The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 199: Enjoying The Ride

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Alex Prewitt joins the show to discuss what's going on in Vegas, the impact Brandon Saad is having in his return to Chicago, the importance of a healthy Steven Stamkos, and hanging out with Jaromir Jagr.  3:25 Behind the scenes in Vegas 14:45 Concussions 17:00 Brandon Saad and Jonathan Toews 25:30 Stamkos' recovery 30:55 Offseason Training 40:15 Profiling Jaromir Jagr 47:15 Enjoying the ride in Washington 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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Welcome to the Hockey Pedyo cast. My name is Demager Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Alex Pruitt. Alex is going on, man. How are you? I'm good. We're recording this on a Monday afternoon, and the only reason I say that is because I think we might be running this on Wednesday,

so hopefully nothing too crazy happens in the meantime. But I don't think. Well, I think we're going to talk more like theoretical stuff and philosophical stuff and stuff you've written about as opposed to actual analysis that pertains to the games that are going on tonight or tomorrow. Not only is it Monday, Dimitri, it's Chris Johnston's birthday. It is. Did you see the picture I posted of the two of us hanging out in Toronto?

Yeah, I like his beard. I know. It's a lot better than mine, actually. I used to have a good one, I think, in my humble opinion, but I got rid of it this summer. So now he's the prominent hockey analyst in the beard department. Yeah, we just tricked your listeners. We're actually not talking about hockey at all. We're just going to talk about Chris Johnson's facial hair for an hour and a half.

So sorry. Yeah, well, there's a lot to talk there. It's a pretty big subject. So what's up with you these days, man? Have you recovered since, I mean, you spent a lot of time in Nashville in May and June, and I feel like that must have taken something out of you. Have you recovered over the summer? Yeah, decently.

I mean, I was kind of working crazy hours because just for purposes of magazine deadlines, so I didn't actually have a chance to go out much in Nashville. I don't think I slept the night after Pittsburgh 1. I think I filed at like, I don't know, 7.30 a.m. local time or something like that and fell asleep for a couple hours. but I did not get to enjoy it as much, so the recovery process probably didn't take as long. Just been, yeah, hopping around, hopping around the league, trying to see as many teams as I can. The caps are away most of the month, so it's been a little difficult to get to games in person, but what are you going to do?

So I'm not exactly sure what your, you know, off-season summer schedule was like, but I'm assuming you had a little bit of a vacation, took some time off after the season ended. Like, is it, what's it like getting back into the rhythm of things when the season starts? Do you have like a little bit of a writer's block or a sort of rust that you got to work off? Or have you been doing this long? Totally. That you're good to go. No. Oh, I suck at the beginning.

And I get like slightly less worse as the season goes on. But yeah, there's definitely some some rust to knock off. And both, you know, I'm still relatively new to the game, you know, watching on a daily basis. So there's definitely some kind of like eye stuff to watch. Right. Knock off, I guess. So that makes sense. Just getting back into the flow of the game and seeing, you know, refreshing your mind on certain players.

because some of that institutional knowledge hasn't been totally drilled in yet. But yeah, vacation, you know, made it out your way in the Northwest. Spent a week and a half in Alaska just camping with my mom. Wow, nice. It's quite a time. But then also, you know, working on some non-hockey stuff too, and that's the cool thing about working at SIs. You get the freedom to explore, and, you know, I can do a story about a generation of kids

who are named after Shaquille O'Neal or digging into some other things and working on like an e-sport story now, too. So expand a little bit. But yeah, once hockey season rolls around, it's pretty much full in, you know, do the media tour, try to get to as many camps as you can, try to bank as much reporting as you can during training camp because obviously once things get going and once the grind starts, it's pretty hard to track guys down. Well, let's talk about that grind a little bit.

So you've, I feel like, been covering the Vegas Golden Knights more than anyone really has nationally at least. So you've gotten to spend some time there and see what's going on for. yourself. I feel like this would be a good time for us to chat about them a little bit because I feel like, you know, we're only, what, 10 days to two weeks into the season here, but they've, you know, not surprisingly, but they've been the one of the most interesting stories so far in the league, I think, obviously jumping off to this four and one record so far, but also just, you know, the, I feel like the in game experience there has been everything you would have thought it'd be in

Vegas, so that's been pretty cool to see. What do you think their mascot? I think all mascots generally are pretty creepy. Yeah, especially the, especially the Edmonton one, which I still have nightmares about. But I think all of them are just... Oh, I haven't seen the Edmonton one. What's the Edmonton one? It's like the old one. It's like the, I don't know what it is. It looks like some sort of like a big cat or like a, it's not a bear. I don't know what it is. It looks like some sort of feline. I don't know. It's creepy. It's creepy than a hila monster? I think so. Oh, man. I just looked it up. That is like an old-timey kids show.

It's nightmare fuel. villain cat yeah yeah um so i don't know like what have been your takeaways so far from uh from what you've seen from Vegas and has have things gone the way you've expected i mean obviously with the tragedy that happened just before the season um it threw things for a loop i imagine with the uh you know for the ceremony before the season started but other than that i mean uh it's been pretty smooth sailing for them so far at least on the ice yeah and and that's the rub right is a lot of it is informed by what happened before the season or kind of maybe altering our view of how we look at the season or at very least look at the team in the context of their new city.

Without giving away too much, we had a big feature we wanted to do for the preseason issue on Vegas. And, you know, you can't really do something about, you know, just the entertainment and the happy fun side of that city in light of what happens. So maybe look for that down the road. But yeah, I don't think anyone would have necessarily predicted that they're, you know, the first team in the expansion era to win four of the first five games. Granted, two of those were against Arizona and one was against Boston on a back-to-back.

But at the same time, I think it's gotten, clearly gotten the franchise off to a positive start, clearly gotten the city off to a kind of positive rebound in that regard, at least the very small way that a professional sports team can in the wake of a tragedy like that. You know, mostly from my standpoint, what's been interesting is just digging into the process of it all, right? and you kind of alluded to that. You know, we were did some behind-the-scenes stuff around the name unveiling, did a little bit more, I think, around March. And then, you know, now with the expansion draft,

just, you know, asking around and talking to folks like Bill Foley and George McPhee and then now down to Gerard Galant and the players, because I wrote about this when I was out there. It's the first of everything, right? It's the first sixth game they're going to play soon. You know, they're going to, they haven't, you know, I had an overtime loss yet. That'll be the first.

It'll be the first whatever. And I think everyone there has a pretty acute sense of history. You know, one of my favorite things was right after the expansion draft ends, right after they email the picks in, a couple of the folks there are staying. I think George McPhee was there, Kelly McCrimand that was there. I think Tom Prasca, the general fanager guy, he was there as well. And they're just kind of sitting around the expansion room and someone has the idea, like, we need to record this. So they flip on a camera. I think it was maybe an iPhone camera.

something and George and Kelly just kind of start talking and they wind up sitting there for like an hour and a half and they're just kind of recreating everything that went on almost as this like historical document in a way because they knew that you know down the line people might want to look back and kind of relive those moments and it was still fresh right like all the all the names were still on the grease boards and all the computer screens were still still there all the projector screens were still pulled down and to just you know just to have the presence of mind to think and like kind of pause and say you know what we did here is never been done before, especially in the city.

And to want to capture that, I think, was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I was going back through your archives of things you've written. And, you know, you had a piece that was, I think it was titled like, you know, inside the room or whatever for the process for the draft. I wasn't there, full disclosure. That shouldn't have been the headline. Yeah, anyway. Trust me, I have a lot of experience with people giving me crap for headlines for stories

ever written even though that's we're not responsible for those headlines um but listen um so the the main takeaway i had was there was a line that stuck out to me it was about how um you know george mcfee had been hired pretty much a year before the actual expansion draft and they'd been ironing everything out and preparing during that entire time and i don't know it it seems weird to say but based on that i feel like you know things obviously happen and and they were certain curle balls thrown their way but it seems like some of the ways they've handled some of the stuff with all the defensemen, the glad of the defensemen they have now and having a keep chepatch up in the, in the HL and and out Shea Theater for a while, like beyond what they should actually be doing.

Like, it seems like given how much time they had to repair, it seems like there's been some mishandling of certain, you know, player personnel decisions that probably shouldn't have happened if they've actually devoted that much time and effort to it this entire time. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure why it shook out the way they did. Part of me thinks that they feel like they did a really good job, and they don't see the same criticisms that we might see, right? They went through it and figured, yeah, we got our guys. Maybe the market for defensemen has dried up a little bit faster than they expected,

but maybe the plan was, I don't know this for sure, but maybe the plan was to load up on that. And clearly it was, right, because that's how they ended up with a lot of those players. Talking with George, I think he froze the market in a way that he wanted to during that exclusive negotiation window that they had, where they could talk to other teams, but teams couldn't talk to each other. And, you know, everyone wanted to picture him as the godfather, right?

Like, you know, has 30, like, horse heads postmarked for fellow GMs. Right. He's sending him out and saying, like, you better not negotiate with anyone else unless you negotiate with us. But I think, like you said, the product of that, there are some reasonable criticisms to be made, not the least of which are the situation that the defensemen are in right now.

Yes. I mean, a lot of guys who are on expiring deals, but, you know, how many of, how many of those people do other teams want, right? I don't know. What would you take from that list? Lucas Visa probably. I mean, there's Stoner or McNabb, England, Garrison. Not really sure why they walked Nate Schmidt to Arbara, UFA in two years by giving them a two-year

in arbitration, or taking him an arbitration to begin with. Yeah, so I did a, I did a Reddit AMA of. last week. And one of the questions I got was, you know, what do you think of the job George McPhee did with his expansion draft and what would you have done differently? And the thing I keep circling back to is, I just think they, like, I'm all for the idea that they had of, you know, taking things slow and accumulating these assets. They can potentially trade down the line and, you know, do this the right way by acquiring draft picks and prospects and building slowly as opposed to going all in for, you know, a short-term gain, but suffering for it down the line. But I just think they maybe mis-evaluated or

misjudge the market a little bit for these defensemen, because, Like the best example for me is, you know, they got like a future third round pick or something for Alexei Emelan. And they would have just been better off taking a Charles Houdon or a guy who actually is like a unknown prospect right now that potentially has greater upside than these wild unknowns. And I assume when they took a guy like Alexi Emelan or even, you know, the guys you mentioned like Lucas Beza and so on and so forth, they probably thought that, listen, defensemen are hot commodities in this league and these guys are going to fetch a nice return for us. And the problem with that is that teams just aren't really interested in those guys. So now they're just kind of stuck with this glut and don't really have any means for actually kind of unclogging that unless someone's going to get desperate when injuries happen and take them off of their hands. Yeah. And even say you, let's say they hit on that pick they got from Nashville in 2019 in the third round.

Right. When is that, when is that person ready? Yeah. And, you know, a lot of their futures are 2019, 2020. So they've done, they have done a good job accumulating. I think they have, what, seven second-round picks over the next three years or something? They've done a good job of accumulating assets,

but I agree with you that there are for sure certain situations, you know, that being one of them, where you look at their pick and you say, you know, would they have been better off taking, you know, a prospect and just kind of seeing what this guy has and maybe trying to accelerate their growth a little bit as an organization. You know, I do think they did a good job with guys like Smith and March or so. I think they, you know, probably, you can probably make an argument

that they fleece Florida for those guys. Nate Schmidt was absolutely the right pickback from Washington. Washington could really use Schmidt right now. Boy, they sure could. My goodness. I mean, you look at what their lineup was in the playoffs, not to digress too much, but what their six was in the playoffs

and sometimes that Nate wasn't even skating for them. And then what it is now with this injury, they have in Niskin, I don't know how bad it is. Yeah, they for sure could use them. But, yeah, I mean, you know, there have been some hits here and there. I thought Chippachov was a very, savvy signing and then you know they they can't play them for a couple games because they do have

this glut of defensemen that they haven't been able to get rid of and um even if they can i'm not sure what the market for you know defensemen in their 30s for instance on expiring deals are right it's it's over the past couple years it's really been you know maybe like a third round pick or something maybe a second yep if you get lucky with the right team is desperate yeah i guess we'll see i mean they probably are banking on injuries happening in the attrition of the regular season and hopefully by the time the trade deadline rolls around. Some of those guys are going to be hawk commodities, but time will tell. I mean, I know that there's a certain segment of the PDOCS fan base right now that's

sitting at home and being like, you know, you guys are talking up Vegas for being four and one, but they've been super lucky so far and they should probably be one and four or something like that. So, you know, we should point out that they have, you know, I think they have the sixth highest PDO right now. And there's a big disparity between their actual goal results and their expected ones. And I think that this is a huge. It's a good story so far, but I still think as the year goes along here, things are going to play out the way we expected before the season. Yeah, look, I mean, let's enjoy this while we can. Let's enjoy the new, the flash and the drum line and the castle that they have.

Yes. Let's enjoy James Neal starting out this season on fire. And hopefully, let's enjoy Mark Andre Fleury if he gets healthy. Big bummer for him to suffer another concussion, by the way. Yeah. You know, let's enjoy seeing young talents like Brendan Leipzig, bread and life's sake doing what he can do or March or so or people like that

but at the same time yeah they're their bottom 10 team in possession right now I think or you know 10 11 12 something thereabouts it's going to regress yeah no they've actually they've actually been better than I would have expected in terms of shot at 10s I think they're middle of the pack just under the 50% mark

but it's gonna come down based on all the other indicators you know what I'm curious about you know you mentioned flurry there and the injury he suffered have you had a chance to do some sort of a profile on head injuries from any angle yet? No, it's something we've been kind of monitoring

because a lot of the concussion lawsuit stuff is still in the procedural phase. They're still trying to figure out whether it can be a class action suit and therefore extend to all NHL players who want to get in on it, not just the ones who were named in the suit originally. But yeah, it's serious business, right?

I don't think that was handled in the best way, clearly, right? right? You listen to some of the quotes from his teammates saying that I think Perron was the one who said that, you know, he looked at Fleury and he just wasn't himself. And I've talked to Mark Andre about the concussion he suffered in, what was it, 15, 16. Essentially, that was the start of everything when it comes to him and Murray there. When he just wasn't the same, he had a couple head injuries that season. And then to see it happen again, and, you know, for him to stay in the game like that and keep playing. And if his teammates noticed that something's wrong, how can a concussion's,

spot or not. Yeah, that's the, that's the worrisome stuff about these instances where, like, it's going to happen, right? I mean, it's a violent sport and you're going to have collisions and players are going to get unfortunately hurt and that's just the reality of the business. But it's, it's the handling where it's pretty clear when someone takes a shot like that. Like, it's just negligent to keep them in the game because we know that like the symptoms aren't going to manifest themselves immediately. Sometimes it takes a couple hours or even a couple days and you have to really be careful with this stuff based on what's on the line. Yeah, I'm in, I'm in the camp of safer than sorry, yank the guy out if the symptoms are there. But like you said, symptoms often

don't manifest for a little while. So that's why all this stuff is tricky. That's why it's, it's hard to research. It's hard to, at least from my ankle, because the research, the science is still being finalized. It's still being finalized this, but I don't know if that's the best word for it. But clearly there's an established link, right, between head injuries and CTE. The good work of the folks at BU have established that. But, you know, the direct causes, the correlations, there's a lot out there. I think that people are still trying to sort through and especially when it's in the moment like that.

And that's a difficult part. But my opinion is that, yeah, you just yank the guy out, giving an evaluation. I know it stinks. I know these guys are competitors and they're going to scrap for every ounce of their body to play some more.

But, man, that's some scary, scary stuff. I've had a couple concussions myself playing basketball in high school. It's no joke. Yeah, no, it's a very serious business. All right, let's shift gears a little bit to the Blackhawks here because I know you wrote about them recently, particularly with regards to guys like Patrick Sharp and Brandon Sodd being back and the Blackhawks in general just, you know,

being a bit of an aberration for the rest of the league in terms of how willing and able they are to bring back some of these guys. And one of the quotes that really stuck out to me from Stan Bowman in your piece there was, you know, he made note of the fact that the reason why this happens is like these are guys that they generally didn't even want to get rid of, but they just basically have. had to because of financial reasons. And so when they get an opportunity to bring them back down the road, if things open up, they're willing to do so.

And I think it's just a fascinating way of operating and doing business. It's different than how most other teams do. Yeah. And for guys like Patrick Sharp and Brian Campbell, for instance, who were the prime examples lately of people who came back and took pennies on the dollar in order to do so, it's, it's just, it's a tug of home, right? I mean, these guys won there. They built their families there.

They're nearing the end of their careers. In Sharpe's case, you know, he wasn't even sure if he was going to play this year, if he's going to be able to play again after his hip surgery. So when a familiar team like that comes along and offers you some comfortability, I think that's a big boost for those guys. And then on the flip side of that is people like Saad, who they actively seek out and flip assets for and reacquire. And at least in his case, it seems to me, at least talking to Stan, that, I mean, this was a move designed to get Taves going again. And unfortunately, it came at the cost of taking a guy who was extremely fun to watch with Patrick. extremely productive with him. But my guess is they are banking that Patrick Kane can make pretty well anyone around him better.

Yes. That as the driver of that line, it doesn't really matter to a certain degree who you have next to him. And clearly there's something there with Taves and Sade. There's even something there with Taves and Sharp going back to when they play it together for stretches. So there's a history there. And a lot of it's comfort in what you know and comfort and what you won with. Now, obviously, a lot of the pieces around them, the supporting cast has changed. But I do think that there was some pull there that they knew what they had in Brandon Saad,

and they wanted to bring them back to address a need that they felt they had. Yeah, the fit with Saad and Taze is fascinating to me because, you know, there was a lot of talk the past few years about Tave slowing down and his production dipping. And if you look at the situation he was in and who he was playing with, I think it's an awfully interesting coincidence that those two down years offensively were the ones that Saad was in Columbus. And, you know, now the two of them have looked great. I think the combination of them and my boy Dick Panic have, have, have really been impressive at 5-1-5 when you adjust it because, you know, they play in a bunch

of these blowouts and sometimes the broad numbers get skewed a little bit. But when the game's been in question, they've just really dominated the puck and the scoring chances and the goals. And that's a huge development for the Blackhawks because while losing a guy like Panarin is a big loss based on how good him and Kane look together and the dynamic skill he has, you're right. I think Kane is, at this point of his career, is more likely to be able to carry a line himself and now if the Blackhawks are able to be a bit deeper and a bit more, you know, puck dominant in 5-on-5, that's something they've really lacked the past few years with these first-round exits. So I think we might need to, you know, recalibrate our expectations for them and what their

upside is if these two lines actually can keep it going this season. Yeah, I mean, you can go back to last season. I mean, Taze had, I think it was 36 points over his final 33 games once he finally settled down with, I think was Schmaltz and Panic. Yeah. And yeah, continuing, continuing this year, I think it's probably beneficial for a guy like that to play with people for an extended period of time. He's not necessarily the game breaker that Patrick Kane is where he can go out and just play with whoever and play with us and he would score four points maybe. But I do think that there was more of an emphasis. Yeah, on putting some familiar faces next to Taves and it's certainly paid off. And again, not to give away the farm, but I was out there doing something on Jonathan.

And hopefully that'll be coming down soon. Just kind of looking at where he's at. But yeah, no, I think Chicago, they were a little bit, maybe an aberration last year in the way they got sweat. And things were clearly trending downwards for them, leading to that, culminating that sweep against Nashville. But, you know, if they have guys like to brink it, stepping up, if they have, you know, Schmaltz, by all accounts, looks like he's a very useful middle six piece. You know, if Patrick Sharp can find the fountain of youth, and, you know, obviously they need some D to step up. But I don't think it's unreasonable that, you know, in a West where we're not really,

sure what's going to happen this year that they could maybe in the same way that Washington might slip under the radar a little bit more than they have in years past do the same out west yeah no definitely i mean there's a lot of good teams but there isn't anyone that has a stranglehold there so it's it's pretty wide open i do one thing i do want to say is watching some of these black hawks games this year the commentators keep sort of beating this drum of how stan bowman made a point of getting you know tougher and more physical this summer because the the the predators bullied them in their playoff in the playoff series last year and i don't know what i understand it's a neat narrative. I don't know which series people were watching because what I saw was

the Predators were just significantly faster and more talented them and just basically ran them off the ice. And that's, I think, a bigger concern. And, you know, I guess Sodd does play more of a sort of, you know, defensively responsible, grittier game that might translate to the playoffs in that regard. But he's also a super talented, gifted player himself. So it's not like, you know, they brought in Matt Martin here. I think there's a, I think people are overstating what the Blackhawks did this summer and the sort of the shift in philosophy because that's not really what happened. Yeah, if we're saying that the main reason Brandon Sa's on the roster is toughness. I don't know about that.

I mean, he's a piece of five-on-five possession monster and has been. I mean, what even was on some pretty bad Columbus teams there for a stretch? Yeah, no, he's a great player. I mean, and now they're actually using him on the power play quite a bit too, which he hasn't really had the benefit of throughout his career. So if that keeps up, he should have a career season. So I'm all for that because I'm a big Brennan's odd believer. Alex, let's take a quick break here to hear from a sponsor and pay some bills.

And we'll pick up the discussion back on the other side of things. Before we get back to Alex Pruitt regaling us with his stories from his travels around the league, let's talk a little bit about Ckeek. Seekeek's been good to both myself and the PDO cast. They've been with us helping support the show since the beginning. And if you allow them, they'll be good to you too because they're on a mission to make finding and purchasing tickets to sporting events in concerts easier than ever before. Instead of having to take time out of your own busy schedule to scour the internet in the hopes of saving a couple bucks

by buying tickets off some shady site that offers no assurances, Sikh takes matters into their own hands by doing all that groundwork for you and guaranteeing that what you're paying for is what you're actually getting. The last time I talked about how I'll be in Montreal in early November and I'm strongly considering going to check out a Canadian's game at the Bell Center for the first time ever as a fan. And that's something I'm still got on my agenda, but something else that's something else that. I want to do more and more with each passing day is make a trip down to Vegas and soak up a Golden Knights home game or two at the Timo Ball Arena. I'm sure the novelty of it is going to eventually going to wear off, but for now, it looks like they're really hitting all the right notes and pulling all the strings with the in-game experiences at those games. You know, just watching it

on HL TV, it looks like quite a spectacle with the slot machine sound every time they score a goal and playing Viva Las Vegas when they win. And, you know, it looks very exciting watching these games on my laptop, wishing I was there. So why not actually just go and experience it for myself? So the other day, I looked up the tickets on Seekek, and, you know, just wanted to get a gauge of what they're going for and what the price tag is. And it's actually not that bad at all. So I think I'm going to try and make that trip eventually here down the line. And I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about my adventures as they come. But that's just me. You might not be down for a Vegas trip yourself at this moment, but you might instead just want to go check out a game in whichever

city you're living in instead. And that's cool too. And, and And if you decide to do so, Siki can hook you up with $20 off your first purchase of tickets because you're a loyal PDOCAST listener and an upstanding citizen. To claim your award, all you have to do is download the Cicac app, enter the promo code PDO, and check out and you're good to go. That's promo code PTO for $20 off. Now let's see what else Alex Buret has to say. Okay, let's talk a bit about Stephen Stamco's. That was a great job reading that ad, man. Yeah.

Great work. Love that. Yes, yes, it was. So you wrote about Stanco's a while ago. I think it was, you know, when he was making his return back before the start of last season. And obviously now he's making his way back from another injury. And I think, unfortunately, this is becoming a bit of a trend. You know, it's obviously been unrelated fluky injuries and hopefully he'll be able to stay healthy.

But this is definitely nothing new for him. I don't know, like you told me that sort of spending some time with him and his teammates, sort of change your perception and I guess perspective on stamp coast like tell me a little bit about about that and how that story unfolded yeah I was just interested or fascinated by how into some of this medical stuff he seemed to be that you know he's gone through some pretty horrible things at the time I wrote the story he was just recovering from the blood clot that kept him out of the playoffs and this was obviously before the the injury he had last year that you know really derailed a fantastic start.

Many people forget just how good he was out of the gate last year. But again, like you said, yeah, he kind of runs into this bugaboo, this injury bugaboo he's had for the past couple years. Good use of bugaboo. Thank you. That's a good word. But yeah, I know from talking to his teammates, it was kind of funny how, you know, everyone has stories about how they would be in the training room, you know,

getting stitched up for this or getting treatment for that or, you know, even down to guys who had their x-rays done and they were looking at him with a doctor and in-walk Stephen Stamco's. and he wants to look at it too and he wants to explore and got to the point they, you know, started calling him Dr. Stamcoast. You know, here comes Dr. Stamcoast to check out the X-ray. But I do think that that was instructive, at least from, you know, a narrative storytelling perspective, that, you know, that's the way he approached it, that he wanted to get as much information as possible that when he was going through his blood clot stuff, he was, you know, Googling things himself. He was reading research articles. It wasn't just, you know, he's relying on the doctor's information.

He really wants to understand what's going on there. He was looking at his MRI and his ultrasounds at his house. He was asking questions. He was looking stuff up. To me, that in the context of what I was writing, felt very similar to the way that he approached his free agency process, that it was very studious. He was making charts. He was printing stuff out. He was studying it at home.

He was doing his research. He didn't wait to the last minute. and maybe it was a very clumsy way of folding it all together, but I came away from that story with the portrait of an extremely detailed, prepared person, at least insofar as his career goes and his life goes. Yeah, it did feel like his return and sort of the impact that I could have on both the lightning and the rest of the Eastern Conference flew under the radar a little bit this summer. You know, it's weird to say that because Stamco is obviously such a big name,

and he's been, you know, covered endlessly in this league, especially arounding his free agency and whether he'd potentially go back home to the leaves, or whether he'd stay with the lightning or go somewhere else. But, I mean, this line with him and Kucharov and the Messnikov has been, arguably like the best line in the league so far. And definitely just in terms of, you know, the aesthetics and watching them, they're so exciting. And this lightning team has a lot of depth. They have these young guys like Braden Point as well. And they obviously have still have Platt and Johnson. And all of a sudden, they can kind of come at you in waves, and it's not just the one guy you can kind of target and slow down. And that makes them, I think there's a case to be made that they might be the most dangerous threat to the penguins out east.

I mean, the capitals are obviously in that discussion as well. But Tampa seems like they're poised to sort of prove that last year was just a weird, you know, unpredictable blipping the radar. And they're going to resume their contender status again this year. I think you and Custis talked in your watchability rankings, or at least you did about how you flipped the channel whenever Washington's on the power play. Tampa Bay is getting there with me for me with Namastikov, Stamkows and Kutrov, and just some of the triangle stuff that they can do with the buck, and that's not to mention the big guy they have up top in Edmund,

who can shoulder a load in the playoffs like the best of them, and history would tell you that that's a pretty critical element to making a deep run is to have a guy you can, if need be, go 30 minutes a night. So, yeah, again, I mean, the East, too, like the West, I think I found it very hard to sit down and just even pick, you know, a couple of the playoff teams at the bottom, because you're not really sure what's going to happen there. But I do think that Tampa Bay is due for a rebound year,

that they have an experienced score still that's there. Like you said, they have some of the young talent like Palat and Johnson, and that's rounded out to scoring a little bit. And if they can get a healthy season out of Stamcoast, I think they're as good as anyone. I mean, Kutjurav is, what would you put? I'm top 10 player in the league now, for sure. I think there's a case to be made for top five, honestly, at this point.

Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Yeah, yeah, I didn't want to get too crazy. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, but yeah. too great. But yeah, I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to argument to make. I think Dan Rosen had a pretty cool story recently about how Stamp Coast kind of feels the same way about Kuturov that he did with San Luis and the way they play together. And what was interesting for me in that story was that, you know, Kutrov would watch Stamp Kose in San Luis and think to himself, yeah, I can do that same stuff if I ever got a chance to play with them. Now we're seeing the fruits of that. And it's pretty darn fun. Yeah, I've been enjoying it so far.

Okay, one final thing here. You wrote about off-season training routines and Joe Quinn and some of the stuff, some of these young stars are doing these days to improve during the summer and get better. I found that fascinating just in terms of the practical application of it because, you know, the league has been shifting so much towards being a younger man's game. And we see that, you know, once we thought that an individual, probably might be sort of closer to 30 years old. Now we know that it's probably more like mid-20s in that 24 to 26-year-old range. And I don't think that's necessarily going to change. But what I am

fascinated about is as we get to learn more in the sports science field and, you know, players take better care of their bodies with nutrition and training and recovery, I wonder if we're going to start seeing, you know, players longevity extended a lot more than it was in the past. I don't know. Did you come away from that with that impression or what were takeaways. No, that's something I hadn't thought about, but that's an interesting point. Well, especially as we're seeing, you know, kind of the middle class gets squeezed out, right? Where, you know, guys like Daniel Winnick have to take tryout agreements. So, yeah, I'm curious what might happen is this current generation of, you know, young, fast,

skilled guys gets older, whether, you know, the investment that they're putting in their bodies and some of the, you know, just doing stuff like Pilates, you know, as opposed to the traditional powerlifting that you would think of, of an offseason regiment, whether that's going to inform the durability they have. As far as the training stuff, I mean, some of it, it was hard to tell how much has been around and we're not seeing or we didn't see

because, like, Instagram didn't exist. But, you know, a lot of this, I took notice of it because it seemed like every other week, you know, a new video of Connor doing something crazy. You're like Mitch Marner jumping off a springboard or like Charlie Coil using a rebound board and doing some stuff between his legs on synthetic ice.

Like these kind of creative ways of training. It's not just the, like, stick handling around pylons or cones or stuff like that. It's, you know, really practical application of doing stuff on the fly of learning to stick handle at uncomfortable angles, at, you know, reacting to pressure coming in certain places. I mean, I do think that a lot of it stems from Connor in the work that he did with Joe Quinn. He's known this guy since he was 11, and you look at, but he's the best, right? You want to emulate the best.

He's the best at, I think, putting pucks in guys' space. putting him in areas and skating around guys and, you know, always doing stuff at full speed to the point that it makes everyone else look silly. So I think people see that and they, they go, I want to try to do that too. I want to do, I want to emulate his methods. I want to learn, you know, how Connor got to be as good as he is on the fly like that. And if you go and look at these videos, or you talk to these guys, they stink at it at the beginning. It's very hard to go from, you know, just your traditional, like I say, you know, stick handling around, cones and doing around objects like that as opposed to, you know, having to do like a pre-planned

route and having to like hop over little hurdles and, you know, stick handle underneath space so small that only the puck can fit on its horizontal edge. You can't, you have to have full control in order for it to get through. I think that's kind of the new wave is this, this new specialization and able to tailor it to the way the games evolved as far as speed and skill goes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, I think this hasn't been lost on anyone. right like both on an individual and a team level um people are investing a lot more money now and trying to uh figure out the best uh you know regimens for preparing the body and making sure that guys are able to compete at the highest level for as long as possible i forgot who wrote the story or

what publication it was on but i highly recommend checking out um someone of a year or two ago wrote up how lebron james spends like two million dollars a year or something on various things to basically keep his body in the best shape possible. And obviously, like, listen, he's, first of all, like an anomaly in terms of just what a freak athlete he is, but also in terms of the money he can actually invest in it himself. And I'm not saying everyone's going to be able to do that. But there is a certain element to the sort of behind the scenes preparation that goes into it that as fans we might not necessarily think of. You just, you know, you kind of go away during the summer and you come back and you just expect guys to get better every year. But there's so much minutia and so

much going on that, you know, goes into it beyond just the things we kind of thought, think about on a daily basis. Yeah, or even in the course of the season where, you know, maybe you're on a back-to-back, right, and you're in Canada and you've got to go through customs and you don't get to your airport at home until like 1.30 in the morning, then you drive home and you're asleep by three and you got to be at the rink by, you know, three the next day. How do you flip the body around like that? Have you heard about the art machine? Have you, have you dug into the cult of that yet? I haven't, no. Tell me about it. Okay. It's this It's the device called the ARP Accelerated Recovery Performance.

And it's run by, I think this guy out in Minnesota. And a lot of the Minnesota guys use it. So like Duncan Keith and Zach Parisei and T.J. O'Shee. And it essentially looks like a little medical device like you would have at the bed side of your hospital bed. And you strap these wires to yourself and electrode currents run through them. And there's some program and there's a lot of signs. behind it. I'd recommend reading Isabel Crusudean story from the post last year. But there's a lot of

guys out there who swear by this thing. And they swear by, this is the way that they help their body recover is to essentially strap a bunch of wires to yourself and have electrodes pulsing into your veins and into your muscles. And I wish I knew more about like physical therapy and neurology and stuff like that. But it is, again, it's a thing like, not unlike Connor working with Joe Quinn where, you know, one guy starts it or a couple guys start using it, and then word kind of trickles down. And, you know, it's a copycat league among coaches and it's a copycat league among players, too. Yeah, I remember, I mean, obviously these things evolved, but back in, I want to say, like, around 2010, one of the big stories here in Vancouver was how the Canucks were sort of, you know,

working with sleep doctors and trying to figure out the optimal times to get your sleep in, but also, like, how long and just, you know, all the stuff that we might not have even, you know, thought about or consider it in the past and now everyone I feel like is probably doing that and you know there's going to be these advancements as time goes on and I think some of it also you know comes down to like the league as well because you mentioned the back-to-backs there and I just I understand why it has to be done sometimes to you know fit it in the schedule and there is a financial amendment as well that you want to play as many games as possible but you know we've seen in the NBA teams resting their stars on back to backs and that still hasn't really come into

the NHL yet because of this sort of matro bravado that's in the league guys never wanted to take nights off and stuff but eventually I feel like you know we're going to reach that point as well where teams wise up to it and start you know doing some some more of that stuff as well so I'm fascinated to see if it when and if that actually does come to the league yeah I'm of the opinion that like, I don't know, what do you call, like body analytics? That's as critical to hockey as advanced stats. That being able to diagnose when guys need rest to tell when they're being overloaded, to tell when they've had bad sleep.

I don't know how you would do it, how you get around union laws, or how you work that into the CBA. You know, whether it's, well, you know, you see a lot of teams already have heart rate monitors. They're doing blood tests at the start of the year to figure out, you know, where certain players have nutritional deficiencies. Anything to get an edge in a sport where you have to go at top speed for a short time relative to the NBA where, you know, Brock can play 45 minutes a night or something. Right.

Yeah, NHL players are going top speed for 20 minutes. How do you figure out how to maximize that time and how do you figure out how to maximize rest when, you know, in the totality of your day, most of what you're doing is resting? Yeah. And then you're going super hard for a super short period of time. relative to the rest of it. Yeah. Well, that's something that's always fascinated me

because we still, you know, guys, like this is a whole debate with Ryan Suter for years and it was sort of finding that optimal amount of time for him to be playing in a game because if you're playing close to 30 minutes, chances are you're probably not going, you know, you have to pace yourself a little bit and you're probably not going max effort on every shift

and then is that the most optimal way to use a guy and we still don't ultimately know but having some of those bio-marking, indicators would be a huge step for, you know, nailing down, you know, what, what drives peak performance and sort of finding this perfect kind of threshold and comfort zone for guys to be at. Absolutely. All right. I have a few other questions here for you before we get out of here.

Hit me. AMA. Who's your, who's your white whale? Who's an elusive player that you've always wanted to work? Okay, well, there we go. I was going to ask, how have you not done a 5,000-word Yarmoyager profile yet? But you did a story on Florida when he was there a couple years ago. And he and I just spent 20 minutes talking about like chakras and like East Asian religious principles.

Because I majored in religion and college, specifically in Buddhism. And I heard that through his strength coach that he was very much into just kind of the meditative alignment of your energy centers, chakras. is the word in Sanskrit religion. So just spent a lot of time talking to him about, you know, his philosophy behind that and, you know, how he views the world. And I would need a lot more than 20 minutes in order to figure out, you know, what possesses a guy to play to he's almost 50 years old and to keep coming back like he has and to not only just come back, but to like, I mean, you go back to the rest point

a couple years ago when Florida makes the playoffs. And the big knock on Yager was he seemed to slow down in the playoffs. And you wonder, you know, what could have a couple games of rest during the season have done, you know, if they pace us. out like some of the NBA teams would do their veterans. But at the same time, good luck telling that guy to rest. Yes. He's somebody who has the key to like every rink he's been in and somehow finds a way to work

out at like midnight. And he's, you know, calling his strength coach out of bed at 2 a.m. saying like, let's go work out. So yeah, I think him, he would be a fascinating one to do for sure. I mean, who have been your, I remember last time you were on, you were telling me about hanging out with Brent Burns and grilling with it. and stuff like that. Like, whoa,

give me some of your other favorite stories you've done in terms of just like the individual characters and personalities you've got to cross paths with in your stories. Yeah, we're going to have to talk again once the flurry, whenever the flurry thing comes out. Hopefully he gets healthy. So he's the answer to this question then? He's a answer.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I have a great appreciation for guys who just were willing to spend time because, you know, I'm just a dude, right? Like,

I come in and I drop in for a couple days and, maybe they've met me, maybe they haven't, and you know, you kind of have to forge a relationship pretty quick. So, you know, for instance, like after the Stanley Cup final, like, I waited sit out for basically the entire duration of the party that they had afterwards in the

locker of in Nashville and got him for, you know, 10 minutes on the walk to the bus. And, you know, he didn't have to do that. He had the cup with them and he could have, you know, just kind of brush me off, but that was quite kind of him to oblige to an interview under those circumstances. Yeah, yeah, Burns,

Burns for sure. Trying to go back and think of some of the stuff I did last year. Always a treat to chat with Bruce Boudreau. Bruce. Yeah, I remember when we had the interview, it got delayed a little bit because he really needed some chocolate. And he was like going around. And this was, do you remember right after their, like, it was when their losing streak happened and they weren't doing so hot in Minnesota last year, kind of late in like March. And he has a guy in Hershey, who we knows from when he was coaching the Hershey Bears there, and he still has a home there, who just, like, sends him boxes of chocolate all the time because he knows he loves it.

And the guy stopped sending him chocolate because they were losing and he didn't want to, like, you know, upset Bruce or anything. You know, say like, here's a gift when you're doing poorly. So Bruce was a little, yeah, he had to go and find. So I assume the shipments have started up again. But, you know, listening to some of his stories, that guy could talk forever. I mean, Wayne Gretzky idolized him for goodness sakes. Yeah. That's a pretty impressive one.

Spending a lot of time in Nashville was great. The same story that I did with Stamcoast, it was like Elliot Friedman's awesome story. It was framed around that one day in July when the world exploded, or the hockey world exploded at least. So I had a chance to just spend some time with P.K., right when he had moved in to Nashville.

And again, you know, just hanging out, riding in the car with him as he's, you know, going to do his physical and going here, there. It's, yeah, you get a nice glimpse into guys' lives outside the rink. And that's, that is a big luxury I have is I have the platform to be able to drop into these situations. And, you know, I guess get some access that makes the beat folks hate me, I'm assuming. Or be like, why is, why does this guy get to just drop in and do this? But, you know, hopefully the product justifies it, I suppose. Well, I think it definitely does. And listen,

I don't want to, you know, blow smoke here. But I think, something the league desperately is in need of and struggles with is sort of letting fans know about some of these personalities and really kind of, you know, get just, just advertising the league that way because there are such interesting characters in this league. But instead, you know, sometimes it gets portrayed as kind of more of a workman-like business, business-like thing where the team is more important. It's not about one individual. But so it's kind of cool to get a look behind the scenes at some of the guys that are in that NHL. Yeah, and that's the age old issue, I think, right?

In terms of visibility that, you know, arguably the biggest American hockey star in history is, you know, he's up in Toronto, but I don't know if the average sports fan, not hockey fan in the U.S. would be able to, like, pick him out of the lineup. I'm not sure. Emily Kaplan and ESPN wrote about that a little bit today. That, you know, you're not like seeing him in advertisements in America. Right. Even in Canada, Toronto has that, you know, rookie. media policy with under Lou that, you know, makes it difficult to promote some of these young guys. But, I mean, the generation is here, right?

Like, I mean, we have line A is a fantastic quote. I think Austin, there's definitely some personality there. Johnny Gujarro, I've enjoyed every chat I've had with him. And I think he's a fantastic story. So even north of the border, I mean, the excitement, and they all play, they're all fun to watch, right? Like, how many of those teams at the top of your watchability rankings had young talent on them? It was driven by just, I'm going to turn on this TV because I don't know if Connor McDavid is going to start at, you know, one goal line and outrace everyone to the other end. Right.

And no one's going to even sniff him. And that's the possibility of some of these young guys. But at the same time, it is, it is very hard to pull some of the personality out of it. I'm not sure, you know, how much of that is, you know, on the team level, as far as promotion, how much of that is just an institutional thing. how much of that is, you know, necessarily on the league as a whole or the culture that just just has existed in hockey for generations and no one wants to break it. But when people do, when, you know, you get a Sagan or a Suban or a Burns or, I don't know, whoever, that it's, it makes for good stories. It makes for good quotes. It makes for good promotion of a sport that I think

everyone wants to see do well. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of probably all the above in terms of what's responsible for it. All right. I think we did everything we wanted to hear. Wait, what's the vibe like in Washington right now with the Capitals? Oh, thank goodness you said the Capitals. You know, I admittedly haven't been around them as much as I normally have over the past three years just because I've been traveling more.

Part of me says, why not them? just because, you know, Pittsburgh's coming off two incredible long runs. They're due at some point, right? I do think that they may be able to benefit from lower expectations from not being the President's trophy winning team. Of course, they're going to have to reconcile some of that, depending on who they face in the playoffs, especially they get matched up again with Pittsburgh in the second round.

But at the same time, I mean, the attitude is going to be great. Whatever you do is fine. Just show up in May. And, you know, the nationals not getting over that home probably didn't help a little bit. And it's all just wrapped up in the history and kind of the heartbreak that fans had to go through here. To that end, I mean, they clearly lost a lot. And, you know, I'm not sure whether the O'Hanson thing in particular was avoidable. It seemed like they felt backed into a corner with his Nets off contract and the threat that he made to go to the KHL.

but I think you could maybe you could probably quibble over the eight years for Oshy but probably no I mean you could but I think that was probably a necessary thing that they had to do or they felt like they should do and you know the back end like how many players are going to get to the end of that

anyway yeah and once we get to that point you know what vetchkin and Baxter are going to be at the end of their deals as well or their deals I believe are already going to be expired so it's going to be an entirely new group I mean, the window remains open. It's a little bit more shut than when they had some of the guys like Chatton Kirk and Schmidt and Justin Williams and Marcus Johansson.

Because that's off, continues to play like he has. I think they've had great chemistry on that line with him of Etchkin and Verana. And ditto with Baxter, Oshamoshi and Verkovsky. They're nowhere near as deep in the bottom six as they've been in the past. So they're going to need, you know, they're going to need seasons, and especially playoffs from guys like Tom Wilson and Brett Connolly. people that they're banking on to round it out because, I mean, that's, that's been their issue in the past. I think is secondary scoring.

Yep. And, you know, in push comes to shove, that's, that is what you need in the playoffs. Unless you're just Pittsburgh, unless you're Pittsburgh last year, and you can out opportunistic everyone and rely on 71 and 87. I'm not, I'm not necessarily sure if the caps can play that way. I don't know if they've demonstrated themselves playing that way, being able to play that way under Barry Trots. But there's certainly a foundationally solid team that has. consistently put up great seasons under him over the past couple years. And there's no reason to suggest that they can't at least be in the hunt again, right?

Well, that's the thing. That's all you can really ask for. And like, listen, no one was more critical the summer they had and some of the moves they made. But then you start the season, you start playing the games and you are kind of reminded like, oh, yeah, Ovechkin and Baxter and Kuznetsov are very, very good. And as long as you have those guys, you have a fighting chance. And I would just urge people to enjoy the ride and the journey here without. Alex Lovetchkin because like whenever it's amazing to me.

Sometimes the feedback you get when you mention just the lofty heights he's reached in terms of goal scoring and some of the stuff he's doing right now. And then, you know, a common refrain you get is, oh, wake me up in May when it's the playoffs. And it's like, come on. Like, all right, I understand why people play such an importance on a playoff success. And that is ultimately what everyone is playing for. But I think we can also appreciate this guy that's doing these amazing things right now

because it's not going to last forever. And I don't want to be. looking back at it, nostalgically, I want to kind of enjoy it now while it's still going on. He strikes me, it strikes me that he's getting his shot off

a little quicker this year. I don't know if you've watched as much caps. Yeah. But it strikes me like a couple of those goals he had early. Like he was turning around and maybe last year he would have been tried to like tee it up and aim a little wrist shot there and someone gets stick on puck

and it gets deflected. But it seems like he's just letting it fly. And like a lot of that is just sheer goal scoring ability. So I agree with you that, you know, I've been, I'm on the train of let's enjoy this generational goal score while we can, this guy who, you know,

he plays unlike anyone else in the league. He skates like anyone else in the league. And, yeah, while he's here, let's enjoy it. But I don't think that's, yeah, I don't think that's mutually exclusive to, talking about their playoff. Yes. Their playoff shortcomings.

Well, that's a good point on his shot. That's something I would definitely, I'm going to look for more closely and urge everyone too as well, because as good of a shot as he has, like goalies are getting so good these days that if they know it's coming and they can square up that shot they're probably going to stop it unless it's just the absolute perfect attempt on your part and you know that's something we hear a lot about guys like philip forsberg and austin matthews is

they're sort of just so unpredictable and they shoot the puck because they shoot it at weird times and from different angles and you kind of can't prepare yourself for it and expect it as a goalie and if he has added that little wrinkle to his game then that's going to be a potentially even more dangerous uh thing for him as a goal scorer So I'm looking forward to seeing if that's actually a thing that's going on right now. I think it's pretty clear that the regression talk about him was maybe a little premature. But when you looked at it as year last year, I think some of it was deserved for sure. Some of it was shooting percentage and puck luck. But I think there were definitely questions about how he could rebound from that,

especially given the morale hit that that Pittsburgh series did to that team and that they're clearly still getting over and that they openly talk about, especially for data management. Yeah. All right. Well, Alex, do you want to plug anything in terms of stuff you're working on or what's coming out other than the Flurry and Tave's stories you've already alluded to? Like, what are you up to these days? Yeah, that's about it.

Yeah. Just, you know, plugging away. Yeah, I mentioned I'm working on an esports thing as well. I'm not sure when that's coming out. But I would urge everyone to keep listening to the PDO cast and sorry for my ramblings. Hey man, it's always fun to chat with you. And I think this is your third appearance, which puts you in some pretty elite company. I think there's probably only like a handful of people that have that have been on that often.

So that's, uh, that's something. Very undeserved it. But I will accept my certificate in the mail. I think everyone enjoys story time with Alex Pruitt. And we will, uh, we'll make sure to have you back on as the year goes along after you bang out some more of these interesting profiles. And we'll chat then. Always great talking to you, bud. All right.

with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.