The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 151: In The Entertainment Business

Episode Date: March 11, 2017

With the Vancouver Hockey Analytics Conference in town this weekend, Micah Blake McCurdy, Jack Han, Mike Pfeil, and Chris Watkins stop by for a mega-show to discuss their respective presentations and various other miscellaneous topics. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 1:00 Can Corsi Be Coached? 3:00 Quantifying Effects of Linemates 4:15 Puck-moving vs. Puck-carrying 7:30 Penalty Killer Prototype 11:15 Defining 'Hockey Sense' 12:45 Radical Deployment 14:00 Score Effects 18:00 Expected Goals 23:00 Fixing the End of the Regular Season 25:30 Playoff Seeding 29:30 The Entertainment Business 37:45 Three-Point Line Sponsoring today’s show is SeatGeek, which is making it easier than ever before to buy and sell sports and concert tickets. They’re giving our listeners a $20 rebate off of their first purchase. All you have to do is download the free SeatGeek app and enter the promo code PDO to get started. 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.

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

These days, everything is go, go, go. It's non-stop hustle all the time. Work, friends, family. Expect you to be on 24-7? Well, sometimes you just need to reach for a Coors Light because it's made to chill. Coors Light is cold-loggered, cold-filtered, and cold-packaged.

It's as crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. It is literally made to chill. Coors Light is the one I choose when I need to unwind. So when you want to hit reset, reach for the beer that's made to chill. Get Coors Light and the new look delivered straight to your door with Drisley or Instacart. Celebrate responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. Regressing to the mean since 2050, it's the Hockey P.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich.

Welcome to the Hockey Pediocast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And sitting across from me in a surprising. jam-packed living room are Jack Han and Mike Phel. Mike, Jack, what's going on? I've never asked two people that at the same time. It's usually a one-on-one. This is an honor to be here. I'm really overwhelmed right now in the illustrious company of everybody here. Yeah, for me, it's my third time on the PDO cast, first time in studio, so a big honor. That's not true. We did it. We did one I guess in studio, but we did one together in a, and like a McGill conference room. No, like

real deal here. Yes. So you guys are in town for the Vancouver Hockey Analytics Conference. Jack, you're presenting this time, right? You did last year as well, but are you actually doing something this year? Or are you just here to drink a beer? I'm actually doing, presenting your original research.

So, can you give a little spoiler to people? Yeah, sure. I don't want to spoil your full thing. I mean, I want people to watch it, of course. Yeah, so the title of my presentation is Can Corsi be coached? And, you know, I've been working with the Miguel Martlett women's hockey team for the past three years. And, you know, unlike most other analytics guys who work for teams, I report to the head coach just because we don't have a front office.

Like, everything runs through our coaching staff. And, you know, Corsi is a thing that we know, you know, players are either good or bad at, right? So you kind of, the consensus is you go out and you try to buy players with good course. and try to get rid of the ones who don't, right? Right. But, you know, after three years, I've kind of realized that there are certain things that coaches can do to put their players in a better spot to actually help them control more shots when they're on the ice. Like what? I'm just tactical things, how, not only how they want their players to play, but also how they give feedback and how they make adjustments.

So, you know, like coaching effects is something that I don't think many people have attempted to really dig into, but, you know, given my proximity, like I can sort of not only understand the process behind it, but also have some metrics, right, that we track throughout a season to see, okay, like, you know, we start the year at 52% and then we end at 65%, which is actually exactly what we've done for the past two seasons. So how do we do that, right? Because our players didn't magically get better. We didn't make any trades because we can. can't make trades. So how did that happen and how has that happened for the past two seasons? So it was a big topic at the Sloan conference last week was sort of quantifying the effects of line mates and of teammates and how certain situations influence performance. And obviously we have stuff like, you know, with or without you metrics that kind of show if the players a certain drag on his teammates or if, you know, just based on how it's working with who is playing with who. I think that there's also just like a stylistic component to it that might not necessarily be in the numbers. But like depending on who's like if you're playing with someone compared to someone else, you might just be playing a completely different game.

And that probably also influences things. Sure. I mean, you know, every player has a different profile. Like, you know, if you just look at something that I would use a lot is, you know, looking at exits and entries, which I know that you've done, especially for the fencemen, right? Yeah. It's very rare that you have a guy on a team or a girl. who's good at every facet of the transition game. It's very rare. You might have one or two.

So everybody's good at something and not so good at other things. So how can you maximize that or what matters more, relatively speaking? That's something I've been digging into with some interesting findings. So you know what I'm fascinated about, I forget who brought it up on Twitter the other day, but it's the idea of whether the ability to rush the puck, especially for a defenseman, is a skill that's sort of fading in the NHL where, I mean, like you saw last year, for example, something that made the Penguins so successful was their ability not necessarily to skate fast, but just play fast in terms of just moving the puck from one end to the ice quickly.

Obviously, the puck can travel faster via past and if one guy is just skating it out by himself all the time. Like, do you think that that's a skill that is still relevant in today's NHL? Or do you think that just puck movers, especially for defensemen, is a more sought after skill. I mean, I think it's a little bit paradoxal, and I think Gus Casaros was a random. Yeah, I think that's yeah, I think he brought up. And he was talking about it. And my response was, you know, I think it's getting harder and harder for us to see that skill because, you know, teams are betting, are playing with better structure and the guys who can't rush to puck are being phased out. So when everybody's good, it looks like everybody's just blah, you know? Right. Yeah, I guess it's

kind of tougher to separate your stuff. yourselves from other guys. Mike, get in, get in here, man. You're also sitting in on this conversation. Let's talk a little bit about the penalty kill. I think that's something that I've been focusing a lot on lately, and that's something that's right up your alley. It's like my favorite thing in the world.

What do you think about the idea of how we combat against teams that are going with the four forward one defenseman approach on the power play? Like, what do you think is the best way to approach defensemen? bending that. I think like the biggest thing that I've been a big fan of when it comes to that transition has been like a more aggressive penalty kill. And I think predominantly along the lines of like the wedge plus one, like the transitions into a check press. But more importantly, I think it starts first and foremost with player usage and picking like your best players as opposed to specialists because they're quickly becoming the way of the dinosaur. And

you know, you're enabling those players and putting those positions, those players in a position to succeed. Obviously, you're going to probably generate more offense and you're going to take advantage of it because, you know, it's always been discussed that if you have four forwards out there, you're likely going to give up something. But the net gain is always going to be there. I know you've mentioned that on the last podcast with Delo, but if you put guys out there like a Lars Eller or a Michael Backland, who's really good at that, or you start doing a lot of things that Carolina's been doing this season, you're going to be able to, you know, catch them along that, like the half wall and then, you know, cause a turnover and then go up by some.

And next thing you know, you're generating goals. And then I think that's, like, the biggest thing that's lacking in the NHL outside of generating offense at five versus five is not having those opportunities to kind of do that. So you deploy a really aggressive penalty kill. And I know you mentioned it previously three forwards and one defenseman might be an option. Or, you know, to Jack's point, recently, you know, the discussion point of total hockey. You know, we might get four forwards up there, right? Yeah. And just see what's going to happen because you're going to be so much more mobile and you're going to be able to do a lot more with those guys rather than, you know, two defensive.

defenseman. Just four, just four players without a job. This would be great. What do you guys think about this idea that are like, because obviously there aren't really any more penalty kill specialists, I feel like. I feel like you mentioned it's kind of being like phased out. Like you kind of just need to be good at hockey to be good at the penalty kill. But I thought an interesting thing was like it seems like, I don't know, might just be anecdotal, but all of these kind of like smaller, shiftier players are much more effective on the penalty kill. Maybe just they can, I don't know, just hound the puck carriers more or I don't know what it is. But it's, It seems like, you know, these prototypical, just big lumbering guys just aren't as successful

as you might think on the penalty kill. Yeah, I mean, you know, when you're talking about guys who are shifting who are fast who can close down in space, Mike is sitting right behind me and I'm thinking of, I think of a better conjure, for instance. You know, a guy who's very fast, got good hockey sense, cannot shoot the puck. So why not throw him out there, you know, the penalty kill all the time? Because if you throw him out on five-on-five, he's not going to help you off. offensively, but he is going to help you, you know, hound the puck, kill time.

Yep. On the PK. Yeah. It seems like just keeping the puck in the other end of the ice would probably be a pretty sound penalty kill strategy, but teams are just content, like, are just sitting back and trying to block as many shots as possible. Yeah, it's so bizarre that, like, the penalty killed stuff is, like, a game within a game, and then you're just managing time and mental fatigue and physical fatigue, and it's like,

why don't you have, like, a Paul Byron out there and Erykondra and these guys that are just going to wear you down and you're eventually probably anecdotal evidence as well but it would make sense that if you're wearing out the power play and keeping the puck away from them and forcing them to try and get it back from you they're not going to, obviously they're not going to generate anything if they don't have to puck. Right. But you know

if you're not only that but just like disrupting the neutral zone as well like on dumpouts and icings and things like that like I'm sure Jack could speak to that a bit more like how much effective it is. Just to kind of defend I guess the coaches out there were you know the ones where

we're doing this at a very high level. You know, at Miguel, like our coaching staff in pre-game meetings, I'd say, we would spend as much time talking about how to prevent exits and entries on the PK than how to play in-zone, right? You know, we talk about trigger points. So trigger points are moments where you want to attack the power play aggressively, right? So a trigger point could be, you know, if you're behind the net breaking out, you want to kind of force them to stay there as long as you can.

or when they're carrying the puck on entry, you know, you want to outman them at the blue line and cause a turnover or make them go offside or, you know, or worst case, they dump it in and then you gain possession, right? Right. Or another trigger point is once they're in your zone,

but they bauble the puck or they miss a pass or, you know, they have their numbers to you. So, you know, those are moments that you can attack the puck carry and get the puck back. So I think coaches were really update on, you know, how modern hockey's play, like they're very much aware of that. So it's something that you'll see more and more of. Yeah, I think that just kind of taking the power play out of its comfort zone

and just making them maybe try to do something that they're like, you know, I imagine that a lot of these power plays probably have this ideal set of how they like for the sequence to go to resolve in the back of the net. But so if you can just kind of make them maybe go to a second or a third or a fourth option, all of a sudden you're at least making some sort of progress. Yeah, that's the dream. And I mean, I think the most exciting games you have out there is when you have a penalty kill at that. It's forcing the power play to just do everything in their power and they can't get anything to work.

And, you know, you're taking advantage of literally every option that they have. That's what I really like about the Kane's penalty kill especially. Yeah, yeah, no, they, I don't know if they still have, I haven't checked recently, but I know at the start of the year that they were, like, kind of going at, like, a historically great rate. I think they, like, at 5, or 4 versus 5, I think they're still, like, the top team at Corsi against, Fenwick against shot and I expect equals as well like they're just crushing it. Jack, I've always been curious about this and maybe you can enlighten me a little bit as someone who works for a coaching staff. When you say something like hockey sentence,

what are you actually talking about? Do you even know what it is or is it just something that people just throw it around and it's not an actual thing? Like I try to avoid the expression just because I don't trust my interpretation of as much as the coaches. Like I would give him more concrete measures. Like, you know, this player is good at influencing controlled exits or influencing controlled entries or, you know, influencing the failed exits. You know, so hockey sense could be just an ability to do something in a very narrow sense. Yeah, it seems like a whole lot of nothing, honestly.

No, I mean, like, there's definitely something there. Like, it's not... Yeah, no, for sure. It's one of those things like you know when you see it. Yeah, like you can... not know how to skate backwards. You can be very slow. It can not know how to shoot.

You can, you know, look very kind of sluggish, but you can be a very smart player and, you know, be able to close down space or to open up space with the puck and still be effective. Right.

So it's definitely a distinct skill. But what it is, you know, you have to define it. Okay. So let's say, you know, you're working with your team and you want to make some sort of radical schematic shift to your game plan.

Like, let's say, you decided to use three forwards and one defense on the penalty kill. Do you think that's something you could accomplish in season, or was that something that maybe you'd have to do in the preseason during exhibition games during training camp? Because it's such a kind of fundamental shift from how the players are used to playing. Well, like two more radical deployment of things that we do is we play five fours in our first power play and we play 70s.

And those are things that, you know, we've, as a staff, we've been talking about for a while. Because like last year, for instance, we knew with our, freshman class coming in. We have 10 freshman players this year that we wouldn't necessarily have a defenseman who's going to be able to play a point on a first power play.

So we were mentally prepared to the idea of playing 5-4s and we kind of bounced ideas around the summer and then we kind of finally got around to it in preseason. And same thing with 70s. We find that with the style that we play, which is very up-tempo, very... We place a lot of demands on our defensemen

to support the play and to move the puck quickly. Having seven out there is, you know, is a big edge for us. All right, guys. Well, we're going to take a little break here and switch up the musical chairs we got going on and enjoy the rest of the conference. Yeah, thanks.

All right, all of a sudden, we've got a new cast. Micah, Michael Blake McCurdy and Chris Watkins. Hello, thank you. How's it going, guys? What do you guys want to talk about? About how much more handsome we are than the people you've had on a new? You're definitely more handsome than the first two guys.

Um, let's, I don't know, Micah, you're not, are you presenting this? I am. I am. What are you doing on? I'm trying to figure out. Just doing your pressure thing again, hoping people in last year I don't remember. So pressure features again, I, which at first I was nervous because I, I'm going to repeat some of the stuff I talked about last year, but then I decided to tell myself that it was actually good, that that that meant that the research I did last year wasn't completely a waste of time. Right. But I'm talking with score effects, trying to figure out why teams, play worse when they're leading and why they play better when they're trailing. And the specific detail that's better than last year, that's better than what I've done before is incorporating that pressure that I talked about, about incorporating the time on the clock

in addition to the score. And so did you come up with any... It's a little better. Can you... Not really. Just a tiny bit better. It doesn't lend itself very well to sound bites, which is a bit unfortunate. but the point is that it's theoretically quite a bit stronger,

that the numerically comes out to be the same thing as what we had before. So there's nothing to make you say, oh, God, you know, it's so much better than before. But when you look at the pieces that go into the model, it's much more satisfying. You know, this looks like it matches up closely with what we actually watch. Right. Rather than something, it's a little less artificial.

So I'm happy with it for that reason, but it's not super groundbreaking stuff. So do you think it's, do you think like the concept of score effects or the stuff you're looking at is purely just like on a psychological level where people just it's human nature to kind of let up if you're if you're leading i think there's so one of the details that i did work at that is new and that you'll have to hear the talk to understand that the background four is that i think home and away teams feed into it more in a more detailed way than i realized so score effects don't affect the home team and the away team the same the

that's so in some sense score effects are part of what makes home ice advantage what ideas. Right. But also another aspect is that I find that it does appear to be a more reasonable psychological take on the incentives that teams are offered. You know, given what you are offered in terms of the score system, teams are behaving in a way which is more sensible than I previously thought. Right. On the face of its score effects look really counterintuitive. You know, that teams suddenly find this extra gear when they're losing. You know, if they, if they, if they, if they were doing things optimally, you would think that they would do that all the time. They wouldn't wait until they were losing to play their best hockey.

Or conversely, if you look at it from the other point of view, they wouldn't suddenly start playing badly just because they were winning. But when you look at the incentives that the time and that the score gives the teams in terms of the point system, then you see that they're behaving a little bit more rationally than it first appeared. So that's part of why it's not so impressive is because it's not, there's less surprise now than there was before, which is unfortunate from, you know,

if you're trying to make a splash at a conference, but it feels good in the sense that I feel like I understand what's going on better. Right. It's funny, you still talk to people sometimes. They're like, yeah, I'm watching this game, and I don't know why, but all of a sudden this team just started playing so much better

when they were down for nothing. It's like, I can think of a few reasons. Yeah. You know, it wouldn't have anything to do with the terrible players. that are suddenly coming over the ice for the other team now that they're up for nothing. Yeah. All right, Chris, what do you,

what are you presented on this weekend? Yeah, so I'm presenting on this concept of opponent weighted horsey. And actually, just recently, partially thanks to Micah, it's opponent weighted, expected goals,

and I added some score effects in there based on Michael's model on his site. So I added some juice to it, you know, I realized, I created it a couple years ago. Really, it was in response to Brian Elliott's crazy 2011-2012 season where he had like a 947 percentage.

And I'm like, there's no way in hell Brian Elliott's this good. And plus I hate the Blues anyway. So I went and looked at every team that the Blues played against that year and saw, you know, what, you know, what I would expect them to score and then, you know, how they scored against Brian Elliott. Right. It's sort of manifested from that. So I'm really looking at how teams perform, you know, against the other.

top teams, you know, it's different for the Blackhawks to, you know, you know, outshute the coyotes 50 to 15. Right. But when they do it's the Kings, well, okay, that's, there's something there. So I'm really trying to look into that, see if there's any predictive values to that. Does that really make a difference? The score effects thing, actually I think was very enlightening. It actually helped me make it more predictive than it was before.

But really, really doing a deep dog into that. Give me a little spoiler. Is it, is it predictive? It is. and it isn't. So, so I guess the... So like every other talk.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to slice it certain ways.

So, for example, the top two teams and this, Knox. Right. Like with it. Top two teams last year

were the sharks and the penguins. And so actually... That seems like two pretty good teams. Well, yeah. And so there was a tradition contest last year

and like, dang it, had I known that, out of flip it, I flipped that, but it was a little bit outdated at the time, so I didn't see that. But sort of identifying, it really does sort of lead you to really understand who are with the top teams in the league. And so, you know, is it more predictive than, you know, the traditional score adjusted course of year or something like that? Yes and no.

Really on the defensive side is where you really see a lot of that, especially carryover from year to year. I think defensive effects, especially from coaching, is more. repeatable than sort of the offensive side. So you really see that carryover. Right. But as a hallway is probably in line with the other predictive stats out there. Yeah. I mean, I think that you'd like to think that over the course of an 82 game season stuff would even out.

But obviously, I mean, you guys would both probably agree that there's like a bit deeper nuance in terms of like, I feel like strength of schedule isn't something we really account for it probably as much as we should. No, we definitely don't. And it's, you know, you want to say stuff like, oh, over 82 games, you know, this stuff evens out. But some stuff just doesn't. and you know like nobody there's no like nobody's saying

oh you know we should extend the season to 100 games absolutely no one is like you know it's like in

you know like if you work out some formula and you say okay this is you know we can rely on these results to some

confidence interval if we only had 90 or 100 games you know that like if that's what you get from some calculation that's what you get

and and if you want some stat to average out to come out of the wash because it's random, you know, in 80 games, that's nice, but it might and it might not. Right.

So you, you know, that's part of why, you know, if you look at different sports, is why it's great to look at different sports. You know, baseball has a tremendous amount of streakiness in it, but then they play a huge number of games. Right. So you can't win a pennant, you know, on being good fortune. Like, you have to, like, you have to win a pile of games. But I love the idea of, like, the wildcard game, and then it's like, we played 162, but

then we're going to play one to figure it all out. Well, but, you know, hockey people, hockey fans, sort of spiritually, if you're like, are the same as this. Yeah. You know, you can have a dominant regular season performance. You can put up 145 points. And then if you get knocked out on some crazy Game 7 nonsense, people are going to say, oh, well, you're clearly chokers.

Yeah. And if you're Bruce Boodier, you're fired multiple times. We do this as hockey fans where we just say, you know, this one game, these two games, these however many games, you know, are clearly what are the important in the 100 or 50-ish games, whatever, that came before are meaningly. Right. It's not quite as bad as baseball in that sense, but we do that. And every time you do something that's less fun, you do something that's more rigorous and vice versa.

So you can, you know, you can say we're going to be completely mathematically honest. We're going to make everybody play 15 game playoff series, you know, and we're going to bore the tears off of everybody. Or you can say, who cares? one game, I don't care if you've had one day rest and you've had six, you know, round two, fight, go. You know, that's great for fans and statisticians will cry, but fine.

You know, you have to pick who it is you're going to please when you make those choices. Yeah, I mean, am I, I'm sure I'm not the only one, but we're at the point of the schedule here where it's getting to be a grind. Like I, I

keep waiting for the first round of the playoffs, but, uh, well, And this is where Michael comes in with his goal plan, you know, for the tanking. We make the games at the end of the season, you know, meaningful. You know, you have teams fighting for playoff positioning, which you have, you know, Arizona is basically mailed it in, you know, months ago. You have Colorado is a tie fire right now.

They mailed it in like on October 31st. Yeah, yeah. And so you have three-point games. You have all these incentives in place to not put forth the most competitive hockey. And as obviously the GM meeting that just recently concluded, no one put that as a priority to make games interesting all year long. And there's really no incentive for fans that are in that sort of no man's land of. We're not really tanking, but we're not really competing either.

So we're just sort of hold the fort, you know, not get rid of Cam Ward, Pure Carolina or something like that. And really make a move one way and the other to make the games more interesting for fans overall. And you just hurts the product. And you see this in comparison to other leagues where, you know, ACWA has March Madness coming up. Yeah. you know, it's completely randomness and whatever that everyone's looking forward to. Yeah. But that's something that gives people, you know, a reason to watch and really get invested in these games going forward.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, all of that is true. And in addition to that, you also have the schedule, which this year, because of five weeks especially, is unusually compressed at the end. The tonight, the, I forget which game it is, but one of the games tonight is the third last this year between two teams that both have two days of rest. there are, if you want games where both teams have had more than one day of rest, there are three more in the entire season, and one of them is tonight. And how many, what is there, like another month or so in the season?

Pretty much. Yeah, no, a month yesterday. So, there's another month of the regular season? Yeah, and so as we get towards the end of the game, every single metropolitan team ends the season on a back-to-back. And six-eighthast of the Atlantic Division, too. And so the schedule is getting really grindy as well. So not only, just like Chris said, not only do you have all these bad incentives

or sort of mixed incentives where it's not really, you know, you have to put something on the ice to get fans in seats, but you also don't really have any particular reason to put your best guys on the ice. And also everybody's tired and possibly hurt. You know, put that together with the extremely conservative culture you have. You know, you get this weird middle ground product which doesn't really.

And, I mean, if you're the New York Rangers, you're one of the best teams in the league, but you're actively also trying to lose games at the same time, and it's like, no one's talking about this for some reason. It's like the weirdest story going on in sports right now. And you get the opposite incentive, too. You know, it's bad for the Rangers

who are going to take a wild card spot with more than 100 points. But also, you know, what if you're the senators, for instance, and you're on a push, you know, you're going to take over right now you get the Bruins at home if you're second in the Atlantic, or you could win. a couple more games and take the Atlantic from the Habs and your your reward is the considerably

stronger Rangers yeah you know the incentives are bad for them too so the you know perverse incentives are are all over the the whole structure well I know we talked about this uh when we did a show together I think it was like our Christmas wish list but one of mine was I'd love to see just team seated one to 16 and then we just hold a like a national TV thing like a week before and the first seed goes up and picks who they play and so on and so forth. Who Travis, I think, suggested is something like this. And then I found out, apparently, they were doing that in Sweden for a few years. And I was like, yeah, of course.

Was it good? From what I gathered, the first few years were just electrifying. Everyone was like, oh, there's all these stories. Like, no one believes in us. And, like, you know, there's all these side plots. They made it super interesting. But then after a while, of course, it's kind of human nature to just be like, we want something else. This is boring.

I mean that all sorts of fun new things aren't fun anymore when they're not new but I have to say I like the idea of letting people choose especially you know any televising peripheral stuff if you like you know the draft the you know expansion drafts this is what we're going to do for the playoff seating

the all-star game like all that extra stuff there's a whole a whole swath of fans who would love to get into extra stuff like that You know, I'm, I, it's weird, I advocate for this stuff just because I like other fans, even though personally I pay no attention. Like, I, I don't even watch intermission shows. Like, I watch hockey when the people are on the ice. Yeah. Like, and when they go to commercial, I flick channels. Like, I don't, don't watch hockey except for hockey. Mm-hmm. Sort of, but there are plenty of people who, you know, they want to see Phil Kessel and his cat. And they want to see, like, like, every, every, like, you know, all of those little details.

if that's how you're a fan, if that's how you engage. I'm putting out statistical work, which is not for all fans, and some fans love it. But whatever level gets you in, and for some people, that kind of like, sort of soap opera-esque, oh, they pick the caps, how dare they? You know, if that's what gets you in, the league should be all over that.

That's fantastic. And you see this a lot in other sports. I'm a big NBA fan, and my girlfriend and I were talking about, you know, Aisha Curry and Riley Curry, who are not basketball players whatsoever, but, you know, in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live,

everyone in the mom knows. They may as well be. Yeah, so I don't pay attention to basketball at all, but I know about Aisha and Riley Curry. Yeah, who's Stefan Curry? They're adorable people. They have these great stories. You see them at the press conferences and stuff.

I don't even watch the sport. And I like that stuff. And that's the thing where, especially when you're doing free agency season, I get very frustrated. You see guys like Jacob Truva just automatically take it off the market for below-valuing deals.

And it's like, it would be great to expect. where, you know, Stephen Stampehouse is going, you know, July 8th or whatever, versus, oh, yeah, you signed a, you know, $8 million contract with Tampa Bay. Okay, great. That's great for Tampa Bay, but for the rest of the league, you know, you see NFL's in the free agency market right now and people are speculating all these marginal players, really, because no one good gets to the market. But there's just a lot of interest and entry around it. Right. The trade season with the NBA recently. You see a big guy like the Marcus Cousers getting traded. It feels like the NFL purposely suppresses in the end up. information or interest like that and it really limits the sort of watchability of the week outside of the games well i think that topic really uh came up earlier this week when the potential for uh the league not releasing who's being protected for the expansion draft came up and

i don't know just like i raise this question to someone but it's like this hockey by nature is an everyone would agree is an exceptional sport right it's like so fun it's at its best if you're watching two good teams that are going back and forth, especially like in the playoffs, it's like possibilities are endless. Like this is amazing. You're sitting on the edge of your seat the entire time. But the NHL for whatever reason as a league just seems like to be going out of its way

to just suppress any possible fun. Go ahead. Oh yeah, so sorry. So my theory, my conspiracy theory I have is when Gary Blackman was named the NHL commissioner, I guess, in 94, I believe you worked for the NBA originally. Right. And a lot of stories at the time where the

Rangers were, run out on the upswing. A lot of the stories at the time was that the NHO was in the process to overtake the NBA. And I think David Stern, the former commissioner. Gary Bennett's a sleeper? Yeah, yeah. He's like, here's the worst person possible to help you grow and make the game exciting. Let me, let me just sabotage everything. And it seems that played out because you look at the role of the commissioners to make, to grow the revenues and make the game more exciting. And revenues have been flat for who knows how long. And now you're not really seeing the game grow in the way that a lot of other sports aren't embracing right now.

So, you know, why is that? Why would you purpose? Right now, David Stern's like sitting at home retired. He's like, oh, yeah. I forgot to pull that operation. I think part of, it's curious what you mentioned. Part of the trouble, if that's the word I want about the way the league markets it, is that they seem to be focused entirely on the on-ice product.

And there are things you could do to improve the on-ice product. and I'm constantly throwing out bizarre ideas like, you know, penalized goalies for freezing the puck and all sorts of other things that I think would make the on-ice product better. But I still, even as it is, I still like the own ice product. Right. And the league, I think, is fixated entirely on the on-ice product. And they don't have any kind of strategy outside of that. You know, nothing of the, like, we're going to have press conferences with any kind of fun,

with any kind of external, like no meta, other stuff. Right. And one of the things that they've been slow to learn is that other people, you know, like all of us in the room, are picking up little bits and bobs and turning them into interesting things. And if, you know, some of us are making full-time jobs out of stuff with NHL data,

the NHL isn't bothering to do. You know, that they're in a position to do much, much better, but that they just aren't doing. Like, you know, so, this old joke that that you can get wealthy just by standing around near rich people

and waiting for money to fall off. It's almost like that where there's so much data, there's so much good stuff, but the league is doing so little with it, that if you just gather it up and put it together

in a way that's sensible, there's a market for that. Are you implying that hockeyviz.com is a superior product to NHL.com? I'm aware you want that? What percentage of playoff series can you predict?

And is it over or under 85%. It is, at least 86%. And I wouldn't imply that the product I put out myself is better than the NHL. I will tell you it is better. I would imply that. I will tell you it is better. Yes.

Yeah. I think another issue the league really faces is like it, I mean, it just needs to work on like marketing. It's stars, right? Like, I think that I find the excuse that people in the States don't care about hockey just be completely bogus because the league is just like not doing anything to actually get those people into mainstream attention. I mean, a perfect example of this.

You guys don't know. I'm an African-American guy from Chicago, and, you know, the games in Chicago weren't aired until 2009. Right. So there was no... I didn't know this because I'm Canadian. I assumed that every local game was aired incredibly well in every city. And when I learned about this a few years back,

and I thought this crazy. So what are people doing either going to the game or just watch... Yeah, well, if Bill Worse's philosophy was, if they're not coming, you know, coming to the game and paying, you know, full-fri-spin tickets, they just don't deserve a lot. And it's not like he had a great product, you know, at the time. Right, right. You remember pre-taves and free-cane Blackhawks.

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't really all that sexy to begin with. The Brian Smolensky era. Yeah. Red Soapel era. Hey. You know, I was in Atlanta when the Thashers were there,

and there was literally no outlets whatsoever to really embrace, you know, that market, which is primarily African-American. We see this with even with the Josh Hussein controversy this week, P.K. Sub-Subon last year, and even this year, where they're, I'm utterly convinced that 20 years or not, I believe the NHL would be the first lead to have a woman player and a star woman player. But it's like the leads going out of their way to make sure that never happens because they don't have a sustained marketing plan towards women that doesn't require them pinkifying everything. How do you make the game more exciting to people who aren't fully invested in it from day one?

And I don't think that would do it. As Mike said, it's really the on-ice product that they focus on. Well, I mean, this is what happens when a lot of old out-of-touch white guys are responsible for important decisions. Well, and of course, like I can see the people say, you know, it's not, like the NHL doesn't market it stars and they don't. And the game is not as star-driven as some other games. Right. You know, it's not like basketball where if you have a couple of guys who are amazing. You know, you can just wipe the floor with other teams.

You haven't watched any Edmonton Oilers games. Oilers are the exception that proves that rule. But I'll jump in on that real quick. Soccer is probably even less star-driven. But they marketed it as far as. Exactly. Exactly. You know, Paul Paddla, you know, Lionel Messi.

He's on a super team. And, you know, to be honest, like, you know, he's probably outsized influence on that team. But for most part, most of those guys aren't really doing much more than a Jamie Benner is doing some of the soccer. But they know how to market those guys and make them sexy outside of the sport. Yeah, and how you present a guy for marketing is not the same, and it shouldn't be the same, as how his coach deploys him and how much his GM knows he impacts wins. You know, those are three totally different roles, and you should look at them differently.

And if you're marketing them, you shouldn't be under some compunction. So why I brought it up, you know, it's true that that stars don't influence on ice results the same way in the N. But the reason I brought it up is that that doesn't have to be the way that determines how you market players. There's always a disconnect between who you choose to promote. That's part of why it's frustrating to see the league promote players who are terrible choices to promote. Yeah, Patrick King. Without naming too many names, you know, is because you don't have to take your cues from, oh, you know, this person, single-handedly won a playoff series.

Literally no team, no player has ever done this. You know, even goalies who, you know, people talk about Halak taking playoff series away from the capitals, you know, and it's great to rub salt in the wounds of people if you want to do that on Twitter. But single players don't have that impact, but they do have that marketing impact. Right. And, and, you know, you mentioned Josh Hsang and P.K. Suban, those are perfect examples of guys who ought to be, you know, bright lights marketed. Suban, I mean, Josh Osang is a prospect. He's young. You know, if you want to sell fun and hope, that's one thing. But P.K. Subban is an established.

superstar. He should be a fantastic, you know, face the league all over the place. And instead, he's, you know, character issues. You read the same stories, but how, you know, the house were good to trade him. But also, here he is getting a meritorious service award from the government in the same weekend. You know, that stuff happens all the time and it's infuriate. Yeah. Okay, one final thing before we get out of here, Chris, we'll have you here. We've got to talk about this article you wrote a while back about instituting the three point line on the ice because obviously, you know, this is something it's kind of like a half-big idea

that's never going to happen, but I'm always all for just hearing outside the box ideas that'll make the NHL product more viewer-friendly and I don't know, just want to lay the scene a bit for it? Yeah, so basically the thought process was, you know, everybody's talking about

increasing scoring and I think Travis and Sean McIndoe, Travis Yos and Sean McAnell specifically call out that all of these are very incremental, you know, 0.1% movements, you know, increase the size of the nets a little bit. Right.

You know, have the home team, have last change on the face off. Like, those things will not really impact. Yeah, like they just, like they just said in the GM meetings where now you can't call timeouts after I say.

Yeah, that's, which is, that's fine, all the year. Yeah, right, was that an issue that people were actually upset about?

No. No. It's nothing. And so the proposal was, yeah, just basically build a arc about 40, uh, 40 feet around the,

uh, the goal mouth. Right. And those goals are worth two points. Yeah. If you shoot a slap shot from behind the arc, it's two points. So, you know, if you're down in the game and you're down, you know, to zero. Yeah.

You start bombing away from the blue line and see what happens. Right. And if you get a one goal rebound off that, then that's so much the better. And then you'll just try for one more. Yeah. And so, and the article is like, you know, can Shave Weber be the Steph Curry? Right. in the NHL where he's just bombing away and just, you know, making these ridiculous shots from, you know, the red line or whatever.

And I was playing around with it, you know, obviously it's a sort of hypothetical exercise, but when I looked at the numbers, I saw a 10% increase in scoring if you have a line right in front of the blue line and a 15% increase in scoring if you have this arc. So just like, you know, a fun way to approach it and just think about out-of-the-box ideas of how you make this already great and exciting game, even more great-names. side. This will never have it, but it's great to put something like that out there and sort of push the needle. Yeah. I like it. I mean, just purely from a sort of like a strategic perspective, like if a team is down, like what are they going to try to do? If they're just shooting from everywhere or if they're actually trying to improve their quote-unquote shot quality. And the other thing too, of course, is that if you make changes like that, you know, you're going to have those immediate changes. Like you were saying, you know, I'm down two. I need two

goals. This is worth two goals. Let's do that. But also, that's going to become part of the day-to-day play. And, you know, all of a sudden, you can't just leave a guy sitting at the point with a clear shot because it's not just a goal you're giving up, it's two goals, so now you have to guard him more closely, now your gaps are all wrong, now the guys are uncovered underneath, you know, and now the, like you, every time

you introduce new rules like that, you introduce new complexities, and sometimes you find things like, and coaches will find him. Oh, look, they made the game worse in the way that we didn't anticipate, that sucks. But other times you find these new excitements where you're like, oh, because of that threat, that opens up this other thing and you get all

sorts of new stuff. I mean, it's one of those things you think of a guy like Al McGinnis, you know, that was ever instituted. That guy is scoring 500 goals, you know, a year or whatever. It allows for more flexibility in terms of, you know, player development, player types. You bring the big uglies back in that can bond from the blue line. Those guys are kind of out fashion now. Yeah. Now you have to send them to bring them back in. So, you know, forces the coaches actually, you know, coach, which is great. Instead of just, you know, being conservative, dumped a puck in, you know, we'll figure it out later. You know, there's some new nuance to the strategy. Do you screen?

and potentially deflect the shot that was worth two goals. Yeah, yeah. Just get it on the way. It's like, what are you doing? You know, Chris Russell all of a sudden comes, you know, a North trophy winner because he's blocking, he's like, you know, the possibilities are endless, and I illustrate them in an article. But, you know, once again, it's just one of those things where you just think about crazy, fun, some of practical ways that it just really impact the game, make it better and more fun product going forward. Yeah, that's a good rule in general.

Anytime you want to try to fix something, like the specific point you got to target is, is there something that everybody does? Yeah. Then how can we make it so that they only do that some of the time and so that they choose to do that when they should and choose not to do it other times? That's like, you know, screening goalies is a great example. You know, if, like you say, people say all the time, it's not quite true, but they still say, you can't score on clean looks anymore in the NHL.

You have to, you have to screen goalies, you have to get tips. Supposing that were completely true, you know, then the way that you, if you were like on a competition committee, the way that you should look at that is you should say, how can we make people not want to screen every time? Right. How can we give them incentives to do something different? And this is, you know, like I agree, I don't think it'll ever happen, but, but it has that, that angle where it, where it takes away, not just, it doesn't just have some sort of knock on effect. It takes away people's reason to want to do those things. Well, and think about it this way. So there are obviously a segment of the fan base that just like, is okay with complete chaos. And they, so,

support this and then a large segment of the fan base that would be against it is probably the people that really want to see Chris Russell be a superstar so maybe if you found if you found a metric where he actually helped influence the game for once maybe they'd sign on as well and all a sudden we got a we got a voting majority david staples was mine yeah yeah and yeah there's an element of any sport whatsoever and and i think hockey does get a bad rap on uh it's very determined nature NFL's probably just as bad but it's a super popular product so right It doesn't have the need to. It's like, you know, Google versus a startup.

The startup has to be more innovative to sort of keep up with the Googles of the world. Right. And it feels Google right now. So how do you, like, identify ways, maybe it's not the two-point line, but maybe it's something else that it can really, you know, make the game better overall for everyone and really introduce some new fans. All right, guys. Well, thanks for taking the time to come chat and enjoy the rest of the conference.

No worries. Thank you very much. Thank you. with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at Soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.