The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 294: Master Puppeteers

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Sean McIndoe joins the show to discuss the first leg of the Conference Finals, lessons to be learned from how the four teams still alive got here, and what to watch for in the coming games. Erik Karlsson’s health and future (4:00) Converging timelines and the window to win (13:00) Difference makers in the West Final (26:00) How the Bruins have Carolina all out of sorts (43:00) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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And joining me as my good buddy, Sean McAnneaux. Sean, what's going on, man? Hey, how's it going? It's going good. It's going good. We're recording this on a early Tuesday morning. And today we're going to focus on the two conference final series. I feel like there's a lot to get into.

Do you want to start with Sharks Blues first? Sure. Yeah, might as well. Yeah. Got a series there now. We do. I was wondering after game one, but. Well, it's, it's, it's, it's,

I don't know how if you feel the same way, but watching these first two games, you know, with all due respect to the blues, I feel like the big takeaway for me is like I've really allowed myself to enjoy watching the sharks again. It feels like in round two, everyone was just so all in on the Colorado Avalanche from like an entertainment storyline perspective. And it felt like that kind of overshadowed just how fun San Jose themselves are to watch. And then in round one, you know, just because of the stylistic disparity or the speed the Vegas wanted to play with San Jose,

and wanted to, you know, play a slower pace and maybe kind of neutralized a bit of what the Golden Knights wanted to do. So we haven't really seen them reach their full potential from that perspective, but now watching them in these first two games, even though they lost game too, they've opened things up a little bit, and I've really gotten back to just marveling at all the talent that's on this roster.

Yeah, they are a lot of fun to watch. And, yeah, I still don't know if they're at full power, because this Eric Carlson situation where he's putting up numbers and he's making plays, but then you see some of these other shifts that he takes where he's clearly not anywhere near 100%. And to the point where you kind of wonder what exactly that situation is. I guess it's impressive that the sharks look as scary as they do with arguably. their most skilled player, not being anywhere close to full power.

It's just a testament to how good they are. I was on a St. Louis radio station yesterday, and I kind of caught myself because I started talking about the sharks being so good, top to bottom. And it's kind of not that. It's kind of like top to bottom in terms of the 18 skaters. They're fantastic.

And then you got the goaltending where you just need Martin Jones to be okay. Like that's what you need him to be. if he can be as good as the other team's goalie, you're thrilled. And he wasn't that most of the season. He wasn't that the first half of the Vegas series, but he has been since. And, you know, when you've got him playing well enough, and you've got Logan Couture looking like, you know,

the Khan-Smith favorite, they're fun and they're entertaining and they're going to be tough to beat, but full credit to the Blues, because they found a way to do it last night in the game they probably need it. See, that's why you're becoming a broadcasting professional there. You had the point about the Sharks,

but then you made sure to lump in the Blues as well because you know that if any blues fans are listening, they're going to be like, hey, what about our team? Yeah, exactly that's. You know, the Martin Jones thing's been pretty funny because he certainly has been better, and he took his fair share of criticism throughout the regular season

and the start of that Vegas series after he was pulled in two of the first three games. And he has been better. And I do want to give him credit for it, but I still do want to point out he has a 905 save percentage for this postseason. And I think he's against Colorado, I thought he was a lot better. I think, you know, in game two, some of the goals he gave up certainly weren't his fault. They were defensive breakdowns in game one, even though they won and he had a fine

enough game. I thought he kind of got back to looking like a little bit of that shaky Martin Jones version. So that's going to be something to monitor as this post season continues. but I do want to talk more about Eric Carlson because Hockey Night in Canada during one of the intermissions during last night's game ran this kind of series of video clips of him not really going back full speed to retrieve the puck and sort of, I don't know, kind of like half-assing it a little bit on some of those plays. And I certainly don't think no one, and again no one thinks that that's because he's lazier because he's not trying. I think it certainly is kind of preserving himself.

And I guess the interesting part of that is that and Lee's Creed's, instead of fact that he is not 100% is that like he's not playing those types of crazy like Ryan Suter type minutes that he was playing during the auto run where it's like okay this guy's going to knows he's in for like a 32 minute night tonight so he's probably going to pace himself on a couple of these shifts like the sharks have had the good fortune just because they do have Burns and Vlasic on the other pairing to pick and choose his minutes and not necessarily ride him that hard and he still isn't able to give that full 100% effort on a lot of these shifts and I think that is just purely a health thing yeah and that was

you know, that that was kind of a fascinating segment if people didn't see it on hockey night because, you know, just because of the nature of the game that Eric Carlson plays, you tend to focus on when he's in the offensive zone, when he's making those ridiculous passes, when he's leading a rush and just seeing the ice in the ways that he can see it that not too many other people can.

And, you know, I've, having watched him in Ottawa for years, I always thought that after the first Norris win, where I think there was some legitimate criticism that he was a one-way player, I think he's much better defensively than people give him credit for. But, man, some of those plays in his own zone where he's going back and just clearly, man, I don't want to say quitting on a play

because that makes it sound like you said, like he's bailing or trying to avoid contact. But he's clearly making some business decisions as far as how hard he can go and and and what what kind of situations he can put himself in and it's it's fascinating to me because uh you know we we we know this guy had the growing problems much much of the year we know he missed a bunch of time we know that miraculously like so many NHL players he healed in time for the playoffs and uh and came back he's clearly not 100 percent And I think any time you have a player, as good as he is, who you can tell on the ice is not at 100%.

It makes for a very interesting situation. But especially in his case, because this is a guy who's looking at an $80 million contract in the offseason, either with San Jose or somewhere else. And we've heard Elliot Friedman a couple nights ago was talking about, is he going to get to those kinds of numbers? or is there some hesitancy because people, teams around the league are aware of his health situation? Are they worried? Do you go seven years to a guy who's had growing problems? It really is fascinating to me this question of how hard does he go?

And what does, how do the sharks play him if they don't plan to bring him back? If this is a one and done, how hard do they want to lean on him versus how hard does he want to be leaned on knowing that on the one hand, this might be the best chance he ever gets to win a Stanley Cup. On the other hand, he might have $80 million riding on coming out of this playoffs healthy. And it just takes one more shift, and suddenly he's limping off the ice and we don't see him again. And that can have enormous ramifications for the sharks and for Eric Carlson.

And I don't know how you balance that. I don't know how you get this close to the cup and still have everyone involved making good decisions around the health of a player like this. Yeah. No, well, you'd like, yeah, you'd like to think, like, in an ideal world, he plays well or well enough, and the sharks reach their ultimate goal and win a cup, and everyone caches in, whether, you know, he signs with a contract with someone else, or he stays with San Jose, and both parties leave happy through this one year of their being together.

But I think the groin is certainly one thing. I think you see it mostly when he has to, you know, kind of turn and rotate laterally, especially when speeds coming at him with puck handlers. but I think also the like the foot issues that he had back in a back in his Ottawa days like I feel like those are also kind of like chronic degenerative ones that aren't necessarily going to just get better over time and he's about to turn 29 so that's going to be a fascinating decision I mean I guess I want to be clear like I think I can speak for you as well if people are listening we're certainly not talking poorly of Carlson here because he's actually been fantastic and it's just a testament to how unique a talent and how dominant a player he is that even though it's pretty clear that he's not 100% he's still impacting the game in ways very few guys can even on their best night and I thought more so in game one than game two but he had some plays there with with breakouts

where he went back to retrieve the puck and you know he was taking a lot of punishment from the blues forecheckers but he was making great plays out of the zone with it that led to a lot of chances for San Jose and you watch stuff like that and you're like yeah like you know there's so much risk here but I still think at the end of the day someone will talk themselves into paying him whatever he wants to get paid because of just the off chance that he's going to give you at least a couple years of being this type of player, which is really hard to come by in today's league.

Yep. No, I agree that he's that type of player, and I agree that somebody will probably throw the kind of money at him that maybe we were all assuming he'd get. I just... It wouldn't be... I don't know if I'd want it to be my team. I don't think it would. I mean, I just, push comes to shove.

I don't think I could talk myself into outbidding 29 other teams on a, on a guy like this, knowing the situations he said. But I feel that way about most guys. I'd be, I'd be either a great GM or a lousy GM, because I don't know that I'd ever want to sign anybody past the age of 30. And I'd probably, my fans would probably hate me for always missing out on guys. but I don't know, maybe if I capologist would like me. Well, you know, we're getting to the time of the year. Now there's only four teams left.

And I know you wrote about this recently, and we can get into that a little bit as well. But we're getting to that point of the year where it's like with these four teams left and they're kind of the lead teams playing in the conference finals. We're trying to go through that, through the stages of that kind of copycat league philosophy where it's like, okay, what can we learn from these teams? If the other 27 teams are paying attention, what are they, what can they glean from this? What can they take for themselves to reach this point? themselves in the coming years and one thing that i think is really fascinating about these four

teams obviously it doesn't apply to carolina necessarily but with the sharks the blues and the bruin is like just how kind of good these teams have been for as long as they've been and the fact that they're at this point now i know that the sharks and the blues played in the conference final a couple years ago for the bruin it's been a bit longer it's been since 2013 they've gone to this point but you know typically we think of this stuff in sort of cyclical terms and you have a certain short window with your core group of veteran players to reach the end goal and win a Stanley Cup. And if you don't in that finite period of time, you're kind of screwed and you're going to have to reset and probably tear it down and rebuild fully.

And with these teams, they've kind of just hung around for long enough and been good enough for a certain period of time. And now they're kind of capitalizing on getting some breaks in the postseason in San Jose's case and maybe the draw and just everything kind of falling into place for them. And I think that's kind of the most interesting angle. for me here where it's like we typically think of that stuff in terms of like okay if it's been a couple years and you haven't made a cup final or won a cup you need to start thinking whether that group of players you have is good enough to win it all and with these teams they've kind of just

hung around and made some additions here and there but mostly it's been the same course yeah and that is something i mean i still probably over rely on the window narrative and i'm trying to wane myself off that because yeah i think you're right i think we i mean how many times have we declared that the shark's window was closing i don't know if we've ever called it closed but it feels like we've been in the last year of their window for for like five years now uh and uh you know the the bruins are or maybe another example of that where maybe these things last longer than we think and i mean all you have to do is look at last year with the capitals and we all we were already to close that book, a few different times, especially after 2017, and then we saw what

happened last year. So what is interesting for me is I remember one time talking to somebody and it was actually about the sharks and the blues. And this was this was a few years ago. But they talked, I made reference to that. I made reference to, you know, kind of a window closing and the core getting older. And they told me that both of those teams felt like they actually had two cores. They had the veteran corps, but then they had built the younger core that was coming after it. And especially on the San Jose side, you had the Joe Thornton at the time, Patrick Marlow core. But then you also had the Logan Couture Corps that was coming behind it.

And it wasn't a rebuild. They didn't trade all the veteran guys. and tank and then draft and come back, they were able to find these guys and kind of supplement the aging course so that even as it aged out to the point where Patrick Marlowe left, Joe Thornton is still a very good player but is not the kind of elite difference maker that it used to be. They, it wasn't, the window never did slam shut. And, you know, I wonder if there, there's a lesson there. to some extent you saw it with St. Louis as well

with guys like Teresenko coming up, that is you don't necessarily, just because you look at a team and say the core is getting older, does not necessarily mean that the window is closing. It can just mean that we have to shift

what we consider to be the core. And I think there's some other teams around the league that you can't say that and there's other teams that you can't. Like I look at a team like L.A. And I see an older core with not much coming, behind it, but then you look at a team like Anaheim, which is kind of the poster child for the old

expensive core. I mean, that gets left Kessler-Perry trio where, you know, two-thirds of that, that group is basically a write-off at this point. And yet they've got the younger guys, especially the blue line kind of coming up behind. Maybe can they do something without taking that big step back? It might be more doable. but well i think i think the black hawks are sort of the best bet to to follow that that blueprint right like obviously i think they're going to need to do it in a in a short period of time here while kane and taves still

are playing as well as they are but like they've invested so many resources in their blue line in the draft in the past couple years which has been their biggest deficiency on their main roster as guys like keith and seabrook have aged out and not been able to play the types of minutes they used to during their primes. And so kind of if they can, if they can, I guess it just speaks to a different type of window, right? It's like where both those timelines align and you sort of in the Venn diagram, catch the best of both worlds there where your veteran players are still relevant,

even though they might be a bit overpaid. And those young guys are coming up and they're probably underpaid because you have them still in their ELCs. And I think that's what they're trying to time out perfectly. Yep. And if, you know, if you can, if you can catch it, great. it's easier said than done and especially with you know things everything shifting in this league in terms of how guys are

paid and how it all works it's uh it's certainly you know it's it's a challenge i'm not trying to make it sound like this is this is an easy thing or or or you know some some sort of uh groundbreaking uh idea that some of these teams have come up with i mean the idea that as your best players get older find some good young players to feed into the roster is pretty basic, but it's

easier said than done, and it's also something that I think, again, this over-reliance on the idea of windows being open or closed has maybe led us to think that once you haven't won, you got to slam it shut and start all over again, and maybe these teams are reminding us that that's not necessarily the case. Right, it's not necessarily binary. I was reading

Pierre LeBron writing about this sort of idea that I think there's no player left in the postseason that's making over eight million dollars and he had an executive an anonymous one in his article saying that you know the way the league's going you're better off kind of going with that more balanced depth approach on your cap where you just have a bunch of good players and not necessarily great players are eating up large chunks of it and I think that's sort of like a neat narrative for this season but if you look at years past it's still clear that the guys who make the big bucks are doing so for a reason you need a couple of them to kind of carry you this time of year and I think if I was an executive

I'd be saying that as well because obviously if you aren't devoting such a large percentage of your cap to just one player makes life a bit easier for you I still think like and this is going to come up with the Leafs obviously now in the coming years as well and a team like Winnipeg but it's like I still fully believe that if you have a couple players making double digits you can still be competitive and still and still win but you just kind of need to get more creative and you need to uncover some of those young players that are on ELCs that can be a bargain for you and you sort of you can't afford to make other bad kind of cap mistakes where you're overpaying a guy who doesn't wind up producing. So I think that's going to be an interesting to follow. And then,

you know, like with the sharks, for example, I tweeted this the other day, but they missed the postseason one time in the past 15 years and that one time they picked top 10 and they got Timel Meyer 9th overall and the Bruins have missed the playoffs twice in the past 12 years and they got Charlie McAvoy and Jake DeBruscan those years and I know that you know we like to joke about how they've missed on a bunch of draft picks but it's you need to time like you need to be good and you also need to be a bit lucky in terms of timing where if you do falter during this quote unquote window to win with your current core you kind of need to make sure you definitely maximize on those opportunities and come away with something that can contribute while you

still have those veterans. Yeah, I wrote a piece today where I kind of went through the final four and looked for some of the lessons. And one of the things that really jumped out at me is none of these four teams have really picked high in the draft, which, you know, the fable Pittsburgh model that Brian Burke talked about where you bought them out and picked first or second for a few years. We just don't see that. you know other than Carolina winning the lottery and getting Svechnikov last year who is a

good player and a good prospect but it's not a guy that's leading the charge right now you look down these rosters and you don't see those top five picks you know that Boston hasn't had one in in a while the blues I think even longer

the sharks you have to go back 20 years to the point where they had that sort of pick and I think in the Bruins case the last time they had it was Tyler Sagan which they got from the leap so if you're talking about bottoming out and getting your own pick it goes even further what you're seeing instead is a whole lot of guys where teams are hitting on guys in that ninth or tenth or 15th or 20th pick the the pastor knacks and the Teresankos and guys like that or even even deeper into the draft further further down finding Brad Marchan or Sebastian A.O.

or guys like that. It's, and again, it sounds obvious. You know, draft good young players who turn out to be better than the spot you pick them in is something that every team is out there looking for. But I think when you look at these teams, you see the power of that happening. You see evidence that maybe when we say that you have to,

in this league, you can't get stuck in the middle and you have to be either contending or bottoming out and getting those high picks, maybe that's not as true as we think it is. And then as far as Pierre's point about the salaries, there's also some timing that comes into play here. These are three, maybe to some extent the exception of Carolina, who's a different situation for a few reasons, these are also three older teams.

And that we've seen a shift in how salaries get handed out over just the last year or two. And most of these teams had their cores locked up before then. And I'm not convinced that I think we're going to see some really bad narratives over the next few years around teams like Toronto and Winnipeg who are in the unfortunate situation of signing their key players after the salary structure shifted and got a lot higher for elite young players. You know, I don't think the Bruins are in a better cap situation because Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron are nicer guys. who just really wanted to win and take less money. I think it's because they were fortunate enough to be signing those guys and David Pasternak and other guys before the shift happened. And good for them.

And they got them locked into great value deals. But that's kind of one of those situations where I'm not sure that there really is a lesson we can pull from it because you're looking at it going, unless you've got a time machine back to 2017 where you could sign Nathan McKinnon. guys to six million dollar contracts uh i i don't really know what what you do if you're a team now with uh with elite players other than maybe wish that uh that you could go back and uh get their names on a contract earlier well here here's a here's a lesson we can take it pays to be aggressive and i know that uh you know the columbus blue jackets are kind of the post of child this because

they really took it to another level and really went all in this season and i think even though they ultimately fell short the fact that they want a post year in season series and had a very competitive round two matchup against the Bruins is ultimately a net positive for them and i think they do it all over again with you know the sharks they we knew they'd be a good team again they they made it to the second round last year and this summer um instead of just kind of resting on their laurels and coming back bringing it back with the same team they went out and made a splash trade to get a guy like garrick carlson at the deadline even though we would have thought that maybe they they should go after a goalie and they already have enough scoring talent they go out and get gustav nightquist

and then all of a sudden, Pavelsky gets injured and he gets pumped out to their top line and looks great ever since. With the Blues, you know, this summer they go out and make a splash trade for Ryan O'Reilly. So a lot of this stuff obviously comes down to right place, right time, and being able to benefit off of maybe inferior teams who are looking to get rid of a star player for different financial reasons. But at the end of the day, I do think that the good lesson here is that you can never have enough good players and you should be doing everything you can to keep trying to improve your team. and I hope other GMs out there are listening and paying attention and are going to be less willing to kind of just play the safe route and be conservative and just roll things back because it obviously makes it funner for you and I, but it also shows that it can actually pay dividends for you. Yeah. And I mean, I've been beating this horse for years. And I don't buy this idea that it's too hard to trade in the NHL because there's a salary cap now.

I think that's an excuse. I think that if your favorite team's GM says that, you should immediately get very worried because there are, as you alluded to, there's very few tools in a GM's toolbox and the idea that a lot of these guys seem to want to presumptively put one of those tools away and say, no, there's a cap now. I can't make trades. I can't make big trades. I can maybe do rentals at the deadline, but I can't pull off these blockbuster

trades that we used to see. Sure, you can. It might be tough, but it's not, I mean, the NHL salary cap isn't complicated. It's not like the NBA where there are literally all sorts of complicated rules around how you can trade and how things have to fit under the cap. The NHL salary cap is a number and you have to stay under the number and that's pretty much it. And you can even shift some of that cap space around in the way you make trades.

So I think it's laughable that so many GMs, go to the media with this. I can't do my job because it's too hard play and that so much of the media and so many of the fans buy that and let them off the hook with it. And yeah, you look at these teams, three of these

four teams made big blockbuster style trades in the off season. And to some extent, supplemented that with some deadline deals, but made real big

moves and brought in big ticket players and moved out big ticket players and it can be done. And, you know, if the Carolina Hurricanes can make two pretty big deals, which they did and they made the one with Calgary and then they sent Jeff Skinner to Buffalo, if they can make those two trades without even really having a GM, I'm pretty sure some of these highly paid million dollar GMs out there. I don't know. If I was an NHL owner and I saw my GM on TV saying it's too hard to make trades, I would be on the phone right away asking why I'm paying this guy so much to do a job

that is apparently too hard for him. So I know there was a lot of talk earlier in the playoffs that maybe Columbus and the fact that Vegas looked good, this was going to save the trade deadline. Maybe instead we should be looking at this year's playoffs as being something that might save the offseason trade. And the big, you know, not just the rental, not just I'm going to give you a second round pick for someone to play on my second line, but the really big trade. And in some cases, even the hockey trade where you're sending something out to bring something in. I'd love to see that comeback more than it has been in recent years.

And I'd love to see us start pointing and laughing at these GMs who pretend like it can't be done. Yeah, I fully and wholeheartedly co-signed that. Let's talk a bit more about the Shark's Blue Series than obviously we've seen two games or that it's tied 1-1. What's kind of stuck out to you in these first two games or I guess you can even answer from, what are you looking for moving forward as the series shifts to St. Louis? The thing that jumps out at me with the Blues is I wrote a piece last week that I do just about every year where I like to go through and say, let's put a whole roster together of guys who have had bad playoffs. Like the all playoff bus team, the all playoff disappointment team.

And I usually do it around the conference finals. And I typically do it using players from the teams that have been eliminated. And as it happened last week, I was putting it together mostly on the day of game seven between Dallas and St. Louis. So I didn't know which of those teams was going to be available to me to use. And so I had to kind of look through both of them. And I remember looking through St. Louis going, okay, is there a player on here that I can look at and say they're kind of not producing what we would have thought in the playoffs? And I ended up having this list of like four or five guys off the blues. Like Vladimir Teresenko hasn't been great yet.

Ryan O'Reilly has not been great. Braden Chen has done very little. I mean, almost everybody up front other than Jane Schwartz on the blues is not. producing at the kind of level that you would expect, which is both terrible news, obviously, if you're a blues fan, you want all your best players playing their best hockey. But it's also great news because you're still alive.

You're seven wins away from a Stanley Cup, and your best players haven't really been your best players yet. And so what I'm kind of watching for there is the signs of life. And I think we've seen it a little bit from O'Reilly, the last few games. He's been better at both. both ends and look more like the Ryan O'Reilly we're used to. But that's kind of what I'm watching is, all right, what happens when or if these forwards

start to look like we've expected them to look like? And Vladimir Tarasenko, especially five-on-five, starts to look like a guy who can be a game changer and not just a guy who's just kind of there. And will that happen in time to make a big dent on this series, or is it potentially a situation where it doesn't happen and we're all looking back going, man, what happened with that forward group? Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that those first two names with Teresanko and O'Reilly, and I agree with you that they've underperformed. I don't think it's a coincidence that they're the guys you listed considering that, you know, they're so good throughout the regular

season together after the off-season trade and putting them together. And O'Reilly is kind of that play-driving, playmaking center and Teresanko as your prototypical sniper and finisher. But for, you know, they kind of split them up this postseason and i think in this series it makes sense to go that depth throughout considering that the sharks pretty much have either catur's line or hurdles line out there at all times and you need to sort of diversify your portfolio and have a couple different threats to to throw at them to to spread them out a little bit but i wonder if as this series goes if those guys don't start to produce more whether uh broubae considers putting them back together because I'd be really intrigued to do that.

I mean, Teresanko, as you mentioned, has shown some signs of life. I thought that we need to see more of what he did to set up that first blues goal in game two, where he aggressively took the puck from his own zone and pretty much carried it in and challenged Vlasik on the zone entry and then wound up setting up Schwartz for a goal, and we need to see more of that. He's leading the blues and attempts and shots and chances and all that, but the goals haven't been there. I mean, for a guy of his caliber to have just one five-on-five goal in like 230 minutes,

At even strength, like that's just not nearly good enough. And I guess the silver lining is if you keep shooting as much as he has and as talent is as he is, we expect some of those to start going in for them to be in this position to begin with without those Teresanko goals is a testament to sort of the overall depth of this team. But you're right. I think moving forward, if they are going to get past the sharks and potentially win a Stanley Cup, they're going to need him to kind of put the team on his back a little bit offensively. Yeah.

And, you know, that's like we both said, it's. it's the sort of situation that worries you on the one hand, but you're also sitting there going, what happens when Vladimir Tarasenko has the Vladimir Tarasenko game or has a few of them in a row? And how good does this team get then the fact that they're doing what they're doing without getting a lot of that production from the bigger names up front? It's not something you spin as good news if you're a blues fan,

but if you're looking for that little extra bit of optimism, I think that's where you find it. We talk a lot in the playoffs about, have we seen this team's best game? And I don't think we've seen it from St. Louis yet, and yet here they are. Yeah, well, I think it'll be tough for him to really fully kind of get loose and get going in this series because, I mean,

obviously heading back to St. Louis, they're going to have the benefit of last change and maybe they can get him out there for some softer matchups against bronze pairing, but he's been seeing a heavy, heavy dose of Mark Edward Lassick as was to be expected. and considering how good of a job he did slowing down McKinnon, it'll be tough for Teresanko to fully shake loose.

But what I'm watching for is, and this is like a real hockey nerd sort of thing, but it's the third line matchups in this series, which I think are really interesting because I think these are two of the deepest teams and the most stacked teams up front in the league. And that's been a large driving force for their success, as good as the top guys have been. It's, you know, for San Jose, when you have the benefit of having Joel Thornton and Kevin LeBank to go out there play like secondary tertiary competition and really feast

on opposing third lines and third pairings. That's been a huge driving force for them and has won them a couple playoff games this postseason. And similarly with the Blues, I think the Bozac, Thomas, Robert Maroon pairing, sorry, has been probably their best most consistent line this postseason. And so now in this series we're seeing those two kind of go ahead to head a bit more, a bit more. and the Blues trio has gotten the better of things so far. So that's something I want to be watching for because I imagine it's a bit of a change pace of them

where they've went through this season and this postseason playing in software competition because most teams just don't have the luxury of having a third line that's as good as them. And now they're kind of like staring in the mirror and looking back at their equals. Good old Tyler Bozac. The one they got away. The one that got away. Yeah, no. She kept them.

I mean, I guess that's another, you know, with this Blues team, um, like they went out and made the O'Reilly trade, but they also went out this summer and spent a bunch of money, right? They brought back David Perra and they brought in Tyler Bozac. They got Pat Maroon to take a hometown discount. And I think we kind of forget about the offseason they had now a little bit, just because they were so disappointing at the start of the year. And then kind of the narrative with them now has been people citing that stat of how they

were last in the league on as recently as January 2nd and what a remarkable turnaround this has been. But I remember like in that lead up in the preseason at the start of the regular season, I was really high on this team and a lot of people were kind of picking them as a potential favorite out in the central and really liking the offseason they had. And obviously now when you look at this roster, I guess that's like another layer to that conversation we had earlier where it's like just go out and be aggressive and make trades and spend money and don't ever take it for granted that you already have an enough good players.

Yeah. And I mean, they've been, I've told this story a few times, but the blues heading into the season, I was like, yeah, I thought they'd be pretty good. I thought they'd be, in fact, I've made the joke that I think the blues are the only team I got exactly right because I had them picked for third in the central. And that's where they wound up. So, so yeah, me. I got the destination exactly right.

I just had the entire journey completely wrong like just about everyone else did. Because I figured this team was going to be pretty good. And then the first half of the season comes along and they're not. They're terrible. And in fact, I do this weekly power rankings where I pick my top five teams and my bottom five teams. And as you can imagine, when I put a team in the bottom five, very often I hear from those fans and very often those fans aren't very happy with me. and the running joke became that every time I put the blues in the bottom five, I would have blues fans show up very angry at me that I hadn't put them low enough.

Like I would rank them the fourth worst team in the league, and I would have blues fans showing up going, we're not fourth, we are way worse than these other team. They were so frustrated and so done with this team. They just wanted to see, like, they couldn't wait to get the shovels out and drop some dirt on these guys. And then the turnaround begins to happen. And the rest is history that is still being written.

And we'll see how it turns out. But it's one of the most amazing stories that we've ever seen. And I feel like we almost to some extent have amazing story fatigue now in this league. We did the Golden Knights last year. We had the avalanche doing what they did that we didn't even pay enough attention to because of Vegas. This year with the Islanders, it's, it's, almost like 10% of this league every year is doing something ridiculous and unexpected. But the fact that the Blues were as bad and legitimately as bad.

This wasn't a team that was in last place where everybody was going, yeah, but if you look at the underlying numbers and they've had injuries and all this, they're better. They were bad. They were flat out bad. And then between the coaching change and obviously Bennington coming in, everything turns around. And it's, on the one hand, it's an amazing story. And I've loved it. On the other hand, I am dreading what this is going to do to the league next year

when every bad team that's 14 points out of the playoffs in January is insisting that, no, we're still in this and we can do this. And everything's going to be fine because look at what happened to the Blues last year. I think that's going to be potentially hilarious watching legitimately awful teams try to talk themselves into still being cup contenders. But for now, it's, yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, been amazing that the turnaround and if you'd gone back to january and tried to tell anybody that any of this was going to happen i don't think we would have been able to conceive of of a scenario

where it could play out like this no well and that's the thing it's obviously you know not to take any credit away from bittington because the run he went on was remarkable and he'll probably finish second on the calder and deservedly so but like if it was just like okay you know they were getting bad goaltending and all of a sudden they're getting great goaltending you could kind of chalk it up more to randomness and shrug your shoulders and go like oh well you know it is what it is this happens in the NHL sometimes, but it was also like when they changed coaches, I don't know if it was just because Mike Yo was doing that bad of a job or Craig Barouba is this absolute mad genius that we should be giving more credit to, but they went from being just a completely floundering

five-on-five team to being a top three-to-five team. And now when you look at these conference finalists, I believe all four finished in the top seven of expected goals for the year. And they earned every bit of this and they've been awesome for the past, like, you know, for four months or so. So, yeah, it's quite the story. It's weird because on the one hand, I'm getting tired of hearing about how they were the last team in the league as recently as January 2nd. But on the other hand, like, sometimes I think about it and I go like, man, this story is

so nuts that it's probably not even getting enough attention just because it's so ridiculous. Yeah, it's, it really is. It's, it's been something else. And you know what? I'm glad it happened to St. Louis. I think, you know, as far as fan bases who have, no fan base ever earns anything, but as far as fan bases, I probably deserve to see a story like this play out, I'm happy to see it happening to my fellow Norris Division travelers out there in St. Louis. Yeah, I mean, they were so maligned and obviously just being good for so long, but then running into those Dynasty Blackhawks teams were a couple years there. And then the Kings, like, they just couldn't get over the hump and it's kind of easy to, to, to,

make fun of them for being just a regular season team. So you're right. I agree that it's good to see them have some postseason success. Sean, let's take a quick break here. And then we're going to talk about the Eastern Conference Final. Sponsoring today's episode of the Hockey P.D.O. cast is Cickeek. Seek knows that buying tickets can be complicated. With hundreds of websites and varying levels of reliability, it's hard to know who to trust

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We've seen the Bruins take both games in Boston, game 3s tonight in Carolina, or I guess in Raleigh. So hopefully people listen to this before the hurricanes come out and win 7-1 and prove everything we're saying to have been wrong and ridiculous and that we just overreacted to the first two games. But I don't know, it feels like this series so far has played out kind of exactly how we expected from the perspective of like we identified the keys to the series as being the goaltending and just the fact that rask was probably the favorite for the cons myth so

far and has been ridiculous and he certainly outplayed pretermrazic so far and then sort of the special teams and how good the bruin's power play is versus how bad the carolina hurricanes one is and that is also uh borne out exactly as we expected so i know there's like more nuance to it and there's more going on. But once you have both those two things locked down, it becomes a lot easier for you if you're the Bruins. If you're the hurricanes, you'd certainly need at least one of those things to swing pretty dramatically moving forward.

Yeah. And I'm not planning any flags in this series quite yet, but I mean, the Bruins are a real good team. They're just, and they have been all year long and probably didn't get enough credit for it just because of what Tampa was doing. And I have a ton of respect for what the hurricanes have done as well. But beating this Boston team 4 out of 5 is really going to be a challenge. Even even get the level of play up and solve some of those issues that you highlight it.

Four out of five, man, that's a big climb. And, you know, maybe certainly the hurricanes are one of those teams where they've been counted out enough. and have probably heard about how what underdogs they are enough that I certainly don't think they're going to raise any white flags anytime soon. But they've got a real hole to dig out of here. And it goes without saying game three becomes crucial because I'm not obviously this, I don't want to say there's no such thing as blown a 3-0 lead. Bruins fans would correct me on that,

but I don't see it being in play with this particular batch. Yeah, if you think 4 out of 5 is tough, I think 4 out of 4 becomes almost insurmountable. But it sounds like they're going to play Petermazic in game 3, and I'm really curious about that decision because I think just his upside in terms of like when he gets going and if he's standing on his head and playing to his absolute highest, capability. He does give them the best chance to win and steal games. It's interesting in this

matchup and I know we typically don't think about goalies in this way, but postseason series I think comes to come down so much to like which team can control the terms and the pace the game is played at and how the two teams match up and sort of, especially when there's such stylistic differences. And I think the hurricanes get a lot of credit as being like a fast speedy team in the plays at a frantic pace. there's also a certain level of physicality to them as well so i don't i don't want to say that the bruin are solely to blame or solely the credit for this but it does feel like just because of this like mystique of the bruin and sort of how they play and and sort of this physicality and this rep they

come in with it does feel like in these first two games the hurricanes have been trying to overcompens it a little bit to prove that like we're not going to get bullied by the bruin you know everyone talks about this as a david rivers goliath matchup and we're not going to just come in here here and get manhandled by them so they've kind of been like going above and beyond to assert themselves physically and try to throw the body around and it feels like in a lot of these instances it's been to their detriment where it's like the eric good branson effect i like to call it where they're going out of their way to throw hits and then it's leading them to get out of position in open lanes and with petermrazik's aggressiveness and how far out of the net he is on many occasions we've

seen so far that it leads to a lot of patient passing by the bruins and a lot of easy empty net tap-ins because the hurricanes defense in front of Marzik and Marzik himself are all out of sorts chasing the game. Yep. No, I agree with all of that. And I'm surprised that it looks like they're not going to make the change the hurricanes in terms of making the gold-tending switch, partly because, you know, this isn't a team that's got the clear-cut number one.

You know, you can understand. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was Boston, you're saying, okay, well, do we take out Tuka Rask and go to Lack? And boy, Rask is supposed to be our guy. Maybe it's a little tougher there. But, you know, I don't know. Rod Brindamore seems to be a guy that makes a lot of these calls kind of on feel and has a feel for the room. And maybe he's seeing something there that's leading him down this path. but I just can't help but think back to 2006 when the playoffs that ended with Rod Brindamore

being the guy to lift the Stanley Cup and take it from Gary Bettman. That was a year where the hurricanes switch goaltenders halfway through and road cam war to a con smite and the championship. So in theory you would think that if anybody would understand that there is some value in making a change and there is some potential detriment to being overly loyal to one guy, you think it would be him. But for whatever reason, he's either leaning towards the status quo or he's working a really good bluff and suckering a lot of us in with it. I'm curious how you feel about this because you're obviously a Leafs fan and you went through a seven-game series against the Bruins with a bit more of an emotional attachment or perspective with things. but, you know, just following them this postseason,

it feels like just because they're the Bruins, people feel like they get a lot of the calls, and there's some shenanigans going on. And there's certainly an element of that. I think it's much more of a case of NHL postseason officiating is all over the place and is just kind of uniformly bad at times, and the Bruins maybe get the benefit of the doubt because they're sort of suckering,

the officials and the opposing team into this trap of like they mucked games up a little bit. They walk a really fine line between being irritating and actually taking penalties. And so it maybe in their games it just feels like there's a kind of a brighter spotlight placed on this. And so we think about it and talk about it more. But I don't know, I find it hard to believe that there's some sort of a conspiracy where it's like the NHL is making a mandate of we've got to give the Bruins as many calls as possible. No, there's there's no conspiracy. there never are and I mean we all just we sound ridiculous when we suggest that I think what what it maybe works a little bit to the Bruins favor we've we've seen it a bit against

Carolina and we saw it in a few of the games against Toronto is this this this just built-in bias that all the officials have not in favor of any one team but in favor of keeping the calls even this this just really strong pull that that has built up over the years and part of it is our fault as fans because we all scream and cry whenever one team has three more power plays than the other one and we assume that that must be because the refs were up to get somebody uh you know it's it's weird you don't see this in other sports you know you don't like i'm an NFL fan you know occasionally you'll see a game where one team gets 100 yards and penalties and the other team doesn't get any and nobody sits there and says the referees were biased we sit there and go

wow one of these teams was really sloppy and uh kept committing penalties and the other team was disciplined and didn't do that and we don't seem to have that in hockey like when when you saw the the leifes series and the leaps made a mistake in some of those games by trying to play that style but you know there were games that that infamous game to debacle uh where it was very clear the leaps are coming out trying to say okay we know we won game one on the road we know they're going to bang and crash. We know they're going to try to get their building into it. Stay down, stay disciplined, don't take penalties. And it didn't matter because the Bruins were out banging and crashing.

And anytime there was a penalty, it'd be called. Both teams got one. You know, we remember Nazim Kadri getting punched in the face and looking at the referee and getting punched in the face again. And the referee sends both guys to the box. And that's the sort of thing that I think can benefit teams like Boston. And there's other teams as well where, you know that if you're going to if you want to play that physical style you don't necessarily have to worry that it's going to be

result in you having to kill three more power plays than the other team does because the the reps are going to find a way to even it up and that can that can be a situation where you're not the idea of hey let's be disciplined and let's keep our noses out of this stuff and and we'll just make them pay on the power play you can't do that if you're not given the opportunity or if every time you are given the opportunity, you know you're going to get a penalty the next time you sneeze on somebody because the reps are keeping a running balance in their head and making sure that everything evens out. I mean, to their credit, it's kind of evil genius, especially in this series where it's like, you know, the Bruins are what, 14 for 42 on the power play this post season and the hurricanes are five for 45? Like they'll welcome it even if it results in them getting penalized a couple of times and

spending a couple minutes short-handed here, they're like, they'll welcome this game, this series and these games being played at special teams as much as possible and as at 5-on-5 as little as possible. Yeah, exactly. And they're being smart. I mean, it's not, it's not their job to fix the, the officiating or to fix the way that the games are viewed. They're doing exactly the right thing and taking advantage of it.

And, you know, to some extent, Tampa was another team that did this because Tampa is so dangerous and so stacked with talent that you figure they're happy to play on the power play. Tampa took a ton of penalties during the year. They were one of the most, even though when it came to the playoffs, everybody suddenly shifted this narrative that the Blue Jackets were pushing around this soft, wimpy Tampa team. But it wasn't that. Tampa was one of the most penalized teams in the league because they understood that, okay, let's go out there, play that way.

We'll give up power plays, but we'll get a lot of power plays too. and will be better on the power play than the other team will. It's smart. It's a case of understanding and adapting to the league as it is and not just sitting there wishing for the league as you might want it to be. Well, in game one was a perfect example of this and sort of this idea that the one tried and true thing about postseason officiating is that things are going to get you and out and there's going to be makeup calls.

And, you know, the game definitely swung with a couple tiki-tack calls on, on Dougie Hamilton, the one on on stall where he crossed it from behind was very clearly a penalty and it could have even been a major. But afterwards, I remember when the Bruins finally went up and scored a couple power, he goes there, like literally the next shift after Sebastian Ajo

high sticks, David Pasternak, literally right in front of the referee. And I paused it and took a screen grab and it's like, the referee is just watching this happen. And there was no chance in hell that he was going to call a high sticking penalty there. If anything, it would have called like a two-minute dive on Pastor Neck just to give the hurricanes a power play chance of their own.

And so that's what happens in these games. There's a lot of makeup calls. And I think that's the infuriation and sort of the irritating part for most fans where it's like instead of just calling the rulebook and just calling it as it is and as they have all year, it feels like we're kind of making it up as we go along. And yeah, I mean, I remember watching some of those Leaves Bruins games, especially towards the end where they'd be close games. Like I think game five where it was zero zero.

And they were letting a lot of stuff go. and then at least we get a power play in the second period. And there was always this part of me that was like, oh, crap, at least you get a power. That means if they don't score, the Bruins are going to get one. That means we're going to have to kill one later on. And it's a ridiculous way to think about it, but it usually turns out to be the case. I guess the one thing I'll say, though, is we're talking about this like it's a bad thing. Lots of fans talk about it like it's a bad thing.

But the flip side of that is if the officials do just call. what they see and they don't worry about evening it up and your team gives up five power plays and doesn't get any you can't turn around and cry and complain about that yeah and say oh the referees decided to get no your team decided the game by being sloppy and being out of position and being a step behind and having to take these penalties uh i would love to see us kind of shift the way we think about that and uh but but we haven't yet and the the officials do this for a reason and the reason is that everybody has a mass meltdown every time one team gets two more power plays than the other does in an important game yeah um oh okay one final thing on the bruns before we get

out of here i do want to i want a bit of a mea copar i want to apologize to uh the charlie coil i uh i was kind of critical of that of that trade just because i thought that the bruns could have been a bit more ambitious and aimed a bit higher with targeting more skill obviously they went out a couple weeks later and got marcus johansson who has been great himself and been kind of a secondary uh creator for them but coil especially in the series against the leaps i thought when uh the top line was struggling, carry them offensively, and won them that game won against Columbus and overtime and has been great this postseason. So credit to Charlie Coyle and credit to Don Sweeney and the Bruins for the moves they made

because we talked about how these three other teams went out and made big splash blockbuster trades and going out and trading Ryan Donato for Charlie Coyle and a pick for Marcus Johansson doesn't really qualify as blockbuster, but both those guys who have been really, really good secondary playmakers and goal scores for them this postseason. Yeah, and true to the Don Sweeney style, because we talked about these other three teams making their moves in the offseason, and Don Sweeney's a guy who just doesn't do that. You look at his trading record. First of all, he doesn't trade very often, and when he does, it's almost always at the

deadline. You go to his NHL trade tracker page, and you'll see entire years go by, where it's like you'll make a deal in February one year. and then doesn't make another trade at all of any size until the next deadline. So he's clearly a guy who's very comfortable at deadline time and doesn't like to make moves pretty much any other time of the year. But for this year at least, the moves that he did make have worked, and they've kind of been those classic deadline deals

where you don't get a superstar, but you get those little pieces of depth that maybe they're only going to have one or two games in a playoff run where they're really, noticeable and really make a difference. But if those one or two games turned into wins, those can be the wins that get you over the hump in a series. And that series could be the one that gets you to a Stanley Cup. For sure.

Yeah, well, especially when you have Bergeron and Pashtrake and Marjan, sometimes you only need a little offense here and there. Yeah. All right, Sean, this was a blast. Plug some stuff. What have you been turning out lately and what can people look forward to from you and moving forward? They can come find me over at the athletic.

They can find me writing there three or four times a week. And they can also, as a few weeks ago, find my podcast there. I'm on Puck Soup with Greg Wischinsky and Ryan Lambert, which is available through the Athletics brand new podcast network as well as through any other channels that you might have previously found at iTunes or whatever else. We're still everywhere. So yeah, you can find me there.

and if you subscribe to the athletic, go read my stuff. And if you don't, consider jumping in because there is a ton of good stuff there. The teams that are still active in the playoffs are getting round the clock coverage and the teams that are not have already shifted into off-season mode. And there's a ton of mock drafts and what ifs and trade scenarios and all sorts of things kicking around. And I promise you if you're a hockey fan, you will find a ton of stuff. and probably have a big chunk of your day eaten up by just diving into all the content that's on there. And follow you on Twitter at Down Goes Brown, where you are one of the very few people out there that

tweet stuff where I laugh, but I'm also in the back of my mind. I'm irritated that I wasn't the person to tweet it out because it was so funny. Good stuff. All right, man. Chat too. The Hockey P.Ocast with Dim Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at SoundCloud at SoundCloud. com slash Hockey PDOCast.