The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 183: Mailbag Marathon

Episode Date: July 12, 2017

Nick Mercadante joins the show to discuss the new look New York Rangers and whether they're now an improved team (1:09), Vegas' decision not to load up on goalies in the expansion draft (18:45), and this summer's free agent goalie carousel (25:30), before helping sift through the Twitter mailbag (39:45). 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.

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My name is Dimitri Filipovich. joining me's old reliable nick murcadante nick what's going on man old reliable you know whenever i have uh you know whenever i don't really know what to do uh with the show i just let's just get nick on and let's just uh it's kind of just shoot the shit for an hour and and people always seem to like that so why not yeah i'm i'm good for that i'm i'm known as a uh a world-class bullshitter so that's perfect that comes in handy for the podcast it comes with the territory of being a lawyer that's just It's just what I am. You can talk for a long time without actually saying anything.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's more or less it. All right, so we actually have a pretty fun show plan. I mean, we've solicited some Twitter questions from the listeners, and we're going to talk about some of the goalie signings and how the landscapes change the bit of the position. But first, let's do some stuff on the Rangers, because you're a noted diehard and you're a ranger. fan and they've had a pretty eventful summer so far you could argue they signed the the biggest

name free agent at least to switch teams this summer and um i you know they made a big trade before before everything started so i don't know where you're at where are you out with the team how do you like the the new look new york rangers yeah well it's it's you know it's certainly been an eventful summer um it's fun as a fan when your team makes big moves i mean whether you think they're good or you think they're bad or, you know, at least you're kind of not indifferent because it's, it's a big change. So as a fan, you know, just purely as a fan, it gives you something to talk about with your friends and with other fans and all that. And it gives you something to look forward to once the season hits, how is this actually going to pan out? You know, is moving a guy like

Derek Stepon going to blow up in their face when, you know, maybe they suddenly have some issues with center depth. You know, Oscar Lindbergh, they lost as well in the Vegas draft. So now you're kind of looking at their center depth and going, okay, you know, there might be some issues there unless they make a few more moves or do something. So that's fun to talk about, whether you think it was a good move for their now or their future or their future or not. It's fun to talk about. Now, for me personally, just on the step on one, you know, I was very disappointed with the return on the step on trade. Well, yes, I mean, just purely from the sense of the current sort of trajectory or direction of this team and how, you know, the fact that they got two assets back that won't probably help them at least this season. I mean, we could see if DiAngelo potentially play a role.

But, I mean, I doubt he's going to be a difference maker. but at the same time, it is one of those moves, it is one of those moves, though, Nick, where you can't necessarily just look at it in a vacuum because it kind of opened up some space to complete the next move they were going to talk about, right? Like, there was, it's not just in isolation.

You just said, you took the words out of it. That's exactly what I was going to say. You know, obviously I'm saying I was very disappointed with the return, but yeah, if you look at it in a vacuum, it's easy to be disappointed because you can kind of say, well, DeAngel is a little bit of a scratch-off, you know, in his own right.

What is he going to be? Is he going to be, you know, a functioning, productive NHLer? Well, yeah, he's got some of the peripherals. He's also got some baggage and all those other good things that, you know, we can talk about, but we really don't know the details. I'd rather not. Yeah, yeah. I agree.

And, you know, you get another scratch-off with draft picks. and things like that are, you know, speculative. So if you look at them in a vacuum, given that Stepon is, you know, a 1B type center or, you know, a strong 2A center. And Ranta is a, in my opinion, probably a starting goalie on a lot of teams or one of, if not the best backup in the NHL, you go, ooh, that's a lot. And if you're looking at the now and looking at what's going on for next season or even the season after that, you go, I don't know if this was a good deal. But you're right. The bottom line is they wanted to get out of cap hell. They wanted to free up space so that they could do some other things, namely sign a guy like Kevin Chattonkirk. And that, I think that deal worked out great. I mean, it couldn't have worked out any better. the you know his reputation took an artificial hit in the playoffs you know maybe that brought down is the

asking price a little bit and on top of it he wanted to be in new york and he really made that pretty well known um so i thought they got a really really good team friendly type of deal uh with chatton kirk yeah that was a that was an absolute home run i mean the you know the big question mark uh heading into his free agency was what kind of term would he command and what would what that deal would look like when he was in his mid-30s and the fact that you don't really need to pay the price for that. You know, he's going to expire when he's like 32, I believe, is huge.

It's perfect. So, yeah, the thing with this team is, like, if you just compare what it looks like heading into next season versus what it was at the end of last year, I like this team better, assuming that L.A. and Vigno is willing to use the pieces he's been given properly, right? Because, like, in the postseason, I mean, we saw that for large, stretches, I mean, their top four was McDonough, Gerardy, and then Nick Holden, Mark Stahl, and all of a sudden, if you replace Gerardi with Shatt and Kirk on that top pairing, and you actually

play Brady Shea, who, you know, there's a lot of reason to believe it will be better next year, and Brendan Smith, who they obtained. And that pairing was really good for them down the stretch. All of a sudden, if that's your top four, and you can just eat up pretty much, like, 50. Suddenly, it looks like you have one of the best top fours in the NHL. Yeah, yeah. I went from a universally panned defense, or maybe not universally pan, but panned certainly in, you know, in our circles.

Yes. Our elitist, you know, analytics circles and things like that. But, you know, a panned defense or at least a weak aging defense as far as a top four to now, what I think is a very dynamic top four. with guys that are right in their prime, you know, and kind of primed for to have their best seasons, McDonough and Chattonk, Brendan Smith, who really is, I think, revived his career with New York and is a great fit and seems to have, you know, great chemistry or whatever you want to call it with Brady Shea. And Brady Shea, who I think is, I'm so excited about his future.

And we've talked about him in the past. I just think, you know, the sky is the limit as far as what he can be. So you're right. And a lot of it with AV is you had to take away some of his toys because I truthfully don't know if he can – I don't know if he can control himself. I have no idea. Well, come the season, I might be singing a different tune because suddenly, you know, Stahl is playing his usual top three minutes or whatever you want to call it.

and, you know, Holden's getting regular ice time and things like that are going on. So, I don't know. I would love to see them, you know, maybe, I don't think stall is going anywhere, but maybe sell high, so to speak, on Holden, do some kind of last minute move and free up a little bit more room for something new with the bottom pair. But what an exciting change. And I think I feel better overall about the team as well because of that. Well, like, I love watching that Smith-Shay pairing because, you know, something I've been

keying in on more over the past year or so. And, you know, someone like Ryan Stimson, for example, has done a great job in his work of looking at, you know, different player types and sort of trying to optimize configurations of your lines or your pairings based on, you know, whatever a certain player does best, you know, putting a playmaker with a shooter and so on and so forth. stuff that seems very intuitive to us, but we might not necessarily know without, you know, very time-consuming, time-intensive data that's been putting all these data sets together. And with Smith and Shea, like, I see that perfectly where, you know, Shay with a puck is such a smooth skater and he's very creative and willing to try stuff.

And I really appreciate that from him because too few defensemen in this league are willing to activate like that. And then Smith, on the other hand, you know, he's probably never going to reach that lofty status that he might have had as a prospect and when he was playing at the University of Wisconsin. But at the same time, he's sort of this like really kind of effective modern day defensive defenseman where he's great at, great in the neutral zone at breaking, breaking carry-ins against and, you know, just being a pretty much like a sturdy wall at his own blue line. Yeah. He's got, he's an interesting guy too. He's got a little bit of Anton Strachman's game where he's very, very good at taking away premium ice and space. He does enough, he's aggressive enough to disrupt, you know, free-flowing neutral zone play and passes, you know, because he'll stand up his blue line and he'll cut the angles off.

But he's also kind of smart enough and mobile enough to get back and cut the angles off. He's not kind of like this big body checking type of defenseman, but he doesn't have to be, and you don't want him to be, because sometimes those guys take themselves out of the play, trying to get a big hit that kind of artificially dislodges the other team from the puck, but creates a new loose puck. So he's a space controller, and that fits perfectly, like you said, with a guy like Brady Shea, where Brady Shea is just moving vertically.

He will take some risks and get up the ice. and it allows a guy like that to not be as worried about, oh, oh, I'm out of position, you know, and I have no backstop or fill in for that. It's almost the polar opposite of when you look at the Gerardy McDonough pairing for all those years. McDonough wants to move and skate, and McDonough actually had to probably go away from his bread and butter game over the past few seasons because Girardi can't be the stay-at-home

defenseman. He also can't be, you know, the guy who's joining the flow of the, of anything going on up the ice. Right. So McDonagh is just kind of solo out there. Well, I'm very curious to see what Ryan McDonough looks like next year. Like, I think it's, you know, it's not a hot take to say that he's going to, his numbers are going to be better. But I'm just stylistically in terms of how he looks out there. I'm fascinated because obviously this is like a homeless man's example of what we're talking about here. But what I noticed this year, for example, was, you know, when the San Jose Sharks made the Stanley Cup final two years ago, their third pairing was Brendan Dillon and Roman Polack.

And it was like, it was pretty clear that playing was such a like a defensive anchor in Roman Polack, Brennan Dillon sort of really dumbed down his game and never really tried to do anything. And you could definitely see that in the results. And it just, it was weird because he was always this like smooth skating guy. that I actually really enjoyed watching. And then this year they brought in David Schlemko and paired them together. And all of a sudden it seemed like Brennan just was more willing to become that player he once was.

And it just, it was a completely, it was a seismic shift in the way he was playing his game. And I think we could see some of that. And then some with McDonough here where just the fact that he's playing with a guy who can, who can hold his own and move the puck all of a sudden, he'll free him up to utilize some of those physical tools as he has, as opposed to just having to try to be this. more stay-at-home defensive guy. Yeah, I remember there was some article or maybe it was commentary on television somewhere

where they were talking about Dylan and saying, well, he really worked hard in the off-season on his game, his skills, you know, moving the puck and puck handling, getting out of tight areas and all those things. And I was like, I think he kind of always had those things. I think, you know, you hit it on the head. He dumbed down his game whether it was because the coach told him to, or whether it was because he recognized that his partner was kind of the anchor type of player, whatever it was, whatever the reason is, is almost irrelevant.

You know, these guys, when they get to the NHL, yes, players get better in the NHL. Yes, they're constantly working on their game, and they can see drastic improvements in certain parts of their game from one season to the next. But it's not like basketball players where if you practice free throws and you do 10,000 free throws in the off season, and you'll get better at free throws. Hockey is a flow game. In some of the skill, I don't want to say it's innate, but they've already built it up.

And yeah, you can add little, you know, kind of ticks and ties to your game to improve stuff. But the package is kind of already there, and it's just how it's being utilized. And, you know, I think any hockey player will tell you, skill breed skill. When you're on the ice with other skilled players, A, you want to keep up and do, you know,

as much as you can to not take away from their game. But B, they're helping to put you, whether you kind of can see it on the ice or not, they're helping to put you in better positions to be successful, almost regardless of your skill. So in everybody, you know, the basic, just look at the basic example is put a forward, any forward with Sidney Crosby. They're going to suddenly have some levels of success. That is not a magic trick, okay? That's because Sidney Crosby is that good that he will elevate others games. players will actually probably play better with him as well because of the attention that he takes

and because of the way you can put the puck on your stick in situations you don't usually get it, etc, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I'm hopeful and I think we can probably expect to see that McDonough is going to be like, you know, almost like a new player all of a sudden, a revived player, because he's playing with a high-skill player. Shatton Kirk is a very, very high-skill player. And so what role he takes, you know, I don't know. Are they going to have chemistry? I don't know. And, you know, I kind of hate throwing them just, oh, chemistry.

What the hell does that mean? But if you use, you know, things like Stimson's tracking and trying to create these kind of archetypes for players, you know, McDowell – McDonough is a very, very well-rounded player. I'm assuming that he's going to be able to adopt whatever role is appropriate with a highly skilled player and be really successful. I'd like to think so. I mean, obviously, you know, he's like, what, 28 now and he has – around 500 NHL games under his belt.

So it's quite possible that after this many years of having to play that certain way, it might be tough for him. I'm a bit tougher for him to maybe make that adjustment. But at the same time, he's such a good player. And I'm very fascinated to see just what he looks like because I think he could be a far more effective and also just stylistically a more enjoyable player to watch. And that goes for this Rangers team as a whole. I mean, they were, you know, they were really fun this past year,

especially at the start of the season when they were racking up all those goals just in terms of that transition counterattack game that we've all talked about. And if you assume that, you know, obviously Lunkwist at this age with this many miles on him, it's quite possible. It seems plausible to suggest that he's going to be on a downward trajectory in terms of his performance. But at the same time, I think that 9-10 he had last year is more of an aberration than the new norm for him. And even if he bounces back to something closer resembling his lofty standards from before, I think this could be a really effective team.

Obviously, those are a few ifs that I just raised there, but the pieces are in place for this to be a very successful team. Yeah, and look, I'll say it. I said it on Twitter. Actually, I did one of those, you know, Donald Trump tweet mashups with Donald Trump, and my tweet was not as upset with Paves to Rangers as some very bad and conflicted people. Hashtag make America great again. I like the Pavs signing.

I think it's fine. Pavs has been much better over the past few years. You're already on a Pavs basis with him? You're not going to call him Andre or Pavellick or anything? No, we go way back. We're going with Pavs. Everybody knows Paves. I don't have to.

So look, I think that's a great move, not because he's the greatest goaling in the world or anything else, but because over the past few seasons, he has been a very serviceable starter when he's been asked to be a starter. He hasn't been terrible. I think, you know, and it's not just because. It's not because he, you know, got on a couple hot streaks, although he did. It's because he cleaned up a lot of the kind of sloppy parts of his game.

Now, he'll still have his occasional where you go, you know, a head-scratching moment. It kind of comes with the territory. But I think it'll be fine as a backup. And I think you'd be fine to take, you know, 30 games if that, if it comes to that. Lungwis is older and we can expect that, you know, I think you said it. Like, it's not the drastic decline. I think the first part of last season was an aberration. The second part of last season is more what he is, which is a declining Hall of Fame

Legend goalie. He's going to be all right. I think the team's going to be better defensively overall. they're going to be more dynamic. Hopefully, you know, some of the offensive pieces continue to develop

the young players. I think they're going to be a really fun team. I really believe that. I do too. All right. Let's enough Rangers talk for now. Let's move on to some more league-wide stuff.

All right. So I believe I had you a last on the show about, it was a few weeks before the expansion draft. It was sometime around the Stanley Cup final. I remember and we were discussing different paths Vegas could go. with assembling their team and, you know, this idea that they could sort of stockpile

goalies and maybe hold an auction or try a corner to the market that way. And instead, they did the opposite where, you know, they only basically took Mark Andre Fulery and Calvin Picard. They also took my boy, Jean-Francois, but they let him go as a free agent. And, you know, maybe, I don't know, I'm curious based on that, you know, what your thoughts were on those picks. And also, if you agree that, you know, maybe this shows that the landscape is changing a bit in terms of how teams are value in goalies because maybe, you know, it seems quite possible

that they would have explored if teams were interested in certain guys that were available. And maybe they just realized that, you know, the trade market wasn't really there. And maybe that's a departure from what it's been like in the past where maybe, you know, these defensemen that they took all of a sudden carry more trade value in the market than, than these sort of replaceable goalies. So I thought that was a fascinating development. Yeah, really fascinating. You know, the picks for the goalies in particular.

Well, first of all, so I don't know who John Francois Barouba is. He's not an NHL goalie. I don't know who he is. So that name keeps getting thrown around. And so that was an off, what I would consider an off-the-board pick because I'm convinced that he's not a real person. So that's first. Secondly, you know, the flurry thing, that kind of panned out how we said it would pan out the last time I was on, more or less.

I still like it. I think it was the right move for Vegas for a new franchise to give them some kind of name recognition, all those things. And I think it's great for him. I think he'll be solid. He'll be what he's been in the past few seasons. And he probably has a decent bit left in the same. the tank. I was very, I wouldn't say I was very surprised. I don't know how you feel, but the whole Peter Pettramurazic thing. I just, you know, I heard all the rumblings and I heard that

it goes back longer than, you know, just this past season and then it has to do with off the ice stuff. And I have no idea what any of that means or whether it's truthful or not. I don't even want to speculate on it. I just think that he's a really, really good goalie if you harness his incredible ability. So to me, I thought that that would be, regardless of anything, that's a great pick because what at worst, you know, you play him, he plays well and you turn him into trade bait, or he plays decently and you turn him into trade bait. At best, you get your starting goalie for the next, you know, five, six seasons, whatever even more, 10 seasons. yeah that was a

there must be something more going on there otherwise it was a very curious move to pass on that but um yeah no I mean listen I think and for and for the Red Wings to not protect him I mean yeah everything there was bizarre I think the I mean that flurry Picard

one two tournament next year could be could be like at least league average which is decent oh for sure for sure and I think Picard's a very capable goalie. I think I mean, this is a tough situation going on in Colorado overall. Well, I'm actually kind of surprised that I would have thought that they would have explored

maybe even protecting Picard and exposing Varlamov, based on the contract situation. Yeah, somebody asked me that I don't know, somewhere maybe on Twitter, a different podcast or something. I said the exact same thing. You know, expose

Varlamov and see what happens, given the contract and everything. They might not take them and then you, you know, retain both your goalies and you give up something you care less about. I think Picard has value. But, you know, maybe they treat him like a true backup and he plays and he gets, you know, he does decently well. I don't think he has that cachet that, you know, you would be able to turn him into really strong trade bait or anything like that, at least not yet. I think the league-wide opinion on goaltenders in general is probably either the same or steadily decreasing from where it was last year or the year before and definitely down from maybe three or four or five years prior where you saw some really big contracts or bigger than normal contracts. I don't think the league sees goalies as having a ton.

I think they don't seem as interchangeable for sure. everybody's looking for their franchise goaltender still and that's why you get like you know bizarre moves like the ben bishop move but at the same time i don't think anybody is you know breaking the bank for a goalie when they look around the league and they go down there's a lot of good goalies out there you know why why are we going to give up a massive asset for one okay well let's um let's let's let's switch gears and talk about that uh that uh goalie market and some of the moves we saw in free agency but before we do that, we're going to take a quick little break here to hear from a sponsor. Let me take a second to tell you about a sponsor of today's show, Seekek.

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And trust me, you're going to wind up coming back and using it after you see how easy it is. So all you got to do to get that $20 rebate on tickets that I just mentioned is download the Ciki app, go to the Settings tab, and click add a promo code. enter the promo code PDO and Cickeek will send you $20 after you made your first ticket purchase. Just download the Cicac app, enter the promo code PDO today and you can get started. And with that, let's get back to the show. All right. So there was a little bit of a goalie carousel going on a few weeks ago.

I mean, we saw, you know, Jonathan Bernier went to the Avalanche, Antigemi, went to Pittsburgh to back up Matt Murray, you know, two fan favorites of both of ours. Steve Mason and Brian Elliott found you homes. Ryan Miller went to the ducks. I mean, you know, there was a bunch of goalie switching teams. What was your favorite move of the bunch? And please don't say Steve Mason. Here's what I'll say.

I love that entire kind of carousel of, you know, Elliot ends up in Philadelphia, Mason. All these goalies kind of moving in a big concentric circle. around the league. I think it highlights what I was saying before the break that teams are starting to look at goalies and even some starting goaltenders, but at least the, you know, the guys thought of as maybe platoon guys, is somewhat interchangeable. And yeah, they're looking for, they're looking for, well, so I always criticize the GMs saying things like, well, he checks all the boxes for us and, you know, with no explanation of what the hell that even means.

What are the boxes? Yeah, what are the boxes? Well, he's, big, he's athletic, he can, you know, he's compete level. It's like, all right, great. And, you know, some people will say, well, they don't want to tell you what they're looking for in a goal. Why? Everybody's looking for goalies to stop pucks. Everybody knows that. So tell me why you think that this guy's a world-class puck stopper.

You know, the best you can come up with is he's got, compete. Then, okay. So I look at it as, I do still think front offices struggle to quantify goaltending. They look around

the league and they go, there's a lot of capable enough goalies. This year are capable enough goalie that we have, that we're going to

go after that quote unquote checks all the boxes is this guy. And so overall, I think we're going to start seeing shorter contracts. Maybe the, you know,

the average annual value stays around the same, but you're going to start to see shorter contracts, which really, whether I think it's, unwitting and they don't mean to do it but that's a better reflection of what goaltenders

are which is get them for two or three years and hope for the best in that two or three years and then part ways because they're either going to get injured or they're going to pass out of their prime and you know whether the league means to do it or not that's kind of I think how things are going to start to go now I'm saying that and meanwhile carry price just got a massive you know ridiculously massive contract yes Curie Price, let's treat him as a different thing. Yeah, we'll talk about him in a second. Yeah, most of these deals we saw, you know, I would, you know, I'm not shy when it comes to calling out GMs for making questionable decisions.

But there's, you know, in terms of this goalie class, there was a lot of pretty much every goalie was either a one year or two year deal. And the prices were pretty suppressed. I mean, like, you know, I think Steve Mason at 4.1 per for two years was, uh, was the most experienced. expensive goalie. So it's, it's tough to take too big of a issue than any of the deals.

Yeah, even the Mike Smith thing. So, you know, they're giving up assets to get Mike Smith. And, you know, you got the, I think it's true living, again, saying, you only checks all the boxes for us.

And, you know, he had previous experience with him and everything else. But I don't, you know, I can't really totally kill them for it. I want to.

But I look at, at and I go, huh, okay. You know, yeah, you know, he's older and it's kind of a bad move, but they're not, they're not going to be so saddled with such a huge contract that they can't get out from under it. It's not a good move, but it's not, you know, a franchise crushing decision. And in most of these goalie deals, that's, you know, what you're seeing is shorter term, you know, the average annual value is falling somewhere between.

three and, you know, five and a half. And, you know, you kind of get on with it and see how things go for the next year, next two years, maybe next three years, and then you move on to the next thing. And, you know, I think goalies need to be paid more for their work, but I don't think they should be getting long-term contracts. So if the end result is, well, the GMs don't really know what they're doing, but they ended up in the place that I would have recommended anyways, well, you know, who might have judged them?

Yeah, I mean, the thing with the mind. Mike Smith move. What I don't like is I really, I'm a fan of that Calgary Flames team in general, and I think that, especially with the, you know, current situation in the Pacific and how wide open the West is, like they could be a real contender. And I just thought that the Mike, you know, settling for Mike Smith, especially before the rest of the market, I was given a chance to materialize. I just thought it was a bit, you know, it lacked, it was a bit unambitious for my liking. Like, I thought that they could have swung a bit higher. Instead, they just sort of settle for that based on familiarity and I generally think that's a bad way of doing business.

So that, that was my issue with it. I don't, I don't necessarily believe that Mike Smith is going to be, you know, such an albatross or such an anchor on their team that he's going to completely do in everything else that's got, they've got going on.

I just, I thought they could have done a bit better. For sure. I mean, and the funny thing is he's probably not even going to play half the game. So, you know, because he's going to get injured.

He's going to break down whatever it is. Well, I wouldn't be relying on Eddie Lack to play the rest of those games. That's, Well, so that's where I'm getting at. So the, you know, there's where your unambitious kind of part comes back to haunt them is. So now you're stuck with Eddie Lack, who's trying to resurrect his career. Now, Eddie Lack could fix things.

But Eddie Lack was never an above NHL average goaltender. So let's not kid ourselves into thinking that he is going to revive his career and become that. He's just averages where he is at his best, and that's probably his ceiling. I don't think he's nearly as bad as he was in Carolina. If he's starting 40, 45 games for you, you're, you know, that's rough water, so to speak. So, yeah, I mean, they should have just waited. Well, you know my pick for them. I was pining for it the entire time, which was I thought Steve Mason would have been a perfect fit for Calgary.

But it didn't work out. And I kind of like the landing spot for Mason. I think it's all right. Well, okay, so we're going to get to Mason because someone left a question about him in the mailbag portion of the show, and we'll get to that in a minute. But before we forget, I did mention the Kerry Price contract. Let's do a few minutes on that. It's 10.5 for eight years, and it starts when he turns 31. I guess you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out all the risk factors

involved there when you just spell it out like that. It's a really tough position. Let's count on our fingers. One, two, three. 38 years old is when that, that's, uh, oof. And this is not, obviously it was compared to the Henrik-Lunquist deal. It's not that. You got to understand that that Henrik-Lunquist deal came when he was out-of-control good, first of all,

with no injury history to speak of whatsoever and younger. So it's not the same thing. higher percentage of the cap on an annual basis, at least for now, for price. And it's coming after he had a major injury for a goaltender. And you really can't understate the impact of having a bad knee, having something happened to your knee as a goalie. There aren't goleys that just come back from a major knee issue and have a nice, long, healthy career thereafter.

It will always come back and haunt that goalie. Whether he's missing games or not, he's going to be feeling it. I promise you he's feeling it right now whenever he plays. And Kerry Price is a big dude who's putting a lot of weight down on those knees. That's going to get worse. And it could get worse as soon as, you know, a season too. three seasons from now, we could start seeing the decline of carry price that fast. And then that contract looks really bad.

Well, much like with the discussion we just had with the Rangers and the step-end trade and the Shannkerk signing, it's, you know, in the salary cap world, you can't just view, you can't just look at moves in isolation and just purely evaluate them based on that, right? Like, because no one's arguing that carry price is a very, very good goalie and one of the easily one of the best in the league. The thing is, all of a sudden now, with this type of a deal, you're sort of really just tying yourself down to this current incarnation of the Montreal Canadians, which hasn't really shown us any reason to believe that it's good enough to get over

the hump and make a serious run as a contender. And so then they just raised the question of sort of what the end game is here and whether you're just settling for being a good but flawed. you know, a good regular season team that's ultimately flawed or whether you're trying to do something more. And I, that's my issue with it, right? Like I came out against the deal and said, I wouldn't have done it myself. And people were like, oh, you're an idiot. You know, Carrie Price means so much this organization. He's great. And that both those things are true. But at the same time, you do have to factor in sort of the opportunity cost of tying up that 10.5 million of the cap, which is a higher percentage of the cap, regardless of what happens

over the past few years, it's higher than we've seen any team that's made a long playoff run really tie up in their goaltending before. So there's just no precedent here for just devoting that much of your, that higher percentage of your resources into that one position. Right. Well, any way you cut it, now they are dedicating at least that amount to goaltending. Obviously, they're dedicating more with the backup goalie. So if you look at percentage of cap hit, there are teams that have had high.

high percentage of cap hit that have made it to the Stanley Cup finals and won the Stanley Cup. So it's not totally unprecedented that, you know, you have a team. I'm trying to think of who was the last one that had something comparable where it's like 18% of the cap. I thought I saw a stat where the year the Bruins won in 2011, Tim Thomas was the only one that has been over 10%. That might be it. So that might be it.

So it's not unprecedented, but it's uncommon. It's not optimal. Right, which begs the question. I mean, look, if you're tying, I think if you're tying almost anything to teams that won the cup, well, you know, only one team in 30 wins the cup every year. So let's not, you know, let's, you don't, I always cringe when I say, well, they're trying to make a Stanley Cup contender. Everybody's trying to make a Stanley Cup contender.

I hope so. Oh, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think that what you have to do is you've got to, look at, you know, do you, and I get this question all the time, can you build your team from the goalie forward and be successful if you're, you know, in terms of cap hit, not really in terms of performance, because I think every team wants to have the best goalie possible, but in terms of cap hit. And what I would say is, I don't, I don't necessarily think you can't, but you have to do it at the right time. You can't do it when you're paying for past performance. You have to do it,

look at the caps. they did it, I think, perfectly with Holpe. Entering his prime. And they had, I think, a leg up in terms of analyzing performance because they did rely on playoff performance. And they said, wow, this guy is an exceptional playoff performer. He's already proven himself. Oh, and, by the way, he's 26 years old.

So let's just go for it, right? Not every team has that luxury of, you know, you can shut your brain off and make the decision. It's a little bit tougher for other teams. And, you know, you have... some teams kind of play games with their goalies early on with RFA status and things like that. But I think if you're going to do it, then you really need to do it when they are hitting that prime, 26, 27 years old. And it would be interesting to see like a guy like a Matt Murray how they deal with him.

I don't know how they'll deal with him considering their cap constraints. But I think you can build around your goalie in terms of percentage of cap hit, but you have to be really careful. If you're doing it too late, I mean, now you're right. They're saddled with we are the Carrie Price Show, and we've been the carry price show for the past, however many years, but we've never been good. So what are we going to be in the future? Well, we're going to be the aging Carrie Price Show, and we're still not going to be good because our percentage of cap hit is tied up in that guy. I don't know. They're going to have so much trouble trying to play with that.

Yeah, well, I'm sure that's going to be a problem for some other GM in a few years. So I don't think Mark Bergerman is too worried about that at the moment. Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. All right, let's do some Twitter questions. I don't normally do mailbag type stuff on the show, but considering that we're heading into mid-July, now and the news is very slow and there's you know it seems like everyone has gone on their summer vacation there's very little going on um you know like today for example the biggest news was a scott

and signed a two-year deal with like a 900,000 dollar uh a v and i was like oh well that's that's great it's a busy times in the nchel so um we've uh you know i i asked i told people we were recording and i asked for some questions and they came through we got a lot of good stuff and if anyone out there is still listening to the show at this point, you know, we're not going to get to all these. So I was thinking I might do future mailbag episodes down the road. So if you guys are into that, let me know. If not, if there's no interest in it, I will obviously will not do it then.

But, you know, here's a good start. And I'm not going to read the person's Twitter handle because it's a bunch of numbers. And I feel like that would be a wild thing to do. But the question is, gun to your head, Cam Ward or Antienami. And my answer, we're both going to die. And it's right now, right now. Okay, so it's not overall, right? It's not career.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's which goalie would you rather have right now. It's today. Ooh, Cam Ward. Cam Ward. Do I have to justify it? Well, yes, because the reason I brought up the question was that we could touch a little bit on Nieme signing with Pittsburgh and whether that's you know that was a logical fit for them.

I mean it was such a low cost move. I believe it was like 750,000 or something. Yeah. Or 700,000, 700K. So it's like if it doesn't work out, it's fine. It's whatever. Yeah. Yeah. That's and that's my, I kind of, you can't see it, but I just did one of these hand motions like, nah, whatever. I mean, that, who cares? And, but I think, You know, if we're, okay, if we're looking at how much a team is paying for them, obviously, I would take that Niami deal over, you know, paying Cam Ward, the exorbitant amount of money he's getting paid, just based on, you know, I mean, but putting that aside in terms of performance, I think Cam Ward is still playing start, or was at least playing starters minutes up until last season,

or through last season. So there's probably a little bit more in the tank for, him. It doesn't mean that that tank is, you know, running on premium gasoline. But Niemi looks awfully tired every time he's in the net. He just doesn't look, he looks like a beer league goalie to me. He looks like a guy who's just lost all of it. I mean, at the same time, even when he was at his absolute best, as good as that may have been, he still kind of look like that guy, though, right? Totally true. You just can't get it. away with it anymore. Yeah.

He just looks so slow when he's moved, especially when he's, if he's already down and he's trying to recover out. So think like, you know, a guy on the post following the play behind the net and then the play gets moved out to the point. He is just awful coming off the post and out to challenge the puck. He's all sorts of off his angle, sloppy, slow to react. It's, you know, it's the worst version of Pecorina in the playoffs when he was. you know, kind of losing his net every time he, uh, he had to make that same movement.

Right. It was like the bad, it was like all the bad stuff about Pekirini without any of the good stuff. Oh, it's just really rough, rough on the eyes. Yeah. I, uh, you know, people that have been following me on Twitter and have been listening to the show and all my thoughts about Cam Ward already, so I won't, I won't beat the dead horse there. But I'm very curious to see how Scott Darling fairs this year. Um, you know, everything we've seen from him so far at the NHL level suggests that he's a good goalie. it's only 75 games through the past three years.

So take that for what it's worth. I mean, obviously the hurricanes seem optimistic. They're a smart organization that is looking at stuff beyond just a percentage. And, you know, they made a four-year investment item at a decent cap hit. So they clearly seem optimistic that he can be that guy for them. And I think that even something like slightly above league average would be such a nice change of pace for that team and could really be what they need to finally take.

take that next step as sort of realizing all this potential that we've been talking about them having for the past few years now. Yeah. And so look, I mean, I think some people that follow my stuff, I think I'm maybe too critical, darling. I always just go back to, they are smallish sample sizes or short bursts of games. What is he going to look like as a starter? You know, he's never played. I mean, and I say never, I mean, never, not all the way back.

you know, to, you know, college and all of his, you know, and it's obviously well known, all of his struggles and everything else, but he's never played the number of games that he's going to be expected to play as a starting goalie, nowhere close. So what does that look like? A bigger goalie, is he going to have issues with fatigue? Is he going to have issues with injury? I think, I don't think he's going to have issues with focus.

I don't think he's, I think he's, they set him up great. as far as goal-tending coaching, they set them up great as far as what their expectations are of him. I love that they give a clear message that he is their guy. So I think all those things are working in his favor. And he shows very, very well in my stats, but it's short bursts and it's never been over the course of a season. So that's, to me, probably the most intriguing new starting goalie in the NHL. Yeah, it looks like the only time he's ever topped 40 games in a single season was a decade ago for the Indiana ice of the USHL. Right.

Yeah, this is going to be, I mean, listen, he played 29 games two years ago, 32 last year. Yeah, it's not like we're talking about six games. Yes, at the same time, though, we've sort of seen what Cam Ward is and what he's capable of. And I think that if the hurricanes do have aspirations of finally taking that next step and potentially even being a playoff team, especially given the state of how tough that Metro Division is, they're going to need Scott Darley to at least be like in the 50s and be good in those starts. And we haven't really seen that yet from him. So I can understand the skepticism and people sort of wanting to see it before they believe it. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I think there's a lot to be optimistic about it with him because of all the things that the hurricanes have done around him to set him up for success. The biggest thing, it can't be understated, is replacing Marku with Bales from the Penguins. So, you know, the thing with Mike Bals is he knows Darling. he helped darling on his way up and that i think that familiarity is going to help when you know he has a bad stretch of five or ten games or whatever it is um and i think bells is just a really really good coach

so um that's it's a it's a perfect storm there's my pun for the day i'm not even i'm not even i acknowledge that no all right no well anyways i i think it's it's a it's a really nice situation I have no idea how, really how it will play out. But I think there's a lot to be optimistic about. And I think it could end up being a really good thing for Carolina. And they're a team, I think that's on the rise that's going to potentially surprise some people too.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, there is, in the back of your head, it is kind of this thought hanging out that I was pretty high on them last year as well in the summer. Yeah, and they obviously disappointed, but obviously getting some solid go a long way towards shoring that up. Jake Lester asks, do you think the abs end up as the worst team in the league again next season? And I think that's an interesting question because on the surface, my initial thought would have been no, because as bad as they were last year, so much of it was just the fact that their goaltending was abhorrent.

and if I just I just find it hard to believe it would be that bad even though they lost Picard. I, you know, Barlamov assuming he can put together a stretch of healthy games should be better. And they brought in Jonathan Bernier, who I'm not too high on, but at least he's, you know, last year he looked decent in Anaheim in short bursts. So, you know, even if just not having just such bad goaltending would be a massive boost to them towards getting them. back to respectability. But then you look around the league, and all of the other teams that you would have in contention for that spot got better, I feel like. I mean, you know, like Buffalo was the second.

Do you think Arizona got better? Well, they got dramatically better, didn't they? I think so. Some people, I think, are saying they're still, you know, going the other way. And I think, I don't think that at all. I think they got dramatically better. I think it's impossible to argue that they got better. The question I would have is whether it's worth it in the grand scheme of things because it seemed like they were on this sort of trust the process path of really just blowing it up and getting a bunch of high picks and taking their time with it.

And then this year, this summer it was a bit more of a crap would just get a bunch of NHL players and try to be not a laughing stock of the league. And I think that that's going to be a dramatic improvement for them. Now, you know, I don't want to get crazy with it. I don't think they're going to be pushing for a playoff spot by any means. But they're going to be fine. they're going to be competitive. So I don't think they're going to be the worst team in the league. I mean, the Canucks have a lot of their own issues, but they signed a bunch of guys.

They got some NHL. Which is a massive step in the right direction, considering the guys they were playing last year. So I guess the only other team you could really make an argument for is the devils, though, I think unless they trade Corey Schneider, I think he's going to be better for them next year. And, you know, they add a guy like Marcus Johansson for nothing. So that's good. I mean, maybe Detroit. Like, Detroit really seems like a team that could just completely bottom out.

just based on how bad their roster is. You know, Henrik Zetterberg was really good last year, and it's kind of snuck up on people because that team was just so forgettable otherwise, and he's been around for so long, so no one was really paying attention to it. But if he falls off a little bit,

which seems reasonable given his age, and I just, there's not much to fall back on there unless, you know, their goaltending is really good, which seems possible with Howard and Mrazik there. I mean, you know, they could be one of the better

contams in the league. And just like we talked about, Colorado, I mean, just having that type of goaltending means so much. Sure. I don't know. Well, it's interesting. It's interesting because those are,

so those, if there were three, you know, I think surefire bottom feeders, those would be my three. It would be the devils, the red wings, and the abs in that order. I think the devils are going to be the worst of the three. I actually, I'm not looking at Corey Schneider and going, this is going to get better.

There were some telltile signs of age and something going on. He was slow. That wasn't like an aberration. It wasn't, he was slow. People are kind of forgetting, and I do this all the time with goalies when I say their age. Corey Schneider is 31. He's not a young guy anymore. He's a big guy.

He's another one of those guys who's slamming a lot of weight down on his knees. he might not, I mean, is he going to be as bad as last year? Yeah, I don't know. You kind of say, well, maybe, well, maybe. This is my whole thing. We've been spoiled by a couple of goleys who have kind of made things crazy with, you know, your Lunguist and Luongo and Price and even Miller, you know, those guys with like crazy longevity. Longevity of an NHL goalie is not there.

Longevity of an NHL, you know, elite starter is, is equally rare. And Corey Schneider may not get a whole lot better, especially with that team in front of them. They're not going to make it easy for them. Yeah, I guess the argument for the Devils being the worst team in the league next year is the Metro Division as well. Yeah.

You know, if we assume that Carolina is going to be better, and I think Philly will be better than they were last year. And so all of a sudden, it's like, you have seven good teams and then the Devils, and it really could just be really, really bad. I think they're going to be really bad. I think the Red Wings, I don't have anything to add with what you said about the Red Wings. I think you hit it on the head. They're not, they're just so, they're just boringly.

Well, here's the, and this. Non-factors. This isn't a good sign for the state of that franchise, but the best thing going for the Detroit Red Rings right now is the athletic branch that Craig Custins has started. Yeah. Nice slug. I mean, he had a great story today about how, I guess, in these rookie developmental camps, they're running right now.

They're using this, they're trying out this sort of tracking technology on the players to measure their, you know, various biometrics and physiological rates. So I think that was a cool story. I definitely recommend go checking that out. That was really cool. And that's a personal, you know, interest of mine with goaltenders. on goaltender biometrics and studying their, you know, their health and longevity. That's exactly what we were just talking about.

So, yeah, I just got my subscription to the athletic right after the Craig Custin's news there with Detroit. So they got some good stuff. They do have some good stuff. Okay, I got a question here from clattering of tones asks, which team won the UFA goalie ring around the Rosie? The Winnipeg Jets. Yeah. Well, I figured you'd say that,

and I thought it's time we'd talk about Steve Mason, so that's why I set that one up on a T for you. Thanks, buddy. Great contract. Perfect for, I think, where he's at in his career and how they're going to use him. He's just woefully undervalued around the league, and I don't need to belabor it.

I've talked about it a million times. But I think the Jets parlayed that. And that perfect contract is he is going to start. He's going to play the lion's share games. It's going to give a ton of relief to Hellebuck who absolutely needs it. He was not ready last year and it showed. So him being in a backup role will be good for him and his development into maybe being somebody who, you know, maybe he ends up being trade bait to make room for comory and that's okay.

or maybe he starts to kind of get back to where he was in terms of his prospect status. And, you know, a season and a half or two seasons from now, he is your starter and he's shepherding in Comrie. I'm a firm believer that you should not rush goalies to the NHL. The Matt Murrays of the world are very rare. Steve Mason's the perfect example of a goalie who has rushed the NHL too early and he went through that huge dip in his career and it kind of ruined his reputation to some extent. So I think giving goalies plenty of time and seasoning, it's kind of like, you know, I don't know,

a catcher in baseball. They just take a little bit more time to learn all the nuances of playing at that level. And they need the reps to get there. So why push, Winnipeg's got two really good goaltending prospects. Why push them or throw them to the wolves? This is perfect. Steve Mason is going to start a ton of. games and play great.

Nothing, absolutely, nothing wrong with that deal whatsoever. So, I think it's leagues ahead of any of the other ones. I like the Elliott one, too. I think that's fine. Yeah, I mean, especially just on a pure per dollar basis, getting Elliot for two years, 5.5 total is a home run for the flyers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll go with you there.

I'm curious. So what do you think is a good split for the Jets in terms of starts? Do they think it's something like 50-30 for in favor of Mason? Yeah. Yeah, and I think is long, you know, Mason's whole thing, he said it. It's the same thing I've been saying. Just don't jerk the guy around. If you want him to be the starter, call him the starter and let him start and give him a leash.

If he has a bad game, it's okay. You know, he is as consistent a goalie as there is in the NHL, and he's proven that over five seasons. So just give the guy the leash and let him work through it. And where the Flyers really screwed up the past season, really two seasons, although Mason, I think, overcame it two years ago, was every time he slipped up, then they put in Noyverse, you know, and then they do this musical chairs thing and all this other nonsense. So I think if they go in, you know, everybody goes in eyes wide open. They say, hey, look, Mason, you're the starter. Obviously, you know, we got to get Hella Buck his reps too.

We're going to give you 50, 55 games. We're going to give Hella Buck the rest. that's our game plan and we won't jerk it around and, you know, unless something really goes off the rails over time, it's your net, then he's going to be great. And, you know, he'll be fine even if Aldbach plays 35 games, if it comes to that. As long as Mason knows that at the end of the day, he's the starter, he's the guy, and he's the one who's going to carry them into the playoffs, all that other good stuff. Yeah, I'm with you there. All right, so I got a question here, and this is one that I get very frequently, and I think we can expand on it a little bit and go back and forth, is, you know, someone asks, they're new to fancy stats, and they always hear people talking about them on podcasts, and they're basically just wondering which stats are on your starter pack in terms of things to look at right out of the gate that could kind of guide you down the right path. well okay so this is kind of not really answering the question but i really am a big believer in

everything that um ryan stimson's doing you know it's not like this is a stat it's obviously it's a series of microstats that go into building a bigger picture of what's happening on the ice or um you know how a particular player fits into the team dynamic i think that stuff is great and um you know my biggest thing I don't I'm not a fan of the microstats just being thrown around you know like you see I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna get into who or why or whatever but you see some of the tracking companies and you see some of these things where they just throw out a microstat and everybody goes okay that's interesting what the hell does that mean is that you know is that indicative of anything is that does that mean they're going to score more goals than the other team be very wary of following you know microstats just for because they're out there. You should be looking for people that are testing their microstats and having them turn into something meaningful.

And I think that's exactly what Simpson's doing with his stuff. And that's why I think it's great. And I co-sign what you're saying. And one of the reasons why it is so good for these purposes in terms of as a starter pack is that a lot of it is just kind of intuitive stuff in terms of if you're just watching the game casually and then it's sort of. it all ties together. It's not like you're just speaking a completely different language and sometimes, you know, just getting off on the right footing and, you know, taking baby steps in terms of

understanding some of this stuff we're talking about is so huge for people. You know, it could be easy for us to just sometimes kind of take that for granted and just assume we're all speaking the same language here. And, you know, then you don't really make it, you don't make it an open discussion for everyone to participate in. And that's a big problem that we deal with and something we need to get better at. so I think that's huge for that. Yeah, I just want to add, like, you know, so with hockey grass, so hockey grass, kind of a perfect example of what you're describing. Sometimes things can get too, I don't know what you want to call it.

Yeah, a little bit. And it's because we're, you know, we're all kind of sharing it with each other in our world. So it's harder for a first time, you know, person reading it to go, well, where do I even begin with this? You know, they have to backpedal 14 or 15 articles to just get to the beginning of this, you know, the thought process that led to this kind of niche type of topic. So, you know, I think what we need more of on a general basis and hockey graphs is starting to do this is aggregate other stuff to get to, you know, that advanced stage. So, okay, if the advanced stage is this, then what are the things I need to read? read to get to that point.

So Hockeygrass is starting to become more of a resource for that type of stuff, which I think is great. Along a similar vein, Thomas DeNofrio asks, most underrated advanced that. And maybe instead of underrated, because that could mean so many different things, what is one where you just, for whatever reason, it's like a personal favorite for, you know, it could be anything, just something you might maybe appreciate more than, you know, an average Joe might. Hmm.

Want me to give you mine? Sure. Yeah. I love penalty differential stats. Oh, that's a good. In terms of individual players, because we know that it's a repeatable skill, which is huge in terms of what you were just saying with micro stats, where, you know, it can be descriptive or predictive.

And we know that guys that either take a lot of penalties or draw a lot of penalties, it's typically an actual skill that they can do year over a year, especially on the extremes. And I think that's huge, especially in terms of a for defenseman, right? Like you see like a guy like Oscar Cliffbaum or a Chris Hanove that play a ton of minutes against top competition and never take penalties. And I think that, you know, even as recently as five or ten years ago, that would have somehow been spun as a negative where it's like, this guy's playing too soft and he's not. You know, he's not taking enough roughing penalties. And it's like, well, that's actually a good thing. I mean, generally means he's in the right position at the right time.

He's not putting his team down a man. He's not taking himself off the ice for two minutes at a time. And so I think that's a really underappreciated sort of personal favorite that I love looking at. He's a sissy and it's a man's game. Yeah. You wouldn't want that. Yeah. Those are one of my favorite things is when you see like the historical stats.

and, you know, it's a Hall of Famer, and one of their top stats is, like, most penalty minutes plus, you know, most goals in this season or over his career or whatever it is. It's like, you know, boy, if he wasn't in the box all that time, you really could have been, you know, a legend instead of just known for that. So, I don't know. I, you know, I always go back to Brendan Shanahan,

and I get it. That was part of his game, was the quote, unquote, playing with an edge. and all that type of stuff. But he took himself out of a lot of games with his temper and bad penalties and slashing a guy behind the play and all that type of stuff. So, yeah, so I don't know. I'm having a tough time thinking of one that's kind of underutilized

that should be utilized more. I want to say some of my own. What about the Mercad? That's my fault. No, it's not the Mercad. It's win and lost threshold. And it's my fault. It's because I haven't put it out there.

to the degree it should be. And, you know, I hope that I'll get the free time to do that at some point. But I'm tired of, I think everybody's tired of me, you know, making that promise. Yeah, it's like that old sitcom joke where they keep referencing a character that never actually shows up on screen. Yeah, yeah, that's what my Twitter persona has become to some degree. Like, oh, yeah, Nick, yeah, he's going to write that article about the thing. So someone asked how many shots against do you need before you're comfortable declaring goalie X better than goalie Y? I believe it's been found to be something around like 3,000 shots, right?

Yeah, so that's kind of the going rate for career. Obviously, there's a lot of context involved and it's on a case-by-case basis. There's obviously not going to be one like threshold where as soon as you reach it, it's definitive on who's better. Right. I think that's the biggest thing to remember. you know and this is this is kind of the the goes this the reason that we got other types of stats for skaters is when you're just analyzing things based purely on shots and goals you're you're killing the sample and you're inviting you know noise and smaller samples um so that's

you know that's the the problem you know but it's hard to avoid because analyzing goalies with things other than shots on net is precarious as well. And we've done some of that. And I've come around to some degree on analyzing, you know, including shots that miss the net in terms of analyzing goal tenders, but not completely. It's still very counterintuitive. And while, you know, goalie coach or goalie may say, yeah,

you know, forcing a shooter to miss is an important skill. And I absolutely agree. The instances where the goalie forces the shooter to miss are rare enough as to essentially be, you can chalk it up as to some degree white noise. Most of the time guys are missing because of other things. They're off balance. They tried to pick a corner and missed. The skater got in the way and took away the angle or blocked the shot or whatever it is.

So that's just, you know, it's kind of goalie analysis 101 is we're stuck with what we're stuck with. I tend to think that if you, well, and not tend to think, I've found with win threshold and loss threshold that I am getting repeatability and I'm analyzing those on a season by season basis. The signal is not super strong, but it's something. So that means that, you know, if you're looking at somewhere between 600 and 800 shots in a season, you're starting to at least get some information that's useful. But you have to turn it into, you have to take it and do a bunch of manipulation to make it more predictive. So I think that's where, you know, it starts to get dirtier for goalies. Well, in terms of, I'm not sure if you haven't answered this or if you looked into it, but I'm always kind of. kind of curious about workload in an individual season.

And, you know, if there's, you know, it seems intuitive that there would be a point of diminishing returns where it's like after you've played a certain number of games, fatigue's going to set in and performance might drop off. And I guess we kept expecting to see that out of Camp Talbot last year, for example, and he really just kind of kept it up. And, you know, maybe it's one of those things where we're going to see it this year. Or, you know, it might not necessarily be as completely. kind of dry it as after you reach a certain number of games,

all of a sudden you're going to fall off. But I'm curious about that sort of workload dilemma that teams are dealing with. Yeah, and the dilemma that I face, so I've done some work with, and I can't, you know, I can't, it sucks, but I can't say who, but I've done some work with an agent who wanted me to look at basically that exact thing. Right. And wanted me to also look at, you know,

age plus injury history plus physical build and how those things relate to fatigue and how those things relate to peak performance and you know diminishing returns over a season and over time over years to give a better sense of who these particular goalies are and what the market looks like and so the the difficult question to ask or the key question to ask is it is every single goalie the same. And are they going to experience fatigue and diminishing returns or poor performance the same way as a result of fatigue or injury? The answer, of course, is no. They're not. So what does that mean? So, you know, I've looked at things like, okay, over a season, take these ex-guise who played, you know, some threshold number of games in the first part of the season,

compare their performance against the second half of the season. Is their performance in the second half worse. No, all over the map. On a case-by-case basis, yes, right? So then you fall into this trap of, well, let's analyze it on a case-by-case basis, and you start to look at circumstances and all those things. And that's where you lose, you know, statistical analysts and math people, because they start going, no, no, no, no, don't start doing that, right? So, of course, you know, some agents and front offices, they love doing that because they want to tell their story and justify. what they're doing one way or the other. But, you know, then you look at, okay, well, if it's not as cut and dry as that, well, how do they

experience fatigue? Is it on a game-by-game basis? Is it based on how tight the games are together? Does fatigue come in waves? You know, you play 20 games, then you get tired and you need a break, and then you play another 20 games, then you get tired and you need a break. And again, you know, the answers are not clear. So it's a huge, huge area of interest.

around the league, I promise you that, with complete unknowns and lack of answers. And that's the, you know, if I could just clear everything else and dig into one thing, it would be the biometrics of goaltenders and how, you know, fatigue sets in and how it impacts their performance over the course of a season and over time. It's incredibly interesting, but incredibly complex and difficult. Yes. I know, there's no answer. It's not an answer. No, it's a complex question. It's not as necessarily simple as just giving a one-word response. So Corey John Milano, and this is one of the final questions we're going to get to, asks, can you guys talk about the Kings and if they can

turn possession into actual scoring chances and goals? And this topic came up on my last show with Tyler Delo, and we got into a little bit, but it was already well past the hour mark, and we decided to just cut it off for a certain point. But there are going to be another fascinating test case next season because we've already heard, you know, the people that are running the team come out and sort of acknowledge that they might be looking at a way to optimize their 515 performance and maybe, you know, for years they've been sort of this possession gold standard, but it hasn't necessarily translated into goals and I'm going to be fascinated to see if they change their approach and what happens with it

because, you know, to go back to some of the stuff Ryan Simpson's been doing, we know that, you know, there's certain ways where you can create better looks, whether it's, you know, East-West passes across Royal Road, get the goalie moving, whether it's, you know, passes from out behind the net, you know, someone like Steve Alicette, for example, has shown how. how the expected goals increase if it's a double screen versus just one guy standing in front of the goalie. So there's stuff like that. But I'm a bit skeptical that they'll be able to do much with this because you look at that team. And while as much as I love the getting Michael Camilleri for a million dollars after he was bought out by the Devils,

there's a noticeable lack of skill on this team beyond the top handful of guys. So while I'm sure their intentions are good and it's quite possible, that they could stumble upon something. I just, I'm not sure what they're going to be able to do with this roster as it's currently constructed. Yeah, and I don't think they're going to keep pucks out of the net all too well either. You know, whether quick plays or, you know, has bouts with injury or, you know, he kind of returns to his best form, which I think is somewhere between a top 10 to 15 goal, or he, you know,

really starts to fall off because he's got a bad groin. They're going to struggle. I think they're going to actually struggle with keeping the puck out of their own net. And if they're going to change their playing style, they might be playing in their zone more and facing more shots. I don't know. I have no idea how they're going to reconfigure their systems to do that with the roster they have. Because you're right, they don't have – it's not like they've got a bunch of high school guys,

and they're like, well, look, we're going to apply a different system that's going to highlight these players and their incredible goal scoring ability. One of the biggest mistakes that the, you know, the kind of the, I don't know what you want to call it, but the last wave of statistical analysts did that, you know, really started kind of pushing Corsi onto the map is hitch their wagons to the Kings before we saw the kind of the whole picture and fleshed it all out. And obviously you couldn't have known at that time how we would progress and advance and mature in terms of a community and analyzing the sport. But all along, even when the Kings were winning, they weren't a particularly pretty team to watch.

Yeah, they could produce a lot of shots and keep the puck down in the other team's zone. But nobody was ever denying the fact that that, you know, that is not the – be-all end-all of success in the NHL is having the puck or keeping it in the zone or even producing a lot of shots. Nobody was ever denying that, you know, the quality of your shots is important. It's just a matter of how do you analyze it and tie that to, you know, success. And, of course, you was shorthand, you know, to tie to overall team success across the league. So the problem is, you know, was the perception when you hit your wagon, hit your wagon to the Kings and then now this is kind of the end result of it, it looks bad. In hindsight,

it kind of looks bad. But I don't think that, you know, I don't think the kings were necessarily the model of an uber successful style of hockey. They were and have been an ugly style of hockey and they just got older and worse, right? If anything you could argue that it's kind of propped them up because this roster's been bad for a few years now. Yes, yeah. That's They've been competitive. That's exactly how I felt about it. It has kept them more competitive than maybe they should be. And maybe if they got rid of the coaching staff a couple years ago,

they would be in full rip down and rebuild mode. Yeah, I don't know. But I think that they're going to really struggle. And I don't think it matters who's coaching them or what they're going to do to somehow try to address the scoring or whatever it is. If they have the current roster they have, I just think they're going to struggle. Yep, I agree. All right, one final question before we get out of here.

It's from Zach Bell, and he asks, what's the best non-entry-level contract in the league value-wise? And the only reason I bring up this question, I don't necessarily want to talk about specific players, because all of a sudden, as soon as you mentioned one guy, I'm sure everyone listening at home is going to, you know, bring up some other guy that we're not talking about right now. Maybe it's playing for their favorite team, and they're going to call us idiots. it. So I think more so just philosophically, there's three sort of different camps you could kind of lump together and answer this question. I mean, the one obvious one, and, you know, Zach said excluding Kuturov because that one's nuts, but it is like guys who were RFA's and

just had no real leverage. Whether it's Kuturov or, you know, a lot of them happened last summer Kuturov, Jacob Truba, Hampa, Hampa Slinhome, Ricard Raquel, like you go on and down the line, these guys who don't have much leverage and they have to settle for these deals that are not going to wind up looking great. And all of a sudden, they get better based on their aging curve and natural development. And all of a sudden, they're going to be steals for their teams for a few years. And I guess, you know, good on the teams for taking advantage of that leverage and knocking out of the park of these contracts. But those are sort of the ones that come to mind in terms of the best values. yeah for sure um obviously it's if you can knock it out of the park with one of those types of

you know parlaying the rfa status into an eminently reasonable contract with term um that's great um i i like i think um tyler johnson is a is a great contract in terms of what you get for for the value wait now even after he signed his new deal no no i'm sorry before his his deal yeah before his new deal. Yes. But, you know, I think that that's maybe where now it goes in the wrong direction, right? The, so if I, if I could just go back to, you know, and it's not, you don't have to go for low AAB to have it be a value deal. Right. I think that Johnny Goodrow contract from last year is a great contract. Yeah. I think that, I think that's going to get better and better. I actually, if you treat last year is a down year because he missed games and you know he didn't have the total point total points he

had but more importantly his goal total went down a little bit i just i just see him coming back and being a you know an 80 point guy and and going up from there um i and you've got him for what was it six years and i think it's like six million a year or six point two five if i'm not mistaken so Well, it's as we always say, don't pay for past performance, pay for future performance. And as you said, I'm optimistic, I believe. There's no reason not to believe that he's going to be great and great. And yeah, they bought those prime years. So that's a good job by them.

I think, yeah. That's a perfect example, I think, of a value contract and one that, yeah, sure, it's expensive. But it's not crazy. And you bought his prime. So there's two other ways to go about answering this question. One, and I don't think these are the best values, but if you sort by cost per point, which is, I guess, the literal definition of this question, you know, you have guys like Sam Gagne, from last year, Sam Gagne, and Patrick Eves and Jonathan Marcia So.

And the thing those guys have in common is it just goes to show how much of this stuff can be role-based and how there's something to be said for putting your players in a position to succeed. And you know, like a guy like Sam Gagne, for example, it's like bouncing around the league. He can't find a permanent home. He's a, he's, he had that pedigree, but he's really kind of, you know, lost some of that luster.

And he goes to Columbus and all of a sudden, they shelter him in a fourth line. They put him on the top power play as the trigger man. And of course he's going to see that's a great situation for him. Same with Patrick Eves last year, where he's on that Dallas power play. And he's just racking up the power play goals. And it's, it, you know,

know, you can't evaluate this stuff in a vacuum, and sometimes you really do have to look at how teams are utilizing players and whether they are putting those players in a position to succeed. And I kind of wanted to just highlight those guys as sort of giving their teams a little bit of love for doing the right thing with them. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, I'm trying to think of some of the new contracts that have hit that are really, I don't know if you call it team friendly or whatever. Obviously the one that sticks out is the one we talked about earlier, the Shatt and Kirk deal.

I think that falls into that. Well, how about this one? How about this? Instead of one individual deal, how about just the Nashville Predators? Yeah. And if there's something to, you know, you hear about the copycat league and if there's something to learn, obviously there's risk involved if you're making long-term investments anytime you do so. But something they've done and really capitalized on is sort of getting ahead of the curve. giving guys long-term contracts while suppressing the dollars on them, right?

So they did it with Yossi, did it with Eckholm, they did it with Ellis, they did it with Yarncrock, they did it with Philip Forsberg, and now you look at all these deals, and they basically have their core locked up well into like 2021, 2021, 2022 on these super team favorable deals. And I mean, obviously, if something happened to those guys or they got injured or they just didn't develop the way you'd hope, we'd be looking at that and be like, oh, man, I can't believe they're paying those guys for another four or five years.

So there is, you know, it's not necessarily just foolproof, but they took these calculated risks and now they're going to reap the rewards for them. Yep. Yeah. I, uh, yeah, boy,

what a, what a model. What a great job their front office has done to build a team that's sustainable, you know, where at any given time, look, they could,

they could decide, uh, okay, it's time to move this part. They're going to get a great return because most of their parts are on good contracts and have, they generally, you know, most of their assets have kind of this favorable type of look to them. You know, I don't look at anybody on their roster and go, whoa, that's, you know, that's a major, major albatross.

They know what they're doing, for sure. I was going to Matt Kane's stuff with his free agent projections that he did. That stuff was great. And he hit so many close, within $500,000, right? Or in that range. I think that's what he was averaging. And I was kind of going down the list. And one of them jumped out at me that maybe is going to go underappreciated or whatever you want to call it.

I actually really like Ryan Miller going to Anaheim as a backup on a $2 million contract. I don't know why I like that deal so much. I just, well, I do know. First of all, Gibson, boy, you know, he is such an injury risk because of how he plays. So he may miss time. He kind of has that tendency to, he might miss a game here, might miss a game there, might injure himself, whatever you want it. say he just kind of scares me in the net sometimes.

Ryan Miller still performs okay. For $2 million as your backup, you could do a lot worse than Ryan Miller. So I love that. I love that as just like a simple backup goalie contract. Throw the guy $2 million. He's Ryan Miller. There is...

Did you say that as a positive thing or a negative thing? No, as a positive. I still think Ryan Miller can play. I don't think he's a bad goalie. I think he's definitely not what he was, but you can't compare him to what he was. Over the past two seasons, well, last year was tough, but it was tough in Vancouver. The year before that, he was beyond serviceable. He was above average for most of the year.

So, yeah, he's old, and he's not the Ryan Miller. He was even, you know, five years ago. But it's not such a bad. thing for a backup goal. I think they upgraded their position on that position on the cheat. He's better than Bernie A. I'll put it that way. Yeah.

Well, no, I like it purely from the perspective of going towards that more modern goalie split where it's like something like 50-30, all of a sudden. I like that a lot because I'm with you. I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to be relying on Gibson to be starting north of 60 games. No. Miller's shown that if he starts like 30, 35 games this year, like you know it. at least you're getting league average,

and that's a lot better than a lot of other teams have going for them with their backup. Yeah, it's kind of like, it's, you know, I'm going to regret saying this, but it's kind of a sure bet in that regard. And that's hard to get for goaltending, you know, given that unpredictability. The only other contract I just want to highlight, and it's not a value contract, but the Ron Hainesie deal in Toronto, it's just an interesting concept. contract. You know, three million. They're going to throw them in the top four. Just kind of interesting. I don't know what to make. Hey, we made it through this whole thing without

talking about LTIR in the Leaves. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. And we're going to finish the show without talking about LTIR on the Leafs. Nick, I think we're like at an hour and a half so far. I think this is the longest. I'd have to go back and check, but I'm pretty sure off the top of my head is the longest PDR cast I've ever done. So, I should have known it would be with you. Listen, I haven't made it on the Mount Rushmore PDOCast. You're on the hipster Mount Rushmore. And I have a record now.

Yeah. So that's all that matters. Excellent. Personal accolades. Well, I'm not even going to pretend to plug your written work or anything like that. I'm just going to tell people to go follow you at Nmerkad on Twitter and check out all your rants and ramblings there. And we'll get you back on sometime this summer. Maybe if something else happens or maybe, you know, I thought the mailbag was a, was,

success for the first try. Maybe we'll do that again. I like the mailbag. I like it. Okay. We'll do that again. Talk soon, buddy. Thanks. The Hockey P.D.O.cast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at at soundcloud.com slash hockey p.docast.