The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 148: Everybody Hates PA Parenteau

Episode Date: March 2, 2017

Matt Cane joins the show to help sort out the winners and losers coming out of the trade deadline, and preview his talk at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 3:46 Washington Capitals 'going for it' 7:05 The Free Agency Dilemma 12:00 Trying to figure out Marc Bergevin 17:46 Jim Benning shocking the world 23:23 Sharks being rewarded for patience 28:48 Don't mess with Steve Yzerman 32:25 The Ducks sitting tight 36:24 Everybody Hates P.A. Parenteau 39:38 The Passing Project 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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My name is Dimitri Filipovich. across from me in a swanky Boston hotel room. So I'm Matt Kane. I'm Matt. How's it going, man? That sounds a lot like dirtier than I think it was intended to you, maybe? I have to admit, I felt a bit dirty. You literally slid into my DMs and you said, come up to my room and you gave me the

number of the room. And then I, like, walked up and there's people walking in the hallway. And I'm, like, trying to be discreet for some reason. I'm, like, knocking on the door and became this whole thing. You offered me a beverage. It was probably awkward that I answered the door into bathroom, but admittedly I should... Especially at open bathroom. And open baths.

Yeah. That was weird in retrospect. I mean, comfort's key when you're staying in a nice hotel room like this. That's the reason you go on vacation. Yes. So we're both here for the Sloan Hockey Analytics Conference. Or I guess it's not the Hockey Analytics Conference. Yeah.

But there will be limited hockey. I've been so used to talking about the Vancouver Hockey Analytics Conference that's coming up in a week or two that I'm just going to label everything the Hockey hockey. It's what we're here for more. I don't know that I'll be able to contribute much to the basketball, baseball, soccer, or football elements of the conference. So, I mean, there's the one, there's a one panel with like myself and I think like Tyler Delo and a few other people. But then there's other like talks being given about hockey, I think, right? Or is it like, are there, are there going to be like full on panels? I think you're on the only hockey panel. I think you're on the only hockey panel, but I think there are at least one or two others where hockey people will be

participating and speaking, which I think I haven't been here, but I think that's an improvement over years past. So I think some progress is being made. I mean, it's one of those things where obviously some of it has to do with just like easy ice related puns. But I mean, even like the titles of some of these hockey talks the past few years, like the long thaw. And like last year, like coming out of the ice age and it's like everyone seems to recognize just how far how far behind we are the rest of the sports world. I think they just like making fun of the hockey people. They just want to take their shots and bask in their full data tracking basketball superiority.

Yeah. Which is okay, I guess. All right, we'll get into the actual talks and we'll give a little preview of what you and Ryan's Timson are going to be doing this weekend. But we're here to talk about the trade deadline. We're recording this on Wednesday evening. We've had a few hours here to let the trades marinate. To let them settle.

They're ready for the grill. They're ready for the grill. So I thought an interesting exercise would be to do maybe sort of like a, I don't know, it seems very generic, but kind of like a winners and losers sort of thing. Like our takeaways from what I don't want to necessarily evaluate every trade because a lot of them are just like five seconds onbyes. but let's just go back and forth. Is there one particular team or GM or situation or player that kind of sticks out to you as being much better off today than they were maybe yesterday, earlier today or yesterday or whenever the trade happened? I really like the Kevin Chattonkirk trade for Washington.

and I know that they're a team that certainly looks like if they're not the best team in the league right now, they are in a position where they're going to be able to make a deep playoff push, which admittedly it feels like they've been in that position for years and years and years now. But the way that they're sort of dominating teams this year in particular feels like maybe they've taken that extra step. Maybe they've got all the right pieces in place down the lineup and adding someone like Kevin Chattonkirk, who's just phenomenal on the powerplay to what's already one of the most dangerous units in the entire league. That to me feels like a big win for them, particularly since they didn't really have to give up any of their number one, number two prospects to bring them in. Right. And that's a thing.

It's like it's easy to sort of look at the move and go like, oh, the capitals are going all. in but I mean they didn't really need to sacrifice anyone um like tangible off of their current plans right like it'd be one thing if they like traded like a guy like burkofsky or something as it was part of like a package for some superstar then you'd be like whoa they're really like going for it this year but it's like it's a great addition and he like definitely adds another element to them and now they really don't have any weaknesses but it's like they're also well positioned to like it's not just like a, it's a rental for Shaddenkirk, but next year they'll also be very, very good. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the capitals are in a position where they've got some free agents

coming up. T.J. O'Shee and Justin Williams in particular, who, you know, they're probably going to get, Oshy in particular, will get a raise and may be out of the caps budget next year. So in a sense, they do sort of have a limited window. They've got some younger guys who are, is going to be able to step up and fill those gaps. So it feels to me, what I liked about the deal was that it's a bit of a calculated risk. It's giving yourself a marginally better chance, you know, a demonstrably better chance, without saying, you know, this is our year and only our year. There's still room in the future where you can bring up guys like Yakovirana

to fill in those holes that are coming at the end of the season. and continue with Ovechkin, who's still going to be a very good player for at least a few years. So I know that, I mean, for example, you gave the talk last year at the Vancouver conference about sort of like free agent contract and trying to figure out, like, I guess, how would you put it best, like kind of trying to predict like what a fair price would be for them? Yeah, trying to figure out, I mean, less so what a good value would be. in terms of, you know, we think that T.J.O. She'll produce like two wins, right, as broad as that is for the next three years.

But more, you know, TJ.O.O.C. O'Sie is a guy who scored so many goals. And we think that players who score that many goals are probably worth $4 million or $5 million or $6 million, because that's what GMs have paid them in the past. So it's looking more so at what we think the market, the GMs as a whole, are going to pay them and using that information to say, you know, we think we can afford this guy or we think this guy is going to be available on the cheap and we can focus our energy and going out to him and making our pitch to him. Yeah.

Well, so, I mean, Oshy's a great discussion point for this because whenever a player is in that type of situation, I'm always fascinated about all the different factors and sort of how they personally weigh them because you look at him, he's 30 years old, right? He's 30 years this year. And this is probably going to be the last, like, big chance he's going to have. have to really cash in. I feel like, you know, if he takes, especially a long-term deal, he's probably not going to get another big contract off when he's 35, 36 years old. And he's going to score like 30-ish goals this year unless he gets injured. And some team's going

to look at that and be like, wow, like this guy could really come in and help us a lot. And then, you know, the more sort of critical eye would look at his numbers and go, like, well, he's shooting 23% this year. And that's probably not a reliable. I believe. indicator of what he's going to continue to do. So it seems like you're kind of buying at his all-time high and you're just setting yourself up for disappointment if you're paying for him. I mean, generally with most free agents you are, if you're kind of paying them after their career year. But with Oshy, the fascinating thing to me is like he's in such a good spot where he gets to play at five-on-five with Baxter and Ovechkin. And, you know, Baxter is known as one of the least

best passers. But Ovechkin kind of just opens up so much more space for that third guy in the line because he has this like gravitational pull on defensemen and the other teams just strategy. So like if you're OSHA, I mean, I'm sure the money would console you. But like I feel like there'd also be like an attraction to just like maybe taking slightly less money to just stay in this like optimal situation where you're just like winning a lot of games, scoring a lot of goals and having a lot of fun. I feel like if you're if you're a professional hockey player, I feel like most of them definitely number one, they obviously want the money. but there's an element where you want to win games. You're not just in it because it's a well-paying career because there are lots of other well-paying careers

that people can go into. So I feel like that's a factor. I feel like, obviously, for Washington, I think they've got a few other RFAs coming up who are going to make it maybe a little bit more complicated. And it's whether their offer, I guess, is 500,000 less than the top offer or if it's a million and a half less,

And at that point, over a five-year deal or something, it becomes a lot harder to say no to $7.5 million than to maybe $2.5 million. But I definitely agree that, you know, if you're going to get some of the fame, some of the accolades for playing alongside two generational players, that's got to be a big draw, especially, you know, whether they win or not, playing on one of the best teams of the league right now is a big pitch. Well, and I also think that, you know, at the risk of getting super deep down this, like, psychoanalysis rabbit hole, it's like, I imagine for a lot of these players, I mean, there is like an ego component to it, though, where like, I don't think T.J. O'Shee is sitting at home right now being like, oh, man, I'm so forth. Like, I'm sure he appreciates getting to play with great players. But I don't think that he thinks that if he went to, I don't know, some generic city without like another great superstar to play beside where, like, he was going to be. be one of the top dogs. I don't think he like would think would view that as like oh crap like I'm not going to be able to succeed here. Like he probably would think that you know what? I'm a really good player. I'm going to like I'm going to earn this money. I'm going to I'm going to show everyone what I

got. And the reason why I bring that up is because I saw a quote today which really fascinated to me. It was Andreas Martinson who got traded to the Canadians. And he described his game as being a good bottom six game. And I just someone commented on that like you never really see a player. like talk about themselves in that way even if it's like pretty obvious that they're more of like a bottom end guy like no one ever really describes himself as like yeah I'm a great fourth line grinder like I'm going to chip in in this third line like players just never really like I feel like you have to sort of think of yourself as like being this amazing player to just play at the highest level against some of these other guys you can't really kind of just kill yourself right off

at the bat that that's a really weird quote because even if there there's a lot of guys who know that they're a good bottom six guy, but they'll use, they use terms like, you know, I think I bring a lot to the room. I've got grit. I, you know, I'm hard to play against. You got to make a tougher. I know my role. Exactly. Yeah. But, I mean, the honesty is probably, probably serves them pretty well. Like, it's, you go in there and you're open with your coaches about what, what you know they want you to do and what you can offer. And, and it probably makes for an easier relationship when they don't have to worry about, you know, are we getting him enough ice time to keep him happy because he's got dreams of being being Sidney Crosby next year or something

like that. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, I guess a good pivot is to keep talking about the Canadians since I just brought up the Andreas Martins in trade. And I, Mark Bergevin is one of these guys where I don't think there's any other gym in the league that I have a tougher time getting a grasp on because I feel like his moves just kind of oscillate between like wow that was a really smart like how did he get someone else to sign off on this to like like how did someone let him sign off on this like it's just like all

like there's no like middle ground around like you know what that was like a pretty reasonable trade like maybe I wouldn't do it but I can see where he's coming from like I feel like whenever mark bears around makes a bad trade or a bad siding I'm just like I can't even explain this one like I don't know. I can't even begin to think what he was thinking here. Yeah, it almost feels like his view of what his team is changes like really quickly. Like what he thinks he has and what he thinks he needs to do tends to seems to pivot with, you know, whether they won the last face off or not as a broad example. Last night when they, you know, traded David DeHarnay away and picked up another useful defenseman in Davidson,

And I thought that was a great deal. I thought, you know, the Canadians, they're making smart moves. Maybe they're just fleecing, fleecing the bigger fool there. But that's a different argument. But then they go out and they trade for Steve Ott, like two and a half hours later or something. And then they continued today to just build on that sort of idea that their bottom six weren't tough, weren't gritty enough, weren't hard enough to play against. And I don't know if this is, you know, coming up from Claude, who's telling him, you know,

the roster that you gave me isn't the type of roster that I want to play with, and maybe that's part of it. And if it is, then good for Bershavan for going out and molding his team into something that his coach thinks can succeed. Hopefully it's also something that he thinks will succeed. But it is, they're a team that went from looking, you know,

like they'd made a smart acquisition that would help, bump them up ever so slowly but wasn't, you know, like a super obvious move to really looking as if they were almost like panicking at what their bottom six would look like, which, you know, as much your bottom six makes a big difference, but it also doesn't make a huge difference to the degree that you want to turn them over completely

with 20 games left in the season. Well, I think like the question of, you know, like I'm all for having like lineup flexibility and roster of versatility, where you're not necessarily just like one dimensionally you can do different things and maybe if you're you know especially in the playoffs when you're going in different matchups like if you it would suck if you just like do only one thing well as a team and then you just run into a team that happens to like defend that very well and you're just like well we have nothing else like we're going home so like i get i get that component of it but it's like it always kind of boggles my mind when like you look at what makes the canadian successful beyond carry price and it's like they play they play fast they have all these guys that retrieve the puck very well I mean, that entire system, like, managed to even make Michelle Terry and look like an okay coach because, you know, he kept asking him to just dump the puck out of their zone off the glass and stuff. But, like, they had all these guys that were just so quick on the puck that they would actually retrieve it more often than you generally expect. And it looked okay.

And it's like, that's what makes them successful. And then it's just amazing that you could look at that and be like, acknowledge this makes us successful. But we're going to go a completely different direction with this other part of our roster. Like I just like, I never get that. It's like, just do. do what's right. Like, I don't like... It really feels like their focus

a lot more on results than process. Like, if they had kept playing like they were at the start of the season, or sorry, if they had kept winning like they were at the start of season, I'm, well, obviously,

they wouldn't have changed their coach. Right. Well, maybe they would have. But I don't think that we see these sort of deadline moves to revamp half the roster that they were going through here, whereas when they're,

when you're on a losing streak. I think I read that they didn't have a regulation win in all of February. That, I mean, obviously it's tough as a GM to go to your owner and say, no, we're going to stand Pat and ride this out. But at the same time, to sort of hit the panic button and say, you know, we need to completely revamp a roster that look pretty good at the start of the year. That's the whole other end of staying pat that I don't necessarily know if it's. if as a long-term move, it makes sense. Yeah.

I mean, it's just like, it's such a weird, like, it's such a weird fit. I mean, I can't imagine some of these conversations these guys have where it's like, can you imagine Mark Bergerman actually calling Ken Holland and saying the words, like, what is it going to take to get Steve Ott? Like, it just like, just like, just like, starting that conversation, like, it's crazy. I would like to be Ken Holland on the other end of that call. No, but you know, you know, Ken Holland's like, it's like with a heavy heart. He's not even, like, messing around. He's like, oh, man, like, I don't know. Steve Ott just, like, brings so much to our team.

Like, he was playing Wolverines off the start of the year. Like, he loved this guy. Like, I would be surprised at all if, like, Ken Holland was actually devastated. We'll have to take the six. Yes. We'll take you. I'm sad. Remember this down the line.

Yeah, exactly. He thinks he's got an ace in the hole for later. Yeah. It's, um, all right, let's move on from the Canadians. Do you have any other notable standouts? I liked what Vancouver did in general, mostly because it went against what I expected them to do. I really feel like the mumps may have actually saved their next few years

because it forced them into realizing that maybe this isn't our year. Maybe we're not a playoff team like we thought. we were and you know like a lot of people thought they wouldn't be um but i thought they got pretty good return on on the players that they did deal away they for Alex Burroughs to bring back a prospect who's looking pretty good how are you feeling about that as a sense fan as a sense fan i'm not thrilled it's it's not my favorite move that pierre d'orion is made um burrows is is is I think not as bad as a lot of Sends fans had you know sort of panicked and made him out to be but he's definitely not the

he's definitely not the Alex Burroughs that he used to be and at the same time I think the I just feel that in general the Sends roster is probably further from being a top tier team than the management things they are which you know fair enough I could be way off on this they are winning games so as a fan I'm hoping that I'm wrong, but as an analyst, I'll wait and see. I mean, Guy Boucher had the quote today where he was like, yeah, now we can roll three lines without any sort of drop-off. It's like, I guess you can roll three lines.

I don't know. There probably will be some drop-off. This is the weirdest thing to me is that they, Boucher seems to at least think or have had some impression that he didn't have the right pieces at forward to play, you know, with the depth that he wanted. Yeah. But at the same time, you're throwing out guys like Tom Piot and Chris Kelly every night. So those aren't the guys you want to take out.

So I'm wondering, it keeps coming back to, like, who are the guys who are the actual problem when the 40% coursey guys aren't the problem, which worries me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, the Kinax, listen, a lot of crazy stuff happened in 2017 so far. But me writing an article today saying, proclaiming Jim Benning as one of the big winners of the trade line was not something. I saw on the forecast. But listen, you got to give it to him.

We slag on them all the time last year at the trade deadline. They didn't do anything. And we got in his case and deservedly so. And this year, they got ahead of the curve. They made those two trades before the deadline day, so they didn't really wait till last minute. I guess you could kind of quibble that they didn't find a home for Ryan Miller. But we just sort of saw that there wasn't really any sort of appetite for goalies at this deadline for whatever.

Yeah, there didn't seem to be a big goalie market. which I mean kind of makes sense because if you're in the market for a goalie generally you're not winning all that much and not really in a position to be a buyer at the deadline but Benning did do well he didn't do the obvious panic move which would be to start buying pieces

and he found homes for his movable players that got a decent return and brought in some prospects that you know hopefully between the prospects and the pick that they got back from San Jose will start to turn into the future, at least, contributors. Yes. I'm not going to say stars, because I don't think that.

Well, or at least just something for the fans of that team to root for or have some sort of hope, right? Like the past few years, it's like beyond, I guess, Bo Horvatt, who's exceeded my expectations. Like, other than that, it's like, there's not anything really like, people are getting super excited about Michael, well, Marcus Granlin scored like 20 goals. And it's like, oh, well. I think that says a lot about where this season's going. Beau Horvats snuck up on me too. When the All-Star game came around and he was named to the All-Star game, I was looking at his stats.

I was like, that was not something that I expected from Bo Horvatt ever. I'm not a big prospects guy. I don't watch too much junior hockey. But just based on his statistical profile and sort of the scouting reports, he was billed as more of like a conventional like two-way sort of defensive center and you know a guy that might be like your second or third guy down the middle and like very responsible but not like really moving the needle that much but he just like improved his skating dramatically like just got good I guess good coaching or improved his technique just coming to a pro level and now he's just like this dynamic goal score and you're just like well I guess no one really saw I mean maybe the connect saw it coming I guess but yeah yeah I mean, that's kind of like the big thing that analytically, I think we have a really tough time, if it's even possible, accounting for is, you know, how much coaching can impact a player's development. And in particular, like, identifying which skills are things that can be coached.

And I don't even know if those would be consistent from player to player, but it's kind of a bit of a hole in our ability to play. predict how prospects are going to turn out the fact that they can actually change. They're not hockey playing robots. Yeah, yeah. People that are 18 years old can be dramatically different when they're 21 years old. Yes. Yes, that's good.

Yeah, from other side of things, though, so we mentioned the Hansen trade, but I think the sharks are one of the big winners here. I mean, the price they paid was pretty hefty, but you can make the argument that at least Hansen has another year in his contract, so it's not a pure rental. assuming they're going to protect him. And he just like, he seems like a great San Jose Shark Explorer. Like I think he's probably what they thought they were getting when they signed Mikhail

Bodker this year. And I understand that's probably like a little bit of that as like some like lazy like Danish Danish comparison there. But it's like he's really, really effective. And he just does all of his damage at 5-1-5, but he never really played top line minutes. So like the counting stats never added up to how good he actually was if you just like looked under the surface. Yeah, I like that deal a lot for San Jose.

I think that, you know, they're kind of in the position where they, they, I'm not saying that they need to go for it this year for sure, but they're getting towards the end of that, you know, Thornton Marlow window, definitely. Well, one of the best things that might have happened to them was, I mean, it's great that they made the cup final considering they hadn't done that. But like just the way they lost the penguins, how the penguins were uniquely equipped to just like outskate them. even though the sharks were a pretty fast team. Like the sharks skated laps around the Kings in the first round, for example. And then you watch, it's like, oh, my God. Like, what would that Penguin's King series have looked like? I can't even imagine.

But, like, they pretty clearly watched that series and said, we're not going to lose like that again. And, you know, they replace the biggest hole in their lineup, Roman Polack with a smooth skating defender and David Schlemko. And now they're bringing Yanukhansen. Like, all of a sudden, you look at this roster, it's kind of like the Capitals where, I mean, assuming they're not playing, Michael Haley in the playoffs, which I'm hoping they won't.

They can realistically have 12 forwards and 6th offensemen that can all contribute, skate, move the puck, do something useful beyond just being a big body that's kind of taken up space. Yeah, especially with the West the way that it is this year, which seems like the strangest thing to say that the West is the weaker conference and by what looks like a long, a large margin. the sharks just you know they added i think they're the right piece to sort of help cement themselves as the team to be it i know minnesota has obviously played really well but you know goaltending is

is very fickle and and in a seven game series you know one one one one flubug or one one untied skate lays one case of the mumps one case of the mumps oh man that that would be that would be can you imagine A playoff series decided by Mumps would be a very NHL thing to happen. I would laugh, but I would be a little sad that it came to that. Yeah, I haven't really seen anyone write this story, or maybe it's happened, but it hasn't come across my eyes. But, you know, in today's landscape, not just for hockey, but I feel like for most professional sports, it's a very reactionary business where, like, as soon as you stop being production, or you lose in a playoff series like two years in a row or something like that.

Like all of a sudden, you see like a guy like Bruce Boudreau, it's like every objective thing would tell you that this guy's a fantastic coach. But like a couple just unfortunate playoffs losses in a row. And they're just like, well, we need to get rid of this guy because we need to like point to something as the reason why we expect our fortunes to turn around this year. Like I feel like teams are still really bad at like selling either themselves internally or their fan base as like, we got unlucky, we lost a few puck balances, but next year we're hoping we get them. It's like, we've never really heard a team say that,

even though that's usually the case. But so the point is, like, with the sharks, I mean, they changed their coach, and they let a guy like Dan Boyle walk maybe, and they obviously brought in Martin Jones, but for the most part, like this core has been here for years, and it's kind of cool just to see, like, there were so many times where these rumors

about Joel Thorntner or Patrick Marlow moving on, and it'd be cool to see them have another long playoff run and maybe even win a cup like that'd be very vindicating yeah i mean they're they're a franchise and i don't want to use the term the right way but they did sort of stick to a long-term plan and and realize that you know good hockey players don't become bad hockey players and the playoffs all of a sudden right you know the the playoffs are 14 games versus for for i guess the average team in that case um versus 82 games for the regular season and you can learn a lot more about how good players are over the 82

games than the short sample of one or two playoff series. So it's nice that they finally did get vindicated. I hope they don't like go out and lose in the first round this year. And make it seem like, you know, they had their one year and that they screwed it up. But, you know, it's always good when there are stories that, you know, it's always good when there are stories that sort of help you as an analytical person make the argument that you need to take a longer term view of things and that, you know, one game or one week or one series or even one year doesn't necessarily make or break what you should continue doing in the future. I agree with that.

One other team that I wanted to talk about here was the Tampa Bay Lightning, who probably won't make the playoffs, so it's not, you know, an urgent matter. but I thought like one of the sneaky trades today was just getting rid of Val Filpula just because I mean for two things right like one the five million maybe was on the hook for next year would have really tied their hands with signing probably Tyler Johnson I imagine he would kind of would have been

the odd man out and that would have been a tough thing to reconcile like having to watch a guy like Tyler Johnson walk or having to trade his rights or whatever because Valpilola is on your team and the other thing is he has a no move clause and they would have had to protect him in expansion draft, which also would have left them kind of exposing a really good player. So, you know, it was one of those things where it was kind of like a sneaky little trade where it's like, hmm, they traded Val Filpula and like a pick or whatever for Mark Stride

and then they flip Mark Stride for another pick, but it's like somehow Steve Eisenman just came out, smelling like roses here. I don't know how, but he always does. I have to wonder if like the other GMs in the league aren't like frustrated by Isam. because you have to feel like they had him like pinned down, especially if you're like Vegas, you're looking at this thing, like, you know what, they're probably in a situation where we can at least get something out of them to, to help them preserve their roster. And then all of a sudden, I think it was like one of the last deals before three o'clock came

around. Eisman manages to deal, he'll be away. And I think I read like he even, he got them to get, he got Philly to hold on to. to like 4.7% of Strites contract. And then they're retaining 50% of Strite. Like, it's like, it's all this. Three different teams are paying marks right now. Yeah, it was some, like, absurd number so that, like, the numbers worked out exactly perfectly.

So there was, like, no net cap hit. And the, you don't want to say that someone's playing, like, four-dimensional chess. But Eisenman has to be one of the closest to, you know, seeing all the moving pieces that are going around and having sort of a clear vision of what he needs to do. It's amazing that he also took Marks right from Philly and then just moved him to Pittsburgh and it's like... Yeah. Like, those two teams didn't really need that middleman,

except for the fact they probably just don't like each other and don't really want to do... Yeah, it's not going to... It's like Steve Eisenman somehow winds up profiting from this. Like, I don't... It's funny. Like, last summer, I remember looking at it, I was like, they can't sign Stamkels.

Like, Stankel is a fantastic player, but, man, if they sign him to the money he's looking for, like, I just don't see how they're going to be able to keep this, team intact. And yeah, now, I mean, obviously the Kuturov contract goes a long way, the fact that he got him to take so much less than he's actually worth. But like, now this, and it's like, yeah, the lightning, I'm going to be very, very high on them again heading into next year, assuming nothing crazy happens between now and then.

Yeah, I mean, his ability to sort of structure the roster and figure out, you know, if he could get rid of that Ryan Callahan deal, that would be the ultimate. Houdini Mooh, but I think that's the one that he might have tied behind his backs for, for when does it expire? 20, 20 years. It's in a while. It's a lot. Yeah.

In a very long time. Yes. But he's, you know, he's found a way to, to make things like this work. And David Clarkson got traded so anything can happen. Anything can happen. You can't say it can happen anymore. You're right about that. Were there any other teams, or maybe we haven't discussed any.

teams that were maybe too quiet, like maybe a team like Anaheim should have done something? Like I don't know. Like I, were there any other teams where it's like you're kind of confused why they didn't really make any noise? Anaheim is one that's interesting because, again, the West is so weak that they... And I guess they picked up Patrick Eves a few days before.

Yeah. Yeah. They made a small move. They've still got like a glut of defensemen that... Well, that's a thing. seems to pose an expansion problem in theory, possibly. Well, it seems like they're one of these teams. I mean, we keep hearing that there's going to be a lot of action between the end of the season.

Expansion draft. It probably seems like one of those defenses going to go. I mean, man, if they prioritize keeping count foul over some of these other guys, though, I think that's going to be a very bad decision. As someone who, I don't want to say, I dislike the ducks, but I'm not a huge ducks fan. I don't mind them having this problem going. in. But yeah, I mean, the Pacific in particular is not very, not very strong. So it feels like, you know, San Jose went out and made a move to strengthen their position. And Edmonton went and did an Edmonton thing that doesn't necessarily, I don't think makes them a better team. It may make them more vulnerable. It probably leaves them close to the same, maybe a little weaker. But Anaheim was in a position where, you know, it's not inconceivable that they can in the first two playoff rounds and then you're in the conference finals and they didn't do much

to to help their cause there. I don't think that I don't know necessarily that they, um, that they are quite on the same level as, as, you know, the San Jose's, the Connor McDavid's, um, for the 50% of the game. Yes. He'll end up playing in the playoffs, I'm sure. Um, um, But they're definitely a club that could have stepped up. The one that really surprised me was Buffalo as a team that is obviously not going anywhere, but really didn't do anything to sort of take advantage and, you know, stockpile some more resources for what's seeming like a kind of a long rebuild these days. Yeah, I wonder what happened there because, like, it's not one of those things where, you know,

last year, for example, when Jim Benning didn't do anything. you could kind of point to like, well, this guy has like a very suspect asset management track record and maybe he just doesn't really understand what he needs to do here. But like Tim Marie has done a pretty good job over the past few years of just getting as many picks as he can. Like they're amongst the league leaders in terms of how many picks they made over the past three or four years or whatever. And it's like I just wonder what like maybe he just wasn't getting any offers that were just worth. Like I don't know. Like it seems like Demetri Kulikov would have been like I'm not a fan of him as a player, but it seems like he would have been. been like an ideal guy for someone to at least give up like a second rounder for that's that's the

weird thing is that kuhakov obviously like a lot of analytics people don't like him but there's an equal number of like yeah i don't want to say non-a but hockey people who who really like him and to not be able to turn him or or cody franzon who's kind of the exact opposite of that um into you know even a later round pick i don't know what what service they really offer you over the remaining 20 games that you wouldn't take, you know, the last remaining offer at the deadline. You have to think that they must have discussed it and had some offers available. So maybe those pulled out. But it's a little confusing for someone that, like you said, generally has had a pretty good read on the market and on where he's moving people.

So I agree. I agree with that completely. I think that the other. kind of puzzling thing to me and you just kind of rerun this same conversation we've had here for many years but it's like why does no one like pa parent's oh I don't like are like you just like the worst person ever or something like did he kick someone's dog like I don't like like what like there must be something behind the scenes because there is no way that like he could have helped every single playoff contender this year like there's no way every team thinks they have 12 better forward and he went for a sixth rounder and it like makes me think like How was there no one that thought he was worth a fifth? I feel like there must be some deep inner, like, hockey people secret that, you know, GM forum where they're, like, spreading, like, rumors and gossip. They've got a GM slack where PA Parento is, like, being ragged on all the time. Because, you know, there's enough franchises now with analytics people who, in theory, get listened to, at least a fair amount.

Yeah. who probably could have said, you know, pay Parento for a sixth-round pick, we could give him a fifth round pick, and that would still be a pretty good deal for us. And, you know, Nashville comes away with him for a super cheap price. A Steve-A-A-Stov-Level price. A steve-a-old. That was Montreal's decision, was Parent-O-R-odd, and they went with Ott.

But, yeah, there must be something about whether, you know, he's, quote-unquote, bad in the room or... Brad Boys was like this for years too, right? Where it's like everyone just kept being like, like, he was on like every single bargain bin, UFA blog post anyone wrote for like six years. It's like every year like just get Brad Boys for like the league minimum. And he's like sitting there until like September. And then finally someone picks him up and he scores like 22 goals.

And you're just like, what is going on? This was obvious. We told you. It's probably just a gift to like the bloggers from the league as a whole. Like here's some easy. It's some easy content. You know, you guys can push this out. No trouble.

Write your Parenthood article. How magnanimous of them. Yeah. Is there any other big takeaways you have? Nothing huge. I mean, if I'm biased towards looking at, you know, the Ontario point of view on things. And, you know, Ottawa had a weird, weird deadline because I didn't hate all of their moves, but definitely they have a different view of where their level of ability is right now

than I think a lot of other people do. Yes. And then Toronto on the other end didn't really seem to do much to close out that hole on defense that maybe they need to push themselves either into a playoff spot or into, you know, I think they could be a very good team if they didn't keep blowing third period leads, I guess. is the they're fatally flawed they're young man

they can't they can't close out the games they get bored it's the millennial generation how Brian Boyle he's uh I think he's I saw some he's played the most playoff games out of anyone since like 2011 so he'll bring that presents into the locker maybe he'll play right defense or something um all right let's talk a little bit about

uh about Sloan um I don't want you to necessarily spill all your beans because I want people surprised and excited all that jazz when you guys actually give your talk but give the people a little bit of a spoiler what are you what are you and ryan working on yeah so ryan stimson and i uh ryan's from hockey graphs as well as i am uh are presenting a poster on passing data and how we can use it to evaluate uh defensive play uh and what we've looked at mostly is both from a team level what sort of systems what sort of tactics make for teams that effectively defend against passing plays. And in particular, we looked at, you know, what are the most dangerous types of passing plays, obviously like Royal Road, pass from behind the net, that sort of thing. So which teams in particular, I think Ryan goes over, you know, Florida did very well last

year with a very aggressive man-to-man style, whereas Colorado was a lot more passive, didn't necessarily mark as closely and had a lot worse passing results, which obviously turned into a lot worse actual results as well. But we also looked at the player level how much of inability do players have to defend against certain types of passes? And one of the things that we found

was that if we divide up all of the passes that occur into all these little bins, like pass from behind the net, or road passes from the center lane, kind of in the right lane, that sort of thing. All of these things seem to be distinct defensive skills. So as a really simple example, defensemen have a lot more impact over how many passes come from behind the net than forwards do, which makes a lot of sense. forwards have a lot more impact on how many passes come from the point or how many passes go back to the point.

So we identified how much of a skill these kinds of things are. And then we identified the fact that a lot of these are independent skills and you can use these passing metrics to have. help you determine either where your own weaknesses or your opponent's weaknesses are. So if your opponents are giving up, you know, a thousand behind the net passes every game, then obviously that's somewhere that you might want to attack. Or, you know, if you're lacking a player who can defend against shots off of passes on zone entries, that may be a player that you want to go out and find. So do you think something like, let's say defending,

passes from behind the net. Do you think that would be more of an individual player trait that some guys might just be naturally better at? Or would it be something that a coach could look at the data and say, we're going to exploit this? I think it's a little bit of both. I think defensively, there's a lot more structure and strategy involved than offensively. You need five guys who are basically acting as one unit and not one of them.

can screw anything up in order for your results to look good. Yeah, and so that's something that you can fix with coaching. That's something that I think you can sort of drill into it. But at the same time, they're going to be defensemen who are good at positioning their body, are good at, you know, pinning their opponents down into one location so that they don't get that opportunity to make the dangerous pass. And I think that's a bit of what we see in the data. There's definitely repeatability there.

But there's also some areas. where there's also some of the data where it's like we have to regress a little bit because there are team factors, there are opponent factors, there are, you know, he had a flu factors that we can't necessarily account for, that we want to sort of take out of the data before we make any evaluations. Well, that was one of my things with the Patrick Waugh abs because, you know, the easy thing was to point at their death chart on the back end and be like, you know, they don't really have anyone beyond Tyson Berry.

I guess Eric Johnson, it's like, what is Patrick Wall supposed to do? But then it's like you watch them. And I felt like a lot of it was just like people just like, it looked like they like never practiced. Like it was just like, like people were always in the wrong position at the wrong time. It was just like it was so disorganized. There's complete chaos in their own zone. And they were playing a lot of that man to man where they're just kind of chasing around. And it's like, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't take like six like generic AHL defensemen that don't really have many skills and just like drill.

into them, like, proper positioning. And, like, I'm sure, like, there's only so much you can do unless you have the requisite talent or skill level. But I imagine that if you're running a tight ship, you can probably, like, your baseline will be pretty high. Well, that's what I feel is that the most impact you can have as a coach is, you know, drilling in that defensive structure. If you just get your guys to sit back and, you know, play a very trapping,

play a style where you don't attack very aggressively and focus like really hard on preventing opportunities against, you'll have pretty good defensive results. Like the devils for years and years were arena bias aside were evidence of this. You know, you can take any group of players and if you have an organization that's dedicated enough to a system, you can drill that into players. So, you know, Colorado does not have a great roster, did not have a great roster. Did not have a great roster last year. But at the same time, there are problems that you can fix if you're willing to put the effort into identifying what they are, identifying where your individual players have gaps in, you know, executing whatever system you think is going to close those holes that you have

and, you know, working on it rather than, I don't know, maybe they just had played shenny at their practices. Well, what pulls my mind, though, is that after like, even worse now. Like it's one of these things where it's like I just, I mean, you could explain it by the fact that the goal tending

really fell apart for them this year. And that was something that under law, especially like the first season, like you wonder how much it was just like short term sort of luck like yeah, Sermian Brahma was just playing out of his mind

and that wasn't actually his true ability. But like obviously if the goal is were making a higher level of saves or even like a league average save percentage, they probably wouldn't be like historically bad in terms of goal differential and win-loss record right now. But it's just, I just don't, I don't know. Someone needs to do like a big deep dive on the Colorado. Because like I wasn't expecting him to be good, but I looked at the roster and I looked at the fact that I knew Patrick O'Wall wasn't a good coach.

And I thought, well, maybe Jared Bedner is just not a good coach either. But assuming that he's, I mean, everything we were told about him, like his HL tracker and everything seemed like he was a perfectly, reasonable candidate and so I just don't understand how they're so bad. It's really baffling because I genuinely thought they would get better year over year rather than becoming the absolute worst team they could possibly. And one of the, going back to the trade deadline actually, I was kind of happy to see that they didn't go ahead and trade away Duchenne or Landisog because they're, those are good young players who are under control for a while.

And I don't necessarily know that if you trade Duchenne for a first and a prospect, that you're necessarily going to get another Matt Duchin in three years when you've already, you've got one. And you're going to have probably the first overall pick, but if, well, maybe not probably, but you're going to have a very high pick this year where you'll, you'll likely get a good or at least serviceable player out of it. and you don't want to be, you know, rebuilding with, let's say, the 27th overall pick alongside him and hoping that that 27th overall pick turns into Matt Dershain in three years.

Yeah. So I'm glad that they didn't panic. I don't necessarily know what a long-term strategy is to fix all of the problems that they have. It's one of those things where, like, if you see, like, a car that's so busted up or, like, a house that just needs so many repairs, you're just, like, You're kind of overwhelmed. You're like, you don't know where to start, right? Like, if there's like one or two obvious things, you're like, okay, well, if we start with this and the next logical thing is to do that. But like, you look at that team and it's just like, I, it's like, it's like, it's like stressful a little bit. You just look at it.

You're like, oh, my God, I don't know what to do. Yeah. There's so much. And McKinnon are like, those are the things that you know aren't the problem. Yeah. But I mean, that would be the only argument, I think, for trading either Landiscagg or Duchet and just like, they're so. many holes on this team that if you could get like a king's ransom where you get like four or five legitimate assets but i don't think anyone's paying that right now and we're seeing like they're like

they were like asking for like goalie prospects or something like i don't know like everything was just so out of whack and i think the worst thing they could do is like trade matthewshane for like a cam foul or type of defense or something where they're just like we need a defenseman so we're just going to take this guy that's like okay and it's like yeah and i feel like for probably for them to the expansion draft isn't helping with the market that they otherwise could have made for them because teams aren't going to want to take on a Matt Duchyne who you're obviously going to have to, or going to want to protect, if it's going to mean that there's another player that you would otherwise get to keep that you're going to end up losing in addition to whatever you're

paying out to Colorado to get Matt Duchayne out of there. So there's kind of like a a plus one onto whatever deal you would have had to made because you're bumping someone that you otherwise would have got to keep potentially down into the hands of Las Vegas at that point. Yeah, Colorado's got a lot of work ahead of them. Glad it's not our problem. Eric Parnas's problem now. Eric Parnas is like in the corner of this room, just solving, quite.

Yeah, yeah. All right, Matt, plug some stuff. Where can people check out your work, where they can follow you online? Sure. my my my my my Twitter handle is at cane underscore mat very original was Matt underscore cane degen I think it was I I I hate to admit this but it took me a really long time to choose between doing like a funny like creative and just going with my name and I chose just my name and I'm kind of glad that I did but it took way longer the thing is is like

I went down this path and if you're serious about being in this industry or you know, trying to make, even if it's just a hobby, uh, you generally want to have your name associated with your work, assuming you're like doing actual good work. Maybe,

maybe if you're just a jokester, maybe you want, you don't want your name associated to it. But like, so eventually, like I feel like a lot of people start off with like some sort of witty thing because they're like, ah,

whatever, I'm just going to see where this Twitter thing goes. Then eventually you're like, maybe I should actually just change it to my name. And then it's this whole, whole thing. So I was actually just really worried that my jokes weren't all that funny.

All right, that was the worst part. Um, Thanks for taking the time to chat. Yeah. Thanks for having me. This is fun. I'm looking forward to checking out your talk,

and I'm sure all that will be available online so people can check out what you and Ryan are doing. Yeah. The papers online, I think Ryan and I will have something up on HockeyGraphs.com, and I've got other stuff up on Wintersview.com. If you were in the Washington or Dallas markets right now, you can check out the videos that we're doing there,

or there's a few of them, too, that are globally available to if they don't have footage. Sweet. We'll check that out, and let's get you back on the show soon. Awesome. Thanks for having me. The Hockey PDOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.