The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 188: A Hohl Lot of Jets Talk

Episode Date: August 9, 2017

Garret Hohl joins the show to discuss the Winnipeg Jets sustained goaltending woes (1:30), the surprisingly slow pace they played at last season (8:45), whether they should load up their top line or spread the wealth (13:00), and their outlook for the 2017-18 season (25:40). Plus, a chat about the two notable recent analytics hirings and what goes into building a complementary research and development staff (35:45).  Every episode of the podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play, and Stitcher. Make sure to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss out on any new episodes as they’re released. All ratings and reviews are also greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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

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My name is Demetri Filipovich. and joining me in studio sitting across from me with a longer beard than me at this point in time, which is a bizarre... This is, I believe, the first time in our lives. Yeah, I think, well, I don't know about that. I mean, you're older than me, so I'm sure. I'm sure maybe you had a beard before I did,

but it's Garrett Hull. Garrett, what's going on, buddy? Well, not much. Sorry about being a little bit late. Oh, that's okay. I was a little afraid of the nuclear winter, so I had to make sure I had enough dry food. Well, you know, the thing about podcasts

is that we don't have a live audience, So we can really, you know, you didn't have to tell anyone that they could have assumed you're very punctual and on time. I wanted the nuclear winter joke, though. I had to. So we have you in my living room. Not my first time. No, and it won't be your last, as far as I'm not concerned. To chat about the Winnipeg Jets, we're going to do a bit of a Jets deep dive.

For some reason, I don't know, I don't know why. I mean, you don't really cover the Jets anymore, but I guess you are wearing a winner. Jets Jets Nation shirt right now. And to be fair, you were covering them last season, and we're going to sort of be kind of bridging, bridging what happened last year into looking ahead. So you're probably the right guy. I feel like you're still the Hockey PEOCast go-to, Jets correspondent.

Jets correspondent. Oh, good. Okay, so where do we start with this? I think with this team, like for the past, however many years, pretty much since they moved back to Winnipeg, any discussion about them has started with the goal-ending situation. because, you know, I was looking back and it's been six seasons

since they moved back to Winnipeg from Atlanta and they made the playoffs once. They didn't win any playoff games that time, but they did make the playoffs. And they were leading at the start of the third period in every single one of those games that they lost. Well, yeah, the playoffs can be a fickle beast. But that was the one good

Andre Pavlik above average season where I believe he had like a 920, say, percentage in 50 games or something like that. Uncoincidental. And yeah, and they had their best team success and made the playoffs that year. And the following season, I think they were 28th I looked up in same percentage as a team. And last year, same. I think they were all the way up to 27th in 5-1-5, save percentage.

And so obviously they're going to look different at this year with Steve Mason coming in. Yeah. And kind of helping relieve some of the pressure off of Connor Halliboyks. shoulders. Do you think, what do you think about the steam a amazing move? And do you think there's realistic optimism to be had about the fact that the Jets might be able to finally get out of that safe percentage seller they've been in pretty much for for years on end now?

Yeah, I mean, there's the whole, you know, cop-out answer of gold tenders or voodoo. The whole Andrew cop-out answer? Oh, since the Concord Jets. Yeah. And, I mean, there's some true. to it in the ideas that you know 2014-2015 Andre Pavlik had a 900

save percentage until about the last two months or maybe two months and a half all of a sudden he just went on fire and pulled himself all the way up to 920 and the Jets made the playoffs so like any if the the high idea behind gold tenders or food is not

the fact that you know there's no way to analyze goaltenders it's just the understanding that good goaltenders will still be shit in some seasons. Yeah. And they'll still be good in other seasons. Yeah. And bad goaltenders will be good sometimes and terrible sometimes.

So even if the Jets made no changes, there's still a chance. However, bringing in Mason, I believe Mason is an extreme upgrade in terms of provenness. I mean, he's had some rocky ups and downs or whatever. But in the end, I still believe him to be a better replacement than Andre Pavlik. and also I just blanked on the ghost of Michael Hutchinson The ghost of Michael Hutchinson

Who had a lot of potential But just Turned out to be basically Andre Pavlik Which isn't a bad deal Because I mean A lot of people hear me poop on Andre Pavlik

But that was more due to The idea of just riding him No Questions Asked as the Bonafide number one When you know He was still a legitimate goaltender And I'm kind of interested to see how he does in New York especially because New York is a team that likes to play their goaltenders shallow. And Pavlik's biggest issue is that he plays deep.

Or not deep, sorry, he plays way out there. Right, he's way too aggressive. He's way too aggressive. And I think if New York pulls him back, he might be a legitimate backup goaltender. Yeah, I think if you can play more like Henrik Lundquist, he will be useful. Stylistically. I mean, nobody expects him to play more like Lundfus in terms of quality. Although we'll see, I mean, you know, obviously, I guess we'll see this season how anti-Ranta does in Arizona.

You know, Cam Talbot's sort of shown, especially last year that he's kind of the real deal and it wasn't just the Ranger's system. But they have for a while now, like their backups have posted pretty good numbers behind. Yeah. So I'm kind of curious to see whether that trend continues and they can actually salvage some value out of public or whether it's always hard to tell like, I mean, we're tensioning here. but it's always hard to tell because the fact that, you know, there's team effects, but there's also randomness. When you flip a coin, sometimes you gain a whole bunch of heads in row, regardless of, you know, whether the coin is weighted or not.

But yeah, with the goal-tending thing to Jets to go back is, I think that they made the right move, whether or not that move turns out to be the impact that they need, because, like, the biggest issue has been stopping the puck for the Jets. There are, I think, 7th and goals for last year. They're a great five-on-five team. They struggle a little bit, and the penalty kill, okay, a little bit's a bit of a...

Understandment? And also their defensive systems is not the greatest. I mean, they do a decent job in choking out the shots that are up close to the net, but they struggle with, you know, the two-on-ones, the breakaways, and that kind of stuff. But I really think that the goaltending... solution was like the biggest thing that they needed and well there was there was nothing on there was a for sure win no matter what on the market well i think the i mean one of the best things you can

say about the steve mason deal is the fact that they only had to give him two years yeah and i think believe he's 29 so i think that's perfect it's perfect you don't want to be committing long term but i mean some people might say you know four millions quite a bit but like i believe it's aavs i believe both of their AAVs for both of the contracts that the Jets signed over the summer are literally on the dot the same as before. I don't think that's unintentional. The thing was Steve Mason, he's like the ultimate arbitrary endpoints guy where like there's depending on which light you want to shine his career in so far.

Like, you know, if you cut certain years, you're like, oh God, that was ugly. And same with last year. And then there's this like stretch of between. in 2013, 2016, where he was really good. In Philly, especially if you look at the 5-on-5 data, you know, maybe on the penalty kill he wasn't quite as good. But I'm optimistic that he'll bounce back and be useful. And I'm kind of, I feel like they're in the perfect spot here

where they can really, I mean, it might be 50-30 as opposed to 40, you know, 41-41 evenly, but they're going to have that sort of ideal opportunity here to go with a 1-1B and net as opposed to having undying allegiance to one guy, which they had in the past maybe. And this is the first year that they'll have that, and that is literally what they've needed since they moved to Winnipeg. And I mean, even if Mason performs like last year, it's still going to be a decent improvement.

Especially, I looked at expected goals on the DTM about Hart version. Yep. And his performance versus Hutchinson and Pavlik was worth about three or four wins, and that's a big deal in a league with as much parodies that exists. Yeah. I mean, they missed the playoffs by seven points last year, and those three or four wins would have helped quite a bit.

Ding, ding, ding. So I have a few questions here about what the Jets are going to look like next season. And one of them, we discussed this about them on the podcast before. I know you written about it and I wrote about it myself is this idea of pace and the speed they were playing at 5-1-5 as a team. And I haven't looked at their year end numbers, but I know for large stretches, like pretty much as far as like two-thirds of the way through the season, they were one of the slowest teams in the league.

And if you're using combined shots for and against per hour as a proxy for pace, which is sort of the best we have at this point. And, you know, they were right there with like the blues and the devils. And that seemed very unbecoming for the type of team they have, especially up front with all the, you know, young dynamic forwards they have. And it seemed like we were both kind of curious as to how much of that was coaching effects and how much of that was just kind of inexplicable randomness. and do we have an answer to that?

I mean, we did notice the fact that the Jets did play to a higher pace as the season went on, which also caused them to fall from, or not fall, but rise away from a high-quality draft positioning. Because originally they were in battle for the top spot, and then all of a sudden they went on a couple of win streaks there. And a large part of it was, I believe, due to the fact they started picking up the pace and playing more of a style that fits the Jets just because they have that depth of youth and young quick players,

especially now that they've lost the shackles of Mark Stewart and Chris Thorburn for next season. Yeah. Yeah, just as an unbiased observer and a fan of hockey in NHL, I mean, it was disappointing watching them sometimes because you could sort of see that they weren't maybe playing up to their potential and that's kind of been a common theme with this team.

I mean, so how much of that are you putting on Paul Marys and the job he was actually doing? Because I know we've been pretty critical of him in the past. I feel like we still don't. A lot of our evaluations of coaches are sort of like hearsay and speculation and a lot of it is sort of the stuff they're there to do is stuff we're not necessarily privy to as observers from the outside. Yeah, as we've gone over on this podcast before and I won't go. too deep into it because we have gone more in depth. Was that when you did that like hardware still?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's many different tools. There's many different roles and many different jobs within a head coach. And we're only privy to some of them. And even then those ones that were privy to have confounding variables. Just like, for example, pace, I think a lot of the pace had to, this is just speculation, but the Jets goaltending was terrible. Yeah.

From the get-go, the very beginning of this season. and I think Paul Maurice was like, holy crap, because one thing that you'll notice when you look at the Jets last year, even though they're not considered a great defensive team, they did severely well in making shots not come from the prime areas.

And I think a large part of that was because Paul Maurice didn't trust his goaltenders as far as he could throw them, and goaltenders are heavy nowadays. And because of that, he was trying to, you know, bail out as much water as possible. Maybe or maybe not it was the best solution.

Who knows? Maybe you should have focused on plug in some holes or who knows what. More analogies for you. Yeah. What is this? And I know it's the summer season. There's a lot of boat references. Yeah.

There we go. But still, like, um, I, that's my guess. So I believe that if the Jets or if Paul Maurice has more confidence in his goaltender, um,

he'll, he'll do differently. in terms of how he'll build the system. I mean, we saw it 2014, 2015, the jet system was dramatically different than it was last year. And I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, that kind of trust and goal tending. So when you say, you know, whether or not a coach is bad or good,

some of it might be just the fact that certain coaches are better with certain hands that are dealt with them. It might not be that one hand is better than the other hand, but just a coach might be better in one type of situation while another coach might be better than another. Right, and the idea of trust is sort of like a good segue in terms of looking at their forwards because, you know, when they had that combination of line A, Shifley,

and Eilers together, they were fantastic, and obviously they were generating a ton of offense. But then it felt like- In 107 PDO. Well, we can discuss about whether some of those guys might be have some sort of a more innate ability to drive higher scoring quality and all that. But, you know, it was pretty clear that maybe some of their depth players or guys they would have hoped would step up weren't able to be relied upon.

So then they had to, like, split those guys up and go for a more balanced approach. And some of that might have also been just, you know, the rigors of a regular season and all the injuries that they had. But I'd like to see them pretty much just keep those three guys together for the entirety of next season. I don't know. I would as well. my personal opinion is I'm kind of pro splitting your top three guys

especially when you have a top three guys that are kind of like the jets in terms especially in terms of tilting the ice because I mean in my personal opinion Blake Wheeler is the best jet and is that there are some people who question that not many but there are some people who question that especially because shyfully

has been improving and could be the best jet as close as next year. Right. So, you know, the closer players gets, the harder it gets to tell whether or not one player is superior than the other. But then I would put Shifley on another line. And then I would put underrated Matthew Perrault on it.

That's his full name. I think he's actually, legally changed it. Yeah. Due to my own drive for him and trying to get all the people to sign signatures and what. Yeah. No, I remember when you had the, you were not going to. people's doors and it got you out of petition going. Yep. This was before the internet. I was going

years and years ago. But yeah, we kind of like want to split them around. So I probably put the three that we mentioned earlier together. And then Wheeler, he'd probably put with Little and then one other player. And then Perot on the third line with Kyle Connor and maybe another player, whether that would be Adam Lowry, Nick Patan, or Andrew Kopp in the center spot. Well, yeah, I mean, they have all these guys and, you know, you've engine Patan, Connor,

even like a Mark O'Dano, I mean, they have some of these young forwards that if they could step up and realize the potential that we think they have or they've shown in the past all of a sudden,

it makes it much easier to load up just that top line like that rather than trying to spread the wealth. Yeah, they have six guys who are very, like, set top nine players, excellent. Eilers, line,

Sheifley, Little, Wheeler, pro. Those players are, you're going to get top six, type performance looking at any model any eye test whatever the real questions comes with how do you fill the rest and that's you know do you go over the top six bottom six type system top nine and spread the wealth a little bit more like i was speaking earlier and there's a lot of question marks i mean you got

guys like um adam lowry and joel armiah who have done very well defensively but have not put the scoring in terms, both of them scored okay last year, but it was all special teams. Lowry on PowerPlay, Army on the penalty kill. They weren't really driving, scoring on five on five. They have Sean Matthias, who, as most people know, he scores goals and doesn't do pretty much anything else. He just has a big body. Yeah, he has a big body, and he scores goals at a top six rate, despite not being

top six in anything else. Then you have Nick Patan. Nick Patan has been a complete Jekyll and Hyde player and consistently both last year and the season before, dependent on line mates. Generally speaking, players do better with better players,

but Patan is more, he has a greater gap than the typical player would. And not only that, like, he made Chris Thorburn worse. And he made... He was a bad inflate. He made Brennan Tannav worse.

But he made Blake Wheeler better. Yeah. So like when he was with good players, and I mean, it's, it's not that surprising when you think about it. He's an undersized playmaker.

You know, pass it to Chris Thorburn's not going to work so well. Right. Pass it to Blake Wheeler. That's going to work. It's a little better. Yeah. So he needs to start hanging out

with better crowds, you know? I don't want to see, I don't want to see him skipping class anymore and hang, you know, behind the school with the sketchy hooligans like Chris Thorburn. Well, the interesting thing is because the Jets don't have a Chris Thorburn now. Even in the bottom six, the guys that you're looking at are going to be the Joel Armia,

the Adam Lowry's, the Andrew Cops, the Kyle Connor will probably, after his excellent AHAL season, will probably make the team. And so because of that, you know, he's going to be dealing with a lot higher quality players. So I think we won't really see that Jekyll and the Hyde effect anymore with Patan, just because of the fact that, you know, yeah, sure, the bottom six, and Marco Dono, sorry, I forgot him, which, another underrated player. I think that you won't really see the Jekyll Hyde effect because even though the bottom guys are not nearly as skilled as the top guys, they're at least not enough, or they at least have certain talents that I think Patan can work off of. Obviously, there's a lot of interplay between, you know, the GM and the coach in terms of acquiring the assets and then how they're going to be used.

And you ideally hope that there's like a shared vision and everything's put into place properly. but I love when like every coach has these guys where they just like inexplicably love playing them even though it's pretty obvious they're not necessarily very good but they just can't even help themselves and I love when like the GM just like goes like you know what I'm just going to get rid of this guy and you can't use him anymore he's gone yeah you've lost his toy and that's I feel like that's good that the Mark Stewart's and Chris Orburns of the world aren't available for Paul Maurice to for the non-jets fans Mark Stewart has been severely below replacement level for the past five years and he just got bought out so well yeah i mean he was like quite literally slowing jacob truba down it was just amazing seeing what jacob trauba looked like when he was playing with other players fun fact jacobtruva is the only long-term defenseman to be above 50% coursey with uh mark stuart and that includes prime times the dano chara not saying that jacob was better than primetime Sajan O'Chiric,

but it's a funny end of his joke. Well, the thing that I enjoy about that is, like, you just watching the Jets games, you could, like, quite visibly see the differences in the way Jacob Trubel was playing. Like, it's one thing, like, the results were clearly significantly better,

and it makes sense that, you know, he's playing with better players and the shot metrics and the goal metrics will improve. But, like, you could see he, like, just started, like, opening up his game and sort of realizing all of that potential that we'd heard about in scene and flashes. And that's why I'm,

I'm very excited to see what a guy like Ryan McDonough looks like this year if he gets to play with Kevin Shannkerk after just playing with Dan Jarady for so long. Like obviously his on-ice results will skyrocket. But just aesthetically, I feel like he's probably just going to play like a way more exciting brand of hockey as well, which is great for viewers. Yeah. Going on to Jets defense, since we've kind of naturally seguesed there. That's, yeah, that's how we do it in the podcasting business. That's how we do. And then I awkwardly make it not so clear.

Yeah, you don't point out the segues. you just roll with him. I just love doing the most awkward things ever, though. Yeah, so Jacob Truba. Is he elite? I'm very curious to see how this plays out, because obviously he's due to make a substantial amount of a pretty penny. He's looking for a decent raise.

At the end of this coming season. And obviously, see, you know, he, the Jets kind of leveraged him in his past contract just based on the power teams have with the current RFA structure and how, you know, if Jacob Truea wanted to make any money, he basically had to just like sign and, and get this kind of bridge deal over with. And now I'm fascinated to see whether there's going to be any bad blood left over from that and whether, you know, the Jets are going to have to pay more now than they would. I mean, I think it's pretty clear that they're going to have to pay.

pay more now on a long-term deal than they would have if they'd just done it. Yeah. And you would go at this time, right? That would be my biggest, or that would be what I'd put money on happening. I think the Jets are probably going to have to overpay a little bit now for Jacob Truba. Just because the fact that, you know, that he, Truba's free. He's no longer, you know, where he has the shackles of, you know, Mark Stewart pulling down his results. And also, you know, mostly playing on the third pairing.

I mean, yes, he got top four minutes because of the fact that they used to double shift him on the offside with Dustin Bufflin every once in a while. But the results, the environment creates the results that we see both in terms of the eye test and in terms of the numbers. But the environment that impacts these results also ends up impacting potential earnings. And so now all of a sudden, because of the fact that Truba, the whole reason why I kind of asked for trade was because the fact that Trubah was because the fact that Trubba, but wanted to basically grow his hashtag brand by showing the fact that he is a star young right shot defenseman right and he's kind of proven that and now he's going to have one more year to prove that even better um even better uh just because of the fact that uh he's going to probably be on the top pair with josh morsey this season and so now also the fact is not only

he's a better player but he's played he's going to be playing an environment that's going to be more conductive of him producing results that ends up giving you money. Right. He's going to accumulate all the counting stats and that'll help him in terms of leverage. And yeah, I mean, as a young mobile right shot defenseman, that's like probably other than I guess maybe like a number one center. That's kind of like the hottest commodity in today's NHL. So the Jets don't really have a strong leg to stand on. I mean, I guess he's still, it will be on an RFA, but yeah, it seems like one of those deals where he's going to be a pretty rich man after this coming season, I believe.

I'm going to guess that he's going to be paid higher than most of his comparables suggest that he'll be paid. Because I know a lot of the comparables, people look at the Jones contract and contracts like that, but I think he's going to get paid a little bit more than those guys. And that's the problem. I mean, you know, we've seen examples of it in the past and obviously um you know a recent example that happened this summer is maybe a guy like uh and brokowski with the capitals where it's like i understand why you might want to do a bridge with a player

that you know you still don't have a large sample size on them and you might not might not necessarily be certain that you want to just commit to them for six seven years at a time but if you're not willing to kind of take that calculated risk then all of a sudden it could really backfire on you if the player actually winds up exceeding your expectations and producing very well. So they kind of puts teams in a weird spot where it's like you obviously want a Jacob Truba to be performing very well for you because you're trying to win games in the present. But like every time he does something good, you're like, oh, we're going to pay for this, aren't we?

Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be the interesting one. Well, I mean, they're going to have a lot of interesting decisions because I was looking at, you know, their page on cap-friendly as a team. And other than shifely, who's 6.125 million per year. It looks like a great contract now, especially since it's pretty much stretched throughout his entire prime.

And Bufflin, and then I guess you could lump in like a Matthew Pearl into that. But other than those two guys, they don't really have anyone locked up long term yet for more than like a year or two in the future. So a lot of these guys, I'm sure they're going to make a priority of paying them and keeping them because they're very young, exciting. gifted players, but there is also, until it's done, it kind of remains to be seen what this team will look like moving forward. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely going to be interesting to see how the next couple years go,

especially because the fact that the Jets do have a fairly well-stocked forward prospects cupboards. So they have the ability to move some of these guys who are, they don't view as being the long-term core. and replace them with cheaper ELC and those type contracts. So, yeah. I recently did a podcast with Craig Custins and, you know, it was a mailbag show and we had the question about the hurricanes

or the jets for next season in terms of who we liked more or who we thought would finish with more points or whatever the question was. And, you know, just for the sake of not constantly agreeing, I took the jets and Craig took the hurricanes. and do you think I was crazy to do that? It's tough because obviously the hurricanes are a very trendy team and have had a good summer and there's a lot to like there.

But I look at this Jets roster and I really like it. Like I feel like if things go well for them health-wise and they're utilized their players properly and maybe some, you know, they need a few things to happen, obviously, but you can make that same statement for pretty much every team in the league. I like I like the, a team. They don't have very many holes. They're about to go in this season with their third pair probably being the same thing that was their first pair in the year that they went into the playoffs.

Yeah. And that was only a couple of seasons ago. So there's not that much. I mean, yeah, there's some health concerns. But the Jets, most of their players that have health concerns or whatever were worse than even normal in terms of being healthy. So I think just Mason and just having a little bit better luck in health just because the fact that it's more likely that the Jets are not going to repeat or worsen what was a very historically bad health for a lot of their players.

I mean, yes, they're still going to get injuries. Some of their better players will still get injured. Some players that were really good last year that didn't get injured will get injured. That's just the way the game goes. However, I think the overall impact of injuries will probably be a net positive for them. Their depth is probably going to be a net positive for them.

So whether or not they outperform Carolina, who I think is the other team poised to have a big jump this summer. Yeah. I mean, which one is going to be better? That is a tough bet to make, but there is very good, very good evidence for both of them. Well, it's interesting because obviously you also have to kind of factor in environment or circumstance or context and

I think the Metro Division is going to be very good again next season. And the Central for a while there was considered to be arguably the best division in the league and certainly the superior one in the West. And then now I'm kind of... It is starting to decline, that's for sure.

Well, there's a lot of interesting things, a lot of wheels of motion, right? Because let's go through the teams. So Colorado is unlikely to be historically bad again. Like, I don't I'm not saying they're going to be good by any means. But if they get any saves from their goalies,

like they're going to have above 50 points, I think, this season. So, you know, that instantly, you need to factor that in a little bit. I think the stars, you can make the case, the stars might be the most improved team from how they looked at the end of last season to what they're going to look like. This year you can kind of quibble with the contracts they gave in terms of what that team is going to look like financially in 2020. but I think just for next season.

Like they... Dallas Stars five-time winner of the summer for agency. Yeah, Jim Nill is a first ballot off-season Hall of Famer. The Blackhawks are... Consistly five years in a row dropping course-year percentage. But still somehow winning regular season hockey teams. Yeah, but I just, they're winning, like, I mean, year to year, there's ups and downs, but the...

general trend even with their wins and points is still going downward yeah and there's obviously you know with that blue line there's a lot of reason to be concerned and it's you could like you could envision a very realistic scenario where they completely fall off but I still don't want to be the guy to just you know the hot take machine that's they just goes the blackhawks are missing the playoffs Garrett hot takes blackhawks are missing the playoffs next year yeah I'm not I'm not I'm not yeah I'll think about it I mean a lot of it a lot of it A lot of it rests on Of course Crawford is really good.

I mean, Crawford is a good goalie and a lot of it's going to rest on it. But as we mentioned before, good goalies are not always good. Good goalie, yeah. That is, that, that, wow, that's deep. Good goalies are not always good. Yeah, the wild. Good team.

Good team, very deep. You know, it's funny because they, something weird was going on there last year where for the first half of the year or whatever, they were winning a ton of games and they were like significantly outperforming all of their underlying shot metrics and it was kind of consistent with what we've seen

from Bruce Boudreau teams where he seems to have legitimately figured out shot quality at least when it comes to a regular season and then they started after the trade line when they acquired Marty Hansel they started being a much more dominant possession team but went into the spiral because Devin Duhnick kind of fell off and

then obviously they lose in the first round enter blues and everyone's like oh there go there goes coursey get coursey again just ruining everything because you know goaltender coursey ignores goaltenders not because it's saying goldteners don't matter but just saying because this is it's just stats only paint a certain part of the picture so it's not saying this is the whole picture it's just saying in this part of the picture they're better but if your goalie doesn't make says i mean course he's that matters coursey is a goalie coach i hope he's not ignoring goalies Otherwise, it seems like he wouldn't be able to do his job. That was just workload.

That was just to see how many times this goaltenders moved. Yeah, I think the while will be fine. The Blues, speaking of goalies, if Jake Allen isn't the best goalie in the world, maybe they'll fall off a bit. But there's probably a middle ground between how they looked at the start of the year with Hitchcock and how they looked towards the end of the year with Mike Yow, and they'll probably be somewhere in between.

Yeah, it would be my guess as well. so yeah well since you're now i feel like you're more of a a fan of the winnipeg jets than than covering them yeah all right what's and even then even then it's like it's not like i i'll be honest with me working in with me working uh with working in the industry it does kind of taint a little bit of that fandom but yeah i'd say winnipeg jets fan well okay so on a on a scale of let's say a one to ten ten being you're already planning the the parade route and 10 and a half

And one being I don't even know what Where are you at In terms of optimism For this team moving into next season What's the what would you say Is the optimism for playoff line? Six?

Yeah, I think anything above Yeah, I think six is like Then I'm going to say 6.5 Oh, so you're calling the Jets as a playoff? I think the Jets will probably sneak in one of the two wildcar spots I think that they will do a lot better over the next two years than they have in the last. Well, yeah, I hope you're right. I mean, they're really fun to watch.

And I think that they've, I mean, the two biggest holes they took care of. Mason may not be the best goaltender ever, but he should be improvement in the area that the Jets were hurt the most. Kulikov, not the greatest guy even if he doesn't. I mean, there's a lot of debate on whether or not he was better in Florida than in Buffalo. Some people, like the numbers people will suggest that he just was always Kulikov. But some of the non-numbers types would like to state that he was much better in Florida. That said, even if he is no better than he was in Buffalo, he still fits. it's the role that the Jets need.

They just needed a guy that's more defensive that, you know, prevents goals against and would push bench rot into the proper position that he needs to be in, which is the seventh defenseman. Yeah, I mean, obviously, he's a lot of money to be paying your sixth defenseman, but there's only so much damage you could see what we do

as the sixth defenseman. And he'll get minutes. And he'll be probably playing with Dustin Bufflin. And Dustin Bufflin typically carries not very good defensemen. Ben Chirot basically made an NHL career off of because of the fact that when he got called up, he was playing with Dustin Bufflin. Grant Clemsom was doing very well until he broke his back twice in less than 100 and something days. He pulls up not very good defensemen and makes him look fairly good and Kulikov will just need to be good enough to, you know, make up for the

fact that sometimes Dustin Buflan just watches the puck and doesn't watch anything else. He needs to just sit back and be a safety valve. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I think we've done enough of one of the jets here. But before we get out of here, should we talk about some of the hirings that have gone on in the NHL over the past year or so? So we had two, I believe, right?

Yeah, I believe. Kevin Kahn from that rink got hired by the hurricane. joining their super staff of Mega Mines. Yeah. And David Johnson got hired by the Flames. Yeah. Also a really nice guy.

Having met David Johnson, you know, we sat together on a panel at the Sloan conference. He was a very nice, soft-spoken gentleman and was very different than the personality you might have come across. Believe it or not, people are not always the same. Yeah, it's crazy. that works. An emotionless 140 characters is not always the best way to understand how people... Perometer for a person's a moral compass? Yeah, how they act, how they think, yeah.

What were your thoughts on those hirings? I'm sure you have some thoughts. Data Rink, to be honest with you, I'm not, like, everything that I've seen with the guy that he's done, he's done, like, some very pretty... God, I'm going to miss those, like, kind of like ping pong ball, like back and forth. They kind of reminded me of like Star Wars movies. The lasers shooting them off across and like shields and whatever. I mean, the guy definitely knows that it makes pretty stuff,

whether or not that fits in his role. Like, I mean, obviously he's a good programmer, and I think that's a lot of the role that he's going to be going into. So, and I trust Tulski and I trust his decision-making quite a bit. David Johnson, just to put it out there, most people know that David Johnson and I have had quite the feud on the internet. Yeah, blood feud. Oh, apparently I run a cult.

And here's the thing. I'm just going to preface this with this. If David Johnson's going in there to create an interactive database for their team, he is more than qualified for that. He's done. Like the hockey analysis website and also the Puckaletics, there are great websites that they're highly, they're quick and highly scalable. They're informative and useful.

And they're also user-friendly. And having a combination of being able to develop all three of those characteristics is not easy. It's harder than it looks. And the fact that he was able to. do two different websites like that, not just one, two. Yeah. That speaks a lot for his abilities and his capabilities.

So in no way, shape, or form, despite the fact that, you know, I had some differences of opinions, do I believe that he's not qualified to help a team? Now, to give some quick history of the blood feud, as he said, way back in the day, we're talking about 2007, 2008 range. Back when you were talking about. and getting people to sign your petition for Matthew Perra? Yes, basically. Even though, wasn't Matthew Perra playing the QMJL back then?

Probably. He was pretty good in the Q. You just wanted people to know. I just wanted people to know. Have you heard about our savior, Matthew Perra? So David Johnson, he filled a role. A role that was actually necessary and important. He was highly critical of any type of development

and any type of research that was done. And that is a valuable thing, especially because the fact that I come from a scientific background. And to us, sciences, science is all about disproving hypothesis. It's not about taking an hypothesis and saying, okay, that's good enough. You constantly, constantly are reevaluating and disproving things. Now, I did have some differences of opinions on how he did it,

and also in the opinions and inferences that he's made off of the data. But that said, he filled a very important role. That said, there was also, from 2007 to 2017, it started off with Gabriel de Janeiro, then it moved to Erick Tolski, and then it moved to myself and some other individuals at hockey graphs, were consistently and constantly being like, no, that's not how regression works.

No, that's just because something is real, does not necessarily mean that it's a skill or a talent. You have enough people flipping 10 coins. Eventually, you'll find some people who flipped 10 heads in a row just through the share magnitude. And there's a lot more going on. A lot of it started with the whole shot quality debate. And the shot quality debate was never quite how it was advertised.

Everyone believed in shot quality. and that it mattered and that it made the difference between a 50% coursey player playing on the fourth line versus a 50% coursey player playing on the first line that those two players were not exactly the same

that said there was a difference in opinion on how much shot quality would create in marginal gains off of that shot quality quantity and so that's where most of the debate stem from And there was a 10-year-long debate, and whenever you debate something for 10 years, it gets a little bit tiring.

And both sides are going to get a little bit short with each other at times. And that's some of the context that has to be kept in mind when you see the fact that, you know, these people are having heated arguments. A lot of it has to do with the fact that, you know, this has been going on for 10-plus years for some of us. So it's going to sound and look a different way than if some random just comes up to me and debates me something else. Yeah, I have a few things that I had to. Yeah, go ahead. I think you said all of that very well. I agree.

Hockey analysis is a very, it was an invaluable resource for myself and everyone else who does this. And we'll definitely miss it because it was just so easy to use and like never seemed to really bug out or lag on you. And it was just whenever you needed it and a snap off finger all of a sudden you can find whatever you need. I think the distinction you made there, though, between. the act of cultivating and acquiring data and putting it together versus actually evaluating and analyzing said data. Sometimes it's easier to blur those lines and just kind of take for granted that it's kind of like the same skill because you're working with all these numbers.

But I very strongly believe that there are two entirely different skill sets. And yeah, the reason why I bring that up is because I feel like, You know, it's unfortunate, but still in today's NHL with how many resources, teams are investing in their staffs and certain projects they're working on. Sometimes people that don't know any better just assume that one person can do those two things sometimes. And, you know, I don't want to get into too many details, but I interviewed with a few teams this summer. And it was kind of enlightening just sort of hearing their ideas in terms of what they wanted to do and how they perceived the operation. going and sort of the lack of understanding that one person can't just do all of those things. It's definitely true that right now the NHL doesn't quite have a full understanding of what a good

data analytics department will look like and how much resources it takes, how much time it takes, and the different roles and different expertise that's needed and required in terms to do it exceptionally. I mean, hockey data, we're both a tracking company and an analysis company and also working with big data. So, you know, we see firsthand about how there's different skill sets that are involved. And because of that, you need a huge staff and you need a huge staff of good people. I personally believe that I'm pretty good at what I do. However, I still looked for people to shore up my weaknesses, whether that is people who code in certain things, whether it's people, like I have some background in machine learning. However, I still

brought in DTM about heart to assist with our machine learning. But another thing, I was also, and when you brought up in terms of, you know, being critical and asking questions, that's also super valuable too because, you know, like you and I could be looking at the same information and we could approach it in two completely different ways or in terms of like when we're trying to make sense of it or what it means or how important it is and it's important to sort of have that type of back and forth as opposed to just

thinking one person has all the answers because it's pretty clear that no one does otherwise shot location for just one example shot location's been looked at multiple times by multiple people for expected goal model all the way back from like 2008, 2009, when I think I could be wrong, but I believe it's like Brian McDonald's who was first like looking at it. I might get the person wrong. From the very beginning, looking at like distance adjusted, say percentage and all these kind of different factors, it didn't work out the first couple times. It didn't work out the second,

third, fourth or fifth time. Eventually we figured things out and those things don't occur. Those improvements don't happen unless you're constantly. constantly. That's the whole scientific method of the fact is we're constantly re-looking and evaluating things to see, you know, how we can improve upon stuff. And so having that questioning guy, like, for example, David Johnson was on the community, is a good thing. Well, I think there's a difference between intellectual curiosity and disingenuous trolling, but... Yeah, I mean, and we all pass that line at times. I have as well. I know. I know. for a fact. I love to troll.

Usually I had more troll the randoms that I don't really know. And like, as I said, I had some differences in opinion with David Johnson personally because of, I believe that there were at times disingenuous usage of cherry-picking data

or truncating graphs at times. However, still he had a positive impact not just in terms of building a database. Okay. We can stop talking about him like he's dead. All past 10 stuff. But no, I think the final kind of important point is that just moving forward,

I think it's okay to sort of, you know, like... It's okay not to agree with me. Well, that definitely, I disagree with you a lot about a lot of things. But, you know, in terms of like written work or something, stuff like that. It might not be the most satisfying thing to a reader who expects you as a quote-unquote expert to just provide like answers for them or like definitive things. Sometimes it's not that cut and dried and sometimes it's okay to maybe write an article

that just kind of raises a question or poses a theory without it actually being this sort of definitive thing about what's important or what isn't in which players better than which one, right? Like sometimes that stuff is open to both peer review, but also just good nature debate. And that's important as well. And I mean, like, just looking at like one of the last debates, one of the last debates that went on was, you know, having to do with like, don't tell me about Hart's war model. And yes, the war model is not perfect. Congratulations. Like, we wouldn't expect otherwise. We're dealing with, you know, very basic data. And we're trying to make the most of that data.

And like that's literally what war is. Like literally war is our best guess of value given the information that we have. We know that the best guess is not the perfect guess. However, the real question about, you know, like I've, this is my Pint Tweet. It's a quote, a very famous quote. And it ends with like, you know, the most important thing for a model is not whether or not the model is perfect. The question is, you know, because if, because if, because it.

If the model's supposed to tell you the truth and perfection, you'll never reach that. It'll always be no. But is it perfect, at least to a certain degree, in being informative and being useful? Right. Isn't moving us in the right direction? And there's no question thus far in all the testing that's been done thus far again, with the caveat, it's been better than what we've had before. Like one of the biggest inputs in war is players even strength, offense, and defense.

And we find that even strength offense and even strength defense in war is a lot more predictive of future success for a player and also a lot more consistent to results than, for example, relative coursey or relative teammate coursey or other statistics that other people use. Well said. Those are the stylings of CTO and co-founder of Hockey Data, Gary. at home. Not all hockey data, just the company hockey data. You weren't the co-founder of just hockey data in general. I was the first guy that was like, the person that created. We should track how often a player scores of goal. Are you still being super hush, hush, secretive about

what team you guys are, what teams you guys are working with or what you're doing? Because I remember the last time you were. There is a potential that we may be announcing to, new relationships. But the Capitals one is the only one that's currently on the record. The Capitals was the only one that was on record. That's... So you're to blame when they fall,

when they fall back down to the pack this coming season. And I can't say what we were doing with them because I will say this. With some of our clients, we give data, some of our clients we give analysis, and some clients we give both. So just remember that like, and we work with more than one NHL client.

So when... Well, it seems like a conflict of interest potentially. No, if you're selling, if you're selling, especially when you're selling just data. Yeah. Here's the data. Right, right. But as we said, that's only part of the battle and that can lead teams astray. If they don't know what to do with it.

And that's why, you know, I firmly believe that having a good research and development team within your front office is very important. because I've seen different teams make very different choices off of the same type of information. But yeah, as I was saying, like, there might be two announcements coming in the future. One of them. They'll just see them now. I promise, we'll believe it. Okay. Oh, oh, nice, nice.

One of them definitely looks like the fact that it'll be public disclosures. disclosure just because of the fact that it's not actually an NHL level. Usually the non-NHL levels are a little bit more okay with not always. Some of them are still hush-hush, but and then on top of it, another one will be a lot larger scale. Potentially larger than could be big news. Could be big news. Well, I'm looking forward to it. And the listeners should look forward to the fact that you and I might be doing another podcast soon.

I don't want to. Should we hint to what's that be? I don't know how. Like, I don't, I don't want to give away too much because I don't want... Does it have anything to do with Patrick Lining being better than Austin Matthews?

It... J.K., JK. It might. You know, something else it could be, though. And here's a question from a Twitter follower of Greg Ferguson, who goes, Zach Wrenski or Ivan Proverov, which one would you rather have?

We might, we might answer a question like that. I cannot answer that question without any sort of bias because of the fact that I've been a Werenski fanboy for a quits in a while. Well, we might, you and I might answer a question like that and many other similar. Yeah. Ones. Do you think we've given away a good, good tease on what this? I think that's a good tease.

Okay. Look forward to that sometime in the coming week. And yeah, we'll check you out on Twitter at Garrett Hole, where you're tweeting out much less interesting things that you may have been in the past now that you're working for an HAL team. but I might have some interesting stuff to tweet it out in the next forward. A lot of like powerlifting and boat references. Yeah, thanks for coming on, Garrett, and we'll have you back on soon.

Thank you for having. The Hockey PDOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.