The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 179: The Annual Trade Weekend

Episode Date: June 24, 2017

Jonathan Willis joins the show to discuss the Blackhawks continued cap concerns and their puzzling sequence of moves (1:47), Artemi Panarin's true value and how he fits on the Blue Jackets (6:50), the Coyotes change of direction and attempt to drag itself out of the cellar (31:32), Ryan Reaves' inexplicable trade value (53:10), and the Flames pushing their chips in for Travis Hamonic (1:05:37). 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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Jonathan, what's going on, man? It's been kind of a busy weekend, hasn't it? Yes, it certainly has. On various different levels, you know, obviously we've got all the, all the NHL stuff going on, and I wanted to formally and publicly give you some congratulations. I know that you've had some big, big personal stuff going on in your life as well, in the background with all the hockey stuff going on, too. I have my wife and I had our first child here last week so and we we actually just got home here on

Friday hospital so very exciting for me and hopefully that can that's that hopefully that baby stays in the background of my my professional life and not in the background noise of this podcast because getting him to sleep is still a still an ongoing struggle but hopefully hopefully he's bedded down well Well, listen, we're going to try to persevere through here. And there's a lot for us to discuss because we kind of, you know, we were going to do this podcast a few days ago. And then we realized that maybe we should give it a few days and see what happens, whether there's any trades, like all the stuff we've sort of been anticipating for a while now. And sure enough, Friday morning slash afternoon and pretty much all the way through the first round of the draft, it didn't disappoint. We got a solid five, six, maybe even seven trades that we can really unpack here.

layer by layer and try to make sense of what happened. And I thought a logical starting point would be talk about the Blackhawks just because of both the quantity of moves they made and also sort of the impact that it could have on both them and the rest of the league. And I thought it was an incredibly puzzling sequence on their part that I'm still trying to wrap my head around because, you know, it's pretty clear that when evaluating their moves, you sort of had to look at it through the prism of, you know, they weren't. in the greatest starting position in terms of having leverage because they clearly needed to shuffle

some money around again and ideally shed some of it. And the issue for me with these moves beyond the fact that I think they got worse as an NHL team next season is they didn't ultimately really actually alleviate any of those cap concerns with the two trades they made. Yeah, it's funny because whenever we see Chicago leaking talent, we expect that they're doing it in an effort to, you know, like it's forced upon them. And that's generally been true in years past. But in this case, they, I thought they got weaker as a team and they did it well, you know, basically staying level in terms of salary. The only real salary cap benefit that I can see is,

you know, two years in the future when Nicholas Jalmersen's deal would expire. And, you know, when you've got a team as good as Chicago's, I don't think you really have to start making moves to save cap space to three years in the future. Yes. Yeah, and I thought that was, I forgot who someone pointed us out on Twitter that I thought that was like one of the best things Stan Bowman has done throughout this tenure. It's sort of not panicking and trying to make moves too far in advance just out of fear because he sort of like let these cap concerns come to him.

And every summer when he's needed to do something, he's sort of pulled the trigger on whatever move to become camp. plan and fix their, fix their books. And I think that's sort of the right way to go about it, just because it seems like, especially if you're a team that is, you know, just based on current roster construction, still technically a competitor trying to win in the present day, it seems bizarre that you'd be making your team worse just for the sake of potentially having more wiggle room two, three years down the road.

Because even with the, you know, the Saad Panarin flip, they're both making the same amount of money right now, but I guess you could make the argument that two years, from now, Artemi Panarin is going to be very expensive and the Blackhawks might not be able to afford him, whereas Brandon Sodd will still be under the same figure for an additional two seasons. And that's all well and good, but I just don't see how that helps them in their, you know, in their present day situation and what they're trying to accomplish as a franchise. I thought the Saad-Panarren deal was a little bit more defensible to me than their other one, just because I kind of think what they were doing there is, is you look at the balance of their

top two lines. The Patrick Kane line delivers, you know, this dynamic offensive presence. And Jonathan, like, you know, I'm generalizing here. And Jonathan Taves plays your, your power versus power matchup and does a lot of two-way stuff will also delivering offense. I feel like maybe they came out of last year thinking that Kane doesn't necessarily need Panarin to drive a very effective scoring line, but that Jonathan Taves at this point could use a guy like Brandon Saude to make that top line function better. And so I'm not sure that I agree with that reasoning, but I can kind of see the logic behind it, and I don't necessarily think it's a bad decision.

So it's a little bit puzzling in that they did give up talent, but you can make a defense of it. The trade that really boggled my mind was the Jalmersen deal. Yes. No, well, okay, so let's wrap it up here on the Saad-Panaran front, and then we'll talk about John Merson when we sort of shift gears to talking about the coyotes and the moves they've made and what their outlook is. And, you know, I've been a huge Brennan Saut fan for years and I still am. And I think, you know, last year, for example, he had a really, really nice season that probably

doesn't get enough love sort of in the mainstream sphere from the casual fan because, you know, you look and he hit 24 goals and 53 points. And all those are fine, fine, fine, totals are not necessarily going to completely wow you or make you believe that he's this truly elite player, but then you look a little deeper and only one of those goals on the power play. And, you know, he's just such a dominant five-on-five player, both in terms of driving possession and controlling the puck, but also actually turning it into goals. And I completely agree with you that just based on the way the Blackhawks are constructed and sort of where their strengths and weaknesses are, it makes perfect sense as a fit.

And I think that he's going to do wonders for getting the. them, you know, back closer to those actual kind of more dominant puck possession teams that we saw while they were really at their peak powers versus what they've become the past few seasons. From the Panarin perspective, I'm going to be fascinated to see how he does because, you know, you watch him play and he's pretty clear that he's this sort of singularly dynamic talent that can really just do anything with a puck and maybe more so than the actual ability. The thing that I appreciate most about him is sort of the kind of different. mindset he seems to approach it uh approach the game with coming from coming from overseas and not

maybe uh having you know having the creativity beaten out of him at at uh at young young ages and early levels it you know he's he's definitely sort of in that mold of willing to keep the puck maybe half a fraction of a second longer and waiting for passing lanes to open and he never really just kind of you know dumps the puck into open space for no reason without a plan it always seems like he's sort of setting plays up a few a few plays in advance so i love watching panera play and I'm just hoping that in Columbus, you know, John Tortoralla is actually going to let him do what makes him that special player and not, you know, bench him or or punish him as soon as he turns the puck over at the blue line trying to carry it as opposed to dumping it in.

Yeah, I like, I mean, it's funny because when I think about Saad and Panarin, like there's no question which guy I'd rather watch play. from a sheer joy in entertainment value, Panarin is, I don't even know where you'd rank him league-wide, but probably a top-10 guy in the league. Like, he's just an exciting guy, and Saad's more of a meat-and-pottoes player. But I thought the point you made about five-on-five versus powerplace scoring

was just really critical. Saad actually scored more per minute at five-on-five this year than Panarin did. He has 39 goals at even strength over the five-on-five over the last two years, Panarin's 34. Like, I just think that it's easy to get lulled in by all that skill. Like, because Panarin's such a joy to watch, and because Saad's less exciting, I think it kind of diminishes, like it just hides the fact that Saad is so effective at five-on-five,

and every bit as effective as score as Panarin and maybe in more difficult roles. So, yeah, I really, I don't know. I could go either way on the deal. I think it depends on whether you think Chicago's power play can function, you know, Sands, Panarin. But I'm inclined to think this was a good deal for Chicago just in terms of recalibrating. And like you said, you know, turning back the clock and regaining some of that shot clock dominance they used to have. Well, I think the interesting wrinkle to this, I mean, you mentioned sort of Panarin's prowess on the power play and what he can contribute there.

And that's going to be fascinating to see because, you know, obviously as the year went along, um, regression took hold and they, you know, the Columbus powerplay stopped just pretty much converting on every single opportunity. But for large stretches of the year there, they really, uh, had something special brewing with, with, with their top power play unit. And I mean, obviously you can't have too much of a good thing, but I'm just kind of curious to see how Panarin is going to fit into that. And obviously at, at the five on five on five level as well, I mean, you know, it's,

fair to be not maybe skeptical isn't the right word but maybe a bit apprehensive about panarin just because of how heavily slanted his usage was in terms of being deployed in the offensive zone and you know the fact that he spent i believe like 2 000 of his 2400 5-on-five minutes in his n-hill career so far playing with patrick kane which will obviously do wonders for creating more space for you and making you look better than you might actually be so i'm kind of curious to see how he's going to look on that Columbus team where he plays how they use them and whether he's able to maintain that effectiveness. I believe in the talent, so I don't think that he's just a product of playing with Patrick A.

I believe he's going to be perfectly fine regardless of who he plays with or where he plays with, but he's going to need to maintain this level of play for them not to regret parting with someone like Brennan's side. I'm glad you brought out the Columbus perspective on this because I don't get this trade from a Columbus perspective. Like, you know, this is, Columbus is a team last year that ran four really good lines at five on five, and Saad was an integral part of that.

And, you know, it really did have a lethal power play early on. And should, you know, like maybe they aren't going to, you know, just dominate the league with their power play out of the gate again. But Panarin seems like a bit of a redundancy. And, you know, he adds things that Saad doesn't in areas where they're already good. And he's probably a lesser player than Saad. in areas where Columbus could probably use a guy like SOT. So I don't get it from a Blue Jackets perspective.

Just one last thing on this. You mentioned that you believe in the talent, not necessarily that Panarin's a product of Patrick Kane. One of the things that's really difficult when you play with a player like Patrick Kane or Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid or any of these guys is I think sometimes, and I know I've done it in the past, we get into kind of a binary train of thought where it's like, well, he's this good with

Superstar and he's done nothing away from Superstar, so he's probably nothing. And that's really not how we should think about it. We should think about it in more of a Bayesian kind of way where it's like, okay, so if this guy scores at such and such a level with a star, you know, most players who play with, you know, if you play with Sidney Crosby, you're probably getting a 15 to 20 percent bump, five on five scoring. Those numbers are, that's a ballpark figure, but when I've looked into it, it's about that number.

So you don't go immediately to the, well, he's, you know, he's nothing away from Kane. You go to the, well, you know, he's probably the vast majority of his careers with Kane. He's not going to be as good away from him, but he's probably still going to be, you know, 80, 85% of that guy. And especially if he gets placed on a quality line in Columbus, which he will. So, sorry, I know this is a bit of an esoteric topic, but I do think sometimes we get into that well. Here's what he was with the guy. Here's what he was without. He wasn't good without.

He's bad. It's not really how it works. You have to kind of balance those two things. Yeah, and listen, like... Which, which you did. Yes, yes. And, you know, it's obviously going to be a downgrade in terms of talent and ability from Patrick Cain, but I think if he's playing with like Alexander Wenberg and Cam Atkinson and, you know,

Wedberg can get him the puck and then Atkinson's, you know, a really willing and able shooter. All of a sudden, you know, they could have tremendous success as well. And like you said, you know, it is a bit of a redundancy in the power way, but at the same time, you know, having a guy like Artemian is good and you can't have too much of a good thing in that regard. I'm just fascinated to see how it's going to play out. I think that it's a perfectly defensible trade from Chicago's perspective. I'm puzzled why Columbus did it, but it's funny because it's not in the sense of like, you know, oh, this is a stupid trade.

They're so much worse off now and I just don't get it from their perspective. I'm just kind of sort of curious about what the rationale and driving force for what was in terms of, you know, whether Chicago was really the one pushing this trade and pushing this negotiation, and whether Columbus just sort of was infatuated with Panarin's talent and just went with it and maybe they weren't that sold on Brennan's side after seeing him up close for a few years. I just don't, I'm just kind of like, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall just to know sort of how this trade materialized and why Columbus ultimately decided they should do this for their team going forward.

Sorry, I know I said I was done on this, but the one thing, the one thing from a Blue Jackets perspective that does occur to me is Sam Gagne, who was, was a pretty decent part of their power play last year and is a right shot. He signed for like a, I think it was a $650,000 contract last season on like a one-year show-me deal. A very good season in a lot of ways as an offensive specialist. He's an unrestricted free agent this summer. He's going to be a lot more expensive given the season he had, I would imagine. And I don't necessarily know that Columbus, you know, like maybe he's not in the plans for Columbus.

a guy like Ben-Aren who can do a lot of the, maybe that's the thought process then is, you know, a guy like Panarin can do a lot of what Saad does in terms of five-on-five offense. He can take on Gagne's role on the power play and he can do it, play both roles for basically the same money as Saad, adding that, you know, that really important right shot to the power play and replacing Saad's five-on-five creativity without spending any more money. Maybe that was part of the thought process from a Blue Jackets. perspective. Yeah. And obviously there is sort of, you know, this kind of side plot that, you know, we should maybe acknowledge, but, you know, I don't know, I don't want to speculate too much or

because we just don't really know. But, you know, a guy like Ilya Kovych has been linked very closely to the Blue Jackets, for example, and him and Panarin were teammates in St. Petersburg before Panarren came over. And I'm just, you know, both those guys are great players in their own right and I'm sure they'd succeed regardless but if all of a sudden the blue jackets add both of those guys heading into next season I feel like they're uh you know from an entertainment entertainment and aesthetic perspective I feel like they're going to become a much more watchable than they were last year even when they were winning all those games yeah that's a like you like you said it's it's speculative but it's interesting speculation yes for sure um okay so let's let's talk about the second

trade the black black hawks made here because if um if the sod trade was a logical, defensible one, I think the exact opposite description applies to this Nicholas Jalmersen trade because it just seems, like, I have yet to see a good rationale for it. I do not buy the fact that, you know, we're not going to be able to afford Nicholas Jalmers in two years from now as a proper reason for why you would take such a dramatic downgrade in terms of going from him to Connor Murphy while pretty much playing the same price for the two of them. Like, they didn't really accomplish anything with this trade, and I think it's a real head scratcher. Yeah.

No argument here. If you're Chicago, like, you know, we talked about Saad Panarin in sort of the terms of recalibrating that top six for Chicago, maybe taking a step back to what they were in terms of their former dominance. I know they had a very good regular season, but a lot of the underlying numbers have been weak. well one of the key ingredients in that long-term dominance has been their big three on defense which was keith and seabrook and jolmerson and seabrook you know is has declined markedly already and i'm very curious to see where he's going to be in a year or two or three years because i don't think he's the same player he was and now they've shipped off jelmersen for a guy who i mean you know like he's he's he's he's

He's, I don't want to disrespect Connor Murphy, but he's, he's nowhere near a Shalmerson level player. And so when you look, when you look at that blue line, you combine that trade with the decline in Seabrooks game, and you go from having this, this triple threat on the back end, to having Duncan Keith and, I, it's a problem. It's a problem. Well, I don't want to, I'm trying to avoid saying a bunch of nobodies, but I mean, you know, like, who are there four, five, six defensemen?

because you lose Trevor Van Riemstike to expansion too, which didn't help. I know he has his critics, but he can play. So you're going to go with guys like Michael Kempney and Gustav Foreslain and God, God forbid Michael Roosevelt. And keep in mind that they're also probably losing Brian Campbell as well, which obviously, you know, he wasn't necessarily at the peak of his powers and, you know, playing at his prime level, but he was still kind of doing Brian Campbell things last year for them and sort of just making everyone around him look better. And losing him as well might not get all of the attention that some of these other names might, but is going to, you know, they're going to feel that loss in their lineup.

Oh, absolutely. I don't know how you build a contending blue line out of the pieces they have there. To me, they're missing one or two pieces. And particularly because Jalmerson's a guy who you could really throw to the wolves. Like you can use Duncan Keith all over on one pairing and spot him on your third pair sometimes and, you know, just play the life out of him, especially in the post. season and then throw Jalmersen to the wolves on another pairing and you'd be okay. Connor Murphy is not a guy that you can just throw to the wolves and trust to come out on top of things.

So it's just a massive loss for them. Jolmerson to me is sort of a lowercase Mark Edward Vlasic. He's just a very, very good defensive specialist who is overlooked but played a really critical role on those cup winning teams. And I don't see how you replace him. certainly Connor Murphy doesn't replace them. Yeah. Well, it's funny, you know, when they were winning those cups, especially early on, you know, the Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook pairing was getting all the love and, you know,

a lot of it was deserved, especially from Keith's perspective. But it really was, you know, that John Merson-Odouya pairing that was doing so much the heavy lifting for them and kind of making everything else work in the operation. And we've seen the past few years that pretty much, regardless of who John Merson was playing with, that pairing was being tasked with playing against the other team's best players and really doing a good job of sort of suppressing their offensive output and guys like that don't really get the type of love that, you know, guys that are accumulating big point totals do, but I think anyone that's been paying attention really just appreciates the fact that Nicholas Jalmersen

is a game changer and he's going to do wonders for, for Arizona just in terms of giving them that type of presence they were sorely lacking on their blue line. And from Chicago's perspective, like this is the issue with contracts like the Brent Seabrook one. It's sort of regardless of what he does as a player, it's the opportunity cost, right? Because, you know, you mentioned how this team has so many needs in the blue line and how you wonder how they're going to be able to piece it together to be, you know, not only a contender, but actually just a competitive team. And we're seeing, you know, David Schlemko, for example, goes for like a fifth round pick. Nathan Boyu goes for a third. And you see these trades happening around the expansion draft,

and Vegas has all these guys now that they're probably going to be willing to trade for, you know, mid-round draft picks. And Chicago, unfortunately, because of the situation they back themselves into financially, just doesn't have the luxury of taking on David Schlemko's contract, even though it's only for like $2.5 million or whatever for that fifth-round draft pick. and that's that's ultimately the issue is that they have a lot of these holes in their roster and there aren't very many ways they can accomplish patching them up beyond sort of calling Kai's guys up from the AHL level and hoping that they can keep their head about water

and not just completely sink the entire operation yeah it's um i i i i'd be harsher to chicago about the brentz seabrook contract if it if if it weren't for the fact that Chicago is actually generally pretty good at this. I think one of the things in the NHL that there's a heavy bias in the NHL when you're a good team towards keeping the guys that got you there. I mean, LA is the textbook example of these loyalty contracts and we've seen the results of them. Chicago has mostly resisted that urge and just really focused on its key guys. But what it comes down to to me is every time you come into a situation where you're you have to decide whether to keep or get rid of a guy like Brent Seabrook.

You have those two options. And if you keep him, you're going to pay a lot of money for an older player who's going to decline over time. If you trade him, a lot of times teams are willing to pay a premium for a, you know, especially a defenseman or a center who has been part of a cup winning group for a long time. They go, well, you know, if Brent Seabrook can be a number two or number three defenseman for the Chicago Blackhawks, well, certainly he can anchor our top pairing. We're not very good. he'll help us step forward and he'll bring all these wonderful winning things to us.

And because teams are so willing to pay that premium, a lot of times you can get guys who can, like with the assets coming back, you can get less appreciated guys who can fill the same role. And Chicago has done a good job of that over time for the most part, with the obvious exceptions of Seabrook and Brian Bickle. And I think, you know, if we're looking for the move that ended the Chicago, like we're, It's a little too early to say this, but if we're looking for the move that ended the Chicago dynasty, we could ultimately in a couple of years be looking back at that Brent Seabrook contract. Yeah, I think that's, I don't even, I don't think that's hyperbole.

I think that's a very fair thing to say. You know, we, when I was just talking right now about the Panarin deal from Columbus's perspective and sort of how I was fascinated by, you know, what kind of prompted them to do it and what their rationale was, what I'm always fascinated about with these trends. raids is you know you see this trade get announced on Twitter and it's you know nicholas Jalmersen for Connor Murphy and Lorenzo fan and all of a sudden you see fans or observers from different fan bases chime in and go you know oh I can't believe my team couldn't put together a better offer for Nicholas Jalmersen than what the Blackhawks got from the coyotes

and what I'm always intrigued by is sort of how this stuff works from sort of a process perspective in terms of, you know, if the Blackhawks really are trying to get rid of Jomerson while they still can and recoup something for him. And it's like whether, like how publicly known that he's actually available and he's being shopped and whether it sort of is really kind of a, you know, an open bidding process where other teams are trying to top each other's offers and trying to, you know, sway them and get the guy themselves or whether the Blackhawks just sort of, you know, contacted the coyotes or the coyotes reached out to them and they were just like, you know what,

we're just going to take this offer because we think it's the best we're going to get. I'm always fascinated whether other teams actually passed up on offering more for Nicholas Jomerson in this example or whether it was just one of those things that just came together quickly and they just kind of pulled the trigger on and just made it happen. Yeah, and unfortunately, that's one area where we can't really pull back the curtain and examine the entire process because certainly in some cases, players are really aggressively shopped around the league. But I think there's also the flip side of that where, you know, if you are really aggressively

shopping the player around the league, number one, there's going to be news of it. Like, that is going to, somebody is going to leak it to to one of the reporters for their own ends. Because, you know, if so-and-so is trading this player, you probably want it known that they're trading that player and maybe try and drive the value up or down depending on your perspective. With Jolmerson in particular, I think what maybe surprises me the most about that, like if I'm picking a team that I would have thought could put together a compelling package for him and didn't, I'd kind of look at Montreal. Like Montreal's in win now mode. Mark Bergevan has Chicago roots. Like if there's a GM out there who should know that Stan Bowman is considering moving Nicholas Jalmersen, you'd think it would be Mark Bergevan. And I mean, I know they did very well with the Schlemco ideal, which you mentioned earlier. I love the idea of adding a pretty useful four or five guy at a reasonable contract for not much really

but um you know a guy like jolmerson could have been a game changer for them and uh when when to me they're just a team that if i were if i're making up a list of teams that missed out here the habs would be at the top of the list i think i'd put the leaves up there too i mean obviously um you know they've been sort of um reported to be interested in in various different big name uh right shot defensemen throughout the summer and we'll see if they're able to get their guy and what comes of it, but they have a pretty clear need there. And a guy like John Morrison would have been a very intriguing fit based on sort of how the rest of their roster is composed and what they need in terms of just providing that type

of a steadying presence. They can kind of settle things down and actually be relied upon to eat the heavy minutes so that you're not just force-feeding Matt Hanowick and Roman Polack a bunch of those tough tough opportunities. Yeah, Toronto's, the only thing there is that, and I know Jolmersen spent a fair bit of time on the right side, but if you're Mike Babcock, I think, well, I suspect this summer that they'd really like to nail down that tough minutes right shot defender, and Jalmersen, as a left, he is not going to fit that mold perfectly for a guy like Mike Babcock.

I do agree he would have been a good fit, and he's one of the few lefties that I'd be willing to consider as a as a right-shot guy on a semi-permanent as a right-side guy on a semi-permanent basis but you know mike babcock may not have been yeah that's true um all right i think i think we've kind of nailed this stuff pretty well i mean we should say for the black ox just to kind of put a bow on on this discussion about them uh we haven't necessarily talked about the marion hoses stuff yet uh we'll see what comes of it it does look like he's probably going to retire and they'll be able to put him on the long-term injury reserve once the season starts and that'll give them a fair bit of breathing room and maybe they're a candidate to make an in-season

trade as a result. But I don't want to get too much into sort of what's actually going on here because we really don't know. It's, you know, your opinion on it would probably range somewhere between, hmm, that's awfully convenient to, well, that's just downright fishy, depending on how cynical you are by nature. I mean, it is, it is very convenient that this happens when Hosa starts making $1 million per season after having been making like $7.9 for the previous seven seasons. So it is funny how that works, how this happened at just the right time and could really throw the Blackhawks a lifeline. But, you know, beyond that, if we really have seen the last of Marion Hosa, I just wanted to give him a little bit of love because I really do believe he was one of the more

sort of low-key, just tremendous talents we've seen in NHL just based on his, uh, his combination of skills and what he was able to do out there in the ice. Yeah, I love Marion Hosa. He's just a tremendous two-way talent. You know, if Wingers really, and I know he's actually had some Selky love, but if Wingers could win the Selke trophy these days, I think it almost universally goes to centers now, but he would have been in the mix for a lot of those awards,

even more so than he was. The other thing about Hosa is I love the way that he has emerged, as this, this winner. You know, like he was in Pittsburgh and missed. He was in Detroit. He went and missed again. But then he went to Chicago. He's part of three cup wins there.

You know, like that's five really deep postseason runs in a seven or eight year span. But before he ended up there, he was in Atlanta, which was terrible. He was with Ottawa, which was famous as this team that couldn't win in the postseason. Hosa personally, you know, he had some good runs in the playoffs. but he also had some pretty ugly playoff performances, especially early in his career. So I love Marion Hosa, but I just, I feel like this is an opportunity to say, you know, sometimes that European player with the ugly postseason numbers

who's played for bad teams isn't a loser. He's just been in a bad, he's a very good player who's been in a bad situation. You put him in the right situation, he's going to do great things. And I think that's a lesson that applies to a whole lot of players around the league who are unfairly undervalued. Especially when we're like, you know, in this kind of snap judgment culture where we're just like so eager to, you know, just close the book on someone after, you know, a few years

and sometimes this stuff takes a while to play out. And, you know, it'd be kind of fascinating to see how the narrative on Marian Hosa has, as you mentioned, changed over the years from those early years to when he was on those teams. He kept losing in the cup final to all of a sudden now just becoming like the consment winner. it's pretty fascinating how that works yeah and and i i don't think there's any question he's a hall of famer yeah no no not none at all i don't even think we should spend waste any time on that it's a

it's an immediate yes um let's let's talk about the coyotes here because they've probably been uh the busiest team over the past week or so uh both on in terms of you know on ice personnel changers and stuff going on behind the scenes with them and we'll get into both i think that it's it's interesting seeing how people are talking about them these days it seems like we're sort of doing that same old dance that we just did with the panthers this past year where a lot of their moves are being judged uh you know very aggressively or very sort of with a bias depending on what's you know what prism you're looking at it through or what side of the debate you might be on and or you know it seems like regardless of what they do it everything they it it

will be sort of painted in this light of analytics versus old school. And I just think if you look at just in a vacuum one by one, all the moves they made, it's pretty hard to quibble with where they're at now as a team versus where they were, even as recently as like 48 hours ago. I don't think there's any question about that. I just want to touch on the analytics versus old school thing with respect to Arizona because John Chaka is, like I know he's the young WizKid analytics guy from a, from a, you know, hockey world perspective. But John Chaka is not a guy who came up the traditional, you know, analytics route.

He's not a guy who has a lot, who had a lot of work that was publicly available. We don't really know what John Chaker's evaluative process is, what he believes in. We don't know. We know that he's a fan of this, you know, a microstack. and this really intensive player tracking. And that information has to have a lot of value. Like I think we all would assume that information has a lot of value. But that stuff, because it's so intensive to mine

and because it's been largely proprietary, it hasn't had the same sort of, it hasn't been subjected to the same kind of public analysis as most traditional analytics. So even though Cheika is branded a quote-unquote analytics guy, I don't know if that, like I know he believes in using the data and that's a good thing, but I don't know if his process is great and brilliant, terrible and awful, somewhere in the middle. He's, he really, and we're only really going to get to see that by, based on what he does.

Having said that, what he's done at the last 48 hours, I think is really remarkable. And I say that regardless of how bad it looks to have, you know, Dave Tippett leave suddenly and Shane Dohn, not come back and all that. And I suspect you want to get into those in more depth. So I'll leave them alone for now. But I think they've done good things. Okay. So before we analyze the actual individual trades and transactions,

you know, we should point out because it's tough to know what to make of it and sort of how it impacts things in terms of the ownership change and, you know, the Dave Tippett Power struggle and him being, you know, relieved of his duties, basically after having been there for so long and being generally regarded as one of the better code. in the league and it's it's tough to know how much of it is actually sort of you know john shake is

doing and how much of it is ownership related stuff and i i just think without actually knowing uh the details of that and who's responsible for what it's it's really tough to sort of form strong opinions on you know who's responsible and and and who should blame or who we should get credit to but at the same time if you look at the actual individual moves as i mentioned And I mean, it's, I think they're all no-brainers. Like, you know, Shane Done means a lot to the franchise, obviously, from sentimental value and what he's meant to them over the years. And I just think that based on where he's at in his career and what their timeline was,

it made a lot of sense to part ways with him. You can quibble maybe with the manner in which they did so. But I think in terms of, it just didn't really make sense to keep having him on this roster. The Mike Smith trade, even though they retained some of the salary, I thought was smart. They recouped a couple assets for it, and I thought that was a no-brainer for them. And then all of a sudden, you know,

we get into the actual two bigger moves of consequence with the Jalmersen trade, where they give up Connor Murphy, who is a former first rounder and still, I guess, has youth in his advantage, but hasn't really shown anything in that NHL level, especially when not playing with Oliverich-Marlerson to make me believe that he's some sort of an impact player.

So I think they got significantly better with that trade. And this is where things really start to get interesting with them, because they give up, you know, a defense prospect and Anthony DiAngelo and the seventh overall pick for Derek Stepan and Antiranta. And while this sort of feeds into what we were just saying about how it's hard to quibble with them being better as a team now than they were before these moves, I do think it's kind of curious about sort of the motivation or philosophy going on behind these moves because it seems like a dramatic changing course from how they were operating before in terms of being sort of one of these teams that realizes that we need to, to get as much elite young talent as we can and the best way to do so is by just sort of blowing it up bottoming them out and starting this from scratch and doing it properly over the long haul and then now all of a sudden not that you know necessarily these are super win now moves because these are all still guys

that are in their primes and will be you know good contributors for a few years to come but it does seem like they are sort of trying to speed up this process or trying to actually have something to show for all everything they've done over the past few years on the ice right now as opposed to kind of selling this pipe dream years in advance. So there's a lot there. I want to start with Dave Tippett. Tippett's team has missed the playoffs the last five years. It has been eliminated and it has not,

it's won a playoff round once in the eight years that he's been with the team. I really like Dave Tippett. I think he's a good coach. I actually think he's a very good coach. Like I think his reputation is fully deserved. But if you put him in any other market in the league and you put him, put him on any other team and that team has missed the playoff or has been eliminated in the first round seven of the last eight years or missed the playoffs in five consecutive years nobody is

going to raise so much as an eyebrow at his dismissal um i also think if you're a budget team which arizona absolutely is do you really want to be tying up a whole lot of money with a name brand coach i i don't know that you do so i think this is very defensible that he's he's not there anymore he'd been there a long time. He hadn't had a lot of success that may or may not be his fault. But this idea that the coyotes are a laughing stock because they mutually agreed to part ways with Dave Tippett, it strikes me as ludicrous. And you wouldn't hear any kind of criticism in virtually any other market if they decided to part ways with Dave Tippett,

regardless of how good his reputation is, just based on those results. Jonathan, you know why that's happening. There's more to this. If it was an old-school GM that made that decision, no one would care. It's because this young analytics guy So it's viewed as You know

Disrespecting the traditions of the game And conventions And how dare this guy Come in here and And do things this way It's just how we do it in the NHL Like you know it's a whole Out of that old school Mampo jumbo

Well look Look two years ago Like San Jose and Todd McClellan Mutually parted ways Yeah Did we hear so much as a whisper Of complaint about that Yeah that's because Doug Wilson

Have built up all this cachet With all these old school Mainstream media guys Who he's friends with Right It's like John Jacob Doesn't have a lot of you know we might be willing to give him the benefit of a doubt but a lot of these other guys

guys and gals might be you know kind of view hit a view as he's kind of in stepping on their turf and all of a sudden it gets very hostile i don't i don't want to get into into like kind of impugning motives to to a whole group of people um but i i do think that it's it's just if you're one of these people who thinks that this makes arizona look ridiculous ask yourself why it makes Arizona look ridiculous and it didn't make San Jose look ridiculous two years ago, what's the difference there? And McClellan was a guy who'd had a lot more success with his team than Tibbitt. So anyway, that's my thoughts on that. As for Shane Donne, I think it's ludic, like, and I know Shane Donne has been a key cornerstone for the franchise. I know his reputation around the league

is just tremendous, but the amount of deference that this guy gets blows my mind. Like last year at the trade deadline, he basically ripped. the team because they traded Marty Hansel, right? Like there was, it was a big news story. Shane Don's unhappy about the Marty Hansel trade. He's very upset about it. It's like, okay, if you change his name to, you know, Donovsky, and he's from Leningrad, and he's ripping the GM for trading his friend, the center, how is that going to be perceived?

The only reason it was perceived it was perceived as being acceptable was because Shane Don is Shane Don. And, you know, he's been a good soldier for the club for so many years. but it doesn't change the fact that, you know, he went out and slagged the team. And when you're 40 years old, you're coming off a six-goal season, I don't think you have the right to be miffed at the team for deciding they don't want you back, especially when you don't have any qualms at all about taking shots at the club's management, when they do things you don't like.

I'm coming across as way more harsh to Shane Don't hear than I mean to be. I don't mean it to be harsh towards him because I actually think that the league would be a better place if more players felt free to speak their mind. I just think that there's a bit of a double standard. And just based on divorce Shane Dones past and reputation from what he can do on the ice right now, if you look solely at what he can do on the ice right now, there's no rebuilding team in the league that would say, you know, we need that 40-year-old guy coming off a six-goal season. There isn't one in the league. And there's no contending team in the league that's going to say, you know, we really really. really need that guy. They might add him as a, you know, a depth piece, but realistically,

this is not anywhere near as big of a deal as it's been made out to be. Oh, don't get me wrong. I love Shane Don't being outspoken. I completely agree. The league would be a much more entertaining and much better place if players were comfortable and willing to actually speak their minds like this and not just, you know, tow the company line and just speaking cliches. But, you know, Shane Don't can be outspoken and about the situation and a bunch of the media does it also need to jump to his defense and, you know, bemoan about how he's been treated by this organization. Like, it's both, both, he can speak his mind and then we can just move on.

And it's, that's all I have to say about it. It's curious how people are kind of painting this stuff. And the thing is, like, let's look at it this way. He's been with the team for 20 years. Like his legacy there is secure. There's nobody who's ever going to question what Shane Donne has meant to the coyotes. organization. But the NHL is a pretty ruthless business.

And from a hockey perspective, it just didn't make sense for it to continue. And that doesn't diminish any of the great things he's done, you know, over two decades with the franchise. It just is what it is. It's just the reality of the situation. Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, in terms of the other moves. So the actual moves that actually affect them on the ice.

We really got a bit sidetrack there. Yeah, like where are you at with what I was talking about earlier about how this does feel like it's a pretty dramatic, you know, change in game plan or how they're operating in terms of the moves they made where they're actually acquiring guys now that are going to dramatically help them on the ice next year, even if it's not necessarily the best approach in terms of just accumulating cheap young assets and trying to kind of delay the time until you have to. pay all those guys. I love it and I'll tell you why. I think a lot of rebuilding teams, like I know it's true that rebuilding teams need to collect elite talent. You can't win championships without elite talent.

But a lot of rebuilding teams spend way too much on the on sort of a mindless zombie approach, you know, ooh, draft picks, draft picks. With Arizona, it really depends to me on the quality of what you're giving up. Like you look at what Arizona

traded. Like Anthony DiAngelo, I like Anthony DeAngelo. He's been moved a lot. He's not a guy who I would rate as a really blue-chip prospect. He's a very interesting guy, but I don't know that he's a guy that, you know, a future franchise cornerstone you're trading away. Laurent Defan certainly isn't.

He's an older prospect. He hasn't done enough to really, you know, he might be a useful NHL player, but he's not a cornerstone piece. The 20, this year's first round draft pick, it is a weaker draft class. We've heard this all year. So you look at those three assets, and none of those are, you know, irreplaceable pieces.

Like in the grand scheme of things, Arizona probably has a half dozen guys who are more interesting from a five years from now perspective than those guys are in terms of their organization. So the only real piece that they move to bring in a first-line center, a shutdown defenseman, and probably their new starting goaltender, is Connor Murphy. And, you know, Connor Murphy is a good young player. but again, not one of these pillars. So when you can move out a bunch of good but not great future assets and bring in guys who can play 10 pole roles on your team in the here and now, to me it's a no-brainer. Yeah.

And I think that it's going to be interesting to see whether Antiranta is there a guy moving forward. I mean, I think he's like 28 years old, so I wouldn't. Yeah. I definitely wouldn't be giving him like a long-term deal, even if he starts playing well. But I'm kind of curious to see, you know, if he starts playing well at the start of the year, whether around the trade that line, they might actually even be able to recoup a first round pick just for him alone in a trade,

which would be kind of fascinating and add a whole interesting dynamic to this trade as well. If they're able to basically get that first. They're probably not going to get a lottery pick for it, but I do think people generally tend to weigh overvalue draft picks, right? It's like sort of this great unknown, and it provides a lot of hope. And obviously, if you hit a home run

and the guy winds up becoming a useful contributor for you, having him for all those years cost controlled is incredibly valuable and you'd certainly need a couple of those guys to be competitive in today's NHL but at the same time like from the coyote's perspective they have been drafting at the top of the draft for so long now and how often are they going to get a chance to get a guy like derik stepan right like if a derrick stepan is available in free agency he's probably not signing with the coyotes unless they're you know really just like dramatically overpaying them based on what the rest of the market dictates. And I don't really like I think this is true generally speaking for pretty much every player.

Like I'm somewhere in the middle on them in terms of the two extremes. Like you see people who just rag on Derek Stepan and really don't buy into him as a top play player. And then there's the people that think he's, you know, tremendous and there's a great difference maker. And I think it's the truth probably is somewhere in between where he's probably not ideally a number one center if you are going to be competing for a Stanley Cup but for this coyote's team he's pretty clearly just instantly jumps in as their number one guide and most importantly he'll sort of be able to uh you know eat up a bunch of those minutes bring along some of those younger younger wingers with him and then sort of let everyone else fall in line behind him where

they're not all of a sudden having to play over their head and getting crushed by tough competition so it seems like for this team it makes a ton of sense and a 6.5 million year is not great, but it also, it's kind of just paying him through his, what, age 27 to like 30 years and it seems perfectly fine. I think he's going to be good for those seasons. So I have no issue with him on this team at all. Yeah, absolutely. And the key thing with a guy like that is, you know, is he going to be an albatross deal? Because there's only four years left, because he's only, he's only 27 right now. He actually just turned 27, didn't he? Yeah, like a week ago or so, yeah. Yeah, so we're talking about a guy who realistically is going to be, his contract's going to end in his early 30s.

Probably like, you know, I mean, Arizona undoubtedly hopes they're not in this position, but three years from now, if you want to trade him as a rental player, you can probably cash him in for a lot too. So I don't think there's, there's much element of long-term risk there. And I think it's far more, like, I don't think there's much chance. Well, there's a chance. You generally do not get a player of Derek Stepan's caliber for a first round draft pick, right? Like if you if Arizona had spent that first round draft pick on a prospect, waited five years, they probably still wouldn't have a player of Derek Stepan's caliber. Yeah, that's the thing.

If that seventh round pick becomes Derek Stepan, that is a massive success. Yeah. Yeah. So spinning it forward, I mean, just if you look at this team, I am kind of, interested in how much better they'll be because you just mentioned all those pieces they added and I think sometimes we can kind of run the risk of underrating how much you can improve just by sort of replacing uh you know a hl players or guys that are way playing away above their head and not ready for the opportunity at all with just legitimate NHL pros who can keep their head

above water and I think that that's what they did here and I'm just curious to see what that actually translates to in terms of success in the standings and how many more games they win like I don't think they're going to be great by any means but with the state of the Pacific division and everything that's going on around it I think they could be feisty is the right word maybe and and that's probably something that I think fans of the team and and people in Arizona would probably take at this point well I'm I'm still not sure how much faith to have in their forward group going into next year. Outside of Stepan, there really isn't another tent pole veteran on the team. There are some good useful players.

There are some very good young players. But it's a mixed bag and you're not sure what you're going to get. I do like what they've done on defense. Like, Ekman Larson, Goligowski, and Jolmersson, to me, that's a really quality top three. Luke Shen and Kevin Kahn aren't anything special, but they're cheap and they're competent. it's like, you know, just fill in pieces. And to me, if you, the way you want to build in the modern NHL just because of the way the salary cap works where mid-tier guys get paid a lot and then great players get paid just

a little bit more, you want to have really good players and then fill in with the best cheap players around them that you can. And Arizona's blue line looks like that. I don't know about their forwards. And I don't know if Louis Domingue and Antiranta are going to be a quality goaltending duo. But they're a very interesting team for next year. I'm really curious to see what happens. Yeah, me too.

I think they'll be a pretty fine to watch regardless. Well, if they finished 10th in the West, I don't know if that's tenable or not. I think that's probably possible. That would be a pretty good season for them, actually, given where they are right now. Yeah, just not being the laughing stock of the league would probably be a good start.

From the Rangers perspective with this trade, it's a bit weird of a fit just because of where they're at, a team but then if you kind of just think about the idea of clearing cap space and how they've been linked to you know kevin shankirk and how many needs they have on the blue line it seems like i think that they if they if they handle this the right way and they use this money especially what uh you know the cap space they freed up with the band gerrari buy out and kevin client possibly either retiring or going to play overseas all of a sudden they actually have a little bit of

financial flexibility here and if they're able to for example bring in kevin shan kirk and even retain brennan smith and maybe make one or two uh savvy lower end moves kind of along the mold of what they did when they brought in guys like brenn peary and michael grabner last summer all of a sudden i think this team could actually be in an even better spot than they were last year and that seems like a kind of a maybe counterintuitive thing to say considering they just traded arguably their number one center and their backup goalie who was really good for them for two future assets that they might not get anything out of next season. Yeah, it is a funny way of looking at it, but it's one of those things where it just reflects

the reality of the situation for different franchises. You mentioned that if you're Arizona, a guy like Derek Stepan comes on the market, you have basically no shot at him. When you're the New York Rangers, you have a shot at just about everybody who comes on the market. So that cap space to New York is worth a whole lot more than it is to Arizona. Arizona in terms of going out and getting a replacement. But the flip side of that is it's really hard to assess this deal until we know what New York

does with the cap space. Lots of times teams free up this cap space and then make suboptimal moves and end up worse off. So New York, to me, the New York side of it's still very much up in the air and we'll just have to wait and see how they perform through July 1. Yeah. No, I completely agree with that. Okay, so we have two more trades here and let's bang through these real quick. The Blues Penguins won.

Wow. Wow. That's... Jim Rutherford's like the last guy you expect to make that deal, isn't he? He's one of these vocal. We should get fighting out. We should change the way we look at fighting. His Carolina teams, his Pittsburgh teams have never been known for this kind of thing.

It really surprised me that he was the guy making this deal. Which is kind of the annoying part because, especially with the success that penguins have had, Like you can't, there's this line of thinking where it's like, well, you know, the penguins have been very good and, you know, they've won the back-to-back cups and Jim Rutherford's been responsible for that. So how dare we question this move? He clearly knows what he's doing. It's like, you know, he can have done a good job and we can still also maintain our own critical thought process and question certain moves. And I just don't, I just don't get it. Like, sometimes the evaluations in this league are so bizarre to me.

I mean, everyone kind of raised their eyebrows when the blues protected Ryan Reeves over David Prawn. And Vegas takes David Perron and the Blues get this nice little return for Ryan Reeves. And apparently, I mean, it definitely seems like the Blues knew that Ryan Reeves held more trade value in today's NHL than David Prawn, which is just, it's just mind-blowing. I'm not the biggest David Perron fan by any means, but he has like one year. year left at what, $4 million or something, and he could perfectly reasonably play on like your second or third line and chip in with a 20-ish goals and is a useful player that brings stuff to the table. And I just don't understand how in this current landscape and climate that a guy like Ryan Reeves and what he contributes as a player on the ice is more valuable. And teams

believe that. Like, it's mind-boggling to me. The one thing I will say about Ryan Reeves is he played on a very intensive... A very specialty line. My grammar is just terrible this morning for some reason. He played on a fourth line. You haven't slept in days. It's fine. He played on a fourth line in St. Louis that was used as a defensive specialty unit.

They did a really good job. I don't know how much of that you credit to Ryan Reeves and how much you give to Kyle Brodziak and Scotty Upshall. But as a specialty line, that fourth unit was really good. Reeves is a guy who can play a bit. And I wondered how much this is just a security blanket thing. like Rutherford just I agree with you that it's stupid to say blindly trust this guy because he knows what he's doing well everybody makes mistakes and we should always maintain independent thought and just look at the evidence and come to our own conclusions and then have the courage your convictions otherwise you're you're farming out your decision-making process to other people but but anyway Jim Rutherford knows that he can win without a guy like Ryan Reeves because he's done it I really wonder if this is just a case of you know they've been through their back-to-back to back to champions. They've been through the playoff grind two years in a row and from his perspective,

their window to win is not open that long and flipping a number 31 pick to bring in a guy who will crash and bang and be a bit of a security blanket probably doesn't bother him even if it's just a confidence thing for the guys on his team. I don't like that kind of thinking because I think that kind of thinking has kept enforcers in the league for years and years and years past when they should have been. And has weakened a lot of otherwise good teams. I think it's knowingly weakening your team. But in Pittsburgh's case, I guess I kind of get it. I thought you were going to go a different way with that when you said, you know,

Jim Rutherford knows that he can win without Ryan Reeves, but now he wants to see if he can win with Ryan Reeves. Actually, you know what? My honest against goodness first thought was when I, I saw this trade was you don't usually, I flashed back to the Marcus Naslin to Alex Doyanov deal. And Pittsburgh was on the wrong end of that too, where they traded away a guy who, I'm trying to remember the 31 pick was used on Clim Koston, wasn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's a real wild card. He's not what Marcus Naslin was when Pittsburgh traded Marcus Naslin to Vancouver, but he's a guy who, you know, he could conceivably really. outperform that that selection and uh you don't usually most franchises don't get to make that trade twice yeah well and that's the thing i'm i'm no uh draft guru by any means but you clim coston was ranked as uh i think central scouting's top european skater in this draft and pretty clearly has some sort of intriguing upside and you know for a team like the blues

who are also a budget team it this is the sort of stuff that they need to do and that they've done well over the past handful of years. It's sort of just keeping keeping keeping the wheel moving and just sort of, you know, they keep all of a sudden getting their hands on these really intriguing young, cheap guys they can slot into the lineup. And sometimes they can afford to pay them on their next deal. Sometimes they just have to par ways and hope that they can find a replacement.

But it's a, you know, for them, it's a very kind of smart move. And I love when an H-L teams do like this when they just like sell high on a guy and recoup these. much more sort of potentially useful assets that they can use down the line. Well, I just want to talk a little bit about Clostin for a second because I got to see him live at the World Under 17s two years ago. And like this last year was a bit of a write-off for Coston for a bunch of different reasons. And I totally understand why he fell to 31.

But at the under 17s, this guy was just incredible. like he does absolutely everything you want to do. He was out on the PK. He, you know, he'd hold the puck in the boards against three guys in the ozone. Like, he's a real puck possession guy. He's a guy who had two-way ability. And when I remember asking the Russian coach at the end of the tournament, just for his thoughts on, on, on, on, on Costum's play.

And the translator turned to the Russian coach and relayed the question. And there was this pause. And the Russian coach was very, very, emotional at the time and he finally said something after this long pause and the translator turns to me and he says uh his thoughts on coston are uh great player little thoughts and it was just like he was he was really the essence of that team and to me you know like it's it's one tournament and i it drives me nuts when guys go go on you know uh really overvalue a guy based on one performance but i i get why he fell but i also get why he was still at number 31 after this kind of disaster of a year

he's a total gamble. You're rolling the dice, but he's a guy who might pay off for you. Yeah, I completely agree. And all of these moves are sort of calculated risks, and you're trying to take educated guesses with it. And it seems much more likely that, you know, he could become a useful player for them. And we're saying, wow, what a smart trade

as opposed to him just, you know, fizzling out and not developing into anything and us being like, oh, they have nothing to show for Ryan Reeves. What a disaster for the blues. It seems like it's a smart risk for them to take. It seems like it's a lot of upside and very little downside. And I'm always all for that. Yeah, absolutely.

Just philosophically. It's a good idea. Yeah. The other move they made, which was curious for both teams, because it's one of these things where... I loved it for Philly. I'll be honest with you. I loved it for Philly. But here's a problem with Yori Lattero, who I actually like as a player.

He's played so much with Vlad Tarasenko, and his numbers away from Tarasenko are so underwhelming that I just don't know what to make of him as a player. At the same time, you know, getting the pick and getting rid of Braden Shen, who has much more name value than he actually does as an on-ice contributor, is why I like it for Philly as well. I'm just not necessarily sold that Latara's.

some sort of a great player that's going to make a big difference for them next season. I agree entirely, but I still love it for Philly because, well, do we know the conditions on the 2018 first round pick yet? I think that's the caveat because I haven't, I don't know what the conditions on that are, and I haven't seen it reported. I haven't either, but the way people were talking made it seem like it was a realistic possibility that the Flyers would wind up seeing that pick actually. Yeah, and that to me is, you know, like I say, I love this for Philadelphia, but I'd love to know those conditions.

So that's my caveat here. But assuming they get that first round pick, you can kind of break the trade into two components. Braden Shen for a first round pick and Yuri Laterra's contract in which in exchange for taking you get a first round pick. And both of those trades taken separately are wins for Philadelphia in my mind. And I agree entirely with your concerns about Latera as a play. I'd have concerns about him too.

But I think Shen's a guy who, you know, he does some, he does, he's a useful player, but he's benefited from playing on that incredible Philadelphia power play. He's not a big five-on-five score. He's not really a stellar two-way guy five-on-five, though he, you know, he has value. So to me, you trade him, you bring back a guy who plausibly might be able to fill his role, maybe not quite as well, and you cash in on two first-round picks. what's not to like about that from a flyer's perspective if you want my take on brain shine as a player just go back to the section where we talk about brenn and sod and just apply the exact opposite to

everything like i do think sometimes we can overlook uh power play contributions and they're definitely i think it is obviously you know some of it is just opportunity based but i do think there is a certain skill involved and other guys are certainly more effective out of than others at the same time i mean yeah those opportunities he was getting is basically the trigger band there on that power play with with all the different pieces around him was a great spot and if he's not getting featured in that way which I don't think he will be on the blues because I imagine the blues want Vladimir Teresenko taking a lot of those shots all of a sudden his production really could dry up and he doesn't have much to fall back on a five on five and it's a whole lot of name value with the

trades he's been involved and how high he was drafted and how highly people used to think of him because there isn't actually too much substance to it. So I completely agree. Just getting the extra assets for the flyers made a lot of sense. And it's a very Ron Hextall thing to do. He's been doing well with these draft picks and accumulating assets. And it's another win for him. Yeah, absolutely.

To me, I think St. Louis thinks they're getting a much better player than Liori Latera. I don't think that they are, and they paid a real premium to do it. They did upgrade, but they didn't upgrade enough for the price. that they paid. And when you look at the position Philadelphia's in, it just makes a world of sense. Yeah.

Okay, one final trade here. We can see in the light, we can see in the light, the end of the tunnel. So we're not, we're not going to get into this morning's Hamannick deal, right? No, we are.

That's, this is the final trade. Why, is there another one that we haven't done that I'm missing? Well, there's, there's, I think Edmonton might be mad if we don't mention Everleigh for Strom. Oh, you know,

you probably went over that already. I did it with Craig Custins. Of course you did. Of course you did. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I would like your take on it as someone who follows Edmonton Oilers more closely than most people I know, especially myself. But I don't want to derail us.

And honestly, I'm probably just going to say what Craig said anyway, because Craig's a very smart guy. I haven't heard what he said. I've been otherwise engaged. But yeah, I'm sure you guys did a good job on that already then. Yeah, yeah. Now, go back and listen to it was the last episode, it was the last episode 178 from Thursday. I always, I don't listen to them always when they come out, but I always eventually listen to the, well, all episodes of the PEO cast, of course, but especially the Cust and Slans.

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, the Islanders and Flames made a trade this morning. And, you know, I think the flames, on the surface, it looks like they gave up a lot. And I think from the Islander's perspective, they did about as well as they could in this trade. But it's sort of one of these deals that makes sense for both. And I'll say that with a caveat of sort of like how, what we said for the New York Rangers, I'm not going to fully evaluate this trade for the Islanders until we see what they do with this kind of newfound cap space and asset flexibility because they've been so heavily

rumored even after acquiring Jordan Eberley to be in on a guy like Matthew Shea or making another move of consequence to bolster themselves up front. And they seem pretty, you know, pretty prime to make another sort of dramatic splash in the trade market here. And so I want to see what they do in that regard. But let's evaluate it right now in terms of what we do know. And I think that from the Flames perspective, it's so fascinating because now that top four all of a sudden looks about as good as there is in the league. Like I think Anaheim and Nashville are up there.

But you could make an argument that the Flames might have the third best sort of defense score just purely based on those top four guys out there in the league. Would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. Calgary has been looking for that fourth member of their top four defense for ages now and really suffered from not having them. Travis Hamannick's coming off a really bad season. It's my only caveat here, but when you look at the price that they paid for him, like, it's basically what Edmonton paid to get Griffin Reinhardt. And Travis Hamannick versus Griffin-Rinehart,

that's a no-brainer. And especially since Hamannick is, you know, a right-shot defenseman, a young right shot defenseman on a very reasonable contract and you add him to that that um brodie gerdano on the left side hamilton on the right side group that's just that's that's that's a stellar top four and um i i i just i'm really curious to see how it works with with mike smith if uh you know i i hope that they haven't done this great work building this top four only to undercut it with poor goal tending but i guess we'll see uh certainly wouldn't be the first team for that to be the case um Yeah, it's, I like it. I like it a lot.

And I, hopefully, I'm optimistic that they're going to do the right thing and actually fell out that third pair with, you know, they've done a really good job of sort of stockpiling young defensemen through the draft and such. And I'd love to see them give some of these guys like a Brett Kulak or a Rasmus Anderson a shot or maybe even Oliver Shillington down the road when he's, when he's ready. And I think just not playing guys. like Derek England and Dennis Wydenman and Matt Bartkowski and Yerki Yoki Paca and just giving those minutes to guys who can actually contribute something will be huge and I really, I love T.J. Brody

as a player and I've, you know, his numbers haven't been great. They weren't great last year, but he, the circumstances in which he was playing and the guys he was playing with were so unfavorable to him and assuming that Travis Hamanick struggles last year were sort of injury based than just that weird whatever was in the water in Brooklyn that was just seemed to be hampering that entire team. Assuming he bounces back to the form before last season, I'm very optimistic about how T.J. Brody's going to do and how that top four and how the flames the team will do

just generally kind of as a blanket statement. Well, and one thing that I think really deserves a little bit of attention here is the age range. Like outside of Giordano, who is, you know, I'm a little bit worried about what Giordano's contract's going to look like at the tail end. But Hamilton, Brody, and Hamannick are all in that mid-20s range. And I think that's exactly what you want when you've got, you know,

your Sean Monaghan, Johnny Cadro, sort of as your key offensive guys where they're a couple of years younger. I just think it's a defense that's really built to go with that forward group. And it's built for the long haul. And that's going to be incredibly valuable because it's not like Calgary. or you get one or two years of benefit of this. This could be a group that they keep together for a long time. Yeah.

I'm kind of surprised that they didn't, or maybe they did explore it, and it just didn't wind up working out or the price was too steep. But I wonder if there was a line of thinking or whether they explored sort of packaging Troy Brower with some sort of a pick or an asset and getting Vegas to take that contract out their hands and then using that money more wisely this summer and having another kick of the can because this team does seem so prime to sort of be a win now. Like you do mention the age range and they're not necessarily going to, their window isn't going to close in two or three years,

but there's no sense of putting it off. Yes, exactly. And there's like such obvious needs and this Hamunich trade fills one of them. And getting another scoring winger would be huge. Maybe they can find a guy for cheap and just give them really good opportunities and sort of boost his performance that way. So we'll see what they do with the spray agent market. but I'm optimistic in this team.

I think they're really good. They played so much better as the year went along. They were probably the biggest riser in the league. And I think there's no reason to be down on them, especially considering the state of that Pacific Division, as we mentioned, when we talked about the coyotes, where it's really open. And I don't see any team that, you know,

I like the sharks, but there's so much, so many moving parts in terms of what's going to happen with, with Joe Thornton and Patrick Marlowe, the summer, and they lost David Shlemko, who was huge for them. So they could take a step back. and, you know, the flames, you could make a very realistic argument that they're the best team in the Pacific Division heading into next season. You could make the argument.

I don't think they are, but you can make a case for them. It's plausible. It's not like an outrageous statement where you're like, no, that can't be true. Yeah. No, that's a fair way to put it. Yeah, I think the one thing that works in their favor, and I'd like to know what their cost was on Troy Brower, because when you give up, Like they gave up three top-end draft picks for Travis Hamanick. And when you're going to spend those assets on a defenseman sometimes,

it wouldn't surprise me at all if Bradshaw-Livine explored the possibility of moving Troy Brower, found out what it was going to cost him in futures, and then shied away because he knew he was going to go shopping for a big, a high-end defenseman. That's a plausible approach that could explain it. I think the one thing that really works in Calgary's favor, though, is that scoring wingers, you can usually find a couple of underappreciated veteran scoring wingers in the bargain period of free agency, or even like they did last year where they scooped Chris Verstieg out of Edmonton, sometimes you can do it after the bargain period of free agency.

So to me, that's an area where, yes, they would absolutely improve if they had that, but that's a place where they might be able to do something creative and fill a hole without expending a lot of assets. yeah no it's uh listen they have an intriguing collection of talent so far and if they have a good summer i'm going to be very high on them heading into next season uh jonathan we did like 75 minutes worth of podcasting and we didn't even talk about the chris russell extension and i am so proud of us i think we just we just there was like a betting line in Vegas uh it would have been a heavy favorite that it would have been like the first thing we discuss and certainly one of the first things, but here we are.

We haven't discussed it, and you know what? I don't want to discuss it. Well, I just, the listeners to this podcast don't get to watch the messages back and forth between us in the lead up to the podcast, but I could sense your level of excitement rising with each passing trade as the odds of actually discussing Russell fell lower and lower and lower. So, yes, I agree. We've been over that before.

And, you know, they should just have an account. expansion draft every year because it's a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, provides us with actual fun, exciting stuff to talk about or not just discussing offside, offside challenges and reviews and Chris Russell extension. So I'm a happy gambor for it. Jonathan, I appreciate you working under duress, working with such lack of sleep and still getting the job done.

I think you did a great admirable job on this podcast. And good luck to you and enjoy these next, you know, a handful of days here with free agency coming up. And we're definitely going to have you back on the show soon because I think I'm going to need your help with either previewing or recapping what happened on July 1st. Well, it's, you know, it's always a pleasure to come on here and talk some hockey. And hopefully I came across as a bit more coherent than I feel.

And I look forward to doing it again. All right. Take care of yourself, buddy. The hockey PDOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud. At soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast.