The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 327: You've Got Mail

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

In this episode we mix things up by dipping into the mailbag to answer questions from the listeners.Topics include:2:30 Most easily fixable mistakes teams make 6:00 The backwards contract structures in the NHL11:30 The Taylor Hall trade market21:00 Jekyll and Hyde teams in first two months26:00 Effects of defensive structure and usage on goalies34:00 The future of long-term goalie contracts48:00 Best resources for hockey analytics52:00 Crosby's place amongst the all-time greats59:00 The best scoring tandems in the league1:05:00 Shelf life for NHL coaches1:07:00 No Stanley Cup hangover this seasonSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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

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. It's the meat since 2015. It's the HockeyPedioCast. With your host, Dimitri.

Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Philipovich. And joining me is, is my good buddy and long-time producer of the show. Producer Matt. Matt, what's going on, man? Oh, not too much. Just hanging out. Got my bird scratching at the door because he wants to be in here. And that's not a euphemism or a metaphor. You actually do have a, you own a bird. Yes, yeah, I have a parrot who is just eager to be on my shoulder at all times. He doesn't like this very much. So I'm excited to do this. You and I did this, you know, back towards the last year's postseason. I think it was in April.

I think at that time we were talking about like NHL awards and we were talking about the Roberto Luongo situation because it's your day job you work. In law and you had some kind of thoughts on that and so I had fun doing that and I thought, you know, why not do it again? So I solicited Twitter for questions. We're going to go back and forth on it. We're going to get through some really interesting stuff. I think our listeners really came through.

There are some good questions here for sure. Unsurprisingly, the people that listen to this show are know their stuff and could probably chime in effectively themselves, but I'm looking forward to diving into it with you and having a little bit of a conversation. I had considered just doing it by myself and not even bugging you, but it's like I struggle to do a minute and a half ad read by myself sitting in this room by myself. So I need a, I need a foil or I need a wall to kind of balance ideas off of. I'm happy to be your wall, Dmitri. Well said. All right. So I've sent you the questions and let's just get into it then. you can take this wherever I want to go in order and try to see what we can do.

All right. So Nick wants to know what the dumbest yet most easily fixable problem in the NHL is. I wonder what this says about the NHL that like this was a tough question for me because there were so many ways I could go about answering it. There's just so many potential options in terms of stuff that I think is horribly done in the NHL. You know, I could take it two ways here. One from like an awnice sort of personnel or strategy perspective.

and we're actually funny enough seeing this play out before our very eyes with the coaching change that happened in Toronto, going from Mike Papua with the Sheldon Keith. It's just play your best players. I think the NHL really sometimes overthinks it in terms of having line balance in terms of making sure you're rolling those four lines and getting three pairings out there. And if you have the depth and you have the personnel and you can win with it, I think it's fine, especially if you have, you know, big picture playoff aspirations and you're hoping to play into May and June. but some of these teams like i just think sometimes you you look at the how the ice times a lot and it's like i feel like the top-end players could have been playing here more so especially on the power play uh i robo this recently on uspn but most teams seem to play their top players like 55 to 60 percent of all the power play minutes and then basically just after a minute or so of a two-minute minor

they get the second unit out there and it's like you're just standing around the offensive zone i think a lot of these guys can probably play nearly the full two minutes and that's the high leverage opportunity for you to create a goal. So just get your best offensive out players as much as possible for that. So I think that's the big thing for me. And I think like the load management era and the NBA is really smart. And you know, in NFL we're seeing like teams aren't using their running backs as much.

And in hockey, I think there's ways to go about it. I think the 82 game schedule is too long. But assuming your guys are playing, I think a lot of these teams would benefit a lot from just playing their best players more. And there's another way you were considering going about answering that question. the other direction you were thinking to take it? The other thing is from more of a management perspective, and it's just pay your players with the contracts you're giving them

for what you think they are going to produce during the length and the shelf life of that contract. Don't pay them for what they've done. We see it time and time again, especially with teams that have been successful, where they pay this sort of championship tax to reward their players for all their contributions, and all of a sudden you have yourself paying Brent Seabrook

an obscene amount of money until the end of time. And most teams, time and time again, we see them fall into this trap. And I get it from the perspective of like, you want to reward your players. You know, it sends a good message, I'm sure, in terms of for future recruitment and future contracts where it's like, listen, if you perform here and we win the ultimate team goal, you're going to be rewarded individually for that as well. And that's all well and good. But in a salary cap system where the resources are so finite, I think you can't really afford to get into these situations where you're paying a guy. when he's 32 years old and a shell of what he was as if he was that prime version of himself in his mid-20s. And I don't know how you feel about this as well, but, you know, from a contract

perspective, it's so silly to me, it's so backwards in the NHL in terms of the allotment of resources and sort of who has the power in terms of we know that aging curves trend much more towards the younger side of things. Now guys are hitting their prime in 22, 23, 24 years old. And instead, those are the years where teams are really flexing their financial might on them and making sure they're making, you know, less than their worth, although we've seen, especially with some of the Leafs guys recently, that they have kind of held out and gotten what they deserve. But for the most part, a lot of these RFAs really get the short end of the stick and wind up making peanuts compared to how much they're actually producing for their teams.

And then years down the road, when they're not nearly as good as they were, they're suddenly making more money. So I guess there is like a parallel to the real world, like if you have like an office job, job or whatever of seniority. And if you're with the same company for a certain number of years, you're going to be wind up making more. But just in terms of like the aging process here, I feel like if you're working an office job and you're 35 years old, you're not all of a sudden going to be completely washed up and producing like 50% of the results. Whereas in hockey, it's an entirely different thing. So I don't know. How do you feel about that? Well, I mean, I think so much to that, like, it's hard to compare sports contracts, especially

contracts to like real world. I don't want to say real world because sports is obviously the real world, but outside of sports contracts. Because, I mean, you don't graduate from university and all of a sudden, like, one business on the other side of the country owns your ability to practice in the field that you have graduated in for the next seven or eight years, right? And that is a completely bizarre thing that is totally exclusive to sports. And so much of this goofiness with contracts and with paying guys so much more than they're worth when they're 27, 28, 29 years old, through to 35, and not paying them when they're young

is because the teams have all the leverage over the players when they're young, so they don't have to. And I have to think that that's going to be a major sticking point for the players union in whenever the next lockout comes around. And I think with what we're starting to see with teams starting to pay their younger players more and being willing, you know, younger players being willing to sit out more, I wonder how much that's going to change the RFA situation in the next CBA. Well, the Leafs were in a unique spot where they had a number of guys kind of hitting that same part of their career contractually. And they consider themselves, obviously, the start of the season hasn't gone the way they envisioned.

But they went into this season thinking, you know, we are going to be a contender. We're going to try to win a Stanley Cup here. And so they felt a certain urgency to, like, give it and pay Austin Matthews and pay Mitch Marner what they wanted, right? Whereas for most teams, um, if you have like a young superstar in the way, chances are you're probably still early in your rebuilding phase. So you're not looking to win a Stanley Cup. So you can like afford to really kind of play hardball there and draw it out. And so I don't know, it's, it's going to be fascinating to see how it goes. I mean, I think the entire system is messed up. We're not going to see a massive change because of just how conservative hockey is and how the

NHL seems to just, you know, they do a lot of things just because this is the way we've always done it. but like this idea that an 18 year old all of a sudden doesn't get to choose where he plays and he's basically like locked into that location for whatever this next seven years of his life which are his prime uh you know years in terms of both his abilities but also theoretically should be his prime earning years and anything can happen in those seven years you get a catastrophic career in injury at any point and it's just it's so crazy to me how little leverage or how my little power some of these best young players have in the league and it only compounds the issue that GMs don't want to step on each other's toes. So offer sheets are kind of thrown out

the window. I think if that opened up and all of a sudden the offer sheet was a legitimate weapon, these players yielded or wielded all of a sudden that could open more doors for them in terms of them just going out on the open market even as an RFA and being like, all right, I'm going to go to the highest bidder now. Who wants to pay me $12 million a year and signing that offer sheet? But we see that most of these teams don't even want to go that route. So the options are really limited for what you can do as a star player while you're under contract as an RFA. for sure and I'm going back to the idea of overpaying guys when they're old I'm I'm surprised we haven't seen more teams uh going the Joe Thornton route with older players of I mean even just anyone over 30 and just saying look we're going to give you a ton of money for one season and if you can keep doing it we'll give you a ton of money next season until that player can't do it anymore and you'd see I mean the players would still make I mean Joe Thornton's made a ton of money over the last few years right the way is Joe Thornton to be fair but like a guy like you know the Canucks you think would have saved themselves so much trouble.

If they'd given $8 million per to Louis Erickson for one or two seasons, right. Rather than six by six to a guy who's over 30 and already declining, like, you know, save themselves a lot of trouble just by spending a little more up front and less on the back end. And I think we saw like a smart team like the apps, for example, this summer there were a lot of reports where both with Joe Pavelski and Artemie Panarin, they gave those guys very competitive offers in terms of, listen, for this.

next two or two years or whatever, especially with Joe Pavelsky, who's in his mid-30s, we're going to pay you way more than anyone else is going to give you because we have the caps space up front here. But we don't want to tack on years three and four where you're going to become a potential liability as you enter your late 30s. And so I'd love that. But the issue is for a lot of these teams is there's so little planning and foresight that goes into some of these team building decisions. So when you have a team like the Canucks and you mentioned Louie Erickson there, it's like they're just making one decision after another and there's no real coherent plan of like thinking three steps ahead.

So you don't have now all of a sudden, like you don't have the leverage of being like, well, we have $15 million in cap space to play with for the next two years. Let's go out and get a valuable player for those two years. You're forced to give guys those years three, four, five, six down the line. And that's, I think, when you get into real big trouble as a manager in NHO. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's move on to the next one.

Speaking of players who are entering a potential, big payday. Right. Where do you think Taylor Hall is going to end up? Zumbo James asks that question then Random Task 68. Yeah, Nick DePaulo asked

the first one, we should say. Yeah, it's I mean, this is a great segue obviously because Taylor Hall, and I think this complicates matters where if you're a team acquiring him as a rental, he clearly improves your chances of winning

the Stanley Cup this year. I mean, he won the MVP just two years ago. He's still a heck of a player. I mean, his numbers are down this season, partly because he's had horrible shooting luck, partly because everything around him in New Jersey is such a mess. But you'd think that if you are a team that's knocking on the door of competing this year, and you can bring in a guy who's a legitimate bona fide top line winger who also controls and carries play. So he basically serves as an extra center for you on the ice,

and he can really do everything and play with pace and such like a perfect modern day player, he would significantly swing the needle for any team that acquired him but it's so tricky because you know from new jersey's perspective uh it sends a pretty bad message to their fans and everyone around the organization if they're just selling this guy as a pure rental they need to kind of save face here and at least treat it like all right well you know he's not going to stay here but he wherever we trade him he might stay there and that's why this team's acquiring him and it's more of a a big picture move as opposed to just a one season or half season. season thing. And so for a lot of these teams acquiring them, like Colorado's been linked to him. It's

like, I'm not sure if they want to invest the type of future capital that he's going to command, especially as a 28-year-old who's basically going to be signing like the last mega lucrative contract of his career. So if he was open to going to add Joel Thornton route, for example, and signing going one, like one year at a time for a crazy amount of money, that would really make things super interesting for me. But when you look ahead, it's like how. many teams and there will be teams. Teams will always talk themselves into not worrying about what's going to happen three years, four years down the line. Just let's worry about trying to win a cup now and save our asses. And so there's going to be teams lining up to sign Taylor Hall. But man, it's, it's,

it's crazy to me to think that like you would give, I assume like a first round pick and a top prospect and maybe some other, uh, interesting future parts for a guy. And then also attach this like just albatross six year, seven year contract where he's making, you know nearly 10 million per season it's so tough to me to think what that market's going to be like so the locations that I think are most interesting the avalanche obviously the Montreal Canadians the Arizona coyotes and then New York Islanders

I think all of those are fascinating for different reasons do any of those or any other team I haven't listed kind of stick out to you as like from a fan perspective the most interesting location where you would really perk up if Taylor Hall went there well I've heard I think that Elliott was talking on 31 thoughts recently that Dallas was his pick for stealth Taylor Hall landing place. And I think, I mean, Dallas has been a very interesting team so far this year.

And, you know, adding Taylor Hall to that top six would be very exciting. Yeah, I would. I mean, they could certainly use more game breakers and kind of dynamic talent that can create just by themselves whenever they're out on the ice. And I think that that Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Say Again, connection. I would think that would be pretty interesting from their draft connection. But I don't know, like, I think the avalanche are sort of have the, the highest ceiling in terms of, uh, the closest proximity to the Stanley Cup and sort of just putting them into that system where it's like, they just go full blast all the time and they're skating like crazy and they have a certain type of way they want to play.

Like, I think that would be the most appealing to me just from a pure aesthetic perspective. The coyotes and the islanders, I think, uh, would be, would be, would be, would be, would make sense of the teams that like would most aggressively push for this because it's so tough to get your hands on a player with his skill set especially for a team like the coyotes for example chances are you're probably not going to enter july first and convince taylor hall to sign with you this summer so like you know right now with their goaltending with their defensive structure with rick tocket they are competitive but they still lack that super high-end talent that can go out there and win a match up by themselves. I think they were hoping Phil Kessel was going to fill that role for them,

especially in the power play. The results so far have been underwhelming. I think at this point of his career, there's only so much you can expect from him. Taylor Hall is still in his prime, so that would be super fascinating for me. So both the Cotees and Islanders, I think just in terms of like Taylor Hall, and then going out and getting him and where they are in their respective conferences in terms of the playoff picture, like I think that's really interesting. But, you know, from New Jersey's perspective, you're like, let's discuss this where what do you do if you're them because you know they've won the lottery twice here with Nico Hissier and Jack Hughes and we'll see how those guys develop but you know the

Taylor Hall trade for them was such a such like a groundbreaking moment from like just the jokes of the one for one and getting him for a guy like Adam Larson and all of a sudden he comes in he wins the MVP he brings them back to the playoffs he completely reinvigorates that franchise and now what three years later we're looking we're looking down the barrel of like five total playoff games during the taylor hall era for the for the devils like i think if you're a fan of that organization that that must be a pretty uh disappointing outcome especially with some of these rumors where it's like oh yeah you're going to get a defensive prospect and a a first round pick which it which is coming from a contender and might be in the 20s like that doesn't particularly seem like a very appealing

thing for a franchise that all of a sudden doesn't have a lot of playoffs success to show for uh the teams they've been trotting out there. Well, and I think you're missing the most important reason for New Jersey if they're going to miss the playoffs to keep Taylor Hall around. And that's that they will win the first overall pick if they have Taylor Hall on their team. Man, what a career that guy's had, hey? That's ridiculous. So, for those scoring at home, five career playoff games, all happen in one year.

Five times his team that has had him has won the lottery, which is just in an insurer. insane stat and you know this is his 10th season now that they fire john hines and brought in an interim coach this is his eighth different coach in his 10th season and you know if he gets traded again and then he signs another team like we're looking at like basically one new coach per year and and not that i think you know a player with taylor hall skill set is going to be fine regardless of environment and situation but it really goes to show you like just the lack of stability and consistency in that guy's career like i really feel like uh it's been such a not a wasted career He's won an MVP. He's put up a lot of points. He's going to make a ton of money. And he still has time left in his career. He's still not even 30. But if we replay this career like a hundred times, I wonder how many times it winds up being this magical Hall of Fame career compared to what it's been so far, which is really, really good, but nothing like that you're going to wind up, like, sitting one day, like telling your grandkids about.

Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons that you really want to see him go to team like the Avs is that, you know, can you mad Taylor Hall on the second. line just feasting on second line guys while McKinnon and Ranton are on the first. Like it would be phenomenal to watch. Yeah, stylistically, too, they would just like completely unleash him and allow him to just play when he's best out, which is that kind of north-south, 100 miles per hour game. And so, yeah, I would love to see that. That'd be interesting. And, you know, I know part of the question here was like the return as well.

I think we kind of highlighted it would be like something around, probably like a first-round pick. And it sounds like the devil's based on the reporting want defense prospects. Every team wants defense prospects. I don't think, you know, if the abs aren't going to trade Kel McCarra born by our homes, we can kind of forget that. A lot of these teams aren't going to trade their blue chip defensive prospects, especially if they've already made the NHL. So I think the returns are probably going to be, I need to temper our expectations.

I mean, what Mark Stone last year, and that was with Vegas knowing that they'd be able to sign him long term, was a second round pick and Eric Bransstrom, who's a good defensive prospect. but you know it isn't the caliber of some of these other names that we mentioned so i'm not sure um what what they're going to get uh i imagine people will probably be pretty um overwhelmed by it especially if it is a team acquiring them with the idea of it being a pure rental so we'll see how it plays out but yeah i mean this is going to be this is going to be sort of the driving driving topic for the next however many weeks until there's resolution because it's not often that you get a player of his caliber that is like legitimately available right like last year i would lump artemmy pernaren into that

caliber of player, but even though people were wondering what Columbus was going to do with him, I always felt like this was their one chance to make some noise. And for their franchise, they had to just stick with it and live with the results. And so I'd never really even viewed him as as being that available. So it's not too often that a player of Taylor Hall's, you know, with his resume, but also his offensive skill set becomes available like this. For sure. Yeah. All right. We'll move on to another question. I'm going to put a little bit of a spin on this question. It's from Chief Face Roll. He wants to know, was the Sharks, the November sign of a turnaround or a product of a week's schedule.

And I think you can ask the exact opposite question of the Canucks. So I'm curious about your opinion on the Canucks, terrible November and Great October, and the Sharks terrible October and Great November. And which is the real team or are either of them the real team? Okay, that's tough. Let's start with the Canucks then. You know, for them, and I had Thomas Trans on the podcast, and we did a deep dive on the Canucks.

I think it was right around the time the calendar was about to flip, and we sort of noted that November was going to be just grueling for them. They were going to play significantly better competition. And what I think exacerbated issues for them was they, for a while, they were shooting like 4% or something as a team. And that just completely buried them now. You don't want to excuse it completely because there were some real stinkers there that they had. You know, that stretch especially where they lost to Winnipeg, Chicago,

and the Devils in a four-day span was pretty inexcusable for a team that considers itself to be at least competing for a playoff spot and I think they're going to wind up looking back and really regretting that stretch but at the same time when you're sunk by the percentages like that there's only really so much you can do now for the Canucks I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle um their power play is legitimately great I think it's like a top three to five power play um you know with that unit with Quinn Hughes out there I think no uh five man powerplay unit has scored more goals than they have and they draw a ton of penalties I think that's certainly going to continue. Like the goal tending is a bit of a question mark in terms of how much they can

realistically expect from Markstrom and Demko. And what's going to happen with the depth? I mean, you know, for a team to crater and point to the losses of Brandon Sutter and Jay Beagle as like these sort of insurmountable obstacles for them when you look at Colorado losing Miko Randin and Gabriel Landisog and so many other defensemen, when you look at Pittsburgh basically losing Evgenia Malkin for a significant stretch. And then as soon as he comes back, Cindy Crosby going out of the lineup and them just continuing to rack up wins. Like that's not going to fly in today's NHL. You can't point to your fourth line regardless of how much they're making and be like,

this is a situation where we just, you know, our hands are kind of tied here. So I'm not buying that at all, but, you know, I think this is the point that I make to people, especially here in Vancouver where it's, whatever their record is now, like they're like 1311 and something or whatever and they have a positive goal differential. I think if you told a realistic fan at the start of the season, that 30 games into the year, this is where the Canucks would be at, they'd be on the precipice of a playoff spot. I think most realistic people would be like, all right, that's a pretty positive outcome. Like, you know, they're scoring a lot of goals. This is right where everybody thought,

every reasonable person was like, yeah, they're going to finish, you know, in a wildcard spot or just out of the playoffs, right? And that's right where they are right now. Right. But I think the fact that like they're scoring a lot of goals, they're playing these exciting high scoring games, like even that game, which was really disappointing for them to lose in Pittsburgh where they blew a bunch of leads and they wound up losing eight nothing. at 8-6 after an empty netter by Malkin, you know, that's clearly not the result you want, but like just compared to what the Canucks have looked like the past two, three years for them to have this product that like people care about.

You have two legitimate superstars that you're going to build around in the future and Quinn Hughes and Elias Pedersen, like there leaves and bounds ahead of where they were even this time last year. So I think, you know, that's a net positive. But I do think when you jump out to a hot stretch like that and then you come back crashing down to earth, like, it's going to have massive peaks in valleys just in terms of the fan emotion of, like, thinking they're the best team in the world when they're like 10 and 2, and then now thinking like, oh, my God, here we go again.

And an answer somewhere in the middle. I think for the sharks, it's a much more nuanced answer because they went 11 and 4 in November. You know, they had nine regulation slash overtime wins. They were one of the most successful teams of the month, and their calendar was significantly easier. They started off the year with a brutal schedule and it really softened up for them in November with a lot of home games. The weird thing is, like, they were still had the 31st ranked say percentage in that month. So they were winning these games with the same issues of being unable to keep the puck out of their net looming. And at this point, I mean, with the same defense, with the same system and coaching and the same personnel,

I really don't see why we'd expect them to be any better than like the bottom two or three in terms of keeping the puck out of their own net. the big change for them, and I'm not sure how much of this was them legitimately getting healthier and better and figuring it out and how much of it was the schedule, was they jumped up from 20th in expected goals and 27th and actual goals in October to 10th and 12th. And when you look at the players on that team with Kutcher, Meyer, you know, Carlson Burns, Kane, LeBank, so on and so forth, you'd expect them to be at least in the top half offensively. And last year they had the same defensive issues, but they were so good at scoring goals and generating offense and keeping possession,

that the kind of net, it was a net positive for them. And so that's what I'm going to be looking forward to seeing how they look in December in the months that come offensively because I think we know that defensively they kind of are what they are. All right. So what do you think is the most, since we're talking about the worst goalie tandem in the NHL right now, who do you think is the most talented goalie tandem in the NHL at the moment?

Oh, man. So this is a tough question to answer. because I think it's just in 2019, it's impossible to separate as much as we'd like to. And we have, you know, goals saved above average metrics that sort of try to adjust for the quantity and quality of shots the goalie's facing and try to make it environment neutral. So you're purely evaluating the goalie based on the shots they're facing and their own talent level. It's so tough to strip this stuff apart and isolate it like that because if you look at either the Bruins, the stars. I'd lump the coyotes and the islanders there as well. Not to take anything away from

the performance of those guys, but I really do believe like you or I could be jumped, popped in there and have like a 920 say percentage. Like what those teams do structurally for the goalies. I don't know about that. No, I'm telling you, man. I've never, never played a goal in hockey. But I feel like, you know, just put the equipment on me, send me out there. You know, give me like a weekend to train with Mitch Korn and Barry Trots. You know, let me. let me learn the the angles they're trying to, you know, move the puck towards and where the shots are going to be coming from. I feel like I can figure it out, honestly. I mean, listen, those teams are remarkable at what they do. And what they do is allow these goalies to face shots head

on. So you can just square up. If you're Darcy Kemper, I mean, look at Darcy Kemper's career trajectory from, you know, being the wild backup behind Devin Dubnick to going to the Kings, to getting traded to coyotes and basically being viewed as like a throw-in goalie who was going occasionally eat up some starts for them to becoming, you know, a Vezna contender both last year and this year. And he's like, has like a 936A percent or something this season. And it's obscene when you watch it. And I think he actually talked about this the other day in an interview where it's like,

life is so easy for him because he can just square up on a shooter and basically view it as a one-on-one matchup. And he's got all this big chunky equipment to take up the net that gives him an advantage on that. and he can do so because he knows that his defenders are going to be in the right place. He knows he doesn't have to worry about moving laterally and having a guy behind him for a tap-in. And so he knows those passing lanes are blocked off. And so life's so much easier for him than a guy like Sergey Bobrovsky, let's say.

I mean, it's easy to point at him and be like, oh, my God, what a bad contract. I can't believe what the Panthers are paying him. But playing behind that team, like, it's clear it's a completely different animal than if he was playing on one of these just superior defensive teams. So I wonder if teams are going to gravitate towards that. I talked about that with Cam Robinson on the recent podcast, but it's like, are teams going to make more of an emphasis here instead of valuing just having one star bonafide goalie, really not investing many resources in Puckstoppers and instead prioritizing everything that's happening in front of them? So I'm really curious to see what's going to happen there. I don't know. What do you think about that?

And this idea that the game is completely changing in terms of going from an era where we had, you know, if you look at the game. look at Roberto Luongo as a most recent example of a goalie who especially like when he was on the Panthers and then got traded to the Canucks, he was just basically routinely starting like 72 games, 70, 72 games a season. And it was just obscene. And I really think we're not going to see that again. Well, there was that season. I think it was 0607 when Luongo first came to the Canucks. And he and Broder both both broke the record for wins that season by a goaltender. They both played over 70 games and won. I think Luongo won 48. Broder won 49. or something like that was just absolutely insane.

Yeah, and we're seeing more of these teams, right? It's like teams are shifting towards basically splitting these starts evenly between two goalies. I know someone chimed in with a question of like what is the perfect amount. And I don't think we have an answer to that. I don't think there's a cut and dry rule. It's like, oh, you can't go above a certain number. But you have to play it by year, I think, for example,

a lot of these teams that are out east, the travel is so much easier you can probably afford to play your guys a little bit more but if you're playing a ton of back-to-backs in a given season maybe that's going to influence the number i'd say somewhere around like 45 starts for your goalie and 37 for your backup which is i think the exact numbers the bruin's had with two karasks and yarohalak last year i think that's sort of the ballpark where you want to be and i don't know maybe i wonder what the trickle-down effects are not only from an awards voting perspective and whether a goalie can win the Vesna starting 40 games, but also how goalies will feel about it in terms of compensation.

Because if that's the case and you're going to have a goalie only starting those 40 games, I don't think we're going to see a lot of contracts where the goalie's making 10 million a season like Sergey Bobrovsky is making right now. And so I wonder if there's going to be able to put a pushback there because I know that in the NFL, running backs have really kind of publicly been pushing back a little bit in terms of the compensation structure because they're being used less frequently. And so teams are like basically viewing them as luxury items as opposed to necessities. Well, I wonder if you see it go the other way potentially as well, though.

Like, you know, your first line and your second line center, they only play 20 minutes a night. If you've got a 1A and a 1B goalie, then they're playing 60 minutes a night, 48 and 34, or 48 and 34 games season. Right. You know, maybe you got them saying, well, hey, hey, I deserve seven and my backup deserves five rather than the situation we have now where you got, you know, most teams are paying one guy five or six million dollars and they're paying their backup one or two.

Yep. I mean, I think, uh, my thoughts on the subject are, uh, and I've, I've been open about them in terms of like I, if you, I think there's no question. Goleys are incredibly valuable. They're the most invaluable player you can have just because of how much they're on the ice, how they can like individually influence the results. It's just like with the information we have right now, I just talked for five minutes about how like we can't separate the goalie from the environment as cleanly as we can for skaters. And it's like if you don't know what that goalie is going to look like for those years, you're paying exorbitant amounts of money for him.

I just don't see how you can justify doing so. It seems like such a dice roll. So for me, like I feel much more comfortable, especially keeping the years down on goalies and instead investing heavily in the personnel in front of them and just basically creating this environment that is going to be. so easy for you to just kind of rotate goalies and make them look as good as they've ever looked. And then if they want to go and try and test the market and play elsewhere and try to make some more money from another team, you know, you thank them for their services and you give them a pat on the back and you let them walk out of the door. And you just replace them with a guy who's going to give you very similar starts for a fraction of the cost. You replace them with Robin Lanner on a one-year contract.

Yeah, I mean, it'll be fascinating to see. I mean, for him, imagine going from Barry Trott's and Mitch Korn to this system now under Jeremy call it and the Blackhawks they're like the most poorest defensive team I mean he's facing and still putting up a 930 safe percentage it's it's crazy and and we'll see how much I can continue I mean Court Crawford

himself has really looked much better this season as well and those two guys are kind of I think covering for the fact that the Blackhawks there's just as bad defensively as they were last year and so if uh you know those guys falter a little bit or if not if it goes the other way and they keep putting up these numbers I'm very curious to see what the next

contract looks like because I think a lot of people around the league were pretty skeptical of, you know, how good, uh, Lanner was last year just because it's like the infrastructure and corn and, um, and Barry Trots are so good and have built up this rep and we're seeing it again now with Grice and Varlamov. And it really does. I was being a bit facetious, but it really does feel like you could just put in two guys there and they will stop Pucks based on, uh, you know, the environment they've created for them. Uh, so we have another. question that's really closely related to this.

So let's say you into that. We got Patrick Scherer wanting to know that giving the drop in play from Bobrovsky Price and Schneider, though I think Schneider's been down for several seasons now. What is the smart move going forward for UFA goalies? Do we see a drop in market value for UFA goalies in the future? I mean, I think Schneider's a different caliber than those two guys. But, I mean, he was early in his career.

He was the best goalie in the NHL for five seasons, in my opinion. He was just last two seasons in Vancouver, first three in New Jersey. He was phenomenal. And, you know, we were talking about Taylor Hall and, like, repeating that career and how differently it would turn out under different circumstances. Think about Corey Schneider. Like, when did he make the NHL as a full-time goalie? Like, age of 27?

Yeah. I think it was even later than that. Maybe, yeah. I mean, you know, he was playing in college for a while. And then they really kept him down. the HL, I think, for longer than they should have, just based on his numbers, like it seemed like he was ready to go. But, you know, they were just rolling different guys out there, these kind of veterans that they, I guess, felt more comfortable with for whatever reason. And so, yeah,

if Schneider had made the league earlier, it really would have been interesting to see what his overall totals would have looked like. But, you know, for him, he completely, like, when he lost it and part of it was injury-motivated, but he really fell off and he still got years left on his deal. And what was fascinating to me when I was looking at this up on cap friendly, there's only nine goalies right now with more than two years left on their deal. It's Ben Bishop. Can I read these out to you?

And I want you to tell me which of these guys you would want on your team. So. In terms of, with the contract they have right now. You need a starting goalie for your team and they're on this contract and you can just pluck them off the waiver wire. So we got Ben Bishop. So his his salary is actually pretty low, I think, because the stars, when they signed him as a UFA, gave him crazy term. And I think he's still got a lot of years left on his deal.

So I'm worried about that, especially with his injury history. But, you know, he's a heck of a goalie. And if you have a backup like Andon Hood Oban and you don't have to pay Bishop more than 45 to 50 times, I think I'm fine with it. So I'm okay with him. I think he's going to be much better than some of these other names you're going to mention, I think. Okay, Simeon for a lot of. I'm going to have to pass on that. I mean, what did he get five years, I think, this summer from the Islanders, four or five years,

and at a reasonable a lot of money. And he, his numbers were on the down swing during his time in Colorado. I think it was pretty telling him that the abs were very, very comfortable letting him walk this summer and basically just replacing him with, you know, they had Philip Grubaro were in place and Pao Francoiseu's on a very cheap deal. so I don't think, I don't think Semi and Rahm out of this point his career is swinging the needle for you in it,

so I'm going to have to pass on that one. All right, Martin Jones. I mean, whenever you can get the 31st ranked safe percentage with the Martin Jones, Aaron Dell combo, man, that's a tough one. And, you know, he was pretty consistent there for a couple years, but the past, what, two seasons now, he has really fallen off.

And I understand that he's in a bat. He's like basically the opposite. of the islanders in terms of the system in front of them and how many odd man rushes and scoring chances they can see it against. But yeah, his contract is so oner, is that it's impossible for San Jose really to make any sort of a fundamental change in that

where it's like everyone knows that they have the league where his goaltending, but they can't really do anything about it because no one's going to take Jones's contract and they can't afford to bring in another high-priced goalie with what Jones is already making. So they're basically kind of just handcuffed here hoping that some sort of, you know, Miracle falls in their lap in terms of getting out from under that deal.

All right. Well, we can make a big upgrade from 31st to 30th save percentage. And how do you feel about Jonathan Quick? How do I feel about Jonathan Quick? It's amazing that when was that tweet that the King sent out about, you know, apologies we have better goal-tending than you for the next 11 years or whatever that tweet was. It's like 2013 or something like that. Ironically retweeted now.

I mean, my goodness, he has an 882 save percentage this season and has been just like routinely outplayed by, you know, Jack, Jack Campbell and Kevin Peterson and basically whoever they've thrown out in net there instead. So I don't really want to hear these complaints about how the team he plays for is the complete reason of why his numbers are so bad. And he's another great example of like a guy who was, I don't think he was ever as good as his biggest fans would make you believe he was, even when they were winning the Stanley Cups. Like, he'd have these flashes of greatness, but the overall package was of a league average goalie.

But I think the hate sometimes also went too far on him where it was a lot of, you know, people trying to overcompensate for those fans of his game. And then they'd be like, oh, Jonathan Gwick actually sucks. And it's like, no, he's kind of like a league average guy, which is perfectly fine. But, you know, now he's just completely falling off the map and he's still making $5.8 million for three seasons after this one into his mid-30s. and it's crazy to think back now that a team would sign the goalie to that type of a contract, and they're going to still be paying for that for years to come.

All right. Corey Schneider. Yeah, I mean, if I was running an HL team, I definitely pick them up in my pool. Connor Hullabuck. Halibuck's a really fascinating one because I hated when they signed that contract. It felt like a big time sort of overreaction to that one great. season he had when he when they made the conference finals and he was a Vezna finalist and he really struggled last year now I think he's like the Vesna favorite this year I think he's been the

best goalie in the league and so I still think that contract which is not great I'm going to pull up the numbers right now he's making 6.2 million for four more years after this one I mean at least he's like in his mid-20s so you could talk yourself at this 30 right yeah exactly so that That's exactly one of those deals where it's like he's basically nearly on he's on the books for nearly as long as Jonathan Quick is and he's got like six or seven years of youth on him. So and with the performance this year and the fact that he's been so good, even if even if the truth is somewhere between where he's been at this year and where he was last year, I'll take that. So I think he's he's one of these rare, rare wins in terms of these goaling contracts. John Gibson. Yeah, 100%.

He is on a ridiculous deal where. the ducks just basically took advantage at the right time and they were just like all right well you don't have a lot of leverage here you're a young goalie we're just going to bet that um you're going to wind up being worth a lot more than this and so we're just going to sign you to this crazy deal and so he's in year one of an eight year 51 million dollar deal which is concerning like eight years whenever you attach that to a goalie but i mean for him he is 26 just like hella buck and for my money he's been the best goalie in the world for the past like three years so like we said with schneider that doesn't really carry that much water because maybe halfway through that contract all of a sudden

he's a liability but for right now um he has to be considered one of the better one of the better non-elc deals in the league all right we're just about through the list uh carry price oh man so this one this is one this is really tough because this was one of those where at the time it was like oh my god the haves aren't gonna do this are they and they just felt like they had to because of what he means an organization uh because of how good he looked for a number of years there where he was putting up obscene numbers and then he had some injuries and we'll see if he can ever regain that form but i mean he's in year two of an eight year 84 million dollar deal um he's what he turned 32 this summer like that's pretty bleak and and i do wonder uh it would be a really fun thought exercise you know

taking away the fact that he has a no movement clause and the habs probably wouldn't even trade him because of what he does represent stilted organization like if they just put him on the open market I really do wonder how many teams would even consider trading for him even if it meant just absorbing that cap hit all right last one is bobrowski oh man that is that's tough I really like I was a big critic on that contract and I did not expect it to look this bad this quickly I mean he is right near the bottom of pretty much every single goalie metric you could possibly think of right there with like Cory Schneider and it's tough man it's he's on the hook for so much money and

I still think the track record is there where he's going to be better than this he started last year slow I think he's going to eventually round into four and for this for this panthers team which I think is a pretty good team if he can be an above league average goalie like he gives them a chance to win a lot of games but man that kind of commitment is really tough to a it's it's really unpalatable so um that's another one of those it's a classic example and i wonder how many more of those we're going to see because think about it this way so brayton holpey is going to be a great test of like where the market is on goalies because i think if you weren't really following the league very closely if you're just a kind of casual fan

is aware of players and sort of checks in come playoff time you'd probably think like oh brayton holpe he's one of the league's best goalies right like he's consistently been one of the clutches goalies in terms of his postseason performance. He won a couple of years ago. But his numbers have been severely declining over the past couple years, and he's similarly like 30 or 31 years old, and he's coming up as the top goalie in this year's free-age market. And I'm really curious to see whether anyone steps up,

because I don't think Washington is going to step up and pay him for what he's going to want. But I'm curious to see if some other team is going to be, viewing him as a goalie, they can come in and be their savior. Well, you know, hopefully they'll take a lesson from this list because we talked about seven UFA goalies, and you said yes to one of them. Yeah, I was like, I was like,

Bishop, I don't love it. It was pretty much, yeah, Hellebuck was okay and Gibson's great. Well, Hellebuck and Gibson were both UFAs, or RFAs, pardon me, when they find those deals. That is true. They're the only guys who are in their 20s on this list.

They're the only guys who signed as RFAs. Everybody else signed as a UFA. That is true. And we typically, that's interesting, though, because we typically think of, you know, goalies have a different sort of shelf life or longevity than, forwards because you can be a goalie in your early to mid-30s and still be churning out

these high-quality seasons. And I think you can stick around for longer at an effective level than you can as a skater. But, you know, that's an interesting way to look at it where it's like there's so few of these contracts that are assigned for goalies into the 30s that are going to wind up looking good, even a couple of years into them. Yeah, it's looking bleak for a number of those teams right now. Don't sign long-term UFA goalie contracts, I think, is the moral of the story here. Let me give you some numbers on Holby here.

So he is, he's going to be 31 next year. He has a 909, say, percentage over the past three years and a minus seven goals saved in that time. And they have 22-year-old Dili al-Sam Zanav, who has outperformed him so far this season. So, you know, they're a team that considers themselves a cup contender clearly, and they will again moving forward into next year. And I just, you know, maybe they'll be lucky because they don't have enough cap flexibility to, you know, they can just chalk it up.

Like, we'd love to sign Braden Holby, but we unfortunately, can't and our hands are tied and so they can kind of use that out because i think for a lot of these teams a lot of it is saving face in terms of like showing your fans that you're going to keep their favorite players around and that's how you get into uh into some of these contract mistakes yeah well somebody somebody will pick him up because he uh he knows what it takes to win he does and he has a great beard so that'll let's that's true i would i would pick him up for my team for let's uh matt let's take a quick break here to hear from a sponsor and then we're going to answer some more of these questions sponsoring today's episode

out of the Hockey P.D.O. cast is C. Kekek is great because they make getting tickets to events easier than ever before. They're going to save you time, money, and effort. And I know that's going to be huge because if you're using any of those other ticketing websites out there, you know that sometimes they make getting to the event almost difficult on purpose because there's so many hoops you have to jump through and it becomes this whole thing that's so off-putting it makes you not even want to go to the event. And that's a shame because you should be getting out there and having fun.

and so Sea Geek's going to make sure that it can get you there in the most seamless way possible. So they're going to do so by doing all the work for you. They're going to scour the web. They're going to pull together millions of tickets all into one place and then rate each of those tickets that are available as a deal in a scale at 1 to 10. And then finally, Sea Geek is going to display all those tickets on an interactive seat map, breaking down the details with green dots being good deals, red dots being overpriced ones. And every purchase with Seekek is fully guaranteed so you can shop for tickets with confidence and only that what you're paying for is, what you're going to get. I've got the Siki cat on my phone and I've found time and time again that it's by far the easiest way to find tickets, whether it's a hockey game, basketball, football,

you know, the baseball season is now, but I'll be here around the corner. You know, whatever the event is, and it's not just sports, concerts, stand-up comedy, theater, if it's an event, it's got tickets, chances are C-keek has it, and you're not going to find any easier, more effective way to get them than using C-Kkeek. And as that wasn't enough, C-keek is going to sweeten the pot even further for you by giving you $10 off your first purchase with them just for listening to today's episode of the Hockey PDOCest. So all you need to do to get in on that fun is use our promo code and let them know we sent you. So download the Siki gap today and use promo code PDO for $10 off your first purchase.

That's promo code PDO for $10 off your first purchase. All right. What's next on the docket? All right. If somebody is interested in learning in athletics in hockey, where would you recommend that they start? And that's asked by Puck Brazil. Who's actually from Brazil? So that's pretty sweet.

We got some PDO cast listeners from different places. It's always fun to hear from people outside of North America who are fans of the show. A shout out to Brazil. Here's what I'd say. Go read all of Eric Tulski's stuff on SB Nation. He's working right now, doing a great job with the Carolina Hurricanes. I forget what his job title is,

but he's pretty high up in the organization. And he was sort of the OG hockey analytics writer back in a day, like when I was getting into this stuff in, but the late 2000s, like early 2010s where he was just cranking out stuff. They really kind of was kind of expanding my horizons and making me think about hockey in a different way. And the other one is Rob Volman's hockey abstract.

He works for the Kings now. And he did like a number of annual projects where he basically just talked about what was going on in the game and look at it from different numerical perspectives. And so he's got a series of additions that have been out in recent years that are kind of a good representation of what you should be looking at or how you should be thinking. And another thing is just, you know, like listen to this show, read as much work as you can. And I think what people miss a lot, and I don't know how you feel

about this, but I think people sometimes get way to bark down in what this, like, specific definition of quote-unquote analytics is. I think of it much more as like, uh, just sort of a thought process or like um it's just really what really what it is is information right and it's like information based making your decisions based off of more information and looking at different stuff beyond just looking at a screen and watching a guy's body language and seeing how he interacts with his teammates and i think uh there's a place for all of that in our analysis and um i like to embrace and you know tinker with all of it and so uh whatever the resource is like there's so many good things being written and talked about out there right now.

So a lot of us really smart minds do eventually get picked up and scooped up by NHL teams and their work stops being public. But there's still a lot of stuff out there in the archives that I would recommend going and looking up. Yeah, for sure. The way I've always thought about it is like human beings are really easy to fool. Even the smartest people in the world are easy to fool. And analytics is just like a collection of tools to help you check the things.

things that you think you're seeing and make sure you're not being fooled or to to catch things that you may have missed because you were focused on something something else yeah it's so easy to uh to become emotionally invested or have some sort of biases where you know you go into it you like the way a certain player plays or for whatever reason um something sticks with you or you're just kind of um you know it maybe a a certain player like their skating style is off putting or you look or they don't look pretty out on the ice. And so you kind of talk yourself into them not being effective. And I think that's where analytics has been so important in terms of just stripping that stuff away

and just giving you this unbiased, just set of information to look at. And it doesn't care how those results were achieved. All that matters is the end result. And so there's so many different inputs of so many different ways you can achieve the same result. So a team, a guy can be a great skater. But if he's in the wrong place, the wrong time, maybe his team's getting buried. in terms of five-on-five shot share or goals. And so it doesn't matter if he's the best skater in the world

if he's not using that speed correctly. So I think that's where looking at the overall package can have great results. Yeah, for sure. So speaking of the whole package and great results, where does Crosby belong in the list of all-time greats with Gretzky or Lemieux, guys like that? Does he belong in that bracket?

Look at you with that segue. What are you? Are you trying to steal my job? I'm trying to show that your chops as a broadcast professional here. Just segueing left and right. Just ridiculously smoothly. Wasn't labored at all. You know what I'll say about Crosby? I think that stretch he had in, I guess it was like the late fall, early winter of 2010,

before his first concussion in the Winter Classic against the Capitals, where he had this 25-game stretch, and it's funny to look back at it now because a lot of it was with this obscene mustache that he had for November that year. I think that was the best I have ever seen the hockey player play. And how I was born in 1991, I really started getting into hockey, you know, early 2000s or so. So my sample isn't nearly as big as a lot of people out there who actually did watch Lemieux and Gretzky and the war and can speak more from a firsthand experience off of that. For me, it's a lot of, you know, just looking at their stats or we're hearing other people

talk about them or looking at grainy YouTube videos. So you can't really appreciate it. But man, in that stretch, in those 25 games, Crosby had 26 goals and 24 assists. It was unreal. And keep in mind, that's a different scoring climate. Like, right now when a guy has two points a game for like a 15, 20 game stretch, like we've seen increasingly this season. Everyone freaks out.

It's like, oh my God, like, you've seen what Connor McDavid is doing. And it's ridiculous in its own right. Like, it's crazy what guys like McDavid and Dre Settler doing the fact that Pastor Nack had, what, like 25 goals in his first 27 games or something like that. Like, it's crazy. But it's such a different scoring climate right now than it was, even as recently as that 2010 stretch where Crosby was doing that. Yeah, that year, I think there were like six guys who were over a point of game. and this year there's 35 guys who are over a point of game yeah like he was just on a on a different

stratosphere and it was just it's tough to describe just like how dominant he was and sort of how he accomplished it it felt like it felt like when he was on the ice you know with with macdavid right now you watch and it's like it's so obvious the speed and he just he's playing at a different at a different pace than everyone else and it's like you can someone that has not watched any hockey in their life you can sit them down and and put on an emmental oil game and they can immediately pick out that Connor McDavid is probably the best player on the ice because he's moving the fastest and he's just always has the puck and he just like he looks like he's going at two times speed but for Crosby it was much more like just methodical and like body positioning

and him just cycling in the offensive zone and no one being able to take it from him and then he like kind of sneak up on you and just have these mad dashes where he would just put a move on you and it was just effortless and so I'm really glad that he has had this sort of second win as, you know, it's kind of ironic to say this healthy stretch now that when he's out of the lineup for an extended period of time. But for the past couple years, especially last year where I thought he was as dominant as we had any right to expect from this point of his career, that he didn't just completely fall off after all of those concussions and all those injuries because I think it certainly

could have gone that way. so I'm glad that we've gotten these past couple of years with him. And I think right now I'm just super into just appreciating him and Ovechkin because I think I feel the way about those two guys that a lot of these people that did grow up with Lemieux and Gretzky felt where it's not even just that they're the best players in the league and they're the best at what they do. But there's like a historical context as well, right? Where you can like now we can start talking about judging, you know, Fetchkin's moving up the charts and he's, can he catch Gretzky? And it's like, it's not even a discussion about like him versus his contemporaries right now.

It's about slotting him into the historical context. And I think being part of that conversation and being able to say that we've both been around to see from start to finish the career of these two historical grades is a pretty pretty special thing to be able to say. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, it's a real tragedy that Crosby lost basically two full seasons between injuries and the lockout in the absolute like he was playing, as you said, better than absolutely ever. in the league on a completely different level and then immediately lost two seasons to lock out in injuries is just, I think, a real stain on the game. And it does just to say, just as somebody who is old enough to remember Kretzky and Lemieux, I think the one comparison to that Crosby season is the Lemieux cancer season, which was in 93 was to me the most unbelievable

sports achievement of all time. Lemieux came back from cancer and scored at three points per game. and despite missing 25 or 30 games that season, he won the scoring title. I think there's a lot of parallels between LeBue's career and Crosby's career in terms of their dominance and also their struggle, unfortunately, with injuries that really cut big chunks out of their prime years. Yeah, I mean, Crosby is sixth all-time in points per game, 1.28 points per game and 960 regular season games. so it's just incredible especially considering how most of those years pretty much all those years were like in the absolute down period of scoring in the NHL for him to be able to just routinely be over a point of game is uh is pretty special so yeah i just i want to i want to just enjoy both guys and and it is cool as well because they both got um in crosbie's case he got back to the mountaintop

and ovechkins case he finally got there two years ago where it's like you know after crosbie and malkin won those first two cups and then they had these injuries and they kept losing in rounds one and two and they kept struggling to surround those guys with a supporting cast that could keep up with them we sort of went from being like oh my god this pittsburgh penguins organization with these two centers is going to win the next ten cups to wondering if they'd ever get back there and they finally improbably do and win back to back and with ovechkin he finally wins there and i feel like now we can just enjoy those guys with any of these kind of cats caveats or asterisks or like wondering about whether they actually are as good as their number

suggests. It feels like they're still going to clearly have their skeptics and their tractors and you're never going to be able to win those people over with logic. But it does feel like the general, universal sort of approval rating for these guys is both through the roof now because people do realize that, you know, they're not going to be around at this level forever. So let's just enjoy them for now while they're still, while they're still producing like this. Yeah, and that question was from two Brits, one puck. By the way, I forgot to mention that. So just to go a little further on the points per game thing that we touched on,

we've got three tandums in the NHL. This question is from me, by the way. We've got three tandums in the NHL right now. Crosby, or pardon me not Crosby, McDavid, Drysiddle, Pasternak, Marchand, and McKinnon and Ranton, who are scoring over 1.5 points a game, which is insane. What is going on? I mean, I think, okay, first off, part of it is we're still, what, 30 games into the season?

We are over a third into the season at this time. We are. We are. And it's becoming a legitimate sample size, I think. You know, there's going to be a stretch there. Like, Dres Ato-Eyto-Based game, and then, like, he just recently had his first, like, back-to-back games without a point or something. And there's going to be like whether it's like getting banged up but still playing through it where they're not at 100% where for a lot of

these players there's going to be a random three four game drought that brings those numbers down. But I mean, they're playing at a just a special level. And I do think it's it's interesting to point out the sort of tandem component of it where those guys are playing together too as well beyond just the power play at 515. And so just seeing them kind of feed off of each other. And how they accomplish it is, is, it's great to be an NHL fan right now in terms of the product where the game is being played at such a high level and because of some of the rule changes. And some of the fact that coaches are just embracing the skill component. Like a lot of these players are just allowed to to play and show off their skill. And so, um, I don't think there's like a sort of scientific answer here in terms of like what's causing this beyond like these guys are just obscenely good.

and they're being put in a position to show off those skills on a nightly basis. And so I think, you know, like Pashtenax case, for example, he's shooting like 22% or something like that. And I think that's eventually going to come down. And I think when it does, it'll make the Rocket Richard conversation between him and Ovechkin, who I think will hang around near him really fascinating down the stretch. But for a lot of these guys, like I just, especially with McDavid and Dreisaitle, if like they're going to just be having these games or they're playing 24, 25, 26 minutes in a given night, like their volume of opportunities is just so incredible to rack up points and put up these video game numbers.

All right. I think maybe a wrap up question here. I think we're hitting the hour mark. Can I give you one quick one here from someone that we missed when we were talking about goalies, and I don't have an answer. I just wanted to fold it out there just to give, kind of put it out into your universe and you can think about it and maybe the listeners can think about it as well. but I'd never even thought about it for some reason,

but Varun V asks, he asked about what the optimal workload split for goalie tandums is, and we talked about that already. But then he asked, do you think we'll ever see coaches swap goalies once a game has decided to give the starter and more rest? And like, you know, we see when like a starter gives up four or five goals and he gets pulled out an intermission

and the backup just has mop-up duty. We see that. But it is interesting that we never see, you know, if a team's up, like five nothing. I remember seeing it once. Who was it? Do you remember who?

It was the end of the 2010, 2010, 2011 season, and it was the Canucks did that with Luongo and Schneider. And that's the only time I've ever said it. Was there an injury scare component where they were like... No, but there was a...

They wanted to get Schneider to the number games to be on the Jennings trophy. Oh. And so they played Luongo for two periods and they were up like 4-1 or something and they played Schneider for the last period. I think they did, I'm not sure if they did it once or twice,

but they did a couple times at the end of the season. So I think, you know, the natural reaction to that question is, well, it's not going to happen because hockey is so superstitious. And if the team, for whatever reason, wow enough giving up that lead and losing, like, that would just be a nightmare for that coach to have to answer those questions and deal with the results of that. But the logic is pretty sound. Like, we never, we don't really think about it with goalies. Like, we think about it from the workload management now of how many games they're starting. but you don't think about it from the perspective of them being out there in theory increases the likelihood of getting injured or pulling a groin or taking a puck off of the mask like just the fact that they're facing they're standing in it and they're facing all of these ridiculously hard shots coming their way increases likelihood to get hurt and if you are a team that's set in your position or in a given night you're up and you feel content with the result like it's the fact that it's not even a discussion because it's like so out of left field and it's just never been done. in hockey and that's the reason we never talk about it.

I just thought it was a fascinating question from the perspective of just opening the door to it and kind of as a thought exercise of what that would look like and whether anyone would be bold enough to do it. Because I think the logic from a science perspective is probably there in terms of limiting the risk of your very valuable goalie, not getting hurt when the game is out of question. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting idea that I don't think I've ever heard anybody other of them that one time I mentioned talk about. So last question.

Boston is at the top of the Eastern Conference. St. Louis is at the top of the Western Conference. Ranger Rob 13 wants, or pardon me, sorry Ranger Rob, I'm not reading your question. I'm reading Craig W's question. Well, we'll give Ranger Rob some love as well. All right, well, we'll ask, how long should those coaches' leashes be with how many games they're winning? That's what Ranger Rob wants to know. and Craig W.

wants to know which team you more surprised by. No Stanley Cup hangovers, obviously. So St. Louis and Boston. Well, Ranger Rob, I thought that was an interesting question because, you know,

if you look at it now, John Cooper, Paul Maurice, and Peter Lavigalette are the only coaches that are with, that have been with their current team since before the 2015-16 season, which was like, what, four years ago?

So most coaches, most coaches the what the 28 other coaches have been hired over the past four years and I think like 18 of them or so have been with their team for two years or less it's it's astounding how short the shelf life is in terms of the turnover and you know there's so much they goes into it but I think especially for a rebuilding team where like you probably the the things you're considering are like do we want a veteran coach who's been around and seen it all to help kind of mentor and guide some of these young players through the losing versus having a young coach that can kind of relate to them more on a personal level and sort of bond with them. And then when you're ready to take that next step as a franchise and potentially start competing, whether that requires a different skill set or whether you want to go with a more proven coach. And so I don't think there's any right answer. And I think it's on a case-by-case basis. But just this idea of like the shelf life of a coach and how long they're around for in the message. And also, you, you know,

know, the right fit for different teams and their personnel is such an interesting discussion for me and obviously tying it into what's going on in the current landscape of the league and how coaching tactics and, you know, the way coaches use their authority and how we're having that conversation now is all a very important conversation. It's putting all that together. Like, it's just something we don't really think about that much because it's much more of a player-driven sport. So we don't spend that much time considering sort of coach contracts and how long they're around and the message they have for the players. All right. And any thoughts on Stanley Cup hangovers and surprising starts?

Yeah, I mean, I think what's most surprising to me, or I guess the thing that I expected at least, was especially when Vlad Tarasenko went out for essentially the year, I thought that the Blues would struggle to score. And heading into the year, I was a bit more skeptical on their ability to repeat just because, you know, I thought it was unlikely that. that Jordan Biddington would be as good as he proved as good as he was for them last year. And I thought if he came back down Earth a little bit, he was such a big driving force for his team success that I wondered how that would look. But he's like, I think fourth and goals saved above average has a 9.20 something save

percentage this season. And so he's proven that he's the real deal. Or he's at least as good as he was showing he was last year. And so that's huge for the blues. Whereas with the Bruins, I mean, they're better than people thought, I guess, from the perspective of they're going to run, they look like they're going to run away with the Atlantic, especially as Tampa Bay and Toronto struggles. But, you know, the infrastructure there and with the players and the way,

basically they're repeating what they did last year with, like, having the league's best power play and having the best line and having great defensive structure and goal-tending. Like, none of that should surprise people. So I guess the Blues would be a bit more of a surprising team so far just because Boston's kind of given us what we expected they'd be, even if it's been to a larger extreme. All right. Well, anything else you want to touch on before we call it tonight?

I think that's it. Like, I wanted to get more into the avalanche, but I think we talked about them already with being a Taylor Hall landing spot on what they do what they do there. So we'll have more time to talk about that as we get closer to the trade deadline and as the season unfold. So I'm glad we got to do this, man. This was a lot of fun. I'd like to thank all the listeners for their great questions.

And there's some really thought-provoking stuff. And this is why it's so cool because, like, hockey can sometimes be so, I guess, like, myopic or, like, you can have this tunnel vision where you're just constantly thinking about and talking about the same stuff and then you have different perspectives come in and raise questions from viewpoints that you never even consider before and you're just like oh my god like yeah why have we never thought about that why have we never done this and i think that's a great way to to uh to not only expand our knowledge but also like just uh improve the game because we're refining it and thinking about new creative ways to uh to find a leg up on the competition i guess i guess at

this point you i uh normally i'd ask the guest to uh to plug some stuff and sign off but i guess uh are you going to tell them to subscribe and listen to the PDOCAST? Is that your... Yeah, yeah. Listen to the PDO cast. It's good. It's a very well-edited,

well-mixed podcast. You should definitely listen for those reasons. All right, man. Well, thanks for producing the show. Thanks for doing all that. And hopefully listeners enjoying the bit of the different change of pace or mix up with today's show.

And if so, I'd love to take more questions and more mailback questions throughout the season. Hopefully we can do this again. So Matt, this is the boss. Thank you for having me. Thanks for doing this with me and we'll chat soon. The Hockey P.DOCISD with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.