The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 313: Got Sebastian Aho on the Mind

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

Andrew Berkshire joins the show to help rank the cream of the crop at Center as part of our annual preseason position group previews.2:30 Methodology behind the rankings 5:00 Honourable mentions who just missed the cut15:30 Elias Pettersson's special rookie season18:15 Sean Couturier finally getting love he deserves22:30 1-2 punch of Steven Stamkos and Brayden Point33:00 Jack Eichel's year by year improvements37:00 The summer of Sebastian Aho 41:00 Anze Kopitar's red flags 46:45 Evgeni Malkin's down season 50:30 John Tavares' successful first year in Toronto 53:00 Patrice Bergeron's unusual career path56:00 The Top 5See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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

These days, everything is go, go, go. It's non-stop hustle all the time. Work, friends, family. Expect you to be on 24-7? Well, sometimes you just need to reach for a Coors Light because it's made to chill. Coors Light is cold-loggered, cold-filtered, and cold-packaged. It's as crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. It is literally made to chill.

Coors Light is the one I choose when I need to unwind. So when you want to hit reset, reach for the beer that's made to chill. Get Coors Light and the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart. Celebrate responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. Pressing to the mean since 2015. It's the HockeyPedioCast with your host, Dimitri. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast.

My name is Dimitri Philipovich and joining me for our a much anticipated annual positional rankings slash preview it's my good buddy andrew bruxer andrew what's going on man no much man i'm excited to be getting back to work too much time off in the summer so it's i'm finally ready for hockey season i feel like i'm more ready than any of the last few years what's um yeah yeah me too actually you know what it's funny i uh i've really gotten into fantasy football the past couple years and so this summer i was like doing so much research on that and doing mock drafts and reading articles about it and stuff like that. And then a couple weeks ago, I'm like, oh, crap, I should probably be doing this for hockey considering it's my job and considering

I, I'm expected to and paid for my opinions. And so I, uh, the past 10 days or so I've just been trying to read as much as I can and sort of remind myself about as much as I could. Because, like, I was all in on it through the playoffs and then through the free agency and draft. But then, like, once we hit mid-July, you sort of really dial it back and kind of turn it off. and start using your brain for other things. And it's tough to get back into that, into that peak season mode. Yeah, for sure.

And usually in the summer I have a big project that I do for sports net. And this year I wasn't able to do that because the contract was up and we had to renegotiate. So I'm less into the, like, less fully aware of the deep data that went on last season.

You know, during the season, you kind of are always playing catch up. And I never got a chance to go through like the whole league. But yeah, so we're going to talk more about feelings this time. And we'll probably be more wrong than usual, but that's okay. There's other things in life than being right. I mean, just, you know, going with gut feelings, that just makes us like all the other media professionals and industry.

So I'm excited. This is true. We're going to fit in. I mean, listen, it's with this exercise, I really like doing it and people seem to enjoy listening to it because, you know, everyone loves lists. Everyone loves rankings. and we're talking about all the best players in the world. So obviously there's so much to work with. But it really is worth hammering home that it's like nitpicking and a lot of it when you get to,

it's like, oh, who do I prefer Tyler Sagan or Jack Eichol when we're talking about centers. A lot of it is sort of like personal preference in terms of playing style and maybe just random anecdotal stuff. Like clearly if a guy's ranked 15th or he's not on our list and he's actually the 22nd best center in the league. There isn't too much like actionable or practical stuff involved there. It's more so just like a fun preseason exercise that we like to do. I think this is what the at least the third, maybe even the fourth straight year, have done this. Yeah, I think it might be the fourth. And yeah, like you said, there isn't a lot of separation once you get past like the

top top guys through like the like we're really talking about like the first line guys for every team. right and once you get past like the super elite guys there's this whole swath of people who they're not interchangeable but a lot of it's going to be like what you personally like uh in a players game or what you value versus what somebody else values so yeah don't don't get too stressed out as per usual about the numbers let's just talk about the good players hmm okay so we thought that it'd be good to break it out by position as we always do just because if we did like a top 20 forwards list, for example, just because of the importance of the position and the depth at it, like I'd say probably 15 of the top 20 would be centers or so, give or take. So we kind of felt like we'd be short changing the wingerers. So I think for today, let's do top 15 centers and we'll do a bunch of honorable mentions and get into guys who just missed the cut.

And then we'll do top 15 wingers and lump left and right wing together as the pro hockey writers association likes to do, since we don't even know sometimes which one's which. and then we'll do the defensemen separately because there's just so much to work with there, and it's a whole can of worms in and of itself. Yeah, absolutely. So you want to jump right into it? Yeah, let's do the centers. So let's do some honorable mentions or guys that you really wanted to jam in there, but just because of the depth of the position, you couldn't do so.

And so they were kind of left on the chopping block or on the cutting room floor. Yeah, I actually had some that like pined me a little bit to leave off, but because we were only doing top 15 this year, you know, and there were some players that took downstrides last year and some players that maybe I just want to see a little bit more of. So I had, you only just do like a few?

I just bounce some names at me and then we'll kind of take them one by one. Yeah, so I had these four guys just narrowly missing my top 15. The most controversial is probably Mark Schifley. I also had Kuznetsov, Matt Barzal, and Jonathan Taves, who I think had a phenomenal year last year, but I want to see him do it again. Yeah, so I broke it up into honorable mentions next up and then the top 15. And my next up ones were Mark Schifely of Genie Kuznetsov, as you mentioned.

And then I had Logan, Kutur, and Tyler Sagan there. Yeah, I have Kutur and Sagan a little bit lower than that group. Okay, that makes me feel better because I really, especially with Sagan, I was like thinking so long and hard about it and trying to make it work. but just based on the 15 names that I had ahead of him, I couldn't justify it, but like he's such a great player. And we saw, like, it's funny last year, obviously with like the owner or the CEO or whatever calling them out and calling their play horseshit. And it was like purely just based on the fact that he was leading the league and

hitting the post and had an uncharacteristically low shooting percentage. And like right after that, he was like a goal game for two weeks. And it's funny how that works. But it kind of reminded us of just like how great of a player he is. Yeah, he's super dynamic. I think for guys like saying it comes down to me like center is such an important position and there's so many facets to what makes a great center and he ticks the offensive box but that's kind of it right now he hasn't really pushed play for a few years now

his defensive game still leaves a lot to be desired so like he would have to be significantly better offensively for me to ignore that so I had other guys who are a bit more rounded ahead of him well the tough thing is and I think I think you could say the same thing about Mark Schifley, I imagine, at this point. It's weird that, and there's so many concerns about the Winnipeg Jets for this season. Most of them are on the blue line, to be fair. But another one of them for me is, I think this is going to be the first year of Blake Wheeler's mega extension, and he's already well on the wrong side of 30. And Shifley's quite a bit younger. But those two guys, especially last year, and maybe even the year before, I think, like their underlying numbers

didn't match up to what we'd expect from them or their pedigree. Like they, especially last year, they were actually getting caved in a little bit. And it didn't really make sense. Now, they were so good on the power play. And also, especially in Shifley's case, like, he's been such a well-above-average finisher as a shooter throughout his career that he's one of those guys where he doesn't necessarily need the volume or like his team can get outshot by a little bit because he's probably, the combination of Wheeler passing and him shooting is going to,

to generate goals at a higher rate than we'd expect from other players so like they can get away with that and kind of fudge the numbers a little bit but you're right there's like enough red flags there that it's okay to leave him just outside of this list because a lot of the names ahead of him have similar offensive upside without those question marks yeah sheifley's a weird one because like you watch him play he you listen to him talk he's clearly a smart guy he is a student of the game he makes lots of great plays but like you said the the underlying numbers just aren't there the jets are a weird team because they have multiple guys who outperform their expectations and don't drive play. Wheeler used to, but like you said, wrong side of 30, but also his play has been noticeably degrading over time despite his point production going way up.

So his two-way play is suffering. So now that adds Wheeler, Shifley, Line A, and Kyle Connor, all as guys who can score at ridiculously high rates but don't necessarily drive play and it's like those guys are valuable but how many of those guys can you have on one roster and still have success. You've got to have something else in there to

stir the drink a little bit and yeah that worries me for the Jets but Shively is a weird one because like it's not just that he's a dead shot and he is it's he is a dead shot from the perimeter. He scores from the perimeter at the same

rate the average forward scores from the slot. Like his shooting percentage from the outside over the last three years is three times league average over three times. Wow. It doesn't even make sense, but he's able to do it. I don't know if he's just got a tricky release or like you give him more space and he's got more time to find a spot in the net that's open and he's just insanely accurate.

I mean, I think we all know he has a great shot, but he's just a weird player in the way that he scores. And, you know, lining is the same, not that we're talking about him, but they both score an abundance of goals from the perimeter. And in a way, it allows the Jets to kind of beat expectations and beat teams that are now highly defensive around the goal front. That's like where the game is going. So they're able to counter that a little bit by having perimeter scorers.

But it's something that you can't really bring yourself to rely on long term. And yeah, for Shifley, I think he's one of the best goal scorers in the league and one of the best point producers in the league power play unreal but he's got to push play a little bit more for me to make it into the top 15 top 20 sure yeah top 15 no well and then i had like three other tiers of guys that just missed the cut but i wanted to give some love to it was like this sort of um group of guys who don't have much help or have been on bad teams recently whether it's uh you know dylan lark and or meka's have been a jad or nico hishier there's like that kind of old guard that i have of tapes as you mentioned um you know i'd even lump like baxter and stamcos in there and then i've got like

matt barsall i really struggled with because i think he's a top 50 in talent but just because of the way he was used last year because of trots's system because of how his production dipped like you couldn't justify putting him in here but he's deserving of at least an honorable mention because of that talent because we've seen him play at such a high level as a rookie and because like i wouldn't be surprised if we're having this conversation next year or like holy crap matt borsal just absolutely exploded the season. Yeah, I can definitely see it. And like by the,

the micro stats that I have access to, Barzal was probably the most dynamic playmaker in the NHL last year at 515. So, you know, just anybody who can finish some of his plays off, he's going to see a huge jump and assists and his ability to attack off the rush

and be deceptive and change speeds and beat the defenders is just incredible. There's so much potential there. Right. But it's like you said, the slightly down season, and it's tough to bump him all the way into the top 15 right away. So, yeah, honorable mention makes sense.

Well, those playmaking stats and, you know, his neutral zone ability and how he carries the puck and what he does with it when he's in the offensive zone, like that all checks out by the I-Tess. He wouldn't even necessarily need the numbers, too. It's good to have to confirm them. But that's what makes it even more sort of puzzling or jarring that you look at the end of the year and he's got, like, over 50 minutes played at 5-on-5 with, like, Tom Koonakle, Andrew Lad, Lad, Cal clutterbuck.

there's a few other names there that have no business sharing the ice with that bars out at 515 and that's what's kind of like frustrating i know that you know he's generally playing with either bovier or or everly or even lee but like if he had that one um sort of like full-time elite running mate that could just convert on all of the space he opens up for them and all the looks that he can create for them i imagine hit both his counting stats and our perception of him would change quite dramatically. Couldn't agree more. And maybe they find someone this year to do that.

It would be super interesting to see that for Long Island. I guess, you know, you think Andrews Lee is maybe a little bit too slow to keep up? I think so. I think so. Like it's, and yeah, at this point of his career and with the sort of profiler type of his game, like he's probably his best option, but it's not an ideal long-term. fit, I think, stylistically. I'd still like to see that trust guy.

Absolutely. Yeah, he's not, I mean, like, he's always been a high efficiency, high volume shooter as well, but like high efficiency around the net, one of the best net front guys in the league. But I'm speaking more purely as like a one shot trigger man, kind of like what we were just talking about with Shifley and Wheeler and that dynamic. I'd love to see Barzal have his sort of Mark Shifley that can just convert at like 16, 17% of the looks that Barzal creates for him.

Yeah, absolutely. That would be fun to see. Let's get into the top 15. And I feel like, you know, we've done 15 minutes here on the honorable mentions. And it's deserved it because this list is just crazy star-studded. But let's start getting into it. Give me a 15 for you. All right.

15 for me was Nick Backstrom, who I feel like for some reason people still kind of underestimate. And I don't get it. I think he's fantastic. He's defensively. He's super underrated. I think he's really, really good, has not to denigrate Ovatchka. but has really helped Ovechkin alleviate some of his defensive concerns over the course of his career. And offensively, man, he's still a wizard.

He was able to do it without Ovi last year for most of the season because Ovi was with Kutuznetsov. I had to take advantage of the new, or not necessarily new, but the rejuvenated ability to attack off the rush that Ovi had. But Baxter still, once you gain the zone, he's incredible. He is. And I guess he gets dog. a little bit and unfairly on this list just because like he's been doing it for so long, whereas you have some young names here where it's like, oh, like, this guy just burst on a scene and it's just so recent and so fresh and so young and exciting that we kind of gravitate

towards that, whereas it's like, oh, Baxter's just over here doing the same thing he's done for the past decade and doing it remarkably well. And I do love, I'm kind of torn because it was great to see him still thrive playing with whatever. It was like, Oshie and Renner or whatever, when Kuznetsov and him switched flip-flop in the lineup. But there is something beautiful about seeing him back with Ovechkin and seeing that Kevin's tree between them just because we've shared so many special moments with him in the past. Yeah, absolutely. Who do you have for 15?

I have a last Pedersen at 15. Oh, man, I should have had him in my honorable mentions. For some reason, I blanked on him. Like I said, we're rusty, but that's a big oversight. Well, and it's tough because, you know, he's done it for such a short period of time. And I get the concerns about how he struggled. does the year went along, you know, he, he got banged up a little bit and then the points dry it up towards the end of the year. But I just think seeing what he's capable of and how he does it,

just in this, like, it's kind of unlike anything we really see around the league where it feels like the game slows down around him. And he's just sort of like anticipating plays before the passing lanes even open up or even happen. Like, he like, it's like an NFL quarterback where he's sort of throwing his receiver open where he like throws in where he expects the. receiver to wind up being. And so I just love watching him play. I think the sky is the absolute limit. There's, I don't want to buy into the whole best shape of our, of his life narrative in the preseason. But from like a actionable perspective, a lot's been made of how he's worked on his first couple steps and sort of the working on the separation and being a bit more explosive. And if he

adds that to his game along with all the puck skills he has, I get that there's probably more well-rounded players but I think he's just because he's so flashy we don't think him as this way but he's already shown that he's so reliable in his own zone and doing the little things and so I think that it's a bit of a projection and I don't think it's crazy to have him outside the top 15 but I just felt like from sort of an upside perspective and what we've seen inkling so far I wanted to get him on this list yeah and I think not to necessarily crap on the Canucks but talking about a guy who did things pretty much on his own. And I know Brock Bassler is a great player too, but, you know, both of them had injuries. Elias Patterson's rookie season is super impressive and probably considerably more

impressive than the overall point total show because the team lacks high-end talent. And, you know, they added a little bit more this summer in Michael Ferrell and J.T. Miller. I wouldn't, maybe not high-end talent, but good talent, middle-six talent. And hopefully they can, you know, surround him a little bit more talent to take advantage of his ability because as a playmaker, he's fantastic. As a shooter, he's always in the right area. He gets a shot off quick. Yeah, adding that explosiveness to his game would be a whole other level. Yeah, and I'm sure he learned quite a bit last year, and he's going to adapt on that as well. And you're right, Ferland and J.T. Miller are necessarily world beaters in their own right,

but considering sort of what they're replacing, like the net positive there, will help him quite a bit. and especially J.T. Miller as a finisher. So I really, I really like that. And I just think the sky's the limit. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's keep going here. Give me a, give me a, give me the next name or two on your list. Yeah, this one's a little bit further down the list than I think a lot of people would have, but I've got Sean Couturee at 14. I haven't at 11. So I, uh, I think that's, that's sort of the same ballpark. Yeah, it's around the same. I think for me, Couturee, like, we all were already knew how good he was defensively from, you know, the last five seasons. And then they put,

closure on the wing and all of a sudden it unlocked this superstar level offensive player in Sean Couturier. Now he's able to free himself up a little bit and take risks and go lower in the zone. His shot quality skyrocketed like crazy. And you add in the Philadelphia Flyers powerplay is always pretty good. This is a guy who, you know, maybe he was a late bloomer in terms of offense, but he's been good for a long time. and now that the offense has come along,

the fully matured player shows up in the top 15. And I feel like it's just impossible to deny him at this point. I mean, I feel like what more does he have to do at this point to convince people of that? Yeah. Like my colleagues at ESPN just recently released their top 50 player list. And I actually thought it was a very shrewdly done compared to some of the other lists you do where it's just like based on name brand value and just jamming names in there

based on random stuff. But Guturier was left off the top 50. And I was, that was kind of like the most obvious name that stuck out to me as a glaring omission. And I was just making the point of like, I mean, I think he played the six most minutes of any forward last year. He had insane net positive impacts on goals share, expected goal share, shot share for his team at 5-1-5. He's playing all the tough minutes.

He's one of the best players in terms of penalty differential, which is amazing. considering the competition he faces. And I think the most important part here, and you see Claude Giroux listed above him on all of these lists. And it's like, yeah, health is obviously great for Drew. He was dealing with quite a few hip issues before. And that certainly helps.

But he almost like single-handedly rejuvenated Juru's career over the past two years when it felt like Jiru was really trending downwards. And having Couturee basically be like, I got this. You can play on the wing and not have to worry about as many as a defensive responsibilities. Like that is such a massive. checkmark in his favor for both this list and just in general.

Right, and I feel like it's entirely fair for people to say that, like, Girou is the offensive driver between the two of them. But like I mentioned that, Juru's presence on the line allows Katrurié to take a few more risks, but, like, the opposite is true times 10, you know,

and I think I have Juru slightly above Kutriere just because of, or do I, on this list? Maybe not. Well, you can't have him on this list. He's a winger. That's right. That's right. that's right. I was like,

where is you on the center's list? Oh no, there is on the winger's list. Yeah, so good. I'm not contradicting myself. That's good. So, yeah, I have Drew,

like, he's an offensive driver like crazy, but yeah, Caturier allows him to take so many more risks, and it's nice to see them feed off of each other, you know, like they can cover for each other. Drew knows the center job,

so you make those read and reacts much better. And I didn't think that that shift to the wing was going to be nearly as successful for Drew as it has been. Because usually centers kind of pout when they're moved off the wing, but he took it. And I think all the credit in the world to him and all the credit in the world to Sean Kuturier for taking advantage of it and becoming the player that he was kind of expected to be when he was drafted.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great point. Juru definitely deserves credit for that because we often see star centers, especially at that point of their career, I take that kind of personally. He takes it as a slight. But it worked out for both of them. And now that Kutri has finally kind of that offensive upside has materialized. for him and he's not just sort of like a trendy underlying stats darling and he's just basically

a lock at this point for 30 goals and 70 points certainly helps him in this discussion um all right let's bang through it who are who are the next couple names in your list uh the next couple names on my list are very different uh but two of them are the same team uh stepan stamcois ryan o'reilly and up at 11 is uh brayden point so i had stephen stamcoast just off of this list um he was on my honorable mentions um i have why do you hate goals we can get into Stamco's here more but I have the other two guys quite a bit higher actually I have O'Reilly at 8 and I have Brayden Point at 6 yeah I think that's it's not controversial I think for me it was between like numbers 7 and 12 where it was mostly interchangeable

and I moved guys around based on either history of consistently producing or where I thought things were trending. So, like, I have Sebastian Aho one ahead of Brinpoint. I think he's slightly better than point. And I kind of docked points slightly for playing on such an incredibly good offensive team. So, you know, he outproduced Aho last year, but I think Aho had to accomplish more to get those points. And I think they're both really good defensively,

but I don't think there was much separation there. So I gave Ajo a bit more credit. And for Ryan O'Reilly, I, think he's incredible. Obviously he was the MVP in the playoffs. One of the best defensive players in the entire league. There's just so many good players here. I had trouble putting him higher. Yeah. Maybe that's a little bit of recency bias, but I just think I love guys that profile like him from the perspective of like he played, just what I was saying about Couturee, where he can rely on him to play the heaviest of minutes against other teams' best players,

and he still has such an insane penalty differential. I think there's so much value to that. And you're right. Finally being put in the situation he was last year really allowed him to not necessarily thrive, but kind of get more deserved love for his play because he had that kind of national spotlight. And because of the Stanley Cup run, I feel like more people were kind of their eyes were open to what he's capable of. So I had him where I did on my list. Braden Point, you know, it was interesting. I think based on evolving Wilde's model, he was like fourth, best in goals above replacement last year. And you're right, based on playing on that team and playing with Kutrov in the year he had, it's kind of tough to separate those things or sort of

give Braden Point the full credit for it because he was in such a great spot. But just based on kind of the total package and the player he was the year before he was playing with Kutrov and how effective he was in a different role and then sliding into that top power play, top line role and scoring 40 goals. And it's just amazing that the light, were once again able to get away with paying him on that ridiculous 6.75 mil per year bridge deal and making all of this work. Like I made this point on Twitter, but we went into the summer thinking, okay, this is finally the year where the lightning just have too many players making too much money.

They're not going to be nearly as good next year. They're going to have to lose someone. And with all due respect to J.T. Miller, they basically, he was the only real tangible loss, and they still got a future first round pick, which could be a high lottery pick and will be a great trade asset for them if they want to sort of replace any production down to road via trade. So the fact that it was like that and then it was like Adam Erdy, Ryan Callahan, and Dan Gerardi, and those are the main players they lost. And they wound up making all the other numbers work and added Kevin Shattonkirk as a flyer and all this stuff. It's like once again, the lightning

just pulling off cap wizardry and making it all work despite all of our concerns. Yeah, I honestly don't understand how the lightning are able to do stuff like that. Like the Shattonkirk thing drives me crazy because he's a guy that, you know, continually maligned because he's not what people expect to be. And I think maybe we're guilty as analytics people of overselling him a little bit. And his numbers are still solid. Doesn't matter if you're going by goals or shots or expected goals. He gets results.

He may not play the nicest looking game and he may commit the odd really dumb turnover, but he's a good player. And yet another really good underrated defenseman that the lightning have added. I guess they lose Stralman, but you know, you can't keep the band together forever. And I think you have to give the lightning credit as well for not overpaying to keep the band together. You know, they lost players making a lot of money,

but I don't see how else they could have really navigated this summer any better. I mean, you look at that contract that point signed and you're like, how does this keep happening? Like, do you remember the Kuturov bridge deal? That was insane as well. I think the point one might be crazier. Yeah, especially since, Matthew Kishak, who we both love, obviously.

We'll talk about him when we talk about wingers, but basically signed the same deal for just a little bit more money, and he's a great player in his own right. But I don't know. They just make it work, whether it's selling that culture of just a fun place to play with other great players, even though they haven't won a Stanley Cup,

the fact that they can sell that sort of vision as you could win a Stanley Cup here. I know everyone likes to make a ton of the tax breaks they get. not necessarily buying too much into that because we see other teams with similar tax breaks not taking as much advantage of it or not getting these types of deals. So I'm much more willing to give the front office credit and all the other stuff some more love as opposed to just crying about how it's unfair that they get this massive advantage compared to other teams. Yeah, for sure. I think the tax breaks, what a lot of people never bring up is like players pay taxes in

every state or province that they play in. It's not just some, you sign in a place and you pay that state tax. And you know, you pay half of your tax in that time. But like, there's tons of other factors as to why the Lightning are able to do it. And I think the biggest one is that the players that they talk to believe that they're a team that they're going to win the cup at least once, maybe multiple times. And that's the biggest factor when you talk to these guys of why they would want to go somewhere. It is. Well, and let's get to Stamco's a little bit here.

You mentioned him. I had him just missing my list, and you have him your top 15. And I will say the one thing that I really liked to see from him last year was that he got back to being that sort of just otherworldly shooter and goal scorer that we'd come to Nolan love. You know, he's probably never going to be the 60 goals score again. but the fact that, you know, he had scored 27 goals the year before while being healthy, and his shot numbers were down, his efficiency had been down for a couple years, and the fact that he got back up to, he had 234 shots on goal, he shot 19%, and he scored those 45, as I mentioned, and came close to 100 points just based on that absurd

power play he was also playing on. You're right, maybe I slighted him a little bit too much because he got back to being that just that that that that that that that that shooter that we'd come to that we'd come to expect from him and and that's a massive um sort of revelation considering the trajectory he was on in his age yeah and i think one of the things the tips and scales for me to stamcoast in putting him on this list is that i really have a lot of respect for players who are able to diversify their games or change things about the way they play in order to either adapt to the way the game's trending or uh problems with their uh

personal play or, you know, changing team dynamics. And Stamcoast has kind of had to adjust for all three, right? He had that devastating injury that kept him out of it, basically a full season when he broke his leg and had to have surgery on it. And then in the midst of that happening, all of a sudden, Kitukutrov came onto the scene and emerged as, oh, well, now he's the designated shooter on the team. He's the guy that the power play is going to run through. So sorry, Stephen, you're coming back.

and you're still on the power play, but you're not the main guy anymore. So you have to learn how to be a secondary shooter and also a playmaker. And he really added a lot of a passing to his game over the last couple seasons. He's become a little bit of a better play driver, whereas earlier in his career,

he was more of a Mark Schifley type where he would score like crazy, but things weren't always going in his team's favor when he was on the ice at 5-1-5. He's better at that now. Was better two seasons ago than last season, but I attribute that, to not playing with as good a linemates this season.

And you aren't playing with Braden Point. You're probably going to have less good numbers on the relative scale, right? It's just the problem with not being a winger, I guess, for Stamco's. But I think I appreciate a guy who can do that. And then he was able to mold those things into his game and then bring the shooting back, as you said. And that's super impressive. me. It kind of reminds me a little bit of

guys who've aged really gracefully, like, not necessarily Yarmor Yager, but like Steve Eiserman became more of a defensive forward as his career went on. There's always that narrative of him sacrificing the offense for defense. I don't think that was true. I think he just aged out of being in this prime and, you know, had to figure out other ways to contribute. And I think Stamcoast is kind of doing the same thing. Yeah, it's funny. Like last year, or the year before, I honestly thought that

he might be headed towards what we were just talking about, Claudeau, where the lightning should explore moving him to the wing and whether that would open up more of his offense and whether he'd be a bigger net positive in that type of a role. And him sort of getting back to this high level, open so many doors for the lightning in terms of being able to just play a bunch of different players with him.

And clearly, like, it's much tougher to find centers than wingerers, obviously. And he had such a rotating door last year. like there were times where Matthew Joseph, who I love was playing up with them. There was Andre Pallat. They were kind of shuffling guys in and out of his line, J.T. Miller, so on and so forth. And he just kind of kept chugging along and obviously still getting to play with point headman and Kutrov on the power play and him having 40 of those 98 points in that area of the game kind of helps choose his numbers a little bit.

But the fact that he was still a productive player and still able to carry his weight with less with inferior competition relatively speaking um help help kind of sway this in his favor so you're right maybe uh maybe i need to revisit that but um yeah i mean where are we at now on your list i feel like we're at the sort of like 11 range or so or have we already done all this point was 11 at ajo at 10 okay so i have ajo at 13 on my list um where do you so have you um are we getting to jack eichel at some point or do you not have one your life? Actually, I had Eichol on my honorable mentions. I just forgot to honorably mention him.

Okay, so I, just to kind of, for those scoring at home, I've got Pedersen at 15, I've got Eichl at 14, and we can get into him a little bit here, and then I've got Ajo at 13. I've got Copatar down at 12, then I've got Catiria at 11. Yeah, I think that's, that makes sense to me. Well, so those are good.

Do you want to do, do Ikele a little bit here? Do you want to do Copatar? Yeah, let's talk about Ikel. Yep. Eichol is surprising to me in that if you look at his individual contributions, he is a fantastic transition player, fantastic scoring chance producer, and then you look at his on-ice results, and they're still kind of not good.

And you remove Ryan O'Reilly from the equation this year, and obviously there's going to be a bit of a bump in like the rel team numbers, but I think I just expect a bit more out of Eichol, and maybe that's unfair because it's judging based on. on like draft position and salary. You want him to be an out-out superstar across the board. And I just feel like he hasn't accomplished that yet. I think he's a great offensive player.

And I definitely, if I was coaching games, it wouldn't be scared whenever he's on the ice because he can turn nothing into something really quickly. But I'd like to see more two-way play from him still. That's fair. That is certainly fair. Maybe I'm buying it a bit too much, so just like how much I enjoy watching.

him play. Oh, he's one of the top watchable guys. And similar to Barzal, what we were talking about with him, like his ability, kind of like, it is a little sort of Taylor-Hollish as well in that like he does it all himself sometimes and he's able to just go back and retrieve the puck and flip the ice for his team. And clearly he doesn't get nearly enough help, although obviously he had a nice connection with Skinner last year.

And if you look at the numbers, it isn't groundbreaking material to say that a team, especially as thin as the Sabres was a lot better with their best players on the ice than the other guys. But it was a very sizable drop-off from them actually being perfectly fine and holding their own when Skinner and Iko were on the ice compared to when they weren't where they were like the worst team in the league. And so getting Marcus Johansson certainly helps quite a bit. They're hoping Casey Meadowstats is going to develop. Sam Ryan Hart's a really nice player. they've added a ton of blue liners that'll hopefully help in that transition game. And so if that's the case and you can get some more of that help, then I imagine it'll also

help with getting some pressure off of them, maybe getting some easier minutes on occasion. And so I think there's still plenty of room there to grow, which excites me. Like I love the player already. And I think with his age and how long he's been in the league, there's still another couple gears for him to hit as the Sabres team gets better around him. And so I'm really encouraged by that. And that's ultimately why I had him at 14. Yeah.

And I think if you look at his career trajectory, he's improved every single year he's been in the league, which is a really good sign for the Sabres. And also, like, if he ever has a good shooting year in terms of his, like, completion percentage or his shooting percentage, that's going to be scary for teams to deal with. Like, he had 300 shots on that last year. That's, that's pretty good.

And he's only shot, he's shot under 10% in his career. That's crazy to me. So, you know, if Buffalo ever gets that good power that they had two years ago, and Eichel ends up having a crazy shooting year. He's a guy who can push 40, I think. I think so. Yeah, I buy that. Okay, so Aho and Kopitar here on my list.

I mean, let's do Ajo because he's already come up on your list. And you being in Montreal, you're obviously very well-versed or familiar with the name. Yeah, no, I like the fact that despite him having such a great, year last year and, you know, the Keynes being a fun team that obviously made it to the conference finals. And so he gained more notoriety there. And I don't think he's, you know, still underrated, percy. I feel like you kind of have to be willfully ignorant at this point to not be aware of how good he is. Like if you're following the league at all, you're probably pretty aware of the fact that Sebastian Aho is a superstar. But just that that whole offer sheet saga and it involving the haves and

everyone really kind of talking more about him and diving into the numbers. I feel like also helped him a little bit here in terms of winning over those final few kind of skeptics or people that still aren't fully aware of it. And he's a special player and he's reached that highest level of playmaker or superstar, in my opinion, where I feel confident saying that whoever Carolina Poe with him and obviously, Justin Williams is a nice player, Tara Bynin's an awesome player, or need a needer rider is a perfect fit beside him. But I feel like they could put anyone beside him

and that player would be significantly better because he just has that rare knack of making everyone that much better around him. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we can't overlook that last year was his first year at center as well, right? And all this, like I was skeptical that he was going to be able to translate all the things that made him great from winger to center. It's a tough thing to do. And, you know, right after having a breakout season where he pushed 30 goals

to go into a whole new position that all of a sudden you have extra defensive responsibilities, it's incredible an even better season. And we can talk about his linemates being good, but I think if you look at Carolina and the fact that they've been a good team but not able to put it together for so long now, it really does seem like the tipping point for them in order to produce offense at a high rate or at least a rate commensurate with what they were producing in shots. was Sebastian O'Hoh arriving on the scene.

It seemed like he was the guy who had that elite level talent to allow them to complete those plays. And that's huge. I think when you're a guy who, you know, stirs the drink like that, that makes you really, really important. And it's crazy to think that he signed for less money than Mitch Marner. Yeah, yeah.

That's a nice little troll there, Andrew. Sorry, sorry, I couldn't help it. Yeah, no, he's a special player, and they did such a good job this summer of obviously, you know, they get Ryan to Zingle on a nice little low-risk deal. They trade for Arakala and take advantage of the fact that Vegas was in a big-time cap crunch. Even the Justin Fogg trade, who I think is overrated, they wind up getting Dominic Bach back, and it'll probably take a couple of years for him to make an impact of the NHL level. but he's just another, you know, high-upside top prospect that I think could be a special player one day for them. And you just have to love what Carolina is doing in terms of assembling all this talent that's young and cost-controlled and gives them a chance to not only prove the last year wasn't a fluke, but even build off of it and really take even another step.

Yeah, for sure. And like the supporting cast there is getting better and better. and we haven't we won't probably be talking about him right now but the svechnikov factor in Carolina is also going to be huge he barely played last year and still scored like a demon so if it ever comes to a time where it's ahho and sveshnekov together on the top line sorry other teams yeah that's going to be tough it sure will be um Anzi copatar i had at 12 and i don't know know, I feel like I was just probably giving him too much credit because of the career he's had

and how special a player and how important a player he's been to the Kings. And maybe, I don't know, we can get into this, maybe it's just the fact that it was just such a mess around him last year and he had so little to work with. And all of the numbers across the board were terrible. But now that I look at it even more and think about it even more, maybe I was giving him a bit too much credit based on his resume because his numbers last year were pretty horrendous. Yeah, and it's the second really rough year of the last three. And I feel like 2016-17, he had like still semi-decent underlying numbers. And if you dug into it, you could see like, okay, this is because everyone around this guy is just crap.

And the same could be said of last season. But I think that there is enough evidence out there now that at 32, Copatars game is starting to slide a little bit. Last year, I don't think he was anywhere near as impactful defensively as we're used to. Negative relative shot and goal shares on a team that was horrendous, which is pretty alarming. Yeah, and I haven't taken a deep look at him on like evolving Wild's data to see if everything holds out there. Because I know that there will be many listening who say, why are you guys using a REL team when you could be using the algorithm-driven stuff? but I think for the average person listening, it's hard to get your head around there. But yeah, I wasn't impressed with Kopitar last year.

And I actually was, I know a lot of people got on Drew Dowdy last year for a down year for him. But I think he fell off far less than Kopitar did. So of the two of them, like Kobatar is the one who slid down my list. And I didn't even have in my honorable mentions. Yeah. Wow. I feel like an idiot now for having him this high. I, uh, it, it definitely fell, uh, into the trap of just, I was like, well, for so long,

we've done these lists and it's like, Gonsa Copatar just the deserves to be there. Yeah, top five. And I don't want to be, uh, overly reactionary. Like, it's similar. I think if we were having this conversation, whatever, two years ago, whatever, when, now, to be fair, that was larger driven by the fact that he was incredibly unlucky with his shooting. And so his production wasn't there from a county stats level. And then last year, or in 2017, 18, he bounced back and scored a ton more. But he that wasn't the case last year. It looks like many more underlying concerns for him than just purely all he needs to convert more of his shots into goals. I mean, yeah, I'm looking at it right now in evolving wild. He was still plus 4.1 in terms

of goals of probable placement, but that's not clearly good enough for what we've come to expect from him and also how high I've had him on the list and how much time we've spent talking about him. So I, I apologize for that. Maybe I should, I should revise this and bump him down. But, you know, we're working through this together.

And this was a good learning exercise for me. It's okay. You're not the only one will have some players on out of reputation a little bit higher because I've got one coming up here. All right, let's go for it.

So we're in, we're in each of our top tens right now, right? Yeah. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me cut you off. Let's take a quick break here from a sponsor. We're at the 45-minute mark and we will pick this up,

top 10 after this. Sponsoring today's episode of the Hockey P-O cast is C-Geek. Do you ever feel like ticketing websites make getting to the event difficult on purpose? It's like they're so big that they can get away with not caring about the customer experience. You go on their website. It's annoying. It doesn't have the events you're looking for.

You're opening up a bunch of tabs. You're unsure if you're getting ripped off or if you're going to buy a ticket and then show up to the event. And it's going to be a fake one and you're going to wind up having waste of your money and wasting your time. And we don't want that because I know everyone listening to the shows living a busy, fulfilling, fun life. and you need to maximize your time. And that's where Seeky comes into the mix because they pride themselves on their customer and user experience, but also on the fact that they're going to have what you're looking for and they're going to save you time, money, and effort in doing so.

So you can search Seekheek, whether it's for a sporting event, whether it's for live music, whether it's comedy, whether it's whatever else. Seekkeek's got the tickets you're looking for all in one place. And to make matters better, they actually are going to do all the work for you. They're going to scour the web. They're going to pull all the tickets that are available for whatever event you're looking for. And then they're going to grade them on a scale of 1 to 10. And they're going to map them out on an easy-to-use interactive map that shows the good deals as green dots and the bad deals that are overpriced as red dots.

And every purchase with them is fully guaranteed. So if you buy a ticket with them, you can do so, rest assured with confidence that what you're paying for is where you're going to get. I've got the Ciki gap on my phone and I've found time and time again, it's the fastest and easiest way to find tickets. I use it all the time. If I'm going to a hockey game as a fan, if I'm going to travel, and I can watch a basketball game or if there's a concert coming up, I was using that a bunch this summer. So now with sports season really kind of kicking into high gear here and so many good things to check out, now's the time to finally take the leap and give Seeky a shot if you have

and so already. And to swing the pot and make things even better, Seekek is going to give you $10 off your first purchase with them just for listening to today's episode of the Hockey PDOC. All you need to do is use our promo code and let them know we sent you. So download the Seeky app today and use the promo code PDO for $10 off your first purchase. That's promo code for PDO off your 10 purchase. Now let's get back to the show. All right, let's do it. Give me your top 10.

All right. You want to go the whole top 10? No, no, that's too many names. Let's, uh, we'll do three maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I have at number nine, John Tavares, number eight, this is my one that reputation kept him of higher Malkin.

Nice. And number seven, Patrice Bergeron, who it pained me to bring him that far down. But there's, the, the top. of this list is so tight you know it's really tough so uh yeah malkin was my guy that his history is just so strong that i couldn't punish him too much for a down season i know i had him last year at i think number two because he was so good but uh yeah six spots was the most or i guess that's actually number seven six spots was uh the most that i could drop him i've got malkin at ten so i'm right there with you i've got tavares at nine and i've got bursron at five so

we're kind of in the same wavelength here and you're right when I was pulling out of this list like it used to be you'd go like you know crosbie one one or two and then you'd be like again now I need to start thinking about Malkin and there were just so many other younger players that are coming off much better seasons quite frankly and and we'll see it it sounds like uh he's certainly motivated to prove that last year wasn't a sign of the end for him as that top five center um I don't know what was going on there with Phil Kessel, but by all accounts, it was certainly an unpleasant relationship or there was some friction involved, and I don't know how much of that played into it. So we'll see. I imagine that Alex El-Cenuk is going to get the first crack at playing with him.

It's quite an interesting year. He certainly has a lot to prove, but I just think based on, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here to a degree because it was just that one bad year, compared to like copatah for example we were just talking about so he can certainly if we put him at like 15 or something or he left him off this list uh we could really wind up looking foolish for that because i do still believe that he has one more at least uh truly elite season in him yeah i do too and i think when you just it's hard to watch malkin and not think this is a hyper elite player you know it's i mean i guess it's like looking at a five-year-old Ferrari right and like maybe it's not the best car out out there on the road anymore and its design has been surpassed by other competitors but man it

it still rips when malcon has the puck and he's bearing down he's angry he's still one of my favorite players in the league to watch so there's that bias as well yeah yeah i mean i've said it before on this show but give me a vgeny malcon's peak a game uh against anyone else's when he has a cook and like he he has the highest gear i think in terms of just complete dominance where every time he gets on the ice, you're just like, oh my God, here comes a goal. Like they, you can see, like, do they look like children against them? Yeah, you can see the defenseman like just rolling their eyes like, oh, we have to deal with this again.

Come on. Yeah. And, you know, I really do hope the Gail Chenyak thing works out, obviously, and we have to give Crosby credit for this, but he's really found that nice connection with Gensel, and they're kind of running mates now, and they're basically just attached to the hip at 5-1-5. And I'd love Malkin throughout his career, has, he's a lot of, he's, he's a lot of, had so many moving pieces and such a rotating cast of characters that have played with them.

And hopefully, this is the year that both Galcenaic kind of lives up to the hype and proves that he's worth all the buzz and all the attention he's gotten. And Malcon proves that he still has it. Yeah, that would be fun. And I think it'd be good for, like, a guy like Galcheneck to finally get a stable situation as well. It seems like it's been ever since his, like, rookie year that he's been bounced around as well. So some stability there would not hurt. either player. So Tavares at nine, I don't really know with some of these guys as we get closer to the top 10 and people are going to be like, oh, why do you spend 40 minutes talking about guys who are worse than these guys were going to spend like 10 minutes just breezing through? But with some of

these names, I just don't know what there is to really say from like a revelatory, mind-blowing perspective. It's like, he's a great player. He went from a weird situation on the islanders where they were really good offensively, but it was just a mess to this high octane offense where he was playing with one of the best playmakers in the world. And they clearly had chemistry right out of the gate. I think they combined for the most primary assist goal combo between the two of them. And so, yeah, it's like Mitch Marner passing the puck that John Tiber is magic. And they were great. And I fully expect another 40-ish goals from him this year.

And kind of just pencil that in and move on. Yeah, for sure. I think he's another one of those guys that has diversified his game. over time. And I wondered if he was going to be able to fill the role that JVR did on the least power play and be the net front guy because he's been more of the the trigger man on the half wall for most of his career in Carolina, or not sorry, Carolina in Long Island. You got Sebastian Ajo in the mind. Yeah, Sebastian Ajo in the mind. And I'm not the only person in Montreal with that. But yeah, he was able to do that and then some. He recorded more

high danger scoring chances last year than anybody else in the league. And it was crazy what he was able to do with that lineup. And even though their power play kind of struggled down the stretch, overall, it was the most dynamic power play in the league by the numbers. So I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him even better what he did last year. Yeah, and it's terrifying that he's not even the best center or his own team, which speaks to the Leafs clearly have some flaws in their game.

But I think this is why people keep coming back to them as a team that, has more to another gear to hit here if they can get away or finally get past the bruns but let's uh i guess well that's a good transition let's do bursuron then i've got them five on my list you have them at seven i believe you were saying uh six six i just realized that i misnumbered the list so i mean what is there to say at this point like i do think especially in the playoffs so his usage was a bit weird where it felt like despite the fact that they they clear all these they came within one game of winning the stanley cup again um his were all over the place it felt like and they weren't relying on him as much as you expect

him to given their success and given his caliber of play and there are some nagging injury concerns there where it does feel like he's always kind of nursing something but man um he just his impact and also you know you're you're talking about uh taveras for example how like oh he's added another uh layer or element to his game burseran's kind of like he's done so as well but in the opposite direction where he's become this elite goal scorer as well to all the defensive stuff, which is something you typically don't see at this stage of a player's career, especially without giving up defensive value. Like, it's not like he's just going for broke and just cherry picking and completely neglecting

the defensive zone to try and score more cheapy goals. Like, he's just doing it all now and he's just, he's a freak. Yeah. Boston, they don't make sense. Him or Marchon. Marjohn all of a sudden hit his peak at like 30 years old. Doesn't make sense at all. Bergeron goes from like a good score to a consistent 30 goal guy

by being a extremely effective shutdown center who also is the net front guy. Like he just, there's no guy in the league who plays as much. We talk about 200 foot game, but if it was possible, Bergeron would play like a 205 foot game. like he goes so deep he commits so fully and then he's still the first one back it's it's crazy uh i have very few words left to describe how good this guy is and the fact that you know at 34 years old it doesn't appear on the surface like there's much slowing down for him no it does not uh i guess yeah health is really the only concern hopefully uh he can stay on the ice because once he's on

there he uh he certainly makes a difference maybe they should try some load man management. Well, they certainly should, at least with Chara, if not him as well. Oh, yeah, let's keep going here. So I guess we're in your top five now. Yeah, yeah. So above Bergeron, which was, I had Bergeron, I think at five last year at four, but I bumped him down for Nate McKinnon, who I wanted to see him repeat what he was able to do two seasons ago last year. And then he was like, all right, fine, I'll do even better. So, yeah, Nate McKinnon, I think we can officially say, is a superstar now and those couple seasons after his first

after his rookie season where he kind of didn't score as much were the blip and this is the real Nathan McKinnon man that kid is so incredible his ability to score off the rush is almost second to none the only guy I think who is more dangerous is Connor McDavid wait so count down your your top five for me here okay so I have McKinnon Matthews Barkov Crosby McDavid all right so that's interesting. I've got Barkov at 7 and we can get into him here. And then I've got point at 6, Bergeron at 5, and then I've got Matthews 4, McKinnon 3, Crosby 2, McDavid 1. And obviously with these guys, it is nitpicking. You know, it's interesting with the

Barkov thing. He finished 5th in Selke voting last year and I actually thought that was a bit of a reputation thing. I did not think that he was as good defensively last year. But that could just be the case that, you know, that, that Panthers team was such a mess defensively as a whole, that it's kind of tough to separate those two things. You clearly want to see more from their best defensive player or the best defensive forward, but I did think he certainly wasn't without blame for that mess in front of the gold ending. Yeah, and I think there seemed a point last year for Florida where Barkov and Huberto were just like, you know what, let's just get all the points.

and they were absolutely dominant offensively and the defensive play definitely suffered for both of them. But every time that I go through data and I'm looking at stuff that I know is important, Barkov's name is always, always in like the top five or ten on every single stat. It's crazy how thoroughly excellent he is across every facet of the game.

And I think outside of Prime Bergeron, he's the only guy that I've seen like this. Maybe Crosby for a time, but Crosby was just like more elite in the offensive categories and a little bit further behind on the defensive areas. But Barkov just, he does everything

you could possibly want and imagine the senator to do, and he does them all extremely well. He doesn't have any glaring weaknesses. And I don't know, I think there's something to be said for a guy that maybe he's not a, like he might not ever have 96 points.

again, right? Like, last year might be a crazy 20-point aberration off of what his prime numbers will be. He might be a 75-point guy throughout it. But he's a guy that any team could slot into any system, and he could be a first-line center. Yeah. No, that is, that's certainly the case. And we forget that, I mean, obviously, McKinnon was in the same draft class, but still at such a young age for him to have already hit this level and be in his conversation. And us to have to have these expectations for him. Like when I say that I thought he wasn't deserving of a fifth place Selke vote and that he was to blame a little bit for their defensive woes, like that's all relatively speaking compared to the sky high norms that we've set for him because

yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I bumped him down a little bit just because of that, but I fully expect that next year he'll get back into form and be inside this top five. You know, you mentioned McKinnon already. I had my number three. I felt really good about that. I didn't really consider bumping him down any further.

It was impossible for him to bump into the McDavid-Crosby tier for me at this point. But man, he was obviously the big winner of last year's postseason despite the fact that his team didn't even make it at a conference final because everyone just got to watch him closely on a nightly basis and he took his game

to another freakish level. He was just the volume of minutes he was playing at the energy or pace that he was playing it at in the force he was exerting and how like the sharks for example were just like so spooked by him that they were going to such extremes to just try and corral him as much as they could and it actually worked as the series went along and maybe he just wore down because of the unrealistic minutes that he was being asked to play and energy to exert but man he uh he's unlike anyone else in terms of that sort of speed power combo like mac david's still the fastest player in the league but that downhill attack of mickickickson's when he gets a full head of steam is the most frightening thing a defender can see, I imagine. Yeah, it's like you can kind of, not to say that McDavid is in any way easy to defend,

but you can kind of clip him and knock him off of his stride, and McKinnon just seems to bowl through guys a little bit like Prime Malcolm did. And, you know, the crazy thing is McKinna is not even that big. He's only 6'200 pounds, but he plays like, he looks out there like he's 6'4. you know he it's it's weird to see a guy who's able to to overcome that so ridiculously it's not just like oh that's a small player who's really getting it done not that he's small but he just feels like a big player and you know to his credit it seems a bit counterintuitive but i remember um a couple years ago there this article came out and it was really well written about how um you know the

houston uh rockets had identified james hardin when they traded for him as being able to hit another gear offensively because of his ability to decelerate at just like the league best rate and how he was able to draw fouls and how kind of maneuver and keep defenders off balance because of his ability to be going full speed and then all of a sudden stop on a dime and maintain control and do stuff with the ball and McKinnon's sort of similar to me where he still clearly has that straight line speed and power where sometimes he will just put his head down and go to the net. But early in his career, he was doing that every single time. And it came a bit more predictable from like, you don't obviously want to see it or have to

defend it as a guy who has him coming down at you full speed. But it made it easier to kind of work the angles or for goalies to know what to expect. And then now he still does that. But on occasion, I think he's the best of the league at stopping short and then waiting to hit the trailer that's coming in on the rush or allowing passing lanes to materialize. And I think that's what's taken his game to another level, especially as a distributor, where he's so multifaceted now that with that speed, you can't really cheat at all because he's realized that he can get away with taking a bit off of his fastball to get more out of his talent.

Yeah, and I'm sure it also helps to have a guy like Miko Raton in there that he can play off of a bit more. And I've kind of espels the opinion and I'm still of it that. Ranton is a really good player, but McKinnon kind of makes him a great player. But at the same time, having a really good player with you to compliment you when you're a talent of the level of McKinnon's is a huge boon that he didn't have consistently, at least, for most of his career in Colorado. So it's like everything coming together at the right time.

Absolutely, which is great to see because everyone now talks about how he's on like the most team-friendly deal in the league that's not on any of the league. see and he certainly is but there was a time there i think people kind of conveniently forget it now where we were a bit concerned about the fact that the especially the the counting stats weren't there that his shooting percentage was depreciated for the first three years of his career so and we were wondering we all knew he was going to be good but just how great he would be and he's lived up to all of the prospect hype and all of the and him going first overall and and how he's uh i am as the third best center in the league so it's a testament to him uh growing into that player

Matthews are four. You know, I still have concerns, obviously, dating back to last postseason about the usage. I think the Leafs can sometimes get a bit too cute when it comes to overthinking stuff and the data science. And I know it's a bit counterintuitive because I love when teams do that, obviously. And I think every team should be doing it and should be adopting the load management model, especially with their older stars of the NBA and not asking these guys to play 80s. too hard games because it's tough to do so and still have your peak game in the postseason. But with Matthews at his age and his effectiveness on a permanent basis, as a fan,

it is a bit infuriating to see him come in at that like 18 minute a game mark every night without fail when you feel like a couple more minutes and his production could just be that much better. Yeah, it's one of those things where I understand the load management and sports science part of it. And if you want him to average around 18, 9 minutes a game, it makes sense. But when you're really up against it and you need to win, maybe play them 22. Yeah. You know, like, it's not going to kill them to go all at one game.

And they're diminishing returns sometimes, sure, but I feel like one game isn't where you get those diminishing returns. No. And I mean, look at the house last year. They're like, if we're going to lose, we're going to go down when McKinnon playing 26 minutes. Yeah, exactly. And I sometimes love to see that. Like, if you're going to lose, just go down with your best players.

And he's, you know, on a permanent basis. I think he still has been the most efficient goal score since he's entered the league. And last year we finally got to see him unleashed in the power play, which was great. And unsurprisingly, he was very good at scoring goals there too. And it sounds like he's added some more versatility to his shot making this summer, which is scary to think about with, you know, potentially adding a one-timer to his arsenal on the power play. So the sky's the limit there from, especially in a goal sporting perspective, where I still think despite all the concerns and despite last year, line A kind of seems like that natural era parent to Ovechkin as just like the guy who's putting up video game goal totals year on and year out. But if the usage can ever get there and if he keeps trending in this direction and if he can stay healthy because he has missed whatever, 15 or so games in each of the past two years, Matthew seems like one of these years he's going to pop off for.

just an obscene goal total and win the Rock and Richard. Yeah, I think that's pretty much inevitable as long as he can stay healthy. I mean, the only person to put up more scoring chances that even strengthened him last year was Brennan Gallagher. And, you know, I love Gallagher. I have all the time for him in the world as a player, but he doesn't have the shot that Matthews does. You know, like very few players do. And Matthews is part of the elite group of only four players in the NHL last year who put up,

or who created over 10 scoring chances per 20 minutes for their time. teammates, the rest of that list is McDavid Crosby and McKinnon. So it kind of tells you what we're dealing with with that player. And I think if anything, he can work a little bit more on his transition game. I think the first two years of his career, he really over-reliad on William Gielander to move the puck up the ice for him. He got a little bit better at it last year. But I think part of the struggles that that line had at even strength was that Matthews just

wasn't a great puck mover. And he isn't slow, per se, but he doesn't have. incredible skating. And I think he needs to be a little bit more yagerish, move the puck a bit better, be stronger on his skate, stronger on his stick, and find a way to dangle through guys. Because I'm sure you remember when all the stuff was coming out of zone entries,

when Eric Tulski was working on what's important and who gets it done before there was a lot of publicly tracked data, it was like consistently Yarmory Yager was up at the top and creating these zone entries. And everyone was like, how can this guy do that when he skates like a dump truck? and it's just being creative and being elusive. And I think Matthews has all the skill in the world to do that. He just hasn't had to or hasn't done it so far.

Yeah, no, that's fair. And we're still so early in his career that it'll probably happen. As similar words on about with McKinnon when he figures out some of that stuff and some of the tricks of the trade. Crosby, too, for me, nothing really to say. I mean, I was amazed that he really had like a vintage throwback season, not that he'd struggled in the past. but I didn't really expect him to have that kind of another gear in him where I thought there was a very strong case to be made that he was the most valuable player and clearly he got shut down in the playoffs by the Islanders as the Penguins did it as a whole and Islanders did that to a lot of teams and a lot of great players last year.

But I still think over the 82 games, just his on-ice impacts and how good the Penguins were with him compared to without him, he still has it. And he also, the encouraging thing to me is, you know, you mentioned Yager there, assuming he was. wants to keep playing and assuming he physically holds up. Like, I don't think he can be this great, but Crosby could do this for, I think, as long as he wants in terms of being that guy, especially below the goal line where it's like, good luck getting the puck from him and his big booty when he's just boxing you out and surveying the landscape like a quarterback and just dish in the puck to whoever's open. So I think he could do that for as long as he wants.

And I hope he does because I really enjoy watching him play. Yeah, and I think to the to the booty comment to continue along the trend of talking about butts, I don't think it's controversial to say that outside of Crosby, the penguins were ass last year, right? Like they were just not good. And I think that's what was most impressive about his season. It wasn't just that he had his first 100 point season since 2014. It was that he was able to accomplish that and drive play like crazy while the rest of his team was really not showing up. And I thought that it, like you said, it was vintage Crosby,

but it was almost like he had to find that extra gear again that he kind of seems to hold for the playoffs. And maybe doing that all season long just to drag the penguins, kicking and screaming into the playoffs is why he was able to be shut down so easily in the postseason and the penguins got swept. He must have just been exhausted. So maybe I wouldn't expect, like you said, another season like that necessarily. but I think 80 points is entirely reasonable as an expectation, even 90, as long as the penguins are a little bit better this year.

And, you know, he'll probably save himself for the playoffs again. But I thought just in terms of like as an interesting story, it was incredible to see Crosby pick that team up by himself essentially last year and drag them to not the promise land. They didn't make it very far, but they got a ticket to the promise land. I mean, if he just had like an average season, even for his caliber that he'd had in a couple years prior, like, I don't think they would have made the playoffs. I mean, things were that bleak and as much big booty energy as he has, even his tank gets depleted after a while, especially at this age. So, yeah, you're right. I mean, obviously goes back to our conversation of if Malcon can get back to his forum, that would go a long way towards preserving Crosby and not having to ask as much of him. Now with McDavid, as we close out this list here. So he played 78 games last year, missed four of them,

and that includes the last game of the season when he got injured. And I forget the exact totals in terms of when that happened or what the goal share was like. But he either scored or directly assisted 42 plus percent of the team's total goals, despite missing those games. And that is just, it's so obscene. and I understand Ken Holland kind of had his hands tied because of the stink bomb that Peter Shirelli had left for him and he couldn't do that much this summer. But I don't think the additions of Josh Archibald, Riley Sheehan, Marcus Granland, James Neill,

and Joghem Nygaard are going to put this team over the top. So unfortunately, I expect, you know, if they have better health, I think they're going to be better. But to which degree, who knows? and the question for me is how much better can Connor McDavid conceivably get? It seems scary to think that he could get better, but he keeps doing so. And at this age, it seems like, I don't know, I don't know how he would get better even, or what he could work on in his game, or if you have an answer to that. But, man, he's the best player in the world.

And I don't want to hear any arguments about him making teammates better or them not making the playoffs. They're all just so stupid and unfounded. and if you don't think he's the best player in the world, I don't care about your opinion because you're wrong. Yeah, I feel like maybe his defensive game could use a little bit of work. I feel like it was better a couple years ago, but I don't know if that's necessarily him or just that the others are getting worse. You know, I know that it's a transition period for them

and they're trying to figure out a way out of this like cap hell situation that Chi Raleigh got them into, but man, it looks so bleak outside of McDavid, Drysidal, and Nugent Hopkins and if Clefbaum's healthy. Because even some of the guys who were bright spots last year, like I don't have a lot of faith in Darnell Nurse. You know, James Neal might bounce back as a goal scorer, but he's not going to help them in terms of like five-on-five play driving.

He's just not that player anymore. All the guys they added, like you said, are like low-end depth. Like Marcus Granlin at least is a consistent bottom-line player, but he's going to be asked to play too many minutes most likely. You know, Alex Chason is probably going to have a huge drop off from last year. Sam Gagne might help, but again, mostly a powerplay guy. So maybe the Oilers will transition into being this like really scary powerplay team that you just can't take penalties on.

And that's what allows Connor McDavid to unleash at five on five. But I don't know, there's very little positivity here for me looking at like when you have Connor McDavid and Leon Drysidal on your top line and daily face-off using Korskas ratings still has it as the third best line in the league. You're like, how are, how did you find a player so bad that you're the third best line? How are you not the best? Like, you could put a mid-range, middle-six guy on there and you'd be the best. There's nobody else that should be able to challenge that. But no, they found Zach Cassian. Yeah, it's, uh, man, It's a mess.

And the hilarious thing to me, too, is it's like, oh, you're clearly not going to be able to match McDavid-Speed, although by all accounts, this Nygaard guy they're bringing in from the Swedish League is a Blazer himself, and maybe he gets up there eventually. But it's like they've got Marcus Granland and, you know, Alex Chesson on their third line. Their second line's got James Neal and Sam Gagne. And it's like, could you, are they like intentionally throwing a change up here to teams? It's like you see McDavid's speed and then you bring out the slowest guys possible. And then you're like, seriously. It's just going to be like dizzy and thrown off guard because of the difference between those two speeds.

Like that seems like the only possible rationale here because they couldn't have picked a worse fit. McDavid's life is essentially the climax to Fast 5 where it's like the race car pulling the giant steel safe along a street. That's the Edmonton Oilers right there. Great climax to an action movie, but maybe not a very good hockey team. Yeah. All right, man. Well, we did it. I think the centers are the toughest position to rank just because there's so many great players

and you have to nitpick so much that it's kind of tough to differentiate. I guess when we do wingers and defensemen, there's like a higher volume of names to consider, but you'll get less pushback because the 16th best guy, no one's going to quibble too much about it, whereas the 16th best center that doesn't make it on our list. People are like, what are you talking about? He's so great. And that's just the nature of the beast. Yeah, you say that, but I don't know, going through the wingers, I actually had trouble narrowing it down.

All right, well, we're going to do that on next show. Plug some stuff. Tell people where they can find you this season and what you're working on now that you're back on the saddle. Back in the same spot I was last year, I'm at Sportsnet three times a week, and Winnipeg free press once or twice a week, depending on how busy Winnipeg gets. So that's where you can find me. And I guess on Twitter. that's pretty much it.

You can find me on Twitter. That is depressing. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't... I'm not on there as much as usual. I kind of cut back the last couple of years for my sanity. Yeah, but when the games get going, it's fun to...

I find it's fun to follow along and see what's happening. Twitter is fun, it's real fun. It is, yeah. Yeah, it's best days are very, very good. This was a blast, man. I'm glad we got to do this and look for you and I to do the Wingers and the defensemen coming up soon. Absolutely. Let's get to it. The Hockey P.D.Ocast, Dmitri Filipovich.

Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.