The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 252: Blood in the Water

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

Jonathan Willis joins the show to dissect the Erik Karlsson trade, the Max Pacioretty trade, and the lasting effect the moves we've seen this summer will have on a suddenly much improved Pacific Division. Topics discussed in this episode include: 1:30 Life after Erik Karlsson in Ottawa 32:00 The Sharks going all-in with this group 54:40 Trying to figure out what Montreal's plan is 1:07:20 The outlook for the Golden Knights in Year 2 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.

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

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And joining me is his old reliable Jonathan Willis. Jonathan, what's going on, man? Hey, Dimitri. Always fun to do the show with you. Yeah, it really feels like hockey season's back on the horizon. I think the last time you and I chatted was we did our entry draft preview back in June. So we're kind of bookending the end of the season and the start of the season here. And we've got a lot to discuss on today's show, so I'm really excited to have you back on.

Yeah, it's, you know, I'm just thrilled to do this sort of stuff. It's one of those things that tells me hockey season is about to start. And summer has been too long. Well, and here's the fun thing. We have a couple of a couple of trades to discuss on today's show, which is pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, how often do you have actual news to talk about at this time of year? And not, I mean, there's always a team news, but big blockbuster trades. This is, this is exciting.

Yeah, some actual important players that are moving the needle and are worth discussing. And we're going to talk about the Max Patch Ready trade in a second here. I know it probably, I was telling you before. we started recording it probably feels like it happened a long time ago and i feel like i i guess it has been about 10 days ago or so here since the trade went down but uh we haven't had a chance to discuss on the pdo cast yet so we're going to get into all of that but first we got to talk about this carlson trade um so for those that somehow missed it that have uh not been online i guess and haven't been following along uh the senators got back and i'm going to list off a medley of assets here

and i think the ottawa senators it's really important they want their fan base to know that they got at least six assets back in return here. Josh Norris, a 2017 first round pick, who actually seems like a pretty interesting prospect. Chris Tierney, who at this point of his career, I think it's safe to say as sort of a bottom six type. I think he's already 24, 25 years old. Rudolph Balcers, who is a former fifth round pick, I believe, but I actually had really intriguing H.L numbers this past season. It might be a bit of a player for Ottawa.

Dylan DeMello, who Ottawa seems to be talking up. even though he was an unrestricted free agent for a week after the sharks chose not to qualify him this summer. And then a 2019 second rounder, and they couldn't even get the first because that trade is, that pick is going to go back to Buffalo for the VanderKane trade. And then I think what's going to wind up being a 2020 first and then a couple conditionals based on if he signs with the sharks, if the sharks make the Stanley Cup final, if they wind up trading him this season to an Eastern Conference team. So we're not going to include any of those.

Anyways, the summary is the Ottawa Senator's got a bunch of assets back. I guess the major sticking point here is that none of them really seem to be premium assets that really move the needle for them in any discernible way moving forward. Yeah, I think that's exactly the – well, and you know what? Anybody who just listened to that litany of return or who saw it at the time kind of knew instantly. When one guy gets traded for six guy, Six guys, your spider sense should just be blaring in your head.

You should be unable to do anything else. But hear this loud siren telling you that somebody just got fleeced. Well, here's the counterpoint. And I completely agree. Usually, you know, you're trading a shiny dollar for a bunch of different smaller coins. But what about last year when we saw the Colorado Avalanche, what they got back for Matthew Shane? I guess at the time, I mean, people were definitely more optimistic about that return. to begin with. It felt like even like a Samuel Gerard type if the Ottawa senators were getting

that type of player back in this trade, all of a sudden you'd be like, oh, well, I could see a path where that guy could be a difference-making defenseman for them in their regular NHL lineup. But, you know, that combination of assets and picks and prospects and stuff that Colorado Avalanche got now in hindsight looks like, you know, you're like, wow, I can't believe they got that many great things in return for this one player. Yeah, that's, that is absolutely fair. And I think the difference he's, and I think the difference here is that Eric Carlson is not Matt Duchenne. Part of that's contractual, right?

Like, the contract situation that San Jose is inheriting here is not nearly as pleasant as the one Ottawa is inheriting, although as anybody who follows the senators knows that that Matt Dushain contract is running out soon, too. So, but I don't know. it's like Norris has got to be the guy that they're hanging this trade around right yeah or I mean they're just trying to you know rope their fans in with false hope about these future picks you know oh if if this all comes together and maybe they even wind up

getting that 2021 first or second if the sharks make a run here this season and he and Carlson likes it and he stays in San Jose all of a sudden you can you know you can sort of position this trade as well we got two future first and we got a second and we got a couple different prospects and josh norris was a former first so all of a sudden hey look we got three first round picks for a guy that was going to leave anyways so you know there's certainly this volume of assets allows the senators to position this trade and spin it in a way to you know a certain probably large segment of their fan base that might not be following this as closely and thinking about it as critically but when you really parse through it and kind of go one by one

It's really eyebrow-raising because, I mean, like, if you told me that this trade was going to happen and the sharks wouldn't have to give up, you know, I'd understand their hesitancy to give up Tim O'Meyer, but if you told me that Ottawa couldn't even pry a Tomas hurdle from San Jose in this trade, I'd be stunned that Doug Wilson will be able to pull off a trade like this. You know what? This trade is one of those trades that you kind of go, oh, the senators must have offloaded Bobby Ryan at the same time. Right. except that they didn't. And maybe, you know, maybe the biggest part of the problem with the idea that you've presented about spinning this is, you know, we got three first round picks or whatever is because you need to have a certain level of credibility to do the spinning.

And, you know, maybe the hockey world as a whole wouldn't be so knee-jerk against this if the Ottawa senators themselves had more credibility. So, you know, this kind of, this trade is kind of bookended by two fairly big video gaffes involving the senators that wonderful freakish i don't even know how to describe it never seen anything before like it don't even hope to see anything like it again eugene melnick interview excuse me and the uh the general manager pierre doryon being interviewed on sports net and and and being asked you know what what are you optimistic about about your team and just giving them sort of the thousand yards stare for for five or six seconds there and and and you put those together

and you kind of go, okay, so this is a gong show. The whole team is a mess. The team's a, and for, you know, the Melnik out hashtag, all the rest of it, this isn't a team that can credibly say, you know what, we're doing things right. We're launching a proper rebuild and we maximized our asset haul for Carlson. And I think the real selling point on that is the trade itself, the conditional pick in which the Ottawa senators will receive. a fourth, count them for first round picks, if the sharks trade Carlson back to the Eastern conference this season.

Like, I mean, the trade itself, like, you know, you might be able to sell me on some of it, but that was just a poison pill for me. And for anybody, I think, in terms of assessing the credibility of this trade, because if you're trading Eric Carlson, you are a rebuilding team. Like, there's no ifs, sands or butts about it. You're in a rebuild. So why on earth do you care if he plays a few months in the Eastern Conference? Isn't that good for you?

Because if he drives your team down in some infinitesimal way, guess what? You're getting a better draft pick. Oh, right, that's been traded to Colorado. And that's the point, because we all know what the reason is. And the reason is you don't want to be embarrassed by having to see Eric Carlson in your arena more than one time next year. And because the Ottawa senators are such a laughing stock, I think this trade, which, you know, is very sketchy to begin with.

Whenever you collect a bunch of third liners for a franchise defenseman, it's sketchy. And it looks sketchier because of the organization that did it and because of the way this organization behaves. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, obviously adding to or compounding to their desire to have that clause in the trade is the fact that Doug Wilson, the GM that pulled off this trade themselves, kind of embarrassed them with the Mike Hoffman turned around where he wound up flipping him to Florida for a significantly better package than they got themselves from from him so you know that ties into it I'm still waiting for you know this to all be revealed as you know the current to get pulled back and it be revealed as some elaborate spoof or some sort of a uh a test project because

it's like you read some of this stuff and it's like Doug Wilson giving quotes to people going like listen, I told Pierre Dorian, and I'll tell you, I think this is a fair trade for both teams. And it's like, yeah, this is like stuff that people say in their fantasy leagues when they're like ripping off another GM and the commissioners considering vetoing a trade. And they're like, no, like, I swear, this is made in good faith. Both of our teams are better off. Trust me. It's like, as soon as the other GM even feels obligated to say something like that, you

know something very, very bad is gone for one of the teams involved. Well, you know, maybe Doug Wilson's being. sincere because he didn't pay this much for Joe Thornton. I don't know any other GM who's pulled off multiple versions of this sort of trade. Apparently Doug Wilson is your go-to guy. If you have a franchise player you're unhappy with, call up Doug Wilson. He will take him off your hands for a rich collection of assets. And you know what?

When you take contract situation into account, this is not nearly as embarrassing as that. But, I mean, that's a benchmark that almost no trade ever touches. that the Joe Thornt trade is one of the all-time great rip-offs. So not being comparable to that is damning by faint praise. It actually reminded me a little bit of the Chris Pronger trade that Edmonton made with Anaheim, where Edmonton got its famous five assets. How did that wind up turning up from them? Well, there are two significant differences, I think. one being that Ottawa is sort of kind of committed to the rebuild which Edmonton

amazingly wasn't really when the pronger trade was made and that that's an ownership thing but the second thing is Edmonton actually got more established talent you look back of that pronger trade in addition to the two first round picks Joffrey loophole was a 30 goal man in the NHL Ladashlav Schmead was a number nine overall pick and I mean we know how his career turned out but nobody that Ottawa got back is nobody none of those guys were picked ninth overall a year ago no yeah you're right Josh Norris instead of at I believe like 19th or something is the highest highest asset they're probably going to get them from that yeah and that's not to say it can't work out

but but the pronger trade to me is sort of my entry point to this because it's it's such a similar deal for such a similar player just in terms of overall impact not playing style and it it worked really badly for Edmonton and and I think like Edmonton's asset hall was actually better than what Ottawa managed here because Edmonton got the quote unquote five assets but it also got some significant ones. I mean, you talked about Dylan DeMello. Chris Tierney's a fine player who shot 14% last year and hit a career high 40 points. He's probably a 30 point guy really.

I mean, and those are your proven assets and the futures. Josh Norris is good, but I mean, so is balcers for that matter. but I mean, none of these guys are ever going to come close to being what Carlson is. Yeah, it's just, it's tough to reconcile just because while I do think there is, you know, it's not like they got nothing back, like they definitely got some future assets. It's, it just, it feels like based on the caliber of player that Carlson is, even acknowledging that he only has that one year left on his deal and teams might be hesitant to give up premium assets in return for him for as a rental.

at the same time like you would just it's shocking to believe that you wouldn't be able to get one kind of more name brand value player or or or a pick that's guaranteed to be in a higher draft slot in the future um in return from a team so i guess that's a tough part here but that's what happens when you have this obsession with basically cutting the market you're dealing with in half and really kind of hamstringing yourself by only dealing with the western conference and everyone knows it all of a sudden it really felt like i guess we could lump Vegas into it as well even after the patroredi trade but it was most of the noise was oh is it going to be Dallas is it can be Vegas and then san Jose was kind of a dark course team but

based on the fact that we could be talking about the best defensemen in the league here where you're like oh we're only going to be trading them to like two or three teams that this could possibly work with all of a sudden you're really kind of creating an uphill battle for yourself that doesn't necessarily need to exist Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's an excellent point. And it kind of goes hand in hand with the other point I wanted to make here, which is we focus in any trade like this, people like you and me focus a lot on the specifics of the return, right? Like the X4, Y, Z and A, and A, C. But I think what sometimes gets talked about less is all the things that drive that return. Because the problem isn't so much that Pierre Dorian got on the phone with a bunch of, a guy's and made a stupid decision. That's not what happened here. What happened here was the Ottawa Senators got themselves into a position where all of Pierre Dorian's choices were bad choices. And the reason they got themselves into that situation, part of it was having the market,

you know, nixing all those Eastern Conference possibilities. But a big chunk of it was the time of year they made the trade and what they were willing to look at in return. So part of the reason this went to the summer, in my opinion, and you know, this isn't, look at, look at the amount of money they're paying the guys they got back. Chris Tierney's a $3 million cap hit. Dylan DeMallow makes less than a million dollars and he has, they've cost certainty for two years on him. So they didn't take any money back. And that's something they were able to do because they were dealing with San Jose and they were dealing in the summer. If you wanted to get drive up the absolute maximum return for Carlson, you trade him at last year's deadline.

because then a team is getting him for a playoff run. They're getting him for another year. He's much less of a rental because not only are they getting him for two playoff runs guaranteed, but they have two playoff runs to convince him to resign with them. They've got a lot longer window than what San Jose now has. And I think the problem with trading him at last year's deadline is teams are tight to the cap. Ottawa would have had to take more money back at last year's deadline just to make everything work. and if that was the reason, then it speaks to ownership and the way that's handicapping the senators.

And if that wasn't the reason, it just speaks to incredible, incredible misjudgment inside the hockey operations department. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is a common refrain whenever you see a trade like this that involves future assets and a star player is, you know, you're going to have a bit of a pushback from people saying, you know, we have to give this time to develop and see how it turns out. I have to evaluate it in a couple years. And I do feel very strongly about the fact that while we certainly, you know, it's a work in progress and we are going to wind up looking back at it a few years from now, especially if San Jose winds up making a run with Carlson or if he stays or leaves, you have to evaluate these trades based on the information we presently have.

That's the whole point. You're evaluating, especially when you're evaluating the decision makers and the GMs for the job they're doing, all we can really do is evaluate them on the moves they made based on the information we had at the time. knowing full well that, you know, Josh Norris might develop into a star. There's probably a very small percentage that's going to happen, but it could, you know, certain things, Eric Carlson could get injured in day one of the regular season. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, I can't, I was a good thing the senators got out

from under that while they still could. So like all these different, unforeseen things can happen, which is part of the fun of the sport. But at the same time, when we're evaluating these trades, it is important to actually evaluate based on what we know in the present. and the information the GMs had and were working with when they made the decisions they did. Yes. I don't know where that ranks on my list of pulling my hair out, but it's worse than compete level, which is one of my pet peeves, because it's like, okay, so how did the GM make the decision?

The GM, you know, whose job depends on this, somehow managed to find the courage within himself to pull the trigger on this. decision and you can't even tell me whether or not you think it was a good decision or a bad decision because no we've got to wait five years to see how things develop no you you call it in the moment that's what the GM has to do so as a pundit you certainly have to do that and uh you you do speak to it with the humility that you might be wrong of course like if if josh norris turns out to be this this incredible stellar player and and this is something that ottawa really believes i might not believe it in the moment, but if they state that belief and it turns out that way, I have to give them credit. But the thing with the sort of prospect is all of these guys, you kind of have to look

at probabilistically. Like, you get a second round pick. No, you don't have to wait to see what they do with the second round pick. A second round pick has a set value because there's X percentage chance. It turns out to be a star. X percentage chance it turns out to be a player and X percentage chance. It's a bust, right? And the same is true with these prospects. You kind of look at their profile. say, okay, this is the range of possibilities. This is the most probable one. And that's what the value is. And that's what I'm calling the trade on today.

And that's why the GM made that move today. Yeah. Yeah, you know who's not calling for us to put a pin in it and evaluate this five years for now? The San Jose sharks and their fans, they're very excited about this trade because they very clearly won it. It's a bit of a self-preservation tactic when it's like, oh, if you're a senator's fan or if you're someone covering the team and you don't necessarily want to

be too critical of them, all of a sudden, It's a much easier card to pull where it's like, oh, well, you know, I could see what they were thinking here. Let's give it a couple of years and see before we reevaluate. So it's a bit of a cop-out, and I really dislike when people do that. One final thing here about the senators, we're already 20 minutes in, and we're talking about the most depressing component of this trade. So we've got to give the sharks there to do here in a second. But, you know, if we're evaluating teams and GMs based on the decisions they had at the moment and what they did with that,

how do we feel now in hindsight with Ottawa's decision this summer to keep their 2018 first round pick and take Brady Kachuk forth overall and forego the opportunity to draft with their own selection next year, acknowledging that there's definitely a chance that they could, they're not going to make the playoffs, but there's a chance they won't bottom out completely next year, that they'll be slightly competent and at least mediocre and maybe that pick will wind up being worse and forth and they'll wind up looking smart for it. But there also is a non-zero chance that they just traded away Jack Hughes potentially who could be a generational player.

And that's sort of the, you know, I remember when we did our draft preview, it was one of the big talking points for us trying to figure out what the best value play was and whether the senators should keep that pick or give it away and kind of put all their eggs in the 2019 basket. How do we feel about that decision in hindsight now with the knowledge and sort of the certainty that they, you know, they had no intention of entering the season with Eric Carlson on their team regardless. You know, they offered him that extension, but it was kind of just a safe face. It wasn't ever really going to happen. So, you know, they're basically kind of with that trade, acknowledging that regardless of what they say, that 2019 is going to be a loss

season for them and they're going to have a very, very tough time winning hockey game. and now they gave away that pick. How do you feel about it in hindsight? I believe at the time that I argued fairly stridently that they should move the 2018 pick and keep the 2019 pick and go all in on sort of a rebuild approach. And, you know, in hindsight, nothing changes with that. I understand the dilemma.

I mean, the fourth overall picks, a really very, very difficult thing to trade. And you always kind of optimistically go well. Maybe things will be better a year from now. Somehow, maybe just the draft lottery alone might give me a bit more luck. But yeah, it was the wrong, I think it was the wrong decision. I don't see how you don't think it's the wrong decision. I don't see the real counter argument because the thing about the draft pick chart,

the talent charted the draft is exponential the first overall pick is way way way up there the second overall pick's a big drop the third overall picks a bigger drop the fourth overall pick is a and then the drop you know sort of starts lessening um or sorry the drop between second and third is smaller than between first and second but that's usually the biggest drop in the draft except some of these freak years where you get ovechkin and malcon uh and so

when i look at it i go you know the possibility of losing out on that first overall pick, and especially the caliber of player Jack Hughes's. And I know most people are not really geared up for the 2019 draft yet, except maybe if you're a Senator's fan, you could be. But Jack Hughes is, you know, the same kind of hype around him as was around Austin Matthews, as was around a lot of these really, really elite players.

And, you know, to pass up a chance on him to draft Brady Kuchak, who is a very good prospect, but not in that ballpark, it's baffling. Yeah. I wonder how, you know, I would still agree that the right move from a value perspective would have been to give away that pick and go for 2019. But if they had taken maybe a guy like Philips Zedina or a prospect that people were more excited about with all due respect to Brady Kachuk, I think maybe it'd be an easier pill to swallow. And I understand the argument is like if, you know, from a PR perspective, let's say,

because this is a business after all. If you are giving away that pick, you're basically signaling to your fans. We are fully expecting to be really, really bad in 2019, and we can't afford to give away that pick and a potential first overall guy. So listen, next year we're going to suck, so there's no reason to watch our games or come to our games. But when you make the Eric Carlson trade, that's essentially what you're doing anyways.

And action speak louder than words. So I don't really buy that as an argument. Well, and from a PR perspective, it's backwards anyway. It's short-term pain over long-term pain. If you trade that pick in the moment, yes, yeah, you're sending a tough message to your fans, but they just sent that message with the Carlson trade anyway. And what's going to happen now is for the entirety of the next year, every time they lose a game and our near 30th fans are going to be like,

oh, and we don't even have our first overall pick. This is going to be a refrain all season next. And that to me is far, far more damaging than the short-term pain of being in the summer and saying, look, we're committed to a rebuild, which you can at least put kind of a half-decent spin on. Yeah. I mean, it's always tough to say that a team is going to, you know, it's like, oh, this team's going to finish last. They're going to finish 31st because there's.

No, because you don't know. There's quite a bit of wiggle room there. And Ottawa senators could have a very, very bad season and be unwatchable and still finish like 28th or something, right? But, I mean, if they do finish 31st, you know, all of a sudden you're talking about a 50% chance of being inside the top three and you're guaranteed at least fourth overall at worst. So it's, it's tough. And, you know, you look at it. And I guess they're one saving grades or sort of what they'd point to as the reason why they won't finish 31st is like most of last year was just their goaltending just completely cratered.

I mean, they were 30th and overall, say, percentage, 31st in 5-1-5, and that was after being a top 10 team for the year prior when Craig Anderson was great. But I mean, if that's going to be your argument, you're basically saying you're betting on a 37-year-old goalie turning it around, which is a tough thing to kind of hang your hat on, and then you look at the defense that's going to be in front of them, and I think it's legitimately fair to wonder whether it's, like, is it the worst collection of blue-line talent we've seen since, like,

that openly tanking Buffalo Sabres teams. Like it's, it's really bad. I mean, you got Cody Cici, who's their... Number one defenseman, Cody Cici,

show some respect. And by far, highest paid, I believe he's making $4.3 million, I believe, based on his new deal. And then their second highest paid

defenseman is Dionnevnav's routine salary to play for the Los Angeles Kings. I mean, and I think the most damaging part is, you know, they're going to be riding Cody Cici so hard now to,

it's kind of out of necessity because there's not much else around him but also kind of to try and make that thing still happen because they can't seem to emotionally detach themselves from it and my biggest fear is you know thomas shabbat a prospect that people are very high on rightfully so and has a great opportunity to really spread his wings and get some quality minutes on this team is likely going to spend most of his season playing with cc and based on what we've seen throughout his career and and you know his underlying metrics i'm not sure if that is a good thing for Thomas Shabbat's development. So it's all just one big convoluted mess. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you made the Finoof point because the CC-F

pairing costs more than the rest of their blue line put together, which is just staggering, given that Finoff's not even there. Look, if I want to make the positive argument, I'd point out that Ottawa's power play was miserable last year, even with Carlson. And so they're not going to be as hurt there as you might think. Just because they weren't very good to begin with. Their penalty kill was atrocious last year. You can look at that and say, look, these special teams were so bad. We can improve on that.

But the problem is that the composition of the roster is just so ugly. And I do like Thomas Shabbat. I lower a case like Chris Wyden. I kind of thought Christian O'Lanon did some nice things last year. What about face of the franchise, Mark Borrietski? the only player on the team the only defenseman on the team with a seven figure contract over multiple years

yeah no but but it's just you start putting these depth charts together and even though I think that's an overrated part of hockey analysis and something people do too much and need to step back from it's like I wow I don't even know what you do with this and particularly because we still have the two shoes to drop with Dushain in stone. Yeah, and how can you have any level of confidence if you're an Ottawa Senators fan that this current management and ownership group are going to be able to

pull off those trades if they do wind up coming down here down the pike with, you know, with any guarantee that you're going to get any sort of good assets back in return. They're going to set the franchise up in the years of the comments. It's just, it's a big mess. And I really feel bad for Ottawa Senators fans because, you know, they're good sports online and it's they deserve better it's uh it's it's it's pretty bleak right now uh we've spent a half hour here talking about the senators i honestly don't do you have anything else to add there i i just wanted to put in one tiny little thing just because of the management comment i i kind of feel bad for anybody who's in the management group in ottawa because you know those

jobs there's not very many of them and and i really think this is ownership driven um the the the only thing I wanted to say was how much do you appreciate the job Brian Murray did in Ottawa now in hindsight now that we kind of know what the GM or sorry what what ownership is like without sort of a veteran gravitas the veteran GM with a lot of veteran gravitas who can kind of normalize them and make him a little more conventional yeah yeah I mean he was clearly doing a because I obviously didn't come out of nowhere so it must have been a heck of a job he was doing kind of you know keeping eugene melnick kind of quiet or at least appeased while also doing his job good on the hockey upside of things so yeah it's uh it's a tough job there's a lot of things to juggle

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And I think the best perk that they're offering right now is to my listeners because because you're listening today's episode of the HockeyPedio cast, you're going to get $20 off your first Seek purchase. All you have to do to claim that is download the Seekek app and enter the promo code PDO today. That's promo code PDO for $20 off your first Seek purchase. Now let's get back to Jonathan Willis and today's episode of the HockeyPedio cast. Okay The Sharks The first note I have here that I wanted to get to is we need to commend Doug Wilson

For the job he did And beyond just the trade itself I think Like if you just look at it from his perspective You know they were clearly going to go big game hunting This summer they had a bunch of money cleared They are sort of all in with this roster It seemed very obvious that they were going to be frisky

and they were going to try and add a star, whether it was through free agency or via trade, and then they wind up missing out on John Tavares. They wind up missing out on Ryan O'Reilly in the trade. They wait all the way till mid-September with training camp and preseason on the horizon. And he's just patiently waiting in the background. We didn't really hear much noise about this for weeks and weeks on end. And we all knew that he had, you know, he had his money in this. cap space and these assets burning a hole in his pocket and everyone knows that they're primed

to do something and instead of panicking and making some sort of a short-sighted trade or signing just to have something to point to as a reason why the sharks are going to be better next season he kind of patiently waits and this comes up and they're the big and he himself is really the big winner here because he winds up looking great considering all of those things beyond just adding eric carlinson to his team Yes, absolutely. And the sharks have always kind of been a little bit smarter than the NHL norm, I think, in terms of appreciating that money and cap space are assets and acting accordingly.

Because the obvious counter argument to what you're saying is, yeah, but what if they hadn't got Carlson? And the response to that is if they hadn't got Carlson, then they'd still have all this cap space. And that cap space is going to be valuable at some point, obviously. obviously it has no value at the end of the year if you if you haven't used it on on anything at all come post trade deadline but uh yeah he he put a quote out a couple of days before the carlson trade and i loved it and then i loved it even more in hindsight and i can't remember the exact words but it was something to the effect of um we're very comfortable we went after a high-end guy we didn't get him but we're very comfortable with that strategy or something to that effect and they understand that you don't just spend money to spend money, you spend money to get somebody who's really going to drive things. And if you can't do that, you don't spend. And it paid off for them in such a big way. Well, and one thing you know covering this league and following it for a long time is that, you know, there's always this rush to quickly do something just so, you know, you put your mind at ease,

and you have a player to try it out there with a press release and an introductory press conference and give your fans some of the cheer for. But like if you are, if you can sort of manage that and be patient, like stuff always, opportunities present themselves. Stuff always comes up. Using that, waiting on that cap space to take advantage of someone else's mistake is always a prudent, uh, team building strategy because, you know, unforeseen situations are always going to arise. Teams are going to wind up as the season starts.

Teams that might have gone into the year excited about their team and confident about their chances something might happen and all of a sudden they might become sellers or be looking to get out from under a contract or something like that and so these things always wind up working out you just have to obviously it's easier said than done but you have to sometimes kind of take a step back and be patient and not necessarily make a move just for the sake of being able to say that you've made a move and you're right i mean obviously if a bunch of different circumstances came together here to allow doug wilson to make this trade and it wouldn't happen with you without that. But if it wasn't this, I feel fairly confident. And obviously it wouldn't have been a

player of Eric Carlson's caliber. But the sharks come the end of the trade deadline, certainly would have wound up adding some sort of an asset that would have made their team significantly better. Like, I have supreme confidence in that. So it's great that it happens now. They're going to have a full season of Eric Carlson and they're going to be able to go, you know, work out all the, all the, all the kinks and try and find the best combinations. And that'll be better for them moving forward, but it's just, I wish more teams acted like this is what is, I guess, ultimately the end point. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think the, one of the things that enabled San Jose to do this was that they had a fairly, fairly good reason to be confident in what they had. Like, San Jose is a good team even without Eric Carlson. And San Jose is a team that's, that doesn't have any obvious holes. because the counterpoint to what San Jose did this year, it to me is what Edmonton did last year, and I don't mean to keep harping on the Oilers, but it's my backyard.

And the Oilers last year had a bunch of money. They traded Jordan Eberle to the Islanders for Ryan Strom. They lost Andre Secra and didn't replace him. And then the money disappeared this summer, and you're kind of like, okay, so you suffered through bad season, and you didn't get any benefit out of that cap space. And so I think there's a risk,

if you end up at that situation of looking rather foolish. But sometimes, but I think the big difference there is, if you don't have to trade Jordan Eberle for Ryanstrom, you don't have to do that. And there's an obvious place where that cap space could have been used and you would have pushed results a little bit. Whereas with San Jose, this summer, you know,

they tried for Tavares and then I don't really feel like there were places where they could use that cap space effectively. And you can't say, well, we didn't get Tavares, but we got Leo Komarov. That's a very bad... That's literally what the New York Islanders did, though. Indeed, indeed. And it's a very bad strategy.

Because that's not a guy... Do respect to Komarov, who I like, but that's not a guy who's really going to drive results for you, and you cannot take that money and put it there with any semblance of credibility, saying you're going to get any kind of similar push. So San Jose was absolutely right, and waiting until an opportunity arose,

where they could actually make a difference with their money. Yeah, and it's clear that, you know, Doug Wilson is all in with this core. It's an aging group that you could definitely foresee, you know, three, four years from now when that money they've got tied up in Lassick and Burns and even Kutura at that point. I imagine Joe Pavelski's contract, coming down down the line here like they're going to have a ton of money tied up in guys who are

already on their last legs in their mid 30s similar to what the Los Angeles kings are looking like right now but at the end of the day I mean I think there's a lot of reason to obviously be optimistic about this team heading into 2018 and 19 and they're not necessarily the number one contender or the favorite to win the title but they're definitely in that mix with a top handful of teams and that's all you can really ask for and it's sort of this calculation It's not like they're they tied up a bunch of money and a bunch of mediocre players that have been around for a long time just for the sake of spending money and having a full roster of veterans. It's it's a bunch of

really really good players that are going to give this team a chance to be exciting and win a ton of hockey games and compete for a Stanley Cup this spring and if you're a sharks fan and all the all the heartache you've gone through over the past decade or so. It's a pretty exciting time. So it's really, I know I'm generally, and you are as well, we're both kind of not necessarily more conservative, but we definitely kind of tend to take a bigger picture view of things and always, you know, play the long game and not necessarily try to, you know, put all your eggs in one basket and really go all in in just one season because we know that the postseason can ultimately be so unpredictable and you could just run into a hawk goalie and

lose it round one. And then if you have nothing to show for it, you're kind of screwed. But at the same time, if you are going to go in all in with a team and a group of players, it seems like the guys, the sharks have assembled here is probably a pretty good one to go with. Well, and there are exceptions to that rule, because hockey is a cyclical game. And, like, this is what San Jose has done in terms of contracts and committing to older players, this is a team that went to the Stanley Cup finals in 2016. This is a team that has been competitive almost every year since. 2006, we're coming out of a decade of really dominant San Jose sharks hockey.

You could say more than a decade, really, because it's been a good group forever, which is very hard to do. And at some point, you just get to the end of the line and you can't replenish those assets anymore. And Doug Wilson and I'm looking at these guys and I'm going, okay, it sure is 29, Pavelsky's 34, Burns and Vlasik are both in their early 30s. you kind of have a choice to either trade those assets for younger, lesser guys and push things off into the future, but maybe not win right now and maybe not be that good down the line,

or just embrace the fact that you've got a half dozen or more players who are all in the same age bracket, and you have two years maybe to make the most of them and that the most of them might be a championship. I think you, at some point, you just have to embrace the fact NHL is a cyclical league, and that's what San Jose has done, and it's a wise decision. Yeah, and obviously, I mean,

just when opportunities like this present themselves, if you can get, if you can add an air crawls into your team without really taking anything off of your roster, I mean, they gave up what, their sixth defensemen and a fourth liner, and a bunch of future assets, but, I mean, for a team that is fancies itself,

a cup contender, and thinks that those first round picks will hopefully wind up being in the high 20s. All of a sudden, it's a pretty easy pill to swallow. And, I mean, I don't know, let's talk about their roster now and sort of how Eric Carlson fits into this because they're going to definitely, you know, Pete DeBore is going to have a very good problem on his hands in divvying up these minutes on the blue line. And I'm very curious to see how he plays it because we've seen over the past couple of years

that he is really very, very heavily, maybe more than any coach in the league relied on that Vlasic Braun pairing to eat all of the heavy minutes up and really play, sort of attach themselves as an anchor to the other team's best players. And it's been sort of at the sacrifice

of their own underlying numbers a little bit, but it's been for the good of the team because it's freed up a guy like Bram Burns to really just kind of run wild and much softer minutes. And I wonder if they're going to stick with that strategy and then, you know, spread the wealth by having Burns on his own pairing with a Brendan Dillon type or Yolkin Ryan and then having Eric Carlson on another and then all of a sudden you could essentially say that for nearly

the full 60 minutes they're going to have at least one of Vlasic Burns or Carlson on the ice which is just a complete lunacy. It's insane that a team could pull that off or you could potentially you know load it up and have a guy like Vlasic play with with Carlson and if you're kind of of the mind that, you know, we saw Carlson have quite a bit of success with a Mark Matha type and, you know, Lasix's like a super duper rich man's Mark Matha at this point. So maybe you go with that. I don't know. Like if you were running this team, would you go with that more balanced approach, especially

in the regular season? Or would you tinker with going with a heavier top four and then, you know, having that third pairing playing the 12 to 15 minutes and not really being asked to do too much? Well, I, my temptation is always to say load up. the top four. But the difficulty with loading up the top four is Justin Braun is a really good defenseman in his own right.

That becomes a very difficult thing to do. I think one of the things that's going to save San Jose a little bit in terms of divining up the ice time is the fact that you have some special teams flexibility to get more minutes out of your three big guys than you might automatically think.

Like Burns and Carlson can both conceivably play three to four minutes a night on the power play. I think you can fit both of those guys in on your first unit. I know there's a school of thought that there's only one puck, as Peter Shirelli said. But what if we add a second puck? Let's get a little crazy out here. Well, but the thing is, I mean, okay, so one of Burns or Carlson's going to play on the

half boards instead of being stuck at the point. That's okay. That's just, that's Jim Dandy. I'm okay with that. Yeah, not bad. And so, you know, maybe Vlasic doesn't get power play time at all. Maybe Braun plays three minutes a night on the penalty kill or something ridiculous like that. I think you can work around the fact that you only have so many even-strength minutes to give these guys.

And I think, you know, if you give them a little bit of a spell during the regular season, that's okay. You don't have to to run these guys. Yeah, you don't have to ride them into the ground, yeah. You don't, yeah, you can save them for the playoffs and just run four defensemen as not quite, but almost. And I think we've seen a model for that in Nashville. Yeah, and especially obviously, you know, if, you know, if you're in a bit of a pinch, if you're playing from behind in a particular game or in the latter half of the season and then in the stretch run and heading into the playoffs, obviously you can, you know,

really just play those four guys as much as possible and kind of, discard that third pairing and and that's totally a plausible option too but you're right i think that you know something that really a topic that's fascinated me for a while now and we i've talked about in the show and we don't necessarily have any sort of um you know we don't have any kind of conclusion to it yet it's still a working subject is this idea of the optimal amount of ice time to be giving to your top defenseman because so often and Ryan Suter's been my classic example for this for years. You know, you hear commentators during games talk about, you know, how, oh, this guy

is such a workhorse. He can play up to 30 minutes and he looks so effortless out there. But then you watch him and he's still an effective player, but you can't help but feel like, you know, it's human nature to be pacing yourself, especially at the start of a game when you know that you're going to be out there for half of it and you can't necessarily go full blast on every single shift. And I do, I wonder, you know, if there's. There's sort of that trade-off where it's like, wow, this guy's still really good and he's probably better than our other options.

Could he be even more effective in his minutes if maybe he wasn't playing as much? And especially during the regular season, which is such a slog. And then 82 games is way too many for these guys to be playing. I wonder if you are limiting those five-on-five minutes for Carlson and Burns and asking them to maybe just, you know, they could potentially be much more productive in those minutes if they know that they're only, going to be out there for a certain amount of time. And it's easier said than done because fans and these players themselves obviously want to be out on the ice as much as possible.

But for the betterment of the team and for their own individual numbers, you could conceivably see an uptick if they are having a smaller workload or smaller, smaller responsibility on their plate throughout the course of the season. Yes. And I think the thing that sometimes gets forgotten about this is that it's not necessarily constant from game to game. So, like you mentioned score situation. You know, if you're down by a goal coming out of the first period, maybe Carlson gets

25 minutes that night and Lassick gets less time. Well, I mean, maybe not Vlasic because then you're getting into the left, you're righty thing. But you can kind of, maybe on nights where you have a two-goal lead coming out of the first period, you don't play these guys like 18 minutes a game. And you just play the life out of Justin Braun. There's a lot of different ways you can go at it and you kind of optimize their ice time situations. I'm very curious to see how San Jose does it.

I have a lot of respect for Peter DeBore and that coaching staff. So I'm very curious to see how they handle it. And I think they're going to be writing the book as they go along. And I'm, you know, I'd love to hear their ideas. But even more than that, I'm curious to see what it looks like in execution. And I wonder too. The other thing I wonder about is if we don't see something where they add. a really good number four left shot defensemen at the trade deadline because you can always

seem to add those guys especially if you don't need a puck moving component you know you need the the Dan Ham Hughes of that given year you can always seem to add that player and then they could run three really ironclad pairings going into the postseason theoretically yeah boy I really hope the sharks can add another quality defenseman they uh if any team needs it it's it's between them and Nashville Hopefully one of those teams going to pick up another guy. Well, I know we can't. No, absolutely. How awesome would it be to have Justin Braun anchoring your third pair?

Oh, oh, it'd be, it's, yeah, it's an embarrassment of riches. Okay, this is another point that I was thinking about. We don't necessarily talk about hockey in this way. Generally, it's more basketball when we're talking about, you know, the ball being in a player's hands as sort of the decision maker, the playmaker, or the shooter. with the sharks, I do wonder, especially on the powerplay, if you are going to be using Carlson and Burns together. And I know that you noted that last year, Ottawa's numbers on the power play, even with Carlson, weren't necessarily great by any means. But, you know, so often we rave about Brent Burns's shot totals and his ability, his unique ability to navigate the blue line there and fire the puck off at these really weird angles, while not necessarily sacrifice. his velocity and all that and it's great it's really fun to watch and he's such a unique specimen

in that regard but i mean he scored and i understand there's some you know we're not accounting for rebounds and potential other opportunities created here but i mean he scored 12 goals on 774 shot attempts last year which is just i i just i think as we're learning more and more about the game um i'm becoming more cognizant of the fact that maybe we we tend to prop up uh shot volume and I think for forwards it's a very useful thing I think for a defenseman I'm not I'm not sold that a guy shooting from the point that often is a good thing and I just wonder if the sharks might even be better off from having the puck in on the stick of a guy like Carlson a bit more because it might free up brem burns to be a bit more selective with the shots and not necessarily have to

carry the full weight of the offense at all times when he's out there so you know there's something There's a bit of that interplay as well between those two guys where Carlson is such a good playmaker and he's such a smart player with his vision and his unique passing ability out there that maybe having him pulling the strings a little bit more as well is going to just make Brent Burns an even more efficient offensive player which is, you know, scary to think about considering the point totals he's been putting up the past couple years. Well, and my first thought, well, not my first thought when I heard about the trade, there were a few thoughts before it. But when I got to the San Jose power play portion of my contemplation, I kind of wondered if Burns is playing in a four, why not play Burns on the half wall in like a forward position and have Carlson out at the point go sort of with one of these traditional kind of one three one views. But then instead of having Burns just blasting cannons from way out in the hinterland,

you have him shooting from sort of the Ovechkin spot, right? I think he is an incredible shooter and maybe you can make a lot more use of him. If you don't have him out at the point, you just kind of turn that duties over to Carlson. And you have Carlson and Joe Thornton distributing and Bevelski and Burns shooting. And I mean, pick your poison in front of the net. I think there are ways around it and maybe one of the ways around it is, and I know San Jose's coaching staff, in the past has been criticized for this, but maybe it's not treating Burns like he's a defenseman

when he's on the power play. Oh, yeah, definitely. And yeah, especially if you have Carlson out there on the point, as a more traditional power play quarterback, all of a sudden, I think Burns is just frightening for other teams to deal with if you just completely unleash him and you can just let him kind of rove around and find lanes. And obviously, as you mentioned, with two of the best passages in the game,

and Thornton and Carlson, they're going to find him more often than not. And then all of a sudden, that's just another problem for other. teams to deal with and an already scary lethal power play just adds another component to it that you have to have to contemplate i i'm very excited obviously i mean at the end of the day as a hockey fan uh this is a great landing spot for carlson just because this team's going to be really like aesthetically fun to watch uh most importantly i think they clearly have a desire to play fast when they are firing on all cylinders like they were during that 2016 cup run and in the second half of last year after they added a Vanderkane at the trade deadline.

You know, when they're going north-south like that and their transition game and Eric Carlson's only going to add to that, they are as fun a team to watch as there is in the league. And yeah, that's ultimately a takeaway here. A really good team became potentially a great team, and they're just going to be must-watch television now. And it makes me more and more excited that the regular season is only a couple weeks away. Yeah, I don't really have anything to add to that. I just agree. Okay, that's enough on this trade.

Let's quickly touch on, as I teased 50-some-odd minutes ago, the Max Patcher Ready trade. So the HABs got Thomas Dattar, Nick Suzuki, a former first-round pick, and a 2019 second. And I think that my initial takeaway is that from the Montreal side of things, we'll get to Vegas in a second here,

is they actually, all things considered, got pretty good value. Like, I feel like, Nick Suzuki, for example, I feel like is a much better bet than what we were just talking about with Josh Norris to be a potentially impactful young player.

And, you know, they got another asset in next year's second round pick, which is going to be useful for a guy that was clearly out the door. Now, I don't necessarily give them sympathy for these self-inflicted wounds similar to Ottawa, because it felt like, you know, when you talk about, oh, there's only so much they could do for an asset like Mass Patcheretti

whose value has been depleted around the league. It's like, well, yeah, part of that is a large part of that is because of their own doing. So I'm not going to, you know, be softer on them because of it. But at the same time, if you just look at what they got back, it's not ultimately that bad of a hall. Yes. And I think the hinge point for that is Thomas to talk. Like, do you value him?

Is he a positive? or a negative asset in this trade in your mind? I think this is, it might be a bit of a cop-out answer. I think for the Montreal-Canadians component of things, I think it's a positive asset, which is funny because when we talk about Vegas here, I will talk about how getting out from under him is a positive for them as well.

And I understand those are two kind of conflicting thoughts. But I mean, listen, he's what, 27 years old. He obviously had a miserable year last year, after the trade. But everything we'd seen from him prior leads me to believe that he's a very effective at least middle six. I don't necessarily think he's a top line

but if he's on your second line, I think he's he does a lot of things very well. He's very talented. He's awesome in transition in terms of zone entries. He is a very, very skilled player and he's only got three years left with Vegas

retaining some of the salary. It's at under $5 million per. So I think it's one of those assets where it doesn't look great now, but I could very easily see him bouncing back, all those things considered. And so at that point, I think if you're taking him on, especially for a team that's going to be so challenged to score goals this season,

having another creator like that isn't a bad thing for Montreal. So I view it as a net positive for them. I do too. I was curious to see your answer because I'm not totally convinced that you're right, even though I agree with you. to Tartar to me is one of those guys who, one of the very few players in the league that you could look at and say, okay,

conceivably he's going to address a lot of the goal scoring that we're losing in the patch ready deal. Well, at the same time, having a perceived value as low enough that you could add a chip prospect. So I thought he was a really good player. I don't know if they targeted him specifically, or it just sort of happened when they were talking to Vegas,

but I thought he was a very good player to build around. and particularly I think he's undervalued right now because of what happened after the trade deadline he didn't fit in with that team and a lot of times I think we see this people like Paul Stassany are the exception rather than the rule a lot of times these trade deadline acquisitions don't work out it's difficult to adjust at the three quarter mark

to a new team in a new city and all that good stuff so I think he'll be a better player from Montreal I do have some quibbles about Nick Suzuki as a prospect I like them a lot, but I do have some quibbles. I don't think we saw the growth that you necessarily would have hoped for this year in the OHL. But, I mean, given the position Montreal was in here, and again, not to let them off for that, I thought they got a really good return for a player of Max Pajoretti's age and a player who only had and was coming off a tough season too. Yeah, no, I agree with that.

um like they they added a little today and a little tomorrow and and i think that was very difficult for for them to do given the situation they were in and given the season patty had yes no definitely um it's they i think they all things considered um came out looking well just because they they they took some calculated risks there and i think they're you know they're savvy ones that could wind up really paying out for them if if if a couple things fall into place i with this montreal team it's such a tough team to get a grasp on because obviously when we talk about the atlantic division you know you have the three teams up top with Tampa bay Boston Toronto and they're clearly in a class of their own and then I think you have Florida lagging behind and if you're very excited

about Buffalo maybe they're potentially there in the four or five spot as well and then after that it's it's this sort of poo-poo platter of Detroit and Ottawa and Montreal and it's this Habs team that is clearly at a different stage of that cycle that you were alluding to earlier but you know they have this Weber contract and this price contract kicking in this year and this aging blue line that they have a ton of money

committed to with with Jeff Petrie and Carl Elznor and all of a sudden it's like I know they have some young interesting players up front and they've drafted well the past couple of years but I just wonder like what what's the end game what's the plan like what's the objective for both this season and like let's say like a three year plan is how is this team going to wind up looking in 2020 2020 and what are they trying to accomplish like it's those are the types of questions where i just regardless of what the answer is as long as you actually have a very

easy to see plan i'm generally okay with with teams and with montreal they're one of those very confusing teams where it's like i just don't know where this is headed or what they're trying to accomplish. It seems like, you know, it's one step forward, two steps back pretty much every single time. Yes. And not to mention, here's a question. Here's the question. I mean, and this is what it ultimately boils down to. It's, it's this, Mark Bergerand has this endless facetation with, and he's not the only one, it's a league-wide thing, but, you know, solving the, the, the slots down the middle and having enough centers. And it's like they keep seeming to try to jam this square, square peg into a round hole down the middle and now it's it's you know you hear them talk it's like

oh we have you know jonathan druid and max domi and nick suzuki and all these centers it's like are any of these guys even centers like what's going on here what is this team going to wind up looking like is thomas placandas going to be their number one center again like i just it's it's it's bonkers to me that they keep making this sort of same mistake and keep it's like this endless loop and i just be like if you just took a step back and you're like oh maybe we should try operating in a different way they'd be so much better for it moving forward Yeah, and I think you're right. With any trade, you can kind of get lost in the tactical details

and like it so much for that perspective that you lose sight of the big strategic picture. And Montreal is a team that I don't think has a big strategic picture. Like I really honestly, in my core, believe that the big strategic picture is, let's hope Kerry Price can carry us and let's cobble as much together around him as we can for as long as we can for as long as he's good. I'm not going to call it the New York Rangers model. I was going to say. Because that's almost unfair to the New York Rangers.

By comparison, like, Montreal is so much worse at this. And I'm not going to do that. You know, you know what, I'm going to do it, whatever. The P.K. Saban, Shea Weber trade, this speaks. The thing that was always lost in that, people, always pointed to the tactical stuff. Oh, well, Weber's so good defensively. And yada, yada, yada, look at the age difference between him and Saban. Look at the style of game they play and figure out which of those guys is going to age.

better look at those contracts, the term specifically. That was a, you could make a tactical argument for the trade, but strategically it was miserable. And now he's hurt and it looks much worse. And so I don't want to pile on too much because that was not necessarily foreseen, although at his age and his style of play, you had to imagine it was a possibility. So, but the thing about the Tatar trade, sorry, the Tatar trade. Whoa, that's very excited about Thomas Tatar. The thing about the patcher ready trade is strategically, it almost doesn't matter what their viewpoint is.

Because tactically, it's so good that it works in either situation. If their strategic view was, okay, we want to be good this year, so get as much as we can to fill that patcher ready gap, Jatar's a credible, like he's not patch ready, but he's a credible poor man's patch ready. And if their viewpoint is, okay, we're not going to be good this year, but we want to be really good over the long haul, Suzuki is a credible center point. And that's what makes this trade work for me from Montreal is, even with their, really irritating. You cannot tell what they're doing strategically.

It's such a mess. This trade works from both ankles, and there's no way for it to be like a bad trade for them from either perspective. Yeah, no, and with the tar, I mean, yeah, you're right. It could be a poor man's max patch ready. But also, who has

three years on his deal at under five million per, which if he winds up, regaining his form is all of a sudden a legitimate asset, right? And it's, if you just think about it logically, it's like, did he just completely fall off the map for good at age 27? Or did he just have a down season because he was maybe intruded that was reported or because the trade hit him harder or what have you, the confluence of factors? I mean, it's most likely that a player of that caliber will wind up bouncing back at least to something closely resembling what he was before. And all of a sudden, that's a net positive for them.

So I think, you know, just to summarize the thoughts we have here, it's we're perfectly fine with the trade itself. but we're using this trade as a reason to kind of take a bigger picture of view of Montreal and that's where things become a bit more puzzling. And since we're taking a big picture view of Montreal, I have to make a comment about poor Jeff Petrie who probably is going to be playing top matchup minutes again, again with a near rookie partner, which I feel like it's, I think he went when Edmond had traded and he must have thought, finally, I'm not going to be babysitting, breaking in a rookie and playing really tough minutes. And now here he is again. This is just his, his, his, his, his NHL life. And as, as, as,

Edmonton saw during the Edmonton rebuilt, he's a good player, but he's not a top-pearing defenseman with a, with a rookie. And, and I think Montreal, their good players are so old, you almost have to commit to doing, and it's very difficult to do, because they, their past moves don't support it, but they just, I don't think they have the core to be a contender right now. And the thing you would like to do would be to get as much value as you can out of your older players as they did a fairly decent job with patch ready, but I don't know how you do that with Gary Price or or Shea Weber. Petrie's a little bit easier to do, but you can't do it with those guys, I don't think.

Yeah, but the interesting thing is, like, I don't think Montreal is going to be very good next season but at the same time i'm actually bullish on them that bouncing back a bit bouncing back a bit and also like i will not mind watching them next season because you know with druan and domi and tatar and you know you go charles udon arturie leckenin you go on down the line nikita sherbach you know maybe nick suzuki eventually makes a team like there's there's enough young forwards there at least that have room to grow and I still want to see what they're going to be. And that's at least exciting, you know, if you're a Montreal fan, where at least you can kind of point to that along with, you know, the hope that you're going to get a healthy

vintage carry price season that might actually make this team a lot better than it has any reason being. But even if that fails, there's at least like some going to point to or grasp on you for hope as, okay, you know, there's a reason to watch these games and go to these games and year for this team and after talking about Ottawa for half an hour I feel like you know that's at least a step in the right direction and that separates them from a from a divisional opponent let's let's quickly hammer through the gold knight side of things and get out of here um I think I like match max patria as a player a lot um I think you know if you're just evaluating this trade something that

really was grinding my gears was as soon as it happened you saw a bunch of people going I can't believe the Golden Knights just gave up a 2018 first, two 2019 seconds, a 2021 third, and Nick Suzuki, a former first round pick for Max Patruetti. What a crazy amount to give up. And that bugs me because you cannot lump the two trades together. And I feel very strongly about that. If anything, I give George McPhee credit here for doing something the GMs are so reluctant to do so often and that's essentially admit and acknowledge that they made a mistake in their thomas tatara evaluation for whatever reason it didn't wind up working out and instead of trying to force it and feed him top minutes if they really are out on him as a player and they think for whatever reason it just

wasn't going to work instead of spending the next three years trying to save face with their fans and media and kind of reclaim some of that former glory instead they're like listen we made a mistake and instead we're going to, you know, detour here and go for Max Patrady instead. And if anything, I give them credit for that as opposed to lumping all those assets together and being in disbelief that they gave up so much in a six-month span or whatever for a guy of Max Patrady's caliber. Yep. Absolutely.

Well, and I mean, we're conditioned this way. There's a lot of good psychological books about sunk costs and the way we look at things. You know, well, we've spent X on him. so he's worth X. No, Thomas Tatar is worth what he's worth today. I kind of feel like, well, the Thomas Tatar trade was a bad trade. Vegas went to the Stanley Cup final, but Tatar didn't play a big role in that. That was one of their big missteps last season.

I think it would have looked better had he stayed on the team this year, but realistically, his value had depreciated, and I do give McPhee credit for recognizing that. I think the thing that I look at with Vegas is, I'm not so much worried about that. I'm not wild about pain. Like I love Max Patch Ready. I always have. But just given where he is age-wise,

I'm not wild about paying what they paid for him. I think Suzuki, like I wouldn't have thrown in the second round pick for sure. Suzuki and Tatar was more than enough, particularly with the salary retained. But my bigger problem with Vegas is just outside of Paul Stastney, which is a kind of a big outside. side, but, you know, would you rather have Max Patcheretti or David Perron and James

Neal, especially David Perron, James Neal, and Thomas Natar versus Mac Patcheretti? Like, this is a team that did get, I think, got significantly worse on the wings. Stastney helps a lot, but the, I don't know what William Carlson is. I don't know, I'm pretty confident in March S.O. and Riley Smith, but I don't know that this team, I don't know, we talked about the strategic vision in Montreal. I don't know what it is in Vegas either and I don't know if Vegas knows because you know it's wonderful and amazing and any expansion team would take it as last season was it really left them in a position where you kind of wonder okay what do you do for an encore where do we go from here yeah no you're right and obviously

it's like we say that you know with any rebuild it's much easier to tear it down than it is to build it back up and when they one of the benefits of their situation was that they kind of got this blank slate with not a bunch of bad money tied up and all of a sudden when you have to start signing contract, that muddies the waters a little bit. I do, I think I'm a bit more positive about their off-season transactions. I think, you know, you can't necessarily discount the fact that, I thought the Paul Stasney contract, and I, you know,

believe that a team like Montreal, for example, was a legitimate candidate to spend a bunch of crazy money and wind up looking bad after giving him like a six, six-year deal or something like that i think that what they got paul stasny and max patty himself had only four years to sign and obviously um you know they're the tax advantages in nevada definitely help out because of that but they took advantage of that and they didn't commit necessarily a ton of money years and years down the road for those guys so i think that like if you just look at it as what neil peron and tatar for stazni and patty if you're trying to look at what came in

is what went out. I think it's a wash at worst, potentially a net positive, just based on the caliber of Stazni and Patrredi and their upside. And so I'm okay with it. Obviously, the 20-game suspension for Nate Schmidt that's lubing, the fact that the negotiations

with Shai Theodore actually seem to be pretty contentious, and that's kind of hanging over them. And obviously the inevitable baked-in regression from last year to begin with, like those are definite causes for concern. but this trade itself, adding Max Patrready and the contract they signed him to, I think, is ultimately a good thing. Like, they're better, in my opinion, today than they were before that. And for a team that fancies itself to be competitive again this season, that's an okay position to be in.

Yeah, I don't want to be overly negative about their offseason because they did a – they entered the offseason with a bunch of very, very tricky decisions. Like you, I admire the length in term of the Stassany contract for a UFA center, the Patch Ready deal. You're very right in pointing out it's only four years. And maybe bigger than both of those things in my personal view was the fact that they were able to bridge William Carlson. Because that, to me, is the kind of situation where GMs always get themselves in trouble. And they didn't do that. So I think they handled the off season relatively well. I just think that none of it's really going to, in terms of perceptions,

I don't know how much it's going to matter because I don't, the baked in regression was sort of the last comment you made sort of like an added in, but that to me is the story. Like they had a good summer, but who knows what this team is? And you look at the age bracket, like most expansion teams you think, well, they're going to get better. A lot of the guys who contributed are right in the middle of their prime. years and not necessarily going to get better.

To me, I don't know how you repeat that success. I think they made good, smart decisions for the most part and did what they could, but I just think that they're in a position where George McPhee is going to look bad almost no matter what just because he had so much success last season and it's going to be a very tough act to fall off. Absolutely. And obviously, if you are expecting a repeat of last season, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

I think if you, like ultimately, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you, you, like, ultimately, I, I, I, I, think that I'm not expecting this team to just, you know, completely fall off the face of the earth. And the regression would be so bad that they're going to wind up looking like an actual expansion team this year. I think they're, if anything, going to sort of consolidate last year by once again being a tough team to deal with to be a very exciting team to watch. They're going to play very fast. If anything, I'm curious to see what adjustments NHL coaches make this year after having

a full summer. I'm sure they spent most coaches spent plenty of time looking over Golden Knights tape from last year trying to figure out how the hell that happened and how they can stop it from happening again and there's going to be adjustments there and I'm very curious to see whether they're going to be impactful and

whether the Golden Knights will wind up having to play differently or if it's going to be anywhere near as effective. So that's going to be something to watch. But I think the reason why I'm bullish about this is I just think Max Petriady is going to be awesome in Vegas, at least for 2018-19 like if you just look at that fit next to paul stazni on the second line where we saw stasney's playmaking and he was so so fun to watch next to a guy like patrick lining just in terms of

getting him the puck and obviously max patch ready's not that type of finisher but i don't think that he's going to shoot 8% like he shot last year either and i we don't want to get too much into the psychological components of this but it's very clear that last year was as tough of a situation as a player has to deal with in terms of all the questions you're answering and all the uncertainty and everything just going so horribly wrong and I imagine that pass ready is going to enter this season just completely unleashed and just playing like a free man and it's going to be I think exciting to watch and I think he's going to be very productive I think there's no reason to believe that he won't be back in that 30-ish goal range and that's going to be a very useful

player for Vegas to have on their team I'm glad you made that point about about the specific circumstances Patrick Reddy was playing under last year because I love Montreal. I really do. I love the city. I like the Canadians fans that I know and interact with, but man, I don't think there's a tougher city to be, to have a difficult year and to go through the kind of uncertainty he did in just because of the level of fanaticism, the multiple languages. It's a, it's a wonderful

city to do well and it's a very, very, very difficult city I think to do not even just not even poorly but to have a leadership role and contract uncertainty and all these things that go with it so i'm sure i guess it's going to be a very nice change for him the thing i wonder is as much as i like the idea of a patch ready stasney combination i i wonder if they have the defense to support this team you mentioned um the suspension you mentioned theodore like you look at and i mean there were some of this last year too where you looked at Vegas's top four and you're like well who's going to play there and then it turned out to be really good you look at it this year and you really go who's going to play there um i i don't know i i'm a little bit down on the team just overall

for a bunch of different reasons and and one of them is and depending what happens with theodore that's going to be big either way but i i don't know that they have the defense corps to support what is actually a pretty good forward group yeah no i agree with that there's obviously massive questions there. I'm someone who's looked really good in the preseason and who I'm very high on as a prospect is Eric Brandstrom, who they drafted with one of their first

round picks in 2017. And I'm going to be curious to see if he can stick with the team and actually it's always, I mean, it's such a uncertainty with young defensemen like that. But he could be a player that could potentially step in and give them

a bit of that immediate a smooth puck moving element and transition that they need to succeed based on how they want to play and that they don't have much of with especially if Theodore is not going to be on the team of start the year but even with Schmidt out of the lineup so no you're right I mean there's a lot of moving parts there but I'm surprisingly optimistic about them moving forward and I think that you know to put a ball on this entire show the Pacific division is going to be really interesting to watch this year And it's just if you look at the summers, all these teams had, you know, like the Kings at Colchuk, the flames, added James Neal.

I mean, obviously, I didn't like the Dougie Hamilton trade, but, you know, there's reason to believe that because of regression and other things, they're going to be better next year. The coyotes are this trendy sleeper who have a bunch of things going for them. You know, the Oilers, there's. There's Connor McDavid. Yeah, there's Connor McDavid. But also, you know, with the power play and potentially the goaltending, there's reasons to believe there's going to be slightly better luck.

I mean, the ducks. you know, they're probably not going to have Ryan Kessler, but they're going to be healthier than they were last year. Otherwise, all things considered. So, like, all these teams, for the most part, got better. I mean, even the Canucks, you watch them, and it's like, I mean, they were such a mess last year, and now you're watching Elias Pedersen in preseason,

and he's putting up at least two or three, absolutely jaw-dropping highlights a game, and it's like, okay, like, this division is going to be significantly improved, and it's going to be a slog up top, and San Jose made the biggest strides very clear, but even the teams below that, there's going to be a ton of jockeying for position, and I can't wait to see how it's going to play out.

Yeah, it's a very fun year, and the Pacific's been in a difficult division for, or not a difficult division in terms of watching in some years, just because it hasn't had the talent of others, and it's nice to see an influx of talent, especially for those of us who watch a lot of Edmonton, a lot of Vancouver, a lot of California games. So, yeah, absolutely.

It's good to see star players, landed on this side of the NHL. All right. Well, Jay Will, we're back, man. It's very exciting. The season's here. We're going to have you on the show much more frequently now that the summer is done. Plug some stuff. You mentioned Edmonton there. I can notice every five minutes or so you felt like you had to have a little plug

and really add, insert the Oilers into the discussion. So this is your opportunity to let the listeners know what you're up to this season. Yes, my deep apologies to everyone. It's just my backyard and it's where my mind goes instantly. So I think the one thing I'll plug, I have a very big project coming up. I did a bunch of modeling work on American League players, and there's going to be like a 100 player ranking of AHLers. So if you're excited about your team's farm prospects,

definitely tune in next week and read that piece. Exciting stuff. Well, we're looking forward to it, and everyone can follow you at Jonathan Willis on Twitter, and I'm sure we'll chat in the very near future. enjoy this kind of calm before the storm and we'll chat once the season gets going. Always a pleasure, Dimitri. Have a good one, man.

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