The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 291: Snazzy New Surroundings

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

Justin Cuthbert joins the show to recap the opening round and preview round two matchups. We discuss San Jose’s stunning Game 7 comeback, Mike Babcock’s series of questionable decisions behind the bench, and whether the Blue Jackets and Stars can keep the good times going. Avalanche vs. Sharks (10:25) Blue Jackets vs. Bruins (24:25) Blues vs. Stars (53:20) 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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joining. He's my good buddy Justin Cutford. That's what's going on. Not much, man. How are you? I'm a little, I can't say jet lagged. Yeah. Because I didn't cross a time zone. But when you're on a flight, I mean, you're just like naturally a little bit. I just was on a flight. We could work in long hours. But I mean, come on the adrenaline luster. There's a glowup. I mean, the PDO cast being videotaped in a fancy studio. I mean. So you take the PDO cast on the road, though. Like there's been a lot of different setups you had. How would this one rank, I guess? This is number one. I mean, look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this memorabilia. I mean, all these winning franchises, the auto. with senators, Edmonton Oilers, the Calgary Flames. Some fake license place?

Yeah, I mean, the recent history just speaks for itself with these story franchises. And I mean, this is sweet. I've never recorded a podcast like this before. Like, I've recorded in some, like, remote locations and taking pictures and all that, but I've never actually had the full video. So now we really got to be on our best behavior on our toes and not looking at our phones and just locking eyes and really reaching a deep emotional level on this podcast. Yeah, we're going to hit a new level in terms of our working relationship.

I'm excited about it. I'm excited about it. Let's see where the next hour takes us. And we're wearing similar sweaters and that's obviously on video now. Yeah, well, these are Yahoo Sports hoodies that were given to us. You have to do you agree with it. Completely not an accident by any means. No branding.

We're going to be doing a round one recap sort of like winners and losers and round two preview. We're going to focus on the round two preview component of things. But then we're going to obviously get into what happened in the previous series. And we're only going to focus on the three series you know about right now. We're recording this on a way. Wednesday, late afternoon, early evening. So we still haven't seen game seven of Washington, Carolina. So we're going to try and stay away from that.

And I promise all the listeners the next week I'll get into it more when I know who's playing who there. But let's focus on the abs and the sharks as our first round two matchup we're previewing because it's amazing to think that the Leafs losing in a game seven to Boston on the same night ultimately wound up kind of being washed away and people forgot about it for the most part just because of that sheer, just ridiculous nature of what happened in the game that followed. And obviously I'm talking about the Cody Eakin, a five-minute major and a game penalty on which the shark scored four times in, I think, 241 seconds or something like that,

on Kevin LeBank at a point on all those goals. So that was definitely the best four minutes of his life. Let's talk about the penalty first, and then we'll get into that series and talk about this upcoming round two matchup. When you saw that play, like, what are you thinking? because I think generally Twitter is not in unison on these types of discussions. It feels like it's very polarized and you'll find people in different walks of life that are on both extremes. In this case, I felt like my feed for the most part was like, yeah, we need to address

the situation because the referees really blundered it. Well, it rolls up into sort of a common theme, I guess, for the first round and that's spotty officiating, right? So this was an instance I thought, now I guess what I should say, I first saw it on my phone. So I see these three goals like come just like that, four goals, actually, just like that. So you're wondering how that's even possible. And you're like, okay, something terrible must happen. And you see it, and it's not exactly that. Obviously, it's a, that's a, that's a gruesome moment and something you definitely don't want to see Joe Pavelsky slamming his

head on the ice. The blood coming through the helmet and the pitchers was just, I've never really seen anything like that. Obviously, you want Joe Pavelsky, obviously a great player, someone that's a playoff performer and a guy that's really means something. You're a classy guy, Justin. Means something. I'm just channeling my inner Jonathan Marsh so right now. But you want to, you obviously want him to be okay first, but you look back at it and this is just something that happened from a natural hockey play, something that you see pretty much off every draw. The draw is one, whichever which way. And then these guys sort of in their, as they get out of their athletic stances, there's maybe a little contact between them. In this case, Cody Eakin pushed Pavellski back. He

ran into Paul Stasney and he sort of fell on his shoulder and slammed his head. Yeah. And obviously called for a five-minute cross-check, completely changed the game, completely changed the series, as Jonathan Marches-so said, changed the future of the Vegas Golden Knights. Their futures, or what they've had, their past is remarkable. I know. A long-storied history. It's amazing. But it did change, and obviously it changed a large segment of their history because they might have been cup favorites if that four-goal. binge didn't happen on that power play. But it seemed reactionary to me. It seemed like they saw what happened, they saw the end result of a play and called it based off that. And I'm with, I guess,

the Twitter, the Twitterverse that didn't think it was, it was something that should have been called. And if you go by the rulebook, I mean, there's sort of discrepancies of, you know, there's people looking at like junior hockey rule books and trying to figure out what exactly happened. But that was a play that happens a lot. I don't think it was, there was, any malice there. And it's just really unfortunate for both Vegas and Pavelsky. Yeah, I've seen people citing that rulebook and sort of there is like that little blurb in there about how you can give a five-minute major for a cross-shacking penalty. And I think that's sort of like by the letter of law, it's like intent to injure and it's on a very specific sort of play.

And it's easy for us to comment on it. And then obviously a guy like Jonathan Marcia's so kind of might be a little biased or might not be viewing it from the most kind of outside perspective but then you see former players and other guys around the league that are currently playing chiming in on Twitter and commenting on the fact that this is sort of a regular play you see after a face off where you're kind of getting up in the guy's face kind of bumping him a little bit let him know you're there just so he can't skate freely to the net and unfortunately for whatever reason it was just this like confluence of events where I think Pavelski might have been off balance a little bit then he can nudge him a little bit in the chest and then he flew right into Paul Stasney who

then was also moving forward at the same time and knocked him down on this really unfortunate angle. And you hate to see what happened to Joe Pavelski. And I hope he's okay. And I hope that he couldn't contribute in this round two series, obviously. But I think for the referees to just look at that and they see a guy on the ground bleeding and they probably saw the follow-through of Cody Eakin. And they just immediately put two and two together and thought, oh, that must have been some sort of malicious act of violence on his part. And so they just tossed them based on the outcome as opposed to looking at the process and what had happened. And so this brings up to the conversation of whether we should be able to challenge this stuff, whether this is reviewable. And I get the

argument that you don't want to slow the game down any further. We already complain about offside reviews, goalie interference, all of that. And I get hockey's at its best when it's played five on five full speed, no stop. But it just seems silly to me that considering how the ramifications of that event that you can't be like, you know what? I admit I didn't get a good view of it. let me go back and check to see what actually happened. And you look at basketball, for example, reviewing flagrant fouls and one of guys getting tossed for flagrant twos. Like, it just seems like common sense that this is something that you should take seriously

and review, especially with how it can impact a game and a series. Yeah, I'm not, I wouldn't want to see challenges brought into the mix because I think you're getting down in that slippery slope and the, and the inconsistencies, but with what should actually be called back. And we're seeing it with the goal, goaltender interference. I mean, the Austin Matthews goal in game five, I think everyone was convinced that that was coming back and it didn't.

And you're going to get to that point where you're looking at these narrow margins and just basically using subjectivity and what you feel in the moment or what the original call was and you're just going to lose all meaning of what it should be. But I kind of look at what soccer. Soccer has obviously implemented a VAR system in some leagues. But I think what I like about soccer is there's communication, right?

There's a headset. He can talk to other people that might have been able to see. Now, I assume they did discuss things and they made their call after they sort of huddled up. But maybe the supervisor of the series, I'm not sure exactly what it's called,

but there is someone who watches over each series and is in communications with the referees and both teams, if that person was bugged in and could talk to the referees, and in that moment, they could be like, hey, hold on, hold on, that wasn't what you think it was. Or, hey, you just missed something.

You need to talk it over. and make sure you can make the call because one of your, one of the officials on your team probably would have seen it and they can help you assist you in making that call. I think that maybe would be something that makes more sense. I don't think it would slow the game too much. I think it would be only used in like emergency situations. That clearly was a situation where you would use it. Right.

But I don't want to see more opportunities to challenge calls because I don't think it's working in the two instances in which you can use a challenge. I think it's taking from the game. So I definitely wouldn't want to see that added, but they have to be able to find a way to make that correct call because there's really no excuse for it. Yeah, it seems silly in 2019 with all technology you have and everything that like you're never going to have it as an exact science. And I think in sports, people justifiably don't want it to be like that. But at the end of the day, when a team gets penalized to that degree, the Vegas did, I mean, I think even the most objective people would look and tell you. And even if they, for whatever reason, view some sort of ill will and ill and ill and.

intent on Cody Ekin or Paul Stasney's part, you'd say, okay, I'll give it a two-minute minor for interference or for cross-checking, and that's that. And maybe San Jose scores on that, and it's 3-1, and they have momentum, and all of a sudden, maybe they get back in the game regardless. But for them to have that five-minute major and score four times, and I don't want to hear the argument of, oh, Vegas shouldn't give up four goals against in that. Like, they shouldn't have been that. No, they shouldn't have. No, they should have been in that position to begin with. So that, it's sort of kind of chicken out of the egg, right? But I think enough about Vegas now, their fans have finally been treated to the heartache of being a sports fan. And,

you know, after the year they had last year, they're still in the net positive, I think. But from San Jose's perspective, now we're spinning this forward and we're going to talk about the abs here. I think it's going to be a really fascinating matchup because while the sharks struggled mightily in that series against Vegas, they still showed at times, and especially later on in that series, how much talent they have, how deep they are, especially up front. And now with Vlasic back and Carlson looking healthier, they're going to be pretty tricky to deal with for Colorado's perspectives. I wonder what the ads were thinking and the roller coaster of emotions

they were going through in the calculus. They were kind of going through watching that game where it's like, they're preparing for Vegas. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, okay, we got this series against San Jose now. What are you looking for in this series and sort of what are a couple matchups you're going to be focusing in on? You're right.

It's fascinating. because it did take two sort of minor miracles for the sharks to get through and our perception of the sharks has changed so much. I mean, they were my pick to go to the Stanley Cup final at the start. Clearly, you know, problems with Martin Jones and not addressing

those issues and I'm then on the Vegas bandwagging, not really thinking they could even push it to a game six, let alone actually win the series, but it came down to two minor miracles. It came down to the Martin Jones game in game six and that the call on Pavalski that obviously again we just talked about you wouldn't want to see

but they're not moving on without that incident happening so it's it's very interesting and then now you get to the point where okay they should be able to walk through the Colorado avalanche an eight seed a team that was sort of stuck in the mud in the Western conference pretty much the entire year before really turning it up but I think the Colorado avalanche might be favored here yeah I think there's a couple reasons why I mean Martin Jones you don't really know what you're going to get from that's probably the main reason but the sharks are bit beat up a little bit I mean we don't we don't know what Joe Velsky's health status is definitely don't want to laugh saying that but we were joking around

but we don't we don't really heard anything yet and he's really you know he's before what happened to him in game seven I don't know sure if it was a broken jar or what exactly happened but obviously he's got the protective uh protective shield mouthpiece or shield uh but I think the speed's going to be a big issue for them. Yeah. I think Colorado just overwhelmed Calgary with speed. And while there's so much talent on the San Jose side,

I think they're going to be a little bit worn out after the slog that they just went through with Vegas. And Colorado's got really nothing to lose here. Well, that's the matchup I'm watching for. It's not necessarily like player versus player matchup, but it's a stylistic sort of thing, how these two teams match up from the perspective of what really opened my eyes and shocked me in that round-on matchup for Colorado was what they did to Calgary off the rush and how they used that speed to expose them and kind of make them look like this old slow team that they didn't look like at all during the

regular season. I think that was a stunning thing to see. And we saw in this series for San Jose at the start when they were struggling, obviously Martin Jones needs to be better. And I think anyone listening to this podcast knows that and doesn't need us to spell that out for them again. But they were giving up so much off the rush. And they were getting exposed a little bit by Mark Stone and by Jonathan Marsha. So in some of the speedy wingers for Vegas, and in games 5, 6, and 7, I thought they did a really good job of getting back on defense,

cleaning up around the net, kind of slowing the game down just a little bit of 5-on-5 to make life easier for Martin Jones and to kind of give him a bit of a helping hand. And I think ultimately this series is going to be decided based on which San Jose team we see from that defensive perspective, which seems silly to say,

considering this team has so much offensive star power and can outscore all their problems. But if they get in, into that track meet style where it looks like they don't care about the defense at all. And as soon as they don't have the puck, they're just kind of skating around all willy-nilly. I think Colorado is really going to burn them. They manufactured so many scoring chances against the flames. And a lot of that was born off the rush.

And there was obviously instances where they were chasing the game. But they were able to frustrate what is a really good defensive core with their speed and what they were able to do off the rush. And I think it's a little bit slower footed on the back end with this. San Jose compared. I know obviously is a great skater and Eric Carlson, but there's, I mean, it's a little bit more penetrable, I believe, than the Flames defense, although they didn't really show up. But the one thing that I'm, I think one of the main variables here, and we talked about Martin Jones, but I don't think Philip Grubauer has been talked about enough. He's given up more than two

goals in a game just twice since the beginning of March. He's got a 9.52 save percentage since March 1st. And he's been about 9.4. in the playoffs. So he's been absolutely brilliant for that team. And I haven't really seen his name kicked around all that much. So if you got that goaltending and you've got that game breaking star in Nathan McKinnon and you've got the ability to create so many scoring chances, if the sharks don't have everything defensively and organizationally, I think they're going to be in for a little bit of trouble. Well, we've got a couple fancy stats here prepared for you. Let's hear them. So if you look at our friends at the point hockey on Twitter, who have been doing

a great job with some of these micro stats. For the series, they had Colorado up 49, 27 on rush chances against Calgary. And 118 to 70 were the, so plus 48 slot shots. And so that kind of speaks to that, the quality of the shots they were generating and how they were using that speed to get pretty much wherever they wanted to on the ice. And I'm going to be really interested to see, like, from San Jose's perspective, I think the big question here beyond Pavelsky's health has been Carlson's self, because he missed so much the regular season to end it.

And he looked great in game one. And then for a while there, his minutes were plummeting. He was getting exposed. There was some highlight real goals against where he looked like he basically couldn't turn. And Vegas skaters were just kind of going around him and getting to the net. And then in game six and seven, he played 36 and 34 minutes, respectively. And obviously, those games went to overtime and necessitated that. But what we saw from Pete DeBore as that series went along and when they were, their backs were

against the wall, he pretty much stopped playing his third pairing. And when Mark Edward Vlasa came back, he said, I'm going to have, either Carlson Burns or Placic on the ice literally 100% of the time. And I don't know how sustainable a formula that is for another seven game series now after the grueling seven gamer they just went through. But if those guys can hold up, then that throws an interesting wrinkle into this because clearly, you know, the San Jose is going to do pretty well whenever those guys are on the ice. So it's just a matter of, I guess, how those guys can hold up physically against all that

speed Colorado has. Yeah, those extremes might be necessary. Yeah. But then again, they may be not. I mean, this isn't, there's two world-class lines on the Vegas team. There's probably only one. There's certainly only one with the avalanche, and how they're going to neutralize them is probably their biggest thing.

What they got to figure out right now, obviously having Vlasic back helps. But maybe they don't need to go to those extremes, but having that in your back pocket and being able to have one of those two guys on the ice at all times, pretty much, is certainly something that gives them a leg up against most teams. Well, and we saw when Nashville made the cup final a couple of years ago, obviously they have all those star defensemen, but they still found time here and there to put

Matt or win in Yanuk Weber on the ice. It felt like they still had the advantage. Yeah, because those guys were playing against lesser talent and they were able to hold their own. For sure. You can pick and choose. Um, so the other thing that I wanted to mention is that Tomas Herdolo is an absolute animal. I know people are going to talk about that, his guarantee that it was going to go back to game seven and they were going to come home and play another game there and obviously he backed up his words by scoring the game six overtime winner to give him that chance but i mean he's got the six goals in the seven games he had 22 high danger shot attempts in that series the next best was alex rangelove with 15 and for him to have 22 chances

like that in seven games just speaks like how dangerous he was around the net and what he was getting up to it and i think that's sort of been the fascinating development for san jose this season we know what logan could sure and joe pevelsky and those guys are going to do but i think Hurtle and Tim O'Meyer taking that next step and becoming the dominant two-way forwards that we knew their talent had and all the hype and sort of flashes they've shown in past few years. I think that's the big wrinkle here to look for, especially in terms of matching up against McKinnon. If you're Pete DeBoro, what are you doing in terms of, are you going to lean a bit more

on Logan Cature to potentially do that? Are you going to trust hurdle? Are you going to go how they did against Vegas? I know it's a bit of a different animal because they had the two scoring lines. But we saw him just kind of not really go for any matchups, and they pretty much just played all their top guys head-to-head against Vegas and just took their chances. Yeah, and especially with the Joe Bevelsky injury factoring and all that,

I think you probably have to fight fire with fire a little bit because with the way their roster constructed, it's almost a turnover from a previous era, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's these new guys coming up, and now it's sort of the win-win-one for Joe sort of thing where it's completely turned over,

and these are the guys that are going to have to get done now. And I think certainly they don't have that prototypical shut down guy or shutdown line. They don't have a guy who's going to be up for, you know, sell keys and a guy that's really going to really get a match up and try and shut down a guy like Nathan McKinnon. I don't know if anyone really can. So I think you're going to have to just present your best and hope that as a five-man unit or as a five-man working in a structure that you've implemented, you're able to do that because. But I think it's going to it's going to lean more on the defense because. I just, I don't think they should get into that matchup game and trying, if you're, if you're putting Thomas Hurdle in position where you have, you have to shut down, Nathan McKinnon, how's that going to go? I'm not really sure that's going to go well. He has to play his game. His game is predicated on, you know, creating offense himself. So I think it's going to have to come down to, okay, maybe you put your best matchup line against them, but not worry so much about that and just try and get your offense and that'll end up being the best way to shut down. Yeah, you kind of have to concede that Nathan McKinan's going to get his and you kind of have to just hope that it's not such. a landslide when he's out there that you can kind of make it up on the back half against some of

the other secondary players on colorado although they perfectly held up there end of the end of the bargain against calgary and it was just that top line whenever they'd put rent in and up there with them i mean those three guys were probably the three best players in that series and clearly that's a big reason why colorado won and just watching mckenon you're right i don't know what the answer is because as much as you can say okay you put hurdle and carlson out there for example and you just hope that you have the puck so often that McKinn's chasing in his own zone. The issue with that is like he's going to get the puck eventually and when he does it's full steam ahead and towards in transition and that's when he's at his most dangerous. So there's no like I think it's just a very massive problem that you just kind

have to accept and reconcile and just try to win the other minutes because you're not probably going to win those whenever McKinn's out there. Yeah. And don't lose those and lose those minutes in a landslide. I think that's what it comes down to. I think the biggest difference between those these teams is the depth. We talked about the turnover from a previous era, but there's still talent littered across that lineup. There's not as much in the, in the abs, in the abs lineup. I mean, they're more top heavy. There's, there's really dangerous weapons, I guess, with that top line dropping, uh, Rantanin. So they, they have it spread out a little bit. Obviously, Kale McCar, Tyson Berry, these are guys who can be differentiators, uh, for the avalanche.

But you have to try and win. They have the depth. They built this team to win a Stanley Cup. There's depth and talent all across it. And you just hope that you have, you have the best formula to slow down Nathan McKinnon and then you win it everywhere else. You know what I love about hockey, just how sometimes things work out. So Gabriel Landis Gawks was awesome in that series against Calgary. He was around the net. He was a nightmare. He was giving Calgary defenseman fits all series. He had the one goal, which was scored in game five. And it was off a point shot that like went off of his leg and bounced in. But he had 15 high danger and he had over 20 shots. He had over 20 on goal. Like he had all these glorious opportunities, odd man rushes, seemingly sure things that

didn't go in. And then he scores on this random thing. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if those goals, if he keeps playing that way, it will come. We should be expecting them. And that could open the floodgates and that's scary to think that as good as McKinnon and Randon and Landisog where they could potentially get an even bigger uptick in offense once Landisog starts holding up his end of the bargain goals scoring wise a bit. Because, man, those three are scary. And so we're going to do our predictions next year. And I want to say San Jose just because I think they have more impactful star power up front. But after watching that round one series, I can't help shake this feeling that 10 days from now, two weeks from now, I want to be wind up looking back,

kicking myself being like, man, I should have learned from my round one mistake when I discounted Colorado just because those three guys are that good. Yeah, I mean, if you're really tracking predictions, I guess, I mean, no one's going to have a quality year. So I don't. I don't. know, maybe you try and go for, go the opposite route and trying to reclaim some of the losses already, but I got to stick with San Jose as well. I mean, I feel like the talent discrepancy, while it favors Colorado so much at the top, I think it's, there's, there's guys that we're forgetting about Evander Keynes, Gus Nyquist, is guys that can have in the bank, yeah, guys that can have a big difference in this series. I think the speed is going to be a big thing.

I think it's going to take their toll on San Jose, and we might see, um, the consequence of that maybe in the third round. But I just got to think that San Jose is the better team and they should win. Yeah, they almost have this kind of like new lease on life after escaping round one, right? I imagine. Although it's, that's the funny thing about psyche. It's like if they come out of the gate struggling and lose in five, we're going to go like, ah, if we should have known San Jose, they just kind of emptied the tank to just get here, right?

And the Joe Povilski situation is no small thing either. If he's able to come back in the series, obviously that's a big thing for San but it's a huge loss of he's not able to. Okay, let's go to Bruins Blue Jackets next. Okay. We'll go a little west-east-west. So you were covering the Bruins series pretty intimately from a least perspective, mostly, but I mean, you were bouncing around.

You were in Boston for game seven. When you're projecting this series, how optimistic are you from the Bruins perspective based on what you saw against Toronto for them to match the blue jackets, I guess. I guess the two-fold question. One, match the blue jackets depth scoring, which we saw in round one, where they pretty much have three or four lines that can all generate goals and their defensemen can chip in. We saw from Boston against Toronto, I thought Charlie Coyle was much better than I thought he was going to be in, was actually a legitimate, impactful player.

They got goals from, you know, Corrale and Nordstrom and guys down the line. And then it feels like we still haven't seen the best from that top line. I don't know what was going on in round one. Obviously, Pastor Nack was playing down on the second line for quite a bit of it. Marshan certainly had his moments. I thought in a couple of the games in Toronto, especially he was the best player on the ice. But Bergeron's minutes were all over the place. He was uncharacteristically slow, I thought, on occasion.

What are you expecting from them in terms of matching up at the top and also through the secondary score? It's interesting because I think we sort of, while the Bruins have changed and maybe They're not quite exactly what they were. Char are obviously a little slower. You mentioned Bergeron. But we think we know what we're going to get from them. That's some really, really top end talent, some really strong depth,

some unsutting guys that are going to do a really good job for Cassidy regardless. The more unknown here is the Blue Jackets, right? Because there was not really much expectation, despite the fact that when you look at their lineup, that's a really good team. I mean, they're arguably, they probably have more talent top to bottom than the Bruins do. and maybe most teams in the Eastern Conference

or at least the teams that are left, right? But I think there could, I mean, it's an easy answer to say, oh, they're pretty even. But I think they are pretty even, but the difference would be that I think that top end talent, the top line for Boston, is a little bit more reliable, right?

I look at Matt Dushain. I watch a lot of Blue Jackets games down the stretch, and it's just he's the king of the low percentage play, it felt like to me. Like a guy who was just sort of, hoping that this would work out. So much disjointedness with that team, it seemed, when they were trying to win the games,

when they were trying to string together wins after obviously going out and buying at the deadline. But then it all started to work and all started to mesh at some point. And then you're like, well, that makes sense because they got so much talent on the roster. They got lots of different skill players, guys with different tools and guys that can do a lot of different things. And I think that they present a really serious issue for Boston. But when I think about it, I think about where the major minutes are going to be won, and their major minutes are going to be one with those, the Marchans, Bergerons, and Pastronax, who I just trust over the really, the guy, the top guys for Columbus being Duchenne or Artemi Panarin,

who can sometimes be restricted to the periphery when Boston, they, they win, I don't want to say the right way, but they win doing things the way it's continually harped on, right? So I think while it does maybe favor on paper Boston, and I probably would have said that, obviously in a series, if they were to match up, let's say Boston was the first seed, I would have favored them then. But I think the fact that the Blue Jackets have all this confidence from beating Tampa and that they've been waiting

and they're healthy. We saw what seven games for Boston versus Toronto did when they matched up with Tampa Bay last year. So I think that's going to play a part and probably it's going to neutralize things a little bit. Yeah, I'll be watching DeShane, obviously. I think like his, not to sound like a talking head on TV here, but I think like his sort of like aggression and involvement in the offense for Columbus

is a great like litmus test for how much their role and what things are looking like for them because you're right. I thought when he first came to Columbus, a lot of those wards and a lot of sort of negative components of his game that we heard about over the years were shining through. And then in that series against Tampa Bay, there were a number of plays where I felt Like he actually did the opposite where he had a shot for himself to potentially score and he passed up a reasonable scoring chance for like a great A1 to set up Panarin for Atap and a couple others where he had great assist.

So when he's rolling, he adds such a different dynamic to this team. And it's sort of you can see why Yarmor Kick-Kleinen went out and made the move that he did because it gives them another sort of needle-moving offensive player alongside Panarin that can create for others and himself. was a legitimate presence down low, I felt like, in that series, and definitely a difference maker on the power play. It's going to be interesting. We were talking a little bit earlier about what they can throw at Boston on the rush, and we're talking about Saddam O'Chara slowing down a little bit. Brandon Carlo obviously stepped up big for them, but sort of the change up of

being able to throw Cam Adkinson and Josh Anderson in rush chances against that Bruins team. I think that's going to give them a little bit of trouble. I think the leaves were able to do a little bit of that, but they weren't able to take advantage of it as much as maybe those guys would be able to, like a Casbury captain, and he can create those, and you could see it, you could see it happening, but he just didn't have that, what do you do when you get there type thing? I don't think that the star wingers for the Blue Jackets really struggle with that, and they can, even when the rush chances don't immediately work, they can get that possession and then start working down low a little bit more effectively, I guess, than the Maple Leafs did.

So I think they have a lot of different types of talent and guys that are going to give different issues to the defensemen with the Bruins. Obviously, they still got Brandon Carlo, Charlie McAvoy. Those guys are studs back there. But there are vulnerabilities there, I think, in that third pairing with Sedano Chara at times. So I think they pose a different challenge. And it's interesting that all those different sort of pieces that weren't fitting together, they all fit together all of a sudden. and then they look so dangerous together. Yeah.

Well, from a lineup construction perspective for Boston, you know, we talk about their forwards a lot. I think the defensemen are interesting because I think watching that series, I mean, Toronto is such a uniquely fast team throughout their lineup that they're not necessarily the norm, but just watching some of those forwards go up against Charra. It was like, it was actually kind of sad at times to watch him try to move around. And whenever they'd throw the puck anywhere near his feet or make him lunge or move forward, like it just looked like, it was just like, oh, my God.

And he's resorted to the means of a different sport. Yeah. And listen, all the respect to him, he's at an insane career. Remarkable defenseman. I subscribed to the argument that he probably should have won the Lady Bing every year because he could have actively just bludgeoned players to death every single night if he wanted to use his strength and power. But he's actively, he's actively, he actively chose not to.

But now he's kind of playing more of that sort of meat and potatoes grinding type of hockey because he has to out of necessity. And obviously, I think Leaves fans, took a lot of issue in round one with how the game was being officiated and what they let a guy like Zinotara get away with in terms of obstruction and sort of little bumps here and there to slow guys down on the fore on the forecheck and when they were dumping it in if there's a tighter whistle if the refs are calling a bit more um i think that could obviously be a big issue and kind of going the other way um you know what we saw was boston really feasted on the power

play against Toronto where they were seven for 16. And that was a big difference maker because at 5-1-5, you could argue they were the inferior team in totality. But on the power play, they really did a lot of their damage. And what we saw from Columbus all year, they took the fewest penalties in the league in the regular season. And then they gave Tampa Bay six powerplay opportunities total in four games. And three of those were in game one, I believe. So if Columbus can stay out of the box, and I know it kind of goes against what I just said about a tighter whistle, but if Columbus can stay true to form and make Boston earn their offense at 515, I could see them really struggling to generate enough offense to put up the type of goal

totals that they might need to to combat Columbus's offense. Yeah, definitely. How was their penalty kill in the entire season? I mean, obviously, they're really good limiting chances and that's probably more important. But yeah, I mean, just thinking about it, you'd think they'd have that ability as well, right? At least more so than Toronto. And the Bruins really, really relied on that to win that series. I mean, the Maple Leafs look like the faster team at five on five, but they were just so disorganized with their special teams. And that's ultimately what they took advantage of. I think getting back Sean Corrali is no small thing for the Bruins. I think he, obviously he scored that goal. It's hard to believe you'd be able to beat Freddie Anderson with a broken hand from there, but

did no less. but I think he brings a dynamic to that top six, some speed and that physicality. It'll be interesting to see how they measure up with Columbus, who can also play that physical style, obviously. It's something I noticed in the Boston Leaf series is that the Bruins are so good at controlling their physicality and going 95% of the way without going over the line, right? And if they do that routinely against the Leafs, and I think that's one of the things that frustrated them the most. Now, it didn't really matter because I still think the Leafs were able to get the majority of the 5-0-5, at least in terms of dominating the run of play. But I think that's not going to be as easy to assert themselves against the Blue Jackets who have those big bodies and have some legitimate team toughness as well.

That's what makes Columbus such a tantalizing team and has been for years, even before this year, where they have such a versatile group, especially a forwards, like guys who can play big but also are skilled and talented. And ultimately, though, I think Boston's going to want to get them to play that resort to that sort of more physical, slow traditional playoff, a brand of hockey. And I think for Columbus, it'll be imperative for them to try and stay away from that as much as possible,

not necessarily, especially early in the series, shy away from it and let Boston physically intimidate them. But I think they're at their best when they're using that speed, when they're flying up and down the wing, when their fork check is buzzing and creating turnovers and chances like they did against Tampa Bay.

So similar to Toronto, I think they're going to have that speed advantage, and it behooves them to utilize that as opposed to kind of dumbing it down and playing how Boston wants them to. Yeah, I think it's imperative that the Blue Jackets do establish their terms. I think if they try and, I mean, that was obviously so critical against the lightning is if they were chasing games, it probably would have got out of hand the other way. But Boston is, it's all about establishing an identity in a way of playing. So that's going to be the struggle there.

And it's, I mean, again, so cliche talking about first goals, but being able, when they can settle into that, it might be harder for them to make up the ground that they need to. But if they were able to do it themselves, I think they're going to have a similar advantage that obviously the Bruins would have in that case. Yeah. I always, when I watch Bruins games, I don't know if you felt this watching all the games live. I always want them to play Mad Grislik more. Like, he's been kind of an analytics darling for a while, but just watching him, like he's so slick, he's so smooth. the puck. It feels like he makes very little mistakes. And I love that, especially when he's like on the point on that second unit power player or whatever. Like, he doesn't just shoot the puck

on net just because he has it. Like, he always looks to make the smarter, more refined play. And I think it would serve them well to play him more. But I think Bruce Cassidy clearly likes having that kind of like mix and match of he plays Charle with McAvoy. He plays Carlo with Krug. He plays, I guess, John Moore and, and Matt Rizick on the third pairing. But like, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to just play those two undersized skill guys together. but I think Grisleck needs to play more minutes in this series because I think Charra's really going to struggle with all that right wing speed coming down with Anderson and Atkinson and so on and so forth burning him going out wide and so that's something to watch for I think.

When that matchup though, I mean if you are taking those third pairing minutes and you're not responsible for taking on such quality competition may not be the case with Columbus because they do have a pretty balanced lineup but obviously the third and fourth lines he might be able to get the better of. So I think it's all about winning your matchup. If Cassidy's putting him in a position to continually drive success and be a benefit to his team, I don't think that's a bad thing unless they're getting caved in, obviously. But it's interesting. Another, on the flip side of that is Dean Kukon for Columbus. I mean, he's sort of emerged as that is sort of the same thing. I thought he was brilliant against Tampa. Yeah. Scott Harrington? Is that?

Scott Harrington? I'm not, I'm not as confident Scott Harrington. I mean, it kind of sucks because Obviously, I think, like, Ryan Murray had an awesome season and he'd be great in there. But David Savard really stepped up. I mean, it's like he sort of revitalized his career a little bit. We'll see if Marcus Nouveau-Divar is healthy after taking that suspendable act by Nikita Kutjab in game three. So, yeah, they've got some players. And ultimately, I guess, let's get to our predictions here. I think we're going to finally get some disagreement, which makes for great podcasting content.

Oh, I don't know. I'm going with Columbus. Right when you said it, I'm like, no, or not. Well, I felt like you were leaning Bruins when you were talking. Yeah, I mean, maybe there's just a little, Did I talk you into it a little bit? A little bias. You talked me into it a little bit.

But I mean, I like, I mean, I was talking earlier about how I think that advantage all things equal. But I think the biggest advantage in this series is going to be the rest. I think Boston has probably beat up a little bit. Same thing that happened last year. Only having to play four times waiting, not knowing who you're going to play, but having the time to prepare. I think Columbus is going to have a little bit.

bit of advantage. If there was no built-in advantages, I would probably take Boston. But with what I was saying about their top lines, sort of being superior to the top guys for Columbus, I wonder if they're going to still be able to have that effect. I think it's going to be a long series. I think Columbus might edge it in seven. Yeah, I like their speed. I like their depth. I like, I like how they're playing. I think stylistically, I think they match up really well with this Bruins team. They can sort of take advantage of some of the things Toronto didn't while also having the same strengths that they did. Sponsoring today's episode of the Hockey P.D.O.cast is Seekek. They are all about making that experience easier for you as a consumer in trying to save you time, money, and effort. And if you

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let's talk a bit about Mike Babcock and the Leafs. Let's do it. Because obviously you have related to the Bruins here, but I think our listeners will probably be interested in our thoughts on what happened there and sort of the discussion going on on Twitter these days about Babcock and whether he's the right man for the job and sort of how he blundered the end of that series. I don't know, let's just start the conversation.

How are you feeling right now? What's the temperature like? I mean, someone had to wear this loss because someone had to wear the loss. And there was no one obvious in a leaf sweater to wear the loss. I mean, Jake Gardner obviously had his nightmare again, Game 7 moment. But there was only one moment this time. I mean, obviously it's been a house of horrors for him. I think I'm not sure exactly what it was, but maybe 10 goals against through seven periods.

I tweeted about of him being on the ice in Game 7s in Boston, which is just horrible. And I feel really bad for him because obviously he wasn't, he wasn't completely there and he was really demobilized by his back injury. And the only other guy

that could have worn that loss would be Freddie Anderson. And he was the only reason they were there to begin. And he's the only reason they were there. So everything that has annoyed Leaves fans and people that care about the Leafs was sort of thrust under the spotlight

with this series, with Mike Babcock being just so inflexible. and just refusing to make in-game adjustments and being so loyal to the players that weren't going to make a difference and weren't going to tilt the game or the result in their favor. And I think there's some really serious questions that need to be answered about the fact that he doesn't seem to be on page, on the same page with management. He almost seems to be coaching despite Kyle Dubus and the wishes and the sort of design for his roster and what he's, wants to see from his roster and there's just no excuse in a game where you didn't take one penalty

and you're chasing it the entire time to have Matthews out for six minutes in the first, six minutes in the second and six minutes in the third. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'm a bit torn. If you go back to go listen to episode 202 of the PEOCast, I'd Craig Custin Zon after he wrote his book behind the bench where he profiled a bunch of successful coaches and spent time with them and sort of did a full chapter on each one. And I was really impressed with how Mike Babcock came out looking in his chapter because he had this whole spiel about innovation and adaptability and kind of learning from like the business world and a tech world in terms of anticipating where mistakes are going to come up or sort of getting ahead of

problems as opposed to waiting and then reactionarily trying to adjust on the fly and sort of being proactive about it. And it's ironic because based on what he did, year and especially in this series it's like the exact opposite like not put in practice like he literally just stuck to his guns and was very fervent in his belief that he should play his guys a certain number of minutes he kept playing the guys the same amount they were playing the regular season he kept playing them the same in game seven when they were down in the third period and it just really um bugged me from the perspective of i think like the strongest attribute a coach can have is adaptability and not being so rigid in the way you utilize your lineup and the way

you utilize your players and sort of you don't want to necessarily overreact in a series after one bad game and instantly change everything that you did so well to get you there but after five or six games if you see something isn't working or you see something needs to change it just seems negligent to kind of bear your head in the sand and hope for different results doing the same thing over and over again and so just matthews's usage the power play i mean I tweeted about this over the weekend. It wasn't even related to the Leafs and they're certainly not the only ones

who are to blame here. But when our team is going to just start using their top power play unit for like the full two minutes almost, especially if you have sustained pressure in the offensive zone where you're basically just shooting the puck and not necessarily skating around that much

and not having to go retrieve it in your own zone. Like I believe fully that these star players can have enough gas in the tank to the last two minutes out there. Yeah. And in those highest leverage offensive situations where you're more likely to score, is it a crazy outside-the-box idea to suggest that your best offensive players should be out on the ice for as long as possible?

Yeah, I mean, I think Babcock was sort of hamstrung a little bit by the Nazim Kadri suspension. I think it took away the flexibility that could have been there, not saying he would have used the flexibility that could have been at his disposal. But the fact that Neelander was locked into that 3C and nothing else could really move, well, by using all 12 forwards, nothing else could really move. I think we could have went down to three lines and we could have optimized the lineup that way. But there's no excuse on the power play. I wrote about this after game six. The Bruins had two power plays scored on each.

Both of the goals came after the one minute mark, one barely and one really deep in the second power play. If you look at what the Bruins did with their power play allotment in that game, five players, all of them played two minutes and I think 34 seconds. Two for two, clean. You look on the other side, about seven.

or eight forwards had ice time maybe not seven or eight six or seven uh Mitch Marner and John Tavares were I think five or five or six on that list behind Kappanin and Marlowe I don't understand how that could even possibly happen yeah that number one unit which has Tavars and Marner started every power play but the mandate for them is to come off the ice the first sign of losing possession yeah and every time they did that the power play just went to die because that unit the second unit, by sharing Jansson to the first because Cadre was out, had nothing but William Nealander to generate any offense. And when you can key in on one guy, the only threat on that

power play, it's easy to shut it down. The Leafs had every excuse to ride their guys, especially in game seven, especially on the power play at moments in that series, and they just stuck to the process. That's great sticking with the process. But when you get to the randomness and small sample of a playoff series and things are going south, you have to shake out of that because not everything is going to even out the way you think it's going to. Especially when one goal could make the difference between sitting at home watching round two and advancing. And that's the thing. I mean, the pushback that I get to that argument of just play your top unit the full two minutes is, well, you want to be prepared for the five on five minutes to follow. You don't want to

just wear your top guys out and then all of a sudden be playing your fourth line. Well, guess what they did on that last power play in game in game seven? Freddie Gochay comes out and the fourth line goes for a shift immediately after the powerplay, even though Matthews, Martin, Tavares have been sitting on the bench for over a minute. And so stuff like that is just like not optimizing every single possible minute to score, they

still might have lost. But it seems like they didn't give themselves the best chance to actually win that game. His only in-game adjustments in game seven, it seemed other than flipping Marla or Matthews and Martyr on the power play which people were very excited about. I'm not really sure it had

that big of it or it didn't have a difference. The two biggest stories were Matthew's switching his sticks and then Matthew's switching sides. But I mean, obviously the power play has struggled. But he's also pretty dangerous from the spot he was at throughout the season. But the only thing that they did was give more minutes to Ennis and Moore who did deserve more minutes. But because there was no shuffling throughout the lineup, that meant more minutes for Freddie Goce, who cannot chain together more than one positive moment in a shift when I'm watching him. Sure, he makes every now and then pinches someone off a little.

little body contact, something, you're like, oh, and then he disappears for the rest of the shift. It's not, there's no chaining of events with Freddie Gochier, and because of that reason, they're not able to sustain any offensive pressure. So the fact that he recognized that Tyler Ennis and Trevor Moore were having good games, that's fine. Yeah. But put them in elevated positions, not just give more minutes to guys who don't have the differentiating skill that an Austin Matthews had and because of those elevated minutes probably sat on the bench more in a game seven where you need to win to get only your first playoff win with the Leafs but only your fourth in the last decade. I'm really curious to see where this discussion goes and for the coming weeks,

months, the summer heading into next season because it seems like we're reaching this kind of crossroads or this kind of boiling point with the narrative around Mike Babcock because he's clearly, okay, you can't argue with his resume and the success he's had. He won a lot at every level. He's a better coach. He knows more about X's and O's, and he's forgot about it more than I'll ever know. But he's also coached some really good teams.

The Red Wings teams he coached were some of the best teams constructed in the cap era. Team Canada is basically an all-star team or a Hall of Fame team. That Ducks team he took to the cup final. I think Jayeshiguer having a 9-4. 45 save percentage and five shoutouts probably played a hand in that. So when you strip all of that away, there isn't too much to fall back on. And I know you're kind of picking and choosing. But for the longest time, it felt like Mike Babcock was kind of this like untouchable force.

Like his resume was just so spotless that everyone just raved and kind of considered him the de facto best coach in the world. And then you sort of pick your favorite guys after that, whether it's Joe Klanville or who have you. And now sort of people are raising this conversation of, like, well, in today's NHL, is he willing to adapt? Is he willing to listen?

Is he willing to embrace new ideas? Is he too stuck in his ways? Is he kind of rioting the past too much? And once this conversation gets going, it feels like there's this like online momentum or snowball effect. And I'm very fascinated to see, not that it's going to influence his job stature or with his position with the Leafs

or any future opportunities down the line. But I'm just in terms of how people feel about him, which is kind of as like a popular general opinion. I'm very curious to see whether this has legs or whether we're just going to revert back to being like, oh, Mike Babcocki's the best coach in the world. I think it's going to continue to decay if. Unless they win. Unless they win.

But I think the only way to win is he's got to get on page with management or on the same page with management. I mean, you cannot, you can't coach one way and have the general manager trying to create a roster that's not suited for the way it's supposed to be coached. I think they have to come together a little bit, not sure which one has to maybe, you know, compromise more. Right. It might be Babcock. Yeah. But they have to figure out a way to get on the same page because you cannot, after every move, complain about it.

Yeah. And sort of passive aggressively through media scrums and then just go the way you wanted, coach the way you wanted to coach anyway with the personnel that doesn't match that. So until they get on the same page, I think it's going to, it's, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to be an issue for the Maple Leafs. And things are going to get a lot more difficult for this team moving forward because this was the final year on the entry-level deals for the big stars. They're about to all get paid. There's two more years left of Morgan Riley and Freddie Anderson being on very team-friendly deals.

You're going to lose Jake Gardner and probably another piece on the back end and probably a piece up front. And there's not really much waiting there in terms of different talent in the Toronto Marley. There's a couple of guys there, but a couple of the guys were traded to get better for this season. So things aren't going to get any easier. This might have been the best chance or the best chance for them to win. Maybe the window not completely optimized, but this was one of the years. Maybe in two years it will be a little bit more. But this was a missed opportunity full stop and failing to see that is neglecting reality

because there are some really significant issues that are going to face this team. And yeah, there's things that can be done. But until those two parties get on the same page, it's going to be really hard to iron all this. Well, it's kind of like that money ball thing of like, oh, if you don't want to play the players that I got you, I'm just going to take away your toys and make you play them, right? But they tried to do that.

They tried to do that with getting rid of Matt Martin and so on and so forth. I mean, when Nick Vatman came in, Babcock was complaining about the fact that, oh, I don't have centers and I don't have penalty killers anymore. That's a direct response to the trade that brought in a guy, Mike Babcock doesn't want to play. Yeah. Yeah.

misses the days of Roman Polack. Speaking of Roman Polack, the Dallas Stars. I mean, he's unlocking the potential. Advancing into the second round of the postseason, just as we all predicted. I'm excited to talk about this Blue Star series. You know what? I think there's, I didn't give the Stars enough credit heading into the postseason in terms of, I viewed that series against the Preds as like my least watchable series.

I didn't really care much about it. I was like, I don't even know who's going to win. I guess we'll see it round two. I think we all sort of expected that it was going to be, I picked St. Louis to beat Winnipeg, but I think the conventional opinion was Winnipeg, Nashville rematch. We felt like it was going to be that way all year. And so people kind of just took this for granted. And I really liked what I saw from that Star's team. I know some of the underlying numbers aren't necessarily great. It looked like Nashville probably deserved a bit better. But when you have this

formula of you're going to have an insanely dominant top line and you're going to have a goalie that's going to play very well. I mean, we see this in Colorado and sort of the effects of that. And I think Dallas kind of has a juiced up for his and just because Ben Bishop is currently the best goalie in the world. I think that's not even a controversial opinion to say. So as long as he's healthy, I think this is a dangerous team. Yeah, I picked them to beat Nashville is probably the only thing that I did decently with my bracket, which is obviously in ashes right now. But there's a couple of things that allow for that, I think. Matsu Guerrilla coming in and forming a partnership with Rubei Hints, that's given them at least.

something to work with in a second line and allowed, I guess, maybe else to be knocked, everybody else to be knocked down a little bit and allowed that top unit to stay together. But it's all about the defense, I think, with this team. Miro Heiskenen having this coming out party, we all know what John Klingberg can do, Essela Lendell being very, very good. This, the way they chained together, their transition and getting the puck to those big guys, pretty seamless and fun to watch, frankly. And I think that's, while we look at this one line being so dominant, maybe the most dominant the league, I think it's doing them a little bit of a disservice to just rely on that or just

talk about that and Ben Bishop because there's more there than I gave them credit for, at least. There is. And they answered a lot of our questions because we didn't know how they were going to use those forwards. Towards the end of the year, they experimented a lot with moving Ben down to play with Rupert Hints. And I think obviously Matt Zucrow was out of the lineup. So part of that was kind of like by necessity.

But in round one, we saw they basically just. loaded that top line up again with Radjolov, Sagan, and Ben. And then they played Hints, Rupa Hints. No one should call him Hints. Everyone should call him Rupa Hintz full name, no matter what, all the time. Definitely correct. Amazing name. Rupa Hints, Zuccarello, and Jason Dickinson, those three gave them seven goals in round one.

And I don't know if they can expect that again in round two, but it didn't get anything resembling that. That gives them a legitimate fighting chance here because we sort of know what that top line is going to do, and they were just obscenely dominant against Nashville and sort of even Ben look like a kind of throwback, like power forward to his peak days again. And maybe in a postseason, he can keep it up because it is more of a sprint than a marathon. And Radelab is playing some of his best hockey, if not his best hockey, if not his best hockey, you've ever really seen.

And so those three with that second line, then you all of a sudden have, you know, Radic Faxa as your traditional shutdown center and you can throw him mostly at the other team's best players. That really gives Jim Montgomery some pieces to work with where you're not just relying on that one line. and they're going to need it because this St. Louis team is one of the deepest board groups in the league. You took the words out of my mouth. I mean, I think they need to be stretched out as much as possible while keeping that top line together because, I mean, that blues team is extremely deep. I mean, there's little pockets of, they were able to add, I mean, getting Fabri, Oscar Sunfuss having a really positive impact. I mean, they sprinkled in. It seems like they filled little holes in the rock.

roster, but once they've been able to do that fully optimized, I mean, that's a really, really strong, balanced lines one through four. Obviously, Robert Thomas is in that group as well. I think Blake Wheeler said it best. I mean, obviously, that's sort of your nightmare as someone who spends any time in scrums to get an answer like he got, or that he gave. But I just think that the Winnipeg Jets best wasn't enough. And I think that's because the blues are so deep and really, really talented and it all came together at the perfect time. They won, despite Jordan Bittington not being that great. The numbers are fine, but I mean, in terms of goaltenders that are left, his numbers certainly lag behind everybody else's. So I think the blues are in a nice

spot and the stars are going to have to be at their fully optimized to be able to handle the four lines that the blues can throw at them. Well, the blues seem really, really based on their first round match at least insistent on hard matching. and really playing the matchups. And I imagine in this series, that's not going to change much. Like, I imagine... It won't be as difficult. Well, it won't be as difficult, but also I think that'll, like, incentivize Craig Brubay even more to really just go, like, fully.

Like, I'm very curious to see what percentage of Tyler's say against five-on-five minutes are against Ryan Rowley. I think they're going to be just unspeakably high and with reason. But I think I mentioned this in round one and this would kind of come into play here. Part of that equation, unfortunately, is a lot of Jay Bowmeister. because they seem to really value Bowmeister and Paracos their shutdown pairing. And I think sometimes that can be a bit to their detriment because I just want to see them play Petrangelo and Vans done

as much as possible. But instead, they're going for these matchups so much that if they're going against Sigann and Seaghan's line is obviously going to play the lion's share of the minutes at 515, that's going to all of a sudden mean a lot of that defense pairing. And I don't think that's like a good thing for St. Louis. I don't think they'd want to, they're kind of like missing the forest for the trees

by getting too preoccupied with having certain players out there. It's interesting because who else but Ryan O'Reilly would you want in that matchup? But on the other side of the coin when looking at the defensemen, there clearly are plans to maybe not put their best foot forward with, I guess, the defense crew. So that'll be obviously something that's interesting to watch. But I think Ryan O'Reilly is the key to the series because so much hinges on that Dallas top line. And Ryan O'Reilly might be the perfect person to put up to that. task. Well, the stars defenseman you mentioned earlier, obviously we're never really full-time,

at least right now with currently constructed, going to see Klingberg and Heiskenen play full-time at 5-1-5 just because it doesn't make sense to put all your eggs in that basket. You'll kind of otherwise, you're going to have a lot of like Ben Lovejoy and Roman Polack, and that's clearly not ideal. But we saw a bit in the regular season, like, especially if they need a goal or if it's high-leverage situations, Jim Montgomery is not scared to put them out there together. And we saw a bit of it. I mean, they played 45-15 minutes in that round one series. And the numbers were just like staggering. I mean, they're like north of 70% in terms of expected goals, shots share shots on goal, high danger chances, everything. And so I'm very curious to see

in some of these games, especially if they're as tight as we think they're going to be, whether he's willing to just kind of let those guys loose and go with like kind of like a traditional either power play unit or a five-man basketball unit of like you just get that top line out with those two guys and you just like try to score and acknowledge that maybe you're going to be up against it otherwise. But I mean, as deep as the blues are, if they're going to be so preoccupied with having Ryan O'Reilly and Vlad Tarasenko out there all the time against Sagan's line, that makes it a bit kind of more palatable to have your secondary defensemen out there against the blue secondary forwards. Because as good as Jane Schwartz was to end that series, you know,

it is still a bit of a step down in terms of skill level and ability when that's, top line isn't out there. Yeah, and I think that's that's the time when a guy like Robbie Fabry, like looking so dangerous in that series. You got those guys who can make a difference deeper in the lineup. It's interesting. You said the five-man unit for Dallas. Does anyone look, does any team look more dangerous on television than Dallas at home? There's something about the camera angle and the way the, it's unbelievable. It probably is just that. I think it is an optical. But when I watch them, every time I watch them, I think I'm not sure if it's the east end, west end, whatever, but going to No, it's always going left. Yeah, it always. I'm watching and it's just like this team is

unstoppable. It feels like, so give them those five guys. It feels like it is a ball rolling down a hill and it's like you can't stop it. Yeah. That's the, it's like the, it's the only, it's the only camera angle in hockey where it looks so exaggerated how dominant a team can be. See, teams are so worried with like controlling the narrative how people write about them, how people talk about them in the media. I think there should be more preoccupied instead of all doing all these bobblehead giveaways and all this these random cheap little tricks and vote our player into the All-Star game, just spend all your resources on an off-ice perspective, just mastering the perfect vantage point to make your team look amazing.

Just confusing the consumer to think that this is the Harlem Globe Jotters or whatever of hockey and just, you know, it's like an optical illusion, I guess. These are cutting edge analytics right here. Only on the PDO cast. Yeah, I mean, Bishop could be the ultimate X factor here. I mean, so if you combine the regular season and the postseason, he's got 52 games. which means he should be relatively fresh, right? Just because he hasn't played that typical 60 plus in the regular season.

937 at 5-1-5, say a percentage, 936 overall. He's saved nearly 40 goals above average for the year. He gave up five. So he stopped 57 of 62 high-danger attempts against in round one. Sergey Bobrovsky also, who played a great round one series against Tampa Bay and ridges himself a lot of demons, also gave up five goals against on high-danger chances, on 27 attempts.

So like a third of Ben Bishop's workload. And it just kind of speaks to how ridiculously unparalleled dominant this guy has been so far. And he carried it on into round one. And I think when you look at these teams, I think they are pretty evenly matched. I think the Blues are a slightly superior team in terms of 5-15 in their depth. But I think if you're telling me we're going to get the Jordan Binnington we got in round one and we're going to get the Ben Bishop we got in round one, I think you have to go with a star as just purely based.

on that, don't you? Yeah, I mean, the whole basis behind picking the stars over Nashville in round one was the fact that you had the most proven and the most dominant goaltender in the league to that point against a guy who's, while he's had good regular seasons and be able to chain together some good stretches of hockey, has come up empty. And I think in any matchup right now, the stars are going to have an advantage of goal. And I think that's more, that's more so the case in this matchup, while just... Jordan Bennington has held up to this point. I think there are serious questions still about what he's going to be able to provide.

I mean, he did change things, whether it was psychologically or whether it was just strictly by his play in St. Louis, by, I think, just giving, making that first save. Being able to give them a chance to get a lead and then riding it out that way. I think that was huge for the Blues, who maybe just didn't believe in what they had back there before. but this is definitely the goaltender with the least pedigree left in the playoffs. He's going to have the most talent discrepancy to try and make up in this series. And it's the biggest reason, I think if all things were equal from goaltending,

I think it would be an easy selection. But I think that the fact that Ben Bishop is in a position to dominate, a great narrative because he gets to go home here. And that's great. But he's in the position to make the biggest impact. And it's up to Bennington to try and answer the bell. in that case. So do you think he's an answer? What's your, what's your pick in the series? I think St. Louis still going to win the series. I think they just need average goal tending

in the end in St. Louis because I do think it's just, there's way more depth on that side, in my opinion. And I think eventually that will shine through. But Dallas has surprised me. And I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, you have, I wouldn't, it surprised me, but I wouldn't be surprised. Ben Bishop has made up discrepancies before. He, he, can definitely do it again. We're talking about small samples. The team has maybe the better shooters in the series with that top line. I think it's closer to a coin flip than anything, but if you were going to just boil it down to everyone else but the goaltenders, I know it doesn't work that way. I just think St. Louis has the superior team and I probably lean them, lean that way because

of that. And they're obviously wildly different teams, especially Dallas, and it's been a couple years, but the last time the stars were in this position, it was also a second round matchup against the Louis and that went seven and it was a really tight series and I think I would expect another six, seven game series. I'm going to go with Dallas here just because I think there's going to be a couple games where you're going to see some hilarious screen grabs of the shot counter and it's going to be like 42-17 for St. Louis. I just think, and this is risky because Ben Bishop in game one could pull his groin and be out of

the series and you just kind of have to deal with it. But if you're telling him you're going to get seven games out of Ben Bishop right now with how he's playing. I think we see time and time again. I think St. Louis is a better team. I think Ben Bishop plays in the most important position and is the better option and he can steal the series himself and they have enough to their credit in front of him to help support that. It's not purely just a one-man mission. So I think it's going to be a really fun series and I've, the stars have really grown on me and I'm really looking forward to those home games with that vantage point going left. Yeah, I'm looking forward to watching Dallas as well. I mean, we talked about watch. We weren't

We talked about watchability. No, not at all. I mean, this is probably, that might be the team I watched the least in the entire league this year. So I'm looking forward, obviously, to diving in a little bit deeper. And I'm looking forward to watching St. Louis as well because it's obviously their turnaround began a long time ago. But they're a really fun team to watch. I think they've grown in. Even though they play such a strict style, it seems under Baroube, who loves matchups and loves, you know, defensive structure and all that,

I think they're really fun to watch regardless of that. So I think it's going to be one of the most exciting series of the second round. I'm looking forward to it. Justin, plug some stuff now that you're back in Toronto. You're done with the Bruins Leaf Series. What are you up to? You're going to get a good night's sleep and recharge for Round 2? What's your coverage plan?

What can people expect from you for Round 2? Well, there'll be lots of non-leaf stuff, I guess, because it's been predominantly Leafs the last, I guess it's been two weeks. Yeah. But it's just going to be diving into the four matchups that we have left. We'll do a ton of video stuff in the studio with our license. plates and all that. And, you know, we'll just break down each series, right?

Well, I'm looking forward to it, man. Hopefully we'll be able to get through some more podcasts and videos, and people can look forward to that. Have you back in the studio soon? Oh, I'm loving it here. Thanks for having it. Cheers. The hockey PDEOCast with Dim Philipovich.

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