The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 242: Trader John's

Episode Date: June 20, 2018

Cat Silverman joins the show to discuss the Coyotes late season surge and trendy sleeper status heading into next year (0:49), the Max Domi for Alex Galchenyuk trade (11:25), John Chayka's aggressiveness and team building philosophies (21:40), potential Philipp Grubauer landing spots (28:45), and what Bill Peters' system means for the Hurricanes and Flames moving forward (36:15). 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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And joining me's Katzoran. And Kat, what's going on? Not much. How are you? I'm good. I'm excited. It's a full podcast. I mean, we'll talk about goalie stuff, obviously, because that's your bread and

butter, but it's going to be mostly a full podcast devoted to Arizona Coyotes. So I hope that, you know, what, we already have everyone's clicks because everyone's already downloaded and they're listening right now. So hopefully they stick around with us. I know it's not necessarily the sexiest topic. I think it kind of is, though. I feel like people want to hear about the Coyotes. They just don't want to hear good things about the Coyotes necessarily.

they're hurting sometimes. The thing is, I do feel like, and this might just be sort of, because Twitter can sometimes be a bit of an echo chamber where you generally follow people with similar opinions and stuff like that. But I feel like from what I saw as the kind of year was coming to a close, you know, they went, what, like, I have written down it. Yeah, they went 17, 9 and 3 over the final two months. Like they were playing much better.

They were one of the hottest teams in the league. And it did feel like they sort of got labeled as like the trendy sleeper pick heading into next year. And obviously now with his trend. trade most people favor them for that and there's still some moves ahead and we'll see how the roster shake out but i feel like you know when everyone's doing their season previews in september and everyone's doing projections i feel like people are generally going to have the consensus opinion of being like oh can can we squeeze their arizona into the playoffs here or are

they just going to be one of those frisky teams that that is competitive but ultimately misses out i think it's funny because uh i feel like a lot of people did that last year too and um and then obviously they they went on that like historic losing streak which I got to witness live in firsthand. And it was funny because they didn't look like they were losing 11 straight games. They looked like not a middle of the pack team, but like a middle of the lottery pick pack team. They kept coming really close to winning games and then coming up with like a really new and creative way. Usually Louis Duming allowing like three in the final period to lose the game.

They'd be leading for like two and a half periods and then they lose. So when they like finally put it all together, they didn't look super different from how they did at the start of the year. But I think a lot of people had them like right when the season started. They were like, this team could be really good. And they were like, oh, they're really bad. Well, it's weird because in the summer, right, they obviously made a bunch of moves. And they added a bunch of guys that people generally believe were going to make their team better. Like regardless of your opinion, it was like, oh, these guys are all like legitimate NHLers.

And this team could use more of that. and they started off the year with that historic losing streak, and I wonder, like, how much of that do you think can be chalked up to just the fact that Antiranta got injured right out of the gate, and they got pretty subpar goaltending from the other guys, and how much of that is, like, young guys improving or is some natural regression? Because their underlying numbers as a team did improve quite a bit. Like, obviously, the wins are one thing, but it was weird that at the start of the year, their general kind of performance from top to bottom was so underwhelming, and it did,

the ship did get rid of a little bit a little bit obviously it was too a little too late but it is one of i'm just trying to figure out like heading into next year how much of that is actually repeatable and how much of that how much can we glean from that as opposed to just being one of those things where the year's already done and then maybe they're just playing a bit freer and it's going to be sort of a blip on the radar uh i think at least part of it because ranta was obviously huge i mean their goal tending was bad and i i liked louis duoming i was in his corner for two years there I was like, oh, he starts off slow, he gets better, he's finally going to put it together, and he just, he didn't do it last year.

That was the third year in a row that he started that slowly. But it wasn't just Ranta who was out. They lost Jalmersen for a good chunk of time right around November, December. They lost Jason Demares for a little period of time. I believe they lost Alex Golgoski for a period of time as well. He spent, I believe it was a good portion of the year, hurt in some way or another. They respected his numbers. So Dickrin, other than OEL, he's buying away their best defenseman.

He's so good to watch. And so losing him before the season even started, like he got hurt when he was training in the offseason. He kept posting these YouTube videos of himself doing like eight foot box jumps. And then we heard that he'd like just blown his knee out doing training. And so he was out for what, like three or four months. And that was a huge hit. So I think that was a big part of it.

Obviously OEL lost his mom. at the end of last season, like right in the last month there, he played through it for a while. Finally, when the team was, it was very clear that they weren't going to be going anywhere. He took a leave of absence. He left the team before the season was even over to go back for her funeral. I think that carried over a little bit into the following season. You know, it was his first year starting off without his mom watching all of his games, all that good stuff. So he obviously was a little different on the ice, maybe a little different off the ice.

I don't want to speak to his presence in the locker room, his presence, his state of being on the ice. But I think that affected it a little bit. Obviously, you know, you had Clayton Keller, who was brand new. You had Derek Stefan figuring out how to work into that lineup. You didn't have Shane Done, which I know some people loved him, some people hated him. but he'd been that centering presence year after year, and all of a sudden the guy who's been there for 20 years isn't on the team at all anymore.

I think that probably took some adjusting. Rick Tocket plays a very forward-moving system. Dave Tippett had a lot of backwards skating. He liked their goaltenders to play the puck. Rick Tocket likes the defense to retrieve the puck, have the goaltender stay in the crease. So there were a lot of adjustments that were being made right at the start of the year. So I think

Honestly I mean obviously Players get hurt throughout the season And that'll be the real test as if they can Survive the injuries next year because they didn't this year But I think if they're healthy to start the season They don't lose 11 straight I don't think they lose half their games Right well especially and it does feel like

I mean you don't want to oversimplify But obviously you know the goaltending position is so vital in this league And it does feel like that sleeper status for them will be predicated on whether they can sort of bank on anti-Ranta to kind of give them something he's never really shown at any level before just in terms of workload. I mean, like last year he started 46 games, played in 47 of them, and that was, I believe the most he's ever played at any level as a pro. And, you know, if, I don't know if he's necessarily expected, you're going to get a 9-30

percentage from him, but, like, they definitely need something closer to around 60 games on them. And I don't know, like, how much workload-wise for goalies, how much is that something that you look at and how much of it do you think is sometimes overblown? I think workload, to an extent, can get overblown. I think that 60 should be the ceiling, not just for him, but for most goaltenders across the league. I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that this year, the two goaltenders that made it the

farthest in the playoffs were Mark Andre Fleury, who missed a chunk of the season. So he only played, I believe. if it was one game more than Ranta, it was within a game or two of him. So he was in that 47, 48 game range. And then Braden Holby, who obviously towards the end of the season, he was looking gas. He was looking bad. They played Grubauer for the lion's share of the starts. They're down the back stretch.

And then like Grubauer start the playoffs. And once he started to struggle, you know, a game or two in there, that's when they put in Holpby. So I think he was well-rested, too. This whole playing guys, 70, 75 games, I don't think it wins you a cup. So if they can hit a 60 game ceiling for Rompter, maybe more like 55 to 60, I think that's optimal. And he's never hit that before, but he's had a 45 game season. I believe it was in Liga, so it was in Finland.

He had 943 save percentage that year. He's got pretty consistent numbers throughout his career. We just, like you said, need to see that workload. It'll be whether or not they can get a quality backup, which Kemper took a little bit to adjust there. He had some good things to say at the end of the season about what he'd talked about with Corey Schwab in terms of his video looking at how his game was behind the coyotes. But I don't know how well he'll be able to play season to season because I sure was a little bit of an anomaly for him with the Kings. yeah no and you know that sort of trend you mentioned there with with goalie workload and how it translates into postseason success i mean that's not even a new thing right like we've

seen that for years now it's just a matter of um with how tight things are with a loser point like i understand why most teams are hesitant to uh give their starter that many nights off they want to try and win all those games but yeah you're right that the key is finding that reliable backup and there's no excuse not to i mean it does feel like there's like bunch of these backups just keep kind of being recycled and being passed around the league and maybe teams are more reluctant to give young guys that job because it requires a lot of sitting on the bench and not necessarily getting the reps playing in that. So I know there's a bunch of obviously factors there to consider, but it all does boil. I mean, it's crazy. Like you look at those

numbers and he had a round out of 930s, say percentage in those 47 games. The five other coyote's goalies had an 888% in the other 36. It's when you chalk up, when you look at that season as a whole, you can really kind of just slice it into those two halves. Yeah, that's that pretty much sums it up right there. But that's how the Coyotes have been over the last few years. They've had trouble finding that consistent number two, which I think had something to do with how much they lived and died by Mike Smith, not just on the ice,

but in terms of how when Dave Tippett was in charge, how he talked about the goaltenders. I know when Doming was the backup for him. I think it was two years ago. Doming would play a bad game. They'd yank him. He'd get 10 games off. Mike Smith would have a bad game and he'd get three or four to write the ship.

So he was very clearly, you know, the guy that they relied on. Maybe the team sort of learned to play that way to sort of defer to their starter. I know that they definitely played a very different game in front of their backups versus how they played in front of Smith. I didn't notice it as much this year, but I think there was just. a lot of chaos anyway so we'll have to see whether or not once they settle down the goaltenders can settle down as well because i think some of that was you know that 899 that was kepper he was the highest of the one two three four god they went through poor backups last year um yeah well five have you count that one uh merrick langhammer appearance hey he he stopped every shot he faced

that's a good safe percentage right they could use more of that yeah it's right um well let's talk a bit this trade that happened last week. I haven't had a chance to talk about it in the show yet. And it's interesting because, you know, going back to the trade deadline this past year, I remember all the outlets were listing Max Doomy and you're the top of their trade bait boards. And I just remember at the time I thought that wasn't a realistic outcome because I just felt that the coyotes were, you know, too smart of an organization to sell low on a guy when he was shooting five or six percent or whatever he was at the time and what he wound up with. And now, I mean, We just know that kind of league-wide teams can sometimes get sort of led astray by that

and let a player's value sink just because he's not getting the bounces. But I never really even consider that this type of deal was in play or that, you know, a team like the Canadians would jump in and pay full price for it. So I don't know. Like when you, when this trade was announced, what was your initial reaction to it? I was surprised by the team that they traded with. I was not surprised that Chega got what he did. I know that they'd been talking about,

you know, we've been hearing the rumors about Pittsburgh for a while. What I'd been hoping to see was, and obviously we learned today that the coyotes don't want to pay the Phil Kessel price, but I'd wanted to see the coyotes maybe package a higher draft pick with Domi and ship him off for Kessel because that treats a wing for a wing. You get an older player, but you get a guy who you know is going to help you win. Right. And who you know is going to score 30-ish goals versus Domy's had nine.

He had nine last year. I think he had nine. I think four or five of them were on empty netters as well. Yep. He, I believe, one of the big coyotes fans, Clay Collins, had been, he's been scraping a lot of their data over the year. I think he said that 13% of Max Domi's career goals are empty net goals. So that's, I don't think that's sustainable.

it's just a matter of whether he starts scoring on goaltenders or stop scoring altogether. I mean, obviously it's a one-for-one trade, and there's a lot of factors to consider here. I do think it's, you know, it's neat how this sort of the discrepancy between the two players in terms of what they bring to the table and their styles because obviously, you know, incoming for the coyotes, you have a guy in Alice Kalchagnac who's more of a goal score. He scored 30 goals in the league already, and he'll add an interesting dynamic. there for them whereas you know max domi so far at least has been much more of a playmaker and facilitator and as you mentioned has had his woes actually converting those opportunities himself and

then you get into the fact that you know a lot of gal chenegh's production came on the power play where he was much more affected than domi but you wonder how much of that is team effects and how much of that is actual individual talent and we'll obviously see that this year and then there's you know age and cost-controlled years and stuff to consider but it's just you know we'll get into the halbside of this for a second but I think from from the coyote's perspective um I think this can only be viewed as a net positive like I just when you stack up uh the two resumes and the two players involved I my first reaction to it was I was a bit blown away by the fact that this type of a trade was available to them I just as I mentioned I just thought that domi's

value around the league would have sunk so low that I didn't think the Canadians for example would bite this much. I feel like they could have gotten a lot more if they'd really pressed it. I mean, it's the Canadians, so we think that they could get more, but I don't think they thought they could get more. There's always a team out there. Usually it's a Peter Trelli team, but in this case, it was a Mark Rhebun team that is willing to pay like a panic button price. And John Chagas seems to be very good at finding those. And at finding teams. that are willing to just make a move that they're like, oh, we need to make this move. We'll take this deal.

Other people aren't really giving us. You're at least giving us something good because that's kind of what we saw with the Derek Stepan-on-a-Ranta trade. They gave Anthony DiAngelo, who just from an on-ice perspective is good, but had very eyebrow-raising concerns off the ice just with Arizona but with Tampa Bay. so you got a good player at least and you got a high first round pick they were like fine we'll take it and they sent off to of what you could consider arizona's cornerstone players uh i think that's kind of what happened here with montreal they were like you know what you're sending us a good player fine we'll take it because they've

i think they've been how long they've been dangling galtonic it's been it seems like forever it's it's yeah i mean well that and that's the thing like from the canadian's perspective um It just, like, this isn't even an indictment on Max Domi as a player and what they got back in return for, but it does feel like they just did themselves a complete disservice, not just this time, but a lot of their dealings in the past where they, like, went out of their way to really submarine the value of their own asset and then just wound up selling low. Like, you know, if you told someone a year or two ago that this is all they would have gotten after Gowcenax scored 30 goals as such a young age and, you know, came into the league with such a high pedigree, it's just bizarre to me. And then, you know, that's not even considering the fact that for the Canadians, I mean, like, they desperately need centers. And I guess they consider it'll be, it'll be interesting to see what, how the coyotes feel about Galchernic as a player.

Because clearly the reason why Bergerand was so willing to move off of them was because they felt like Galchernic couldn't play down the middle. And I imagine that the coyotes, based on their comments so far and just sort of logic dictating it, that at least early on, they're penciling in Galchernic as that second center behind Derek Stepan. Absolutely. I think it's going to be Steppen, it's going to be Galteniak, then it's going to be Devorak and probably Marcus Kruger. I think that Strome might get shuttled to the wing just to start off the season because he's still such a poor skater at the NHL level. But no, I think it's, like I said, I wasn't surprised by the value the coyotes got. I was surprised by the team just because people, the coyotes have been linked to Montreal for the better part of a year now, I think. you know, it's maybe even going back before that. And people were saying, oh, you know, maybe they'll

look at Dela Rose, maybe they'll look at McCarron. And my initial reaction was those two teams don't make sense to trade with each other because they both have significant struggle, scoring goals. Right. The coyotes had a ton of trouble beyond Clayton Keller's scoring goals. I mean, Derek Stepan, huge playmaker, Max Homi, huge playmaker, Christian Dvorak, to an extent is a huge playmaker. And then Christian Fisher was still at the point where he needed limited minutes and sort of a sheltered easing himself into the game. And on Montreal, really, your goal scoring lived and died by Alex Galtanick and Max

Pataretti. So I was like, there's no way these two teams trade with each other because they both need the same thing. They need centers and they need goal scores. And so I guess Montreal gave up their center goal score. needed it and didn't go in back but that's that's neither here nor there that's that's that's from montrealta to explain nothing yeah that's a that's an interesting gming philosophy there dealing from a position of weakness um yeah i mean you know you mentioned that i believe the coyotes were

like 30th and goals overall last year and the Canadians were 29th and so both teams were pretty much in desperate need of anything they could get and you know it the other part to consider here obviously is, you know, we mentioned that Domi's shooting percentage was super low, and it has been for a while now, and you wonder, you know, how much of that is actual shooting talent and how much of it is something that can be corrected. Whereas with Gail Chenyuk, you know, we had years of data to tell us that he would be at least a league average, if not above league average finisher, and last year basically got sliced in half. So I feel much more comfortable saying that, you know, it seems like a really wise by-low from the coyote's perspective just because I'd imagine that

Galcanyak would get back to his career norms next season. And if he does, that's all of a sudden another 30-goal season, which would be a pretty massive win here for the carries. Even if he doesn't, though, I mean, if you look at it, Domi had nine goals in 2016-17, nine goals in 17-18. And Galcanyag had 17 and 16-17 on limited games because he obviously had that injury in the middle of the season and then came back not quite himself.

And this year, like you said, it was considered a low season for him. He still had 19 goals. If that's where he plateaus with the coyotes, they've added 10 more goals per season, which that's a net positive for them. Even if he doesn't hit that 30 goal margin again, you've just added a guy who you more than doubled your goals per season by adding to him right there. So that's, I mean, you still have step on who can make plays in DeVorak, who can make plays. so it's not like losing domi really takes a hit on your top six if you split those two up um

so you don't need to have another elite playmate or not even elite you don't even need another quality playmaker there as long as you have a finisher which the coyotes beyond uh beyond keller and to an extent brendan perlini kind of didn't yeah well and it's it's it's always curious to me how people position this stuff and the narratives they want to go with but it's like Galchernic at this point is considered, you know, Habs fans I've seen are like, you know, he's a kind of finished product. He is what he is. He's already been in the league for six years or whatever. It's like he's on, whereas Domi is this kind of up and coming, you know, project.

And it's like there's like a one year difference or something like that. I think amongst them age, right? 10 or 11 months apart in age. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that's something else to consider. Although, you know, in the, in the Canadian's defense, obviously, you know, they get two more cost-controlled years of Domi. and he'll be relatively cheaper, but I'm not sure that is enough to outweigh the production drop-off,

especially based on their team needs. But, you know, you mentioned they're not surprised the fact that, you know, Cheika was able to seek out a trade like this and make it happen. And I took a look. I was going through his page on an NHL trade tracker, and, you know, he took over officially as the GM of the Coyotes on April 11, 2016. And in the two years since, he's made 28 trades. according to that website.

And obviously some of them are kind of paper transactions and HL players being moved and sort of, you know, future considerations and stuff like that. But there's also a ton of legitimate ones with moving NHL pieces there. And it's clearly shown that he has a willingness and a propensity to take swings and make trades and try to proactively make this team better as opposed to, you know,

we typically think of rebuilding teams or teams that have won in a long time as, you know, taking the long patient route and building through the draft and they've certainly done some of that themselves but at least under his watch it does feel like based on the past two summers now that that process is being expedited a little bit do you think that's fair to say um i would say so um i know that he he's been making so many trades like you said some of them were paper transactions and future considerations but a lot of them were a hl too which which we saw this year he fast-tracked the roadrunners.

He was willing to trade out some younger guys and add in some of the better goal scores and leaders from around the HL. He brought back in Andrew Campbell, who was a huge leader with the Toronto Marley a couple years ago. He added guys that he knew would help the roadrunners win. So he's been just as busy with them as he has been with the coyotes.

And that's part of it. You know, you see your minor league guys winning, and then you have those guys that are going to become your future NHLers getting used to winning while you're also building up your NHL team, which I think was part of why you didn't see the coyotes doing it as well for a little while there, because their AHL team was bottom of the barrel for a while. They felt to me not outright neglected, but it felt like that was an afterthought. Like they were trying to work so, they were focusing so hard on their rebuild at the NHL level that they kind of let their HL team just come into itself, so to speak. And so I think he's he's trying to fast track things on on every level, really. Right. Yeah, they're building up that organizational depth. Well, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, I'm very interested to see sort of what is to come because, you know, you'll just look at, you know, we assume that OAL extension,

which has been rumored will come into effect. But, you know, other than that, I mean, Dave Boland's contract comes off the books this season. And then other than that, it's like, you know, Gagoski, Stepan, DeMurz and Ranta are the only players signed on beyond 2020. And all four of those guys come off the books the following year. So it does feel like for the most part it is a pretty clean slate. Now, obviously, with this organization, you always have to, you know, factor in the actual budget and sort of the internal cap and how much money they're willing to spend. assuming that this team does continue to be on the upward trajectory and continue to add young talent in its prime like there is there's a window here shaping up that they really could get feisty

beyond just sort of being what they've been the past handful of years i think it's it's going to be a lot of fun um i know that more and more people were watching them towards the end of the season i'd get text while i was sitting in the press box i'm like are you watching the coyotes tonight i was like yes i'm here and you know people from i had flyers fans watching them i had a lot of kinnucks fans that i know were tuning in on their games because it's obviously the same time zone and their team wasn't a ton of fun to watch towards the end of the year um and they were just they were fun and that was part of it was moving out some of those older guys you know like you said it's a clean slate a lot of those guys that had been there kyle chip chura Shane dome uh Zbinik maholic

wonderful guys worked super hard you know they're big part of the reason that the team made it to the western conference final in 2012 but when you lose enough and when you hear enough of the negative press that was coming from outside of the city you know people speculating about the team and asking why these players were sticking around I think it became harder for those guys to play as well as they could just because eventually it's hard I mean we heard it from Taylor Hall when he moved to New Jersey. He was like, I got a fresh start. It became easier to win because I wasn't in that mental situation anymore.

And I think that having this clean slate, you know, you add guys like Jason Demeris, he's a ton of fun. He's constantly tweeting at his teammates. When he was injured, he was live tweeting the games for the coyotes with like 80 exclamation points. You add stuff like that, and the team almost start to winning again just because they believe they can. And adding a bunch of good players will also help to that. That's a big part of it too.

You know, not serious guys. And if they suck, it's not going to help. But, you know. That's true. All right, Kat. Let's take a quick break here from a sponsor, and we will pick up this conversation on the other end of things. Cool.

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Just download the Seeky cap and enter the promo code PDO. That's promo code PDO for $20 off your first Seek purchase. Now let's get back to the show. Okay, that's enough about the coyotes. Let's switch gears here a little bit. While I have you, I want to talk a bit about goalies. And the natural segue here is the sort of the one player that I keep coming back to this summer that I'm really curious to see how it unfolds is Philip Grubauer. And, you know, we've seen this trend over the past, however many years of these guys who typically are playing on good teams as the backup behind a already established as a caliber goalie who thrive in a smaller work.

And then kind of when it comes to their time where either the team can't afford their services anymore or whether they're sort of hitting those peak years and it's time for them to spread their wings a little bit, they become hot candidates for teams that are desperate for a starting goalie to target and try to hope to kind of stretch out in a larger workload and find success there. And we obviously saw that with the coyotes do that with Antironta. And we've seen Camp Talbot and Marty Jones and the list goes on and on the past few years. how viable of a strategy you think that is and in this particular case with gruebauer what do you think of his game do you think he is one of those guys that could potentially be that for a team or do you think what he is right now is kind of what you're going to get uh i think it's i think it's possible um i am not as confident with him as i was with ranta um just based on consistency levels and you know

know, Ronto over the last like three or four years had done remarkably well in consistency, like in terms of quality start percentage. Drew Bauer's first year really is the backup. 2015-16, he had a 438 quality start percentage, even though he had a 918 save percentage. So that sort of suggests that he had a really good start and then really tapered off, or he was really inconsistent and had great games balanced out by terrible ones. He's sort of leveled out a little bit

in the last two years. He's done really well, but I know that I think pretty much any team that has space to sign a backup for, or a starter for any kind of money is kind of inquiring after him right now. I know that even, like, not to circle back to Arizona,

but I know that even the coyotes have been, from what I've heard, testing the waters on what it would take together, at him. If you swapped him and Kemper, you signed him to a bigger backup deal. You could do that. You know, 55 game starts for Ranta and add him as the backup. There are a couple other teams that could do something like that. I know that Chicago has been at least considering it. I don't know if they have the cap space. I don't know if they want to give up on Anton Forsberg yet. I know the media wants them too, but from what I've heard with him.

in the organization, he did his best behind a very bad defense. I mean, Scott Foster made it look pretty easy. That was the most fun I've had watching a game in years. Honestly, that was really cool. But no, they were bad this year. They were really bad. And I don't know how Grubauer would do behind teams like that, just because we've never really seen that from him.

Yeah, well, the Islanders are obviously a natural. landing spot for him as well based on all the offensive talent they have and the goaltending struggles and the fact that you know halak is a free agent now and grace is under contract but he really took a massive step back this year so like you know those ties have been um kind of circled between those two but yeah if you're concerned about uh the chicago black hawks defensive structure in front of him uh i imagine the islanders aren't a much better fit either that's that's part of the problem is i mean Thomas grace and philip grubauer just if you put the two goaltenders side by side and they're both they're similar guys you know

they've had similar career trajectories they're both big key parts of team germany um i know that people were saying oh grubauer is the reason they made it to the olympics thomas grace is part of the reason that they've become such an established team that's he's helped them hold their own over the past handful of years in the world championships um so you know if he couldn't even hit, did he end up hitting a 900 safe percentage with them this past year? If he can't do that, I don't know if anybody short of a Vez and a candidate can. And that's kind of what I said about the Blackhawks is anybody short of Corey Crawford would have struggled last year. Right.

I think anybody short of Cory Crawford or Henrik Lenquist would have struggled with the Islanders too. So I don't know if adding Gruberauer immediately fixes what's wrong there. I think you have to fix what's in front of them to get that goaltending. Obviously, the goaltender, you know, the buck stops there. They have to make the save. But if the team in front of them is giving them no breathing room, no break, you know, if it's just relentless, high danger shots, it's their own teammates screening them, their own teammates closing in on the crease, you know,

giving them minimal room to move around, lowered sight lines. there's only so much the goaltender can do, especially if they're not someone who's used to playing a confident, you know, 60 game season. Yeah, no, definitely. Well, okay, so what other, are there any particular goalie situations, whether it's the individual player themselves or the, you know,

a team that you're sort of monitoring this summer or heading into next season that, you know, is interesting for a variety of reasons, whether it's you're expecting an optic in performance or whether it's like this team desperately needs to do something because it's not a viable option to just go back to what they were doing last year. I think in terms of the team needs to make a change, I would say that would be Edmonton. And I love Cam Talbot.

I think he normally has a very good game. I thought last year at times he did not look like he had a good game. Like I said there is sometimes where you look at the team and you're like, man, that team's giving their goaltender no chance. and to an extent that was definitely Edmonton but there were times where he also looked bad it was like he eventually just got kind of gassed the team didn't give him any break to sort of collect himself and get back to where he should be and he was I mean he was setting off angle he was positioning himself where he was squared to the shooter instead of the puck so he was like two or three inches off

where he should have been puck would go clean in the net short side it was it was tough to watch so I don't know if he just needs a summer off. I don't know if they need to bring in a backup that can give him lowered starts for a season just to get that break if they need someone. Because part of it was, you know, he didn't have a confident backup behind him that if he had a rough game, someone could come in and take, just get past. It's difficult to play, you know. So they haven't had that experience. So I don't know if they need to do that. but I think how they used him in 2016-17.

It was borderline malpractice. So I'd say, yeah, not doing that again would probably be a good way to go about doing their business. Yeah, I mean, like the team I keep coming back to is the hurricanes. And obviously now I know you want to talk a bit about Bill Peters, but now they're switched coaches. I guess we'll see how much of that was him in the system and how much of it was actual goal-tending talent itself. because obviously for years now, similar to kind of what happened with the Jets, we've been waiting, we like the talent, we like the organization, we like all the pieces up front, but then the goaltending just completely submarines them and doesn't allow them

to live up to that potential that we always believe they have. And then we saw this year how shoring everything up in front of them and then actually getting the goalie performance itself from Connor Halebock, what the wonders that did for the Winnipeg Jets is the franchise. And obviously for the hurricanes, you know, they made that. investment in Scott Darling based on a very limited sample size kind of like some of the guys we've been talking about just now and they're still I guess holding out hope that he can be that guy for them and whether that's possible and whether just changing things up from a coaching perspective like

there's been something funky going on there because even beyond Scott Darling uh there's been goalies in the past where it's like it seems like you just go to Carolina and there's this weird mismatch between um you know the expected goals rates and what's actually happening and I'm I just don't know what to chalk that up to you. I don't want to, like, I don't want to explicitly chalk it up to Bill Peters because. But you're about to. I might be about to. I didn't realize it at first until some of my friends in Carolina pointed out,

they said, take a look at when Anton Hadobin first had his bad season in Carolina. And so I took a look and I was like, okay, it was 14, 15. And they said, look at who the head coach was. And I was like, oh, it was Bill Peters. And they said, look who the head coach was the year before. And I was like, oh, it was not Bill Peters. So every year that Bill Peters was the head coach for Carolina, all of their goaltenders were bad. Just all of them.

I mean, Houdobin struggled with them. Cam Ward has kind of always struggled. And for the first few years there, you know, 14, 15, 16, and 17, I almost pegged it up to their goaltending coach, David Markoo. And I was like, oh, you know, maybe he's the problem. because he came in at the same time as Bill Peters. But then he left this past year and Mike Bales came in. And he's the guy who really turned Mark Andre Fleury around in Pittsburgh.

And even he couldn't do anything. You know, this year, Eddie Lack left. He'd been very good in Vancouver and then was very bad in Carolina. So they brought in Scott Darling and the same thing happened, but with a different goaltending coach. So at some point, it has to be a systems thing. and we saw it we even saw it for team Canada this year um i mean darcy kemper and carter hudden are both career backups but they both had really good seasons like darcy kemper had like

a 925 collectively between arizona and l a carter hudden had like or no it was curtis mccalini yeah and then michael d pietro was the third goalie and and i believe he didn't play at all correct um macklaney had what was it 9 930 940, something like that in Toronto with a limited sample size, but he still had a good season. And both of them looked like they were just struggling. And obviously Canada struggled immensely at Worlds this year. I don't think they even meddled. And so at some point, you have to consider that it was a system thing.

And it's the way that the coach is deploying the team in front of them. So we'll see if that happens in Calgary this year, which I think is going to be probably one of the, either the most fun or the most cringeworthy thing to watch because Mike Smith does not shy back from giving his opinion. He's been known to speak his mind when things are not going the way he believes they should be. Obviously, when he got traded to Calgary, he had his infamous quote of a, I can't wait to pass to teammates who can score. And so, you know, a guy who is willing to say that, you know, willing to allude to the struggles of his prior team, I think if things start to go wrong in Calgary, he will let us know. Yes. Which is funny, but it also could be. I mean, that's another team.

Like you said, the Jets and the Hurricanes, that's another team that keeps getting the talent. I mean, their blue line should be doing remarkably well. And they just haven't gotten there. Which is weird because, you know, Mike Smith was, he exceeded my expectations last year for them. And obviously he got hurt there a bit and their season took a bit of a downturn. But, you know, for the most part, he was, especially early on when it felt like their defense was giving up a lot in front of him. He was really holding his own and he did better than I thought he would. and they still, you know, they got all these great performances from all their top players

and their depth really let them down and they ultimately didn't make the playoffs, which was a massive disappointment considering the fact that they had traded away their first round pick. So yeah, you're right. I mean, it's, they have a lot invested in this group and changing the coach. I imagine they're thinking that that's going to make a big difference, but it could potentially have these sort of adverse effects that maybe they didn't even consider. I think it definitely could. I think that we, I don't know if we're going to head into the season with the goaltending duo that we have right now, which I believe is David Ridditch next year.

I think he's the only other one that they really have in their system. And then Mike Smith, if there's a team that's going to add someone this year, other than, you know, the obvious the islanders, the hurricanes, I think the flames might look to add a number two. So they could be a potential Thomas Grace landing, or not Thomas Grace, Philip Grubauer, landing spot. But like you said, I mean, towards the end of the year there, Mike Smith did take a significant downturn in his numbers. When he came back from injury, he lost something like six or seven straight games, which is what ultimately pulled them out of the playoffs.

Right. But it wasn't entirely his fault because when he got back, they were already losing games. So he just sort of, he didn't pull them out of their nose dive, but they had started the nose dive before he got healthy again. So I don't know what's going on there. They have Dougie Hamilton. They have T.J. Brody. They have Johnny Godreau, Sean Monaghan.

They have Michael Backland, for God's sake. I mean, if you can't put up a consistent 82 game season with those guys, I don't know what you're doing. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to follow. All right, Kat. We're going to get out of here. Plug some stuff. What are you working on these days?

I know you're doing a big draft thing for the athletic. tell the listeners about that and then where they can find you online as well cool i'm a i believe it's coming out within the next day or two i have a uh sort of scouting breakdown on the top ten guys we we can expect to see goal tending wise at the draft on friday and saturday um which i will be there so i'll have a couple things from the draft coming out uh i've got some stuff coming out for the athletic calgary um kind of alluded to that here with the mike smith chat we'll be looking at that a little bit more closely. A couple other things. I've got some stuff for Detroit. I've got some stuff for a couple other teams looking at some of their prospects, talking to some of their

goaltenders, and I will be at the GGSU Legends camp right after the draft. That's the one that Garrett Spark started back in the day. I will be shadowing them in Austin, and we should have stuff on that up in goal magazine where we always have fun stuff over the summer. So, so yeah, that's what we've got coming up. Awesome. Well, I'm looking for it. Sounds great. And I'm glad we finally got to do this. Yeah, we'll see how some of this stuff unfolds, and I'm sure we'll get you back on the show sometime down the road. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Have a good one, Kat. You too. The Hockey PDO cast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud

at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.