, very bad. And we'll make everyone look very unproductive. And then this year he's like up to 13. Yeah.

And I just like watching him play, I know there was always this criticism of how, you know, he was like. Shoots from anywhere. Yeah, he was a type of guy where it's like, well, shot quality is real. look at Amanda Cain. There's a reason he's shooting so low.

He shoots from terrible, terrible angles and terrible locations. And, like, it just happened for so long that you just sort of had to recalibrate your ex. Like, you couldn't just be like, basically, if you were saying that he'd bounce back to league average or whatever, you would have been wrong for many, many years in a row.

So I'm just fascinated by him because, like, he's not even 26 years old yet. So it's like, I'm just very curious. Like, he's also a guy that's popping up on a lot of, trade bait list because I think he has like one year left on his deal at like five million or something like that and Buffalo is not necessarily, I mean they've been playing better lately but they're not I feel like they're not necessarily very attached to him and they're not going anywhere anytime fast at this point. So it's just like he's a he's an interesting player to me because he just brings up all

these subplots that we can attribute to other players around the league that he might be a good case study. Yeah. I think Van der Kaine is a guy that shouldn't be shooting at 13% to be honest with you. I do believe that he's a bit of a lower percent shooter for the reasons that we kind of listed. I think people over-exaggerate those differences and whatever and like he's still a useful player despite the fact that, you know, he does that kind of stuff. But and like, Van der Kaine also plays the game, like very heavy. very fast and very fun. He's a fun player to watch.

He's a fun player to have on your team. And he does a lot of things beyond scoring. So he's a player that teams should want. I would... Well, the reason I brought him up is because... So yesterday I got into this whole thing back and forth with people about Lars Eller. And he's been a similar...

They don't play a similar game per se, or they have different skill sets. But he's also one of these guys where coming up, people thought you know, he had endless potential. you see this big physical guy who's also like flashes crazy skill at times and you're thinking, wow, if he puts it all together,

you could be one of the better players in the league. And he's been around for so long now that I think it's safe to say that's not going to happen at this point for Lars Eller. Like I think he's settled in at like a 15 goal, a season guy, which is perfectly fine. But I think that people sometimes can't get over this mental hurdle that it's like you can't hold two ideas

in your head at the same time where it's like he could be disappointing just from a big picture standpoint of he could have been better but he can also still be effective like that doesn't the fact that he didn't reach that potential doesn't take away from what he currently is so back when rice and i had the hockey grass podcast rest and peace um one of my favorite things to say was fans and also sometimes hockey op hockey ops seemed to view a player who was projected to be You know, if you're just say a scale of like zero to 10, zero being not an NHL and 10 being like the best NHL player. If you have someone who you projected to be a four, ends up being a four, you tend to like that player more than a player who's projected to be a seven and it's up being, sorry, ends up being a number five. You got emotional there for a second.

No, I guess I'm, I guess I'm flumming up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, you're good. Oh, better, Kane. No, but when you have a player who's, you know, expect to be a number four and ends up being a number four versus. is a guy that you expected to be a 7 out of 10 and he ends up being a 5 out of 10. For some reason, fans, and I guess it's just human nature. It's, you know, comes back to that human psychology thing about disappointment. Where you end up being, you end up viewing that, you know, that 4 out of 10 player better than the 5 out of 10 player just because the fact that the 5 out of 10 player didn't reach their potential.

It's probably something related to do with the fact that people will always view a deal being better when they're shocked. If, you know, pulling out some more examples out of nowhere. Yes. What do we have so far? Powerlifting? Yeah. Carpentry. Carpentry.

And now grocery shopping. You know, I used to work in the grocery business. They said if you had something that was, you know, it could be the exact same product. And if you put it out there for $13 or if you put it there there saying that, you know, was $15 now $13, it could be the exact same product. And they'll view the was 15 now 13 as a better deal. Yeah. I've always been skeptical of those sales, especially for, like, expensive, like, clothing or something

like that. And you're like, what was, like, the actual original price? Sometimes stuff are on sale. Here's a little trick. Some stuff is on sale for 365 days per year. Like, for example, I used also do bartending and, you know, some stuff was like, this is our special puts on special every day, some beer that's on for $4 every day. How's that, how's that a special if it's 365 days of the year being the same price? I'm sure you get that a lot in the bartending industry but it's like when people you know if they don't have like a go-to drink or something and they're just like

what's on special and you say something and they'll be like I'll get one of those because it's like the easiest thing to do even though they're a longer four bucks otherwise they never would have gotten that exactly yeah so so now we also got bartending so how do we bring that back to the conversation so Vaner Kane and disappointment yeah Lars Ler

and Lars Ler yeah I definitely agree like a lot of it is Vaner Kane still a good player who still help your middle six second line he'll still drive play he'll still take a ton of shots he'll still hit people he'll be physical on the forecheck

he's fast he's a great penalty killer he's still helpful but because of the fact that he didn't quite reach that potential that people once thought I mean now now people might think that all of a sudden that potential is coming back because he's on a what is he on a 31 goal pace

or something like that I mean he missed a bunch of time but I know that he's one of the top guys in terms of individual primary point percentage which is basically like the goal like what percentage of the goals

that are scored while you're on the ice you're getting either a goal or the primary assist on it. He's like he has a sky high rate basically when like if the Sabres are doing anything when he's on the ice it's because he's scoring the goal basically. So yeah I don't know.

I still think he's an interesting guy. I mean obviously you need to factor in like sort of what it's going to cost to get a player like that and stuff. And I think that's maybe why you would sour on someone like that. Whereas like if it's a guy we're talking about with pro, for example, where it's like, if he costs peanuts to get or you can sign him for super below value, that's why he's enticing. But as soon as you start getting paid fairly, it's like, well, I mean, it becomes much less enticing of a player.

Yeah. And there is some concerns whether or not it's legitimate or not of his off ice attitude and stuff like that. Who are we to say we're not in that? But that also will influence, you know, decision. making. You know what? I noticed a while back he walked me on Twitter, which I was blown away by because I've only ever like defended him and like argued for the fact that he was like undervalued and a much better player than people are making him out to be and stuff. And I think him, him and Mike Kelly, the former TSN numbers guy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Only two people that have blocked me

on Twitter, which is amazing because like I make fun of Steve Simmons all the time. Yes, Steve Simmons. I just think I don't, I think Steve Simmons just doesn't either read his mentions or it does. doesn't know how you can block people on Twitter. I know Steve Simmons has me blocked. Oh. And not because of an ad. I don't believe if I'm an ad. Oh, man.

I think it's because he knows people that I know and heard things that I've said. He's heard bad things? Yeah. But I'm also blocked by Zach Bogosian. Bogo. Yeah, Bogo. Because I turned the phrase Bogo. Oh, no.

Yeah, that'll do it. Matt, what are we at time last year? 44 minutes. think we can do another six minutes, get this to a cool 50. What are we, is there anything for us to, oh, let's talk about the Vancouver Hopkins conference. Okay.

Because I know that you have had a plate apart in helping set that up and get it going. So, yeah, I'm, there's, it's a combination of the Vancouver Canucks. And also hockey data, which is like the stats company that I run. And also hockey graphs, which is a website that I run. And Nation's Network, which is, uh, So it's like all the people that I'm involved with. So other than the Canucks. Since you're the common denominator.

Yeah. Last year we did it. It was mostly run by Cam Lawrence and Josh Weisbach and all of the Florida Panthers. And also with Simon Fraser University, Cam Lawrence is busy because of having his day job, plus also working with the Panthers. And SFU wasn't wanting to do it as a yearly thing. So Josh and I kind of got together and looked around, used my resources, and eventually got some interest from the Vancouver Canucks. And so we're going to be hosting it on Rogers Arena, March 11th. Unfortunately, tickets sold out in 26 hours.

So I can't be advertising any tickets. But we will be, it won't be live streamed, but we'll be recording it for post hoc being able to check it out. I don't so I'm currently on the schedule to be doing an hour panel yes which I'm going to be asking the questions for oh you're going to be on it with us I'm not I'm going to be the the MC guy so you're going to hang out with us yeah yeah oh that's okay good because I was I was worried I was like they gave me and Dan Murphy an hour and I was both Dan and I were like do you want less than an hour I don't think there's an hour's worth of stuff for us to save I have all the power so don't worry yeah oh okay great I thought I was going to be having to like come up with stuff. No, no, no. You ask me anything, I'll answer it. Yeah, this will be the opposite of the PDO cast. Yeah, exactly.

I'll be asking you questions. Oh, but I'll be bringing the analogies this time. Oh, yeah. Study up on my carpentry. Yeah. All right. Yeah, so I definitely, I mean, people can have at the very least if they, you know, missed out on tickets or whatever, they can see it later, but they can also follow along

online. I'm sure people will be using the hashtag and stuff like that. So hashtag Van Hacks 17. Cool. Do you want to plug some stuff before we get out of here other than, than Van H-N-Hack? Just basically check out hockey graphs. It's a great website.

H-O-C-K-E-Y dash. I think people know how to spell hockey. G-R-A-P-H-S. I just want to put the fact that there's a dash in the middle. Yeah. It kind of throws people off. Yeah. And then, of course,

then there's nothing really to check out because we're mostly proprietary, but there's, you know, the hockey data company. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about in the league that we didn't touch on while I have you here? I mean, we're not like, no one's kicking us out of the studio. I live here, so. Sorry, what was that?

All right. Yeah, I don't know. I've talked so much about the trade deadline already and everything like that. So I think that I think we're probably pretty good for that. Yeah. So who do you think is going to win the cup there, Dimitri Philippovic? Oh, that's a good one. I really like the sharks again this year out of the West.

I think the east is so much better. The Beards will eventually get it. The Metro, yes, go beards. The Metro Division is so tough that it's like, I don't see, I think the sharks are going to have an easier path to making the final, so I'm going to pick them just because I think that they have less kind of hurdles to jump over, whereas I think I think I very well could see another rematch. I think the Penguins are fantastic.

The Capitals look amazing. You can't really go wrong with those teams, but I think they could just sort of like cancel each other out. Like I don't know who would even win that series. so I'm just going to go with the sharks. The Penn's made a trade for Ron Hainsey, who is going with the longest streak of no postseason games of seasons. That's true.

It's like 900 or something like that almost. That's crazy. The highest amount of regular season gains with no postseason. Do you think he's going to be nervous? He's, I don't know, the guy was pretty, like he's a former Winnipeg Jet and whenever he did interviews,

I was like, this is a guy that has to go into media afterwards. He's pretty slick, and it's pretty smooth. But wouldn't it be a... And he's got, like, you know, he's experienced doing random things. Like he represented the internet

Phil P.A. That's true. Yeah, he's a most one guy for sure. But wouldn't it be hilariously ironic if, like, he makes a blunder in, like, the first game of the first round? Oh, my mentions are going to be on fire. No, but someone writes an article, like, Ron Hainsey, like, you know, it just, his playoff and experience just cost them.

He didn't, he didn't know what to do in this moment. It's like, the guy's like 40 years old. He's been playing for like two decades. Like, what are you talking about? Playoff and experience. And he's, and he's, he's not bad. Yeah. He's actually, I was talking to Corey Schneider recently, and he has the weirdest, um, he has the

weirdest development curve that I've ever seen in my life because his off, because he came to the league as an offense guy. At the time, when he got his big contract extension, he had set the record for defensive points, but, um,

for Atlanta Thrashers, which just got destroyed because they eventually got instrument. Because they actually got guys who could play. But I mean, like he wasn't still an offense guy and, but his offense just fell down a cliff and, but his defense just hasn't changed. But I love stuff like that.

I love stories where, like, guys find ways to stay effective and do stuff where it's like it's so, so easy. I mean, I had this discussion with Jonathan Willis recently on the podcast where we were discussing, you know, how Luchich was struggling this year. And then we kind of compare it to what happened to Dustin Brown, where it's like once you go a bit physically, whether it's because you're not willing or you're not able to, you like, if you can't adapt your game to do something that'll still be productive, you just basically like fall off the mess. map, right? Not necessarily saying that's going to happen to Lutridge, but it happened to Brown. And I'm always fascinated by like the guys that are able to extend their careers and reinvent their game. Yeah. It seems like it would be like a bit of like an ego killer, right? Like obviously playing in the NHL is a very prestigious thing. But it's like I'm sure being an offensive guy who puts up a lot of points, it must feel much cooler than like being this like gritty defensive guy who just like hangs out of the shadows. in the defensive zone. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

All right, yeah, so let's get out of here. Let's cut it off here, and we'll pick up this conversation at the Analytics Conference in March. Sounds great. All right, thanks, man. Thank you. The Hockey P.D.Ocast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.