The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 369: Watch(ed) The Games

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Jack Han joins the show to discuss his time coaching with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, the pros and cons of the AHL as a developmental league, why innovation in the NHL is easier said than done, and how you can use video to help improve player performance. Topics include: 2:30 Making the most of the AHL experience 13:00 Older stars reinventing their game 21:00 Zach Werenski, offensive funnels, and thinking the game 29:00 Key attributes of a good coach 39:00 Trying to win vs. trying not to lose 49:00 Importance of 'puck touches' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast. With your host, Dimitri Phil. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Filipovich, and joining me for the first. first time in a long time, I believe, since March 2017. So it's been three years or so now.

It's my good buddy, Jack Han. Jack, what's going on, man? Dmitri, I'm doing great. What about you? I'm doing fantastic too, man. It's great to see you. It's great to have you on this video, be chatting about hockey again, being able to record this and share it with the listeners.

It's been a while, so I'm excited to do this thing with you. Yeah, it feels like a lifetime ago, right? Yeah, it does. What, we were, we actually recorded in pretty interesting locations, right? But one time I was in Montreal and we recorded at McGill, I believe. And then you came to Vancouver for the Vancouver Analytics Conference and we were recording at my place. So different circumstances this time, but certainly a lot to catch up on a lot to chat about. Yep.

All right. Well, I don't even know, we don't really have a structure for today's show. We like, we've been bouncing around a bunch of ideas we wanted to chat about through text. I'm going to open the floor to you here. What is interesting you the most right now? What do you want to really kind of deep dive and get into since, you know, we don't have a mandate here. We can talk about whatever we want to talk about. So the last time we spoke in 2017, a few months after that, I was hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs organization.

So I worked there for the past three years. And now I'm striking it out on my own. So right now what I'm doing is. doing is I'm doing a lot of writing about hockey and ideas that really interest me. And some of this stuff is a little bit nerdy and other stuff is maybe a little bit weird. But, you know, I've kind of really enjoyed myself with that. And then the second part is having worked in player development throughout my three years with the Maple Leafs, now I've kind of become kind of a private coach for a consultant for a few players across age levels and across, you know, whether it's minor hockey.

or pro hockey or college hockey, you know, really taking care of individuals as opposed to working on a team, which is a whole other set of challenges. But fun. Okay, well, let's, we'll get into a really kind of key in on the individual component and sort of a more practical level in terms of actually applying some of this stuff to squeeze out better performance from players. But before we get into that, I'll play the groundwork here and talk a bit about sort of the theoretical side of things and the coaching and the team level because I think that's

probably of some interest as well to listeners as well. And, you know, as you mentioned since last time we chatted, you did work with the Marley's and the Leafs as an AHA assistant coach. And so you kind of had that behind the scenes look. I'm always really fascinated by the AHA because I don't think there's necessarily a right answer. But how do you feel after having spent some time in it and sort of seeing the behind the scenes and the inner workings of it, if the HL actually accomplishes what it's sort of set out to do as a developmental league for the NHL? sure so you know we kind of refer to to to hl teams or to minor league team as farm team right and i think that's kind of it's an interesting verbiage because maybe in a lot of fans minds it's a place where you let let your kids you know play or grow for a couple of years and then just magically they're ready to go right it's like you plant your carrots in the spring or whatever in the fall you have carrots but really you know what we see is you know some organizing do it better than others simply because, you know, they put in more resources and they,

they're more specific and, you know, individually oriented when it comes to developing players on their HL teams. Well, I guess there is sort of that clash, right? I think in theory you'd like to think that if the HL team is running smoothly and well, then HL team will be happy and it's going to kind of all feed into each other. but you get into certain scenarios where there's competing agenda sometimes, right? Like I imagine people involved in the HL circuit might be more sort of focused or prioritizing their short-term success because they're trying to get to the higher level as opposed to the organizational outlook of let's sort of actually use this as a platform to develop younger players

and take a big picture of bird's eye view of things. Yeah, and it's a really challenging level of hockey to coach because, you know, you think about high school. hockey or college hockey. As a head coach, you have, you do the recruiting, so you get to decide what your team looks like and what kind of players you attract, right?

If you're a pro team at the NHL level, then your head coach is going to have a saying how this team is built and you know, who gets to play and what kind of systems you get to play. Whereas, you know, at the HAL level, you're kind of at the mercy of what the overall vision is for

the organization. So it's definitely kind of you know you're you're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place because you got to play the kids but then you also got to make them feel accountable and and you know push them to develop certain parts of their games that you know they might not necessarily want to do sometimes but um you know it's always like kind of walking a tightrope but it's also tricky because like i would like to think that you'd be a smart organization would be using the a hL as kind of this like testing ground for for various tactical ideas and trying you things. But as you're just talking about right now,

like if you are trying to impress higher ups and get to a higher stage in your career, whatever your role is, there is something to risk. It's not ultimately this sort of like, the risk reward is still there, even though it seems like it's at a lower level when you're comparing it to the NHL.

Yeah. So, you know, like I'm big on using like restaurant examples in hockey. Yeah, you love restaurant examples. I love food. I love cooking. And actually my girlfriend's winning for me to cook after we're done here. But no worries.

But one example that I would use is, you know, you think about McDonald's or Burger King or Chipotle or whatever, like any kind of a chain fast food operation. They're actually run a lot like hockey teams in terms of, you know, you want to deliver a certain outcome, which is a product in the most optimized way. possible, right? Whereas you look at other kind of, you know, Missionist Choir restaurants, and, you know, I think it's called Noma out in Copenhagen, if I'm mistaken, but, you know, one of the top kind of molecular gastronomy or like local restaurants in the world, and they have a test kitchen. So it's like, you know, whereas McDonald's, they want to extend that their system far and wide, you know, there are more kind of other niche restaurants who are more into experimenting. So I think what we see in pro hockey is much more the kind of McDonald's, big box, you know,

you want to scale your operations as opposed to really experiment and try different things. Well, if you're the one trying out different things, you're kind of putting your neck out on the line there, right? Where it's like if it doesn't work out, you're going to be kind of held personally responsible. Whereas if you're pulling the company line or you're doing something that everyone in the hockey world is doing, it's tough to single you out as sort of the culprit for when things go wrong. Yeah, but even like, like I'll give you a concrete example from a few years ago, but like the Grand Rapid Griffin's, for me, they're one of the more interesting HL teams just because, you know, they played 5-4 power play with Todd Nelson a few years ago. And like historically, they used the 212 neutral zone 4 check, which not many teams do. So it's like, you know, you play like that in Grand Rapids and then you get called up to Detroit and then, you know, your reeds are completely different.

right so so does that does that help your young players or not i mean on the one hand it does expose them to a different way of playing and you know you do get to see them kind of experiment with things but on the other hand you know that's just one more thing you got to worry about when you get called up like you know maybe the red wings play a one-two and then you know the griffins play a two two one two right and what you do is completely different so i don't know like like i think there's merits to both sides. Well, I guess it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, right? Like, what is your main objective for your minor league feeders? I'm like, to use your example there, if you're the Detroit Red Rings organization and you've got like, let's use a random prospect that's not a top guy,

like, I know, I've got any such a cop or something random. Sure. Are you trying to set him up for a career of success or are you trying to set him up so that you can call him up when you have an injury and have him fill in for 10 games and be able to do so without missing a beat. I think that's a kind of a question you need to be asking yourself in terms of how you're going to operate. Yeah, and obviously, you know, if you ask that question of vacuum, you know, anyone would say, oh, yeah, well, we want this player to reach his potential. We want to maximize the skill set and what have you. But, you know, like when I work with players of all ages, whether it's back when I was in Toronto or even now, like, I look for certain elements and their skill set that they use often and they're good at.

So Darry will call them signature skills, right? So it's, you know, for Patrick Kane, it'd be the way that, you know, he comes in off the rush and looks to manipulate the D-Speed. For Matt Barzell or Nate McKinnon is how they use a lot of crossovers when they carry the puck. For Austin Matthews, it could be his drag and shoot. But, you know, when you have an individual-facing, you know, development program, then for every player, you know, these skills are identified, and then we're actively trying to work on them.

Whereas if it's more of kind of like a one-size-fits-all, like big box model, then it's just, you know, you learn your D-Zone coverage, you learn your neutral zone schemes, you learn your power plate, maybe you have a spot that you are assigned, and then you play that for however many years. You know, maybe you'll work on your skating, you're shooting, but, you know, it's not addressed to you. So just to give me an example of, you know, a player that,

that I would know really well, but, you know, if you have JVR work on the same things on the power play as Austin Matthews or William Meadler, it's not going to lead to great outcomes because these guys, you know, they have different skill sets and, you know, they have different kind of those signature skills, right? So the more, I think, individually oriented you are than the better position you are at maximizing your prospects. But on the other hand is that you might not simply not have the manpower to do that. that with your HL team because, you know, you just have that coaching staff and maybe you don't have too much help, you know, aside from that. So, you know, you still got to run your meetings. You still got to do your pre-scouts. You still got to, you know, coach the game and do media and do,

you know, a sort of things, I have meetings with players about, you know, kind of non-developmental things. But, you know, so where do you find the time? It's really hard. How do you feel about kind of just that grind of the HAL life of working with the players? Do you feel like you got an opportunity to work closely enough on maximizing those skills as you're sort of writing about them now? And obviously you have a different set of responsibilities and give much more free time. But do you feel like you got to actually explore that kind of part of your brain? It's like I think a lot of the work also was done the first two years where, you know, where I study these players, whether it's, you know, after they've been drafted or before they've been drafted or, you know, look at them from, you know, their progress in junior. or in Europe or in college,

a lot of that, you know, being able to do a good job developing a player, I think a lot of is on the front end in terms of the research that you do, right? So, you know, let's say take on a client, a private client today. The first thing I'll ask, you know, him or her is, you know, do you have game footage to show me? So once, it's almost like, you know, you walk into a doctor's office. You know, the doctor is not going to write your prescription before he's talked to. you and ask you about your symptoms, right? So it's, it's almost that like three-step process where you have diagnosis, you have

treatment, and then you have follow-up. So the diagnosis is all the video or analytical study that you do beforehand. The treatment is, you know, whether it's time that you spend studying video with the player or talking to them or running drills on the ice or putting them in game situations. And then the follow-up is just looking at, you know, are they, you know, are they succeeding? they doing well? Are they making the most out of their skills? Do they have a certain frequency or a certain success rate when executing? And then making adjustments throughout the ones or the years or whatever. Well, do you feel like at that point, though, I guess this is kind of a

tricky question because it will certainly be on a case-by-case basis and there's a lot of context that goes into it. But when a player comes to you and they've already reached that certain level of their career and let's say they're in their mid-20s and they've obviously enjoyed their share of success just getting to that point, even if it is just the AHL. It's kind of tough, I feel like, at times, to sort of completely rewire the way a player thinks or hacks on the ice after they've been doing it a certain way for the past, like, decade or so. Like, do you find that some of these things might need to be even adapted, like, at lower

levels during earlier in the developmental stages as opposed to doing all of this really kind of deep fundamental work by the time you're at the HL? Yeah, well, you know, like some players, I would say, you know, they have a very junior type of game. Let's say, you know, they're all about using wide speed or they're all about, you know, beating goalers from distance with a wrist shot or a slap shot or, you know, they don't really have an inside game or they don't protect the puck super well. Or, you know, they have clear tells in terms of how they play the game that, you know, you talk about with Conner Carrick, right? The best players in the world, they don't really have tells, right?

but certainly you know the older that you get and the more you kind of go along that age curve the harder it is to reinvent yourself but at the same time I think there's always ways to kind of you know I talk about the signature skills right like you can go and work on the skills surrounding you know your core game so let's say you know for Patrick Kane it's to be a better passer he's got to work in a shot because he's got to maintain that dual threat and make defensemen and goalies respect that, right? Right. You know, one guy that I studied recently and that I wrote about is Eric Carlson. So, so I'm sure you, you know, you have a ton of love for Eric Carlson. I think deservedly so. Yeah. But, but, you know, for him, like when I look at this game from 2012, which is really, you know, early prime, right, analytically speaking.

Right. And then, you know, 2016, which is maybe late prime. and then, you know, after his Achilles injury, and then now, which is, you know, the star of the decline phase, when we look at, you know, traditional kind of statistical models, I just find that a lot of his skill set has deteriorated. And it's deteriorated because of his skating. So he used to be an extremely good skater, especially offensively. And now it just seems like a lot of his, you know, whether it's a higher turnover rate or he's not seeing the right plays or he's, you know, more static and less dangerous than the ozone.

A lot of it is because you can't get going as well as before. And defensively, I always thought his defensive skating was always pretty hit or miss. And now it's more missed than hit, unfortunately. Well, I guess the question for a guy like him is how much of that? Because I know you wrote about like Sub-Ben as well in your book and we can kind of loop that into here as well, where there's a question to be asked of how much of it is like a physical, natural decline.

And in Carlson's case, it's been expedited. by various lower body injuries as well and particularly gruesome ones at that. And then how much of it is like an unwillingness to sort of adapt and evolve and make tactical adjustments to cover for those kind of looming physical limitations. Like that balance is kind of tricky to me

to sort of figure out what's kind of causing that change in the way he's playing. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know Carlson as a person, I've never talked to him about this, but it must be incredibly difficult to, you know, spend, let's say, the first 25 or 30 years of your life and your entire hockey crib, you're referred to as an elite skater, and then turning around and saying, wait, I got to,

you know, reinvent my skating, where I got to seriously upgrade my skating. For me, it doesn't quite drive it, right? It's like me saying, well, Federer's forehand is what's holding him back, and, you know, his forehand is breaking down on it. Like, I think it takes a lot of trust, you know, to have in whoever, working on this with him to really hunker down and look at things and try to fix it. So, you know, like the, I would say the technical piece is relatively straightforward, but, you know, making, you know, helping Carlson buy in. I think that that's really where the finessing and where the coaching comes in.

Yeah. Well, so when you see what's happened with Carlson, there obviously this player hasn't had the same injuries, but I know, like, you love to talk about Roman Yose and sort of what makes him special and how it's just this, like, willingness to basically attack the middle of the ice and sort of detach and go with the puck. You know, he's like 30 years old now and just signed an eight-year deal. If he loses that explosion similar to what's happened with Carlson, what's his game looking like in years five, six, seven, and eight of that deal? We're talking about Yossi.

Yeah, yeah. Like if he loses that sort of special, you know, that special skill, as you're referring to as, like how do you? how do you compensate for that or adjust to not sort of see a significant drop off because all of a sudden that one thing that used to make you so special suddenly is harder for you to reach back and achieve? Yeah. So there's kind of obviously a few ways that this can go and I don't have a crystal wall so I

can't tell you what Yosey is going to look like specifically. But I had a chance to see him up close and at Darrell Belfrey's Pro Camp last summer. and he's a really good skater but at the same time he's not a guy that's that's a burden right like you you watch him in practice he's not skating circles around everyone so you know if he slows down over time then what happens is

when a player's kind of physical game starts to go downhill then he's going to have to make an adjustment mentally so maybe you OC doesn't go quite as often right which you know Nick Lithstrom made that adjustment you know he made that adjustment just fine, right? He played until he was 40 or 41, and he just would go less often than he used to, right?

He would have Nicholas Cronwell or, you know, Brian Rofalski go for him sometimes. So that's fine. And then, you know, you look at defensemen who age really well, and two guys, I think, you know, we talked about three years ago or, you know, hockey Twitter was talking about three years ago, who are still, you know, around and kicking,

or Shea Weber and Mark Jordan. So these are two guys who are not to smooth the skaters. They're not the most fluid movers. They don't have the best skills, but they're still playing a very high level now because they're incredibly fit. They work incredibly hard, and they have that kind of mental intensity

that edge that hasn't gone away. Like if you look at Jordano play, you know, for me, like the really striking thing back when we played with Dougie Hamilton is, you know, Hamilton was the guy who was really noticeable offensively, taking a lot of shots, leading a lot of rushes. But then Giordano, which is like he would just do all the dirty work.

Like he would win the loose pucks in the corner. He would go and retrieve. He would, you know, box guys out in front and then just, you know, hit Dougie with a short pass and get the breakout started. So, you know, he's still doing that. Maybe he's slowing down a little bit now. You know, this year it's been more difficult for him. But here's a guy who, you know, just because of his will and his physical fitness

and just his kind of his intensity level has been able to maintain. So maybe, you know, you know, Yossi is going to be able to kind of hang on to that as well. So it could really go, you know, both ways. It can. I guess, you know, the one interesting case study for me that, you're writing about this guy as well, and I was texting you how the concept of it is one of my new favorite things now. It's sort of that offensive and defensive funnel you've been talking about with Zach Wrenzki and sort of how he's able to be effective by controlling the middle of the ice and basically jumping up

and attacking and sort of probing the offensive zone when his teammates have the puck down low. And, you know, he obviously has physical tools in the sense that he's a good skater. He obviously has an excellent shot. And so he combined that with thinking the game at a higher level and knowing when to jump in and then also come back defensively, basically in one motion, he's able to sort of combine the best of both worlds and be supremely effective. And then the reason why I was thinking about that was like a guy that just really, viscerally bothers me to watch play hockey is Brandon Montour because the physical tools are all

obviously there. He can skate really fast with the puck. I thought he was on a very interesting trajectory as an offensive weapon back in his early sort of AHL and then early Anaheim Ducks days. But you watch him these days in Buffalo and he's never really evolved or developed that sort of thinking component of the game where he can't really like read and react and sort of make decisions in a timely manner. And so he's often like kind of flat-footed or a step behind. And so no matter how good he can skate, the puck can move faster than he can. And so he's kind of left sort of trailing and following the puck as opposed to leading it.

And so comparing and contrasting those two guys was so fascinating to me because there's no reason why physically a guy like Brandon Montour shouldn't be able to watch what Zach Wrenski does and model his game after it, except for I guess this fact that he needs. never really developed that part of his game and now at 26 years old I imagine it's really hard to reprogram him and rewire him to just sort of read the ice like that I guess maybe processing speed is more of a sort of innate skill than something you can just watch a bunch of video and execute on the fly well I mean like like I have studied Montour a little bit throughout the years and I agree he's a really frustrating guy in the sense that he looks so good and you know it's like all smoke but no pancake with them unfortunately. But one of the things that I think about when you talk about offensive defense men like

Borensky or Yossi or, you know, Montour is it's actually like Newton's laws of physics, which I forget which one. My physics is a little bit rusty, but one of them is, you know, for every action to the equal and opposite reaction. And for me, the beauty of what Zach Werenski does is, you know, he's diving in through the funnel to try to get pucks, try to create coins. chance, but then he's exiting through that same funnel, which, you know, I illustrate in one of my newsletter posts, if you're curious about that. But it's like, you know, the idea of being an

offensive defenseman, it's great, and you want to get active, you want to jump in on the rush, you want to be kind of that forward forward, but you also have to have a contingency plan for, you know, what if there's a turnover? What if, you know, there's a block shot? What if, you know, the play dies somewhere along the line. And what Werensky does is so elegant, so interesting. And I would add, you know, guys like Jared Spurgeon do that instinctively really well, too, is that instead of kind of thinking, okay, I play lefty or I play right thee, and at the first side of trouble, I'm going to go and default back to my spot,

what they do is they recover through the middle of the ice. So we talk about the offensive funnel being kind of, you know, Main Street, kind of that Royal Road, right? You're skiing right down the Royal Road. Well, what happens is if you recover out through the middle of the ice as well, then basically you have to force the opposing team, the puck carrier, to kind of pick aside. And once they pick a side, and especially if you're a good skater, then you can go and close that gap and force them outside and then kill the play,

which Spurgeon does a fantastic job. He might be the best in the world. Chris Lattang is up there too. and Werensky's obviously getting there. So, you know, these guys kind of work from the middle or the inside of the rink outwards, whereas guys who really struggle with the defensive skating, so, you know, that's Eric Carlson, that's Seth Jones,

you know, probably Brandon Montour as well. What they'll do is, you know, at the first time of trouble, they'll sprint back to their point, but then they're outside. So then it's very tough for you to go from outside back to inside because, you know, you're kind of baiting the puck carrier into, you know, either wrong footing you're just taking the middle of the ice and going. So if you watch Carlson, a lot of the odd man rushes he gives up is because, you know, he's on the wall and then somehow the puck ends up in the middle of the ice and then,

like, he's just done. But wouldn't you argue that, like, that's something that if physically you're capable of skating a certain way, you'd be able to make that adjustment? Carlson's forward skating is still pretty good. his backward and his backward skating, his backward crossover, his pivots, like that's really what's hurting him. And those are the

skills that you need to use when you recover. So, you know, Latang, Spursion, Werenski, they skate really won all four directions and Carlos is really more a forward skater at this point. All right, let's take a quick break here to hear from a sponsor and then you and I are going to pick up this conversation

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hosted by Kevin Clark, and they were ranking all of the coaches in the league, and then they were talking specifically about Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, and they were basically talking about or positing the skills that allow him to not only excel it as craft, but also sustain it for a long period of time. And like you and I here are talking a lot about, you know, what we're going to talk more,

especially about innovation or sort of pushing the boundaries of hockey as we know it and sort of trying to look for hidden advantages or create more offense or sort of pressure points where, you know, people in the league aren't doing certain things that you could execute. Like it feels like we're still at that point. But obviously, like, when you were working with the Marley's, you were with a pretty, you know, progressive organization that was certainly experimenting and looking to try certain things. But do you feel like we're still at that point in hockey where, like, you do things a certain way. And then if you try to go outside the norm and suggest something, it just quickly kind of dismissed because it's too exotic for what hockey is supposed to look like, quote unquote.

So, you know, having kind of been in the room for a number of years, for me, I feel. find, you know, the thing that holds, and not just hockey, I'm talking about me, like any other sport or, you know, most other industries, it's, um, the people who are responsible for making these decisions or for setting these agendas, oftentimes they, they kind of, they like bandwidth. Like, they're very busy people. They have a lot of day to day things that you got to think about. And, you know, a lot of the more, you know, as you say, exotic things, they kind of let, they get left off the table just because, you know, we don't quite get there. So, you know, I get there at seven or whatever it is. I got to help the coaches prep the video meetings. I got to maybe help them prep a couple of individual meetings. I got to set up the room a certain way. I got to run the meeting. Film practice, after practice, you know, talk to skills, coaches, whatever.

Like, before the day begins, you already have a very strong idea of what the day is going to look like. And it's almost like, I think as coaches, we have. to that because we want to be prepared and we want to, you know, we want to have a plan and we want things to kind of run smoothly, right, which is understandable. But, you know, what if a player does something during practice that's like, wow, I've never seen this before. Maybe we can actually, you know, design a play or design a system or design a special team scheme around that. Well, oftentimes that just gets forgotten because it's not part of the pre-established

plan. Right. And So that's the first thing. The second thing is what kind of compounds the issue is that we have such a kind of a fixed day-to-day routine. And a lot of what we do on a daily basis, it's not scalable, right? Like, you know, if I won three meetings today and, you know, I set an agenda for today, tomorrow I got to come back and do it all over again. Whereas one of the things I'm really enjoying now, kind of doing more writing, whether it's on my newsletter, or in my books is if I have a good idea, I put it down.

You know, I talk to a couple people, I hone it. But then once that idea is put down on paper form or in written form, I don't have to go back and I can just send it to somebody. It's already ready made, right? Right. So,

you know, so much of coaching is just not scalable. And because it's not scalable, you have to kind of reinvent the wheel every single day because, you know, if you don't do it, then, you know, if you don't run a power play practice, or if you don't work on your PK or, you know,

if you don't work on your D zone coverage, a lot of times like that stuff you rode and players forget about it or, you know, they get a little bit sloppy or it's not as smooth as it needs to be, but then you never have time to practice other stuff. So for everything that you want to add to your agenda, you've got to take something else off. And I think the biggest impediment to innovation in hockey

or in many other fields, it's we're not comfortable taking things off our plates. But, you know, the plate's already full. so where do you go? Yeah, but I think at that point you have to question whether all the things that are on the plate belong on that plate. You know what I mean? Sure, sure, exactly. So, you know, to loop this back, because I mentioned Harba and this podcast, also in there,

and they were saying that for his coach, like the skills that he excels at and what any great coach needs to have. And obviously, you know, for football, it's a bit different because there's so many more players involved. And there's offense, defense and special teams that are kind of like more segmented than they are in hockey where it all kind of loops together. is taking care of your own domain, A. So, like, he's a defensive coach. He's got that on lockdown, and that's kind of his specialized skills as a coach, which is a bit more specific to football than hockey.

But then being detail-oriented, which I think most coaches would pride themselves on, and I think you should have that on as a kind of checklist. Hiring the right people, which helps, I would say, increase that bandwidth and make it more scalable because it allows you to sort of delegate that responsibility, and then looping into hiring the right people,

is embracing new ideas and thinking like a young person. And the reason why I bring that up is because in hockey you look, and especially at the NHL level, like your typical coach is going to be in his 50s, has been probably seeing an NHL hockey play at a certain way. I think there's going to be much less incentive or, you know, appetite to add new stuff onto your plate when you've already had a full plate with certain things for a long enough time,

and you've sort of gotten used to a certain meal to keep with your food analogy. So I don't know, that's where I think hockey falls short in that, like listening to you, I completely agree with everything you're saying. You're certainly speaking from a place of personal experience, and I'm not pushing back on that. I'm pushing back on the way that it should be that way, because I don't think that's ultimately the best way to run your business,

which is what an NHL team in theory is. Yeah, well, and I think that that's kind of why the NHL is such a copycat lead, because once maybe one team or one person starts doing it with success, then it's kind of like a race like, okay, like, you know, Barrett Trox plays a 1-1-3 and his teams are so good defensively, let's all play at 1-1-3, or let's all copy their D-Zones. So it's like as slow as kind of change happens in hockey, I think, once something is proven to work, then the rest of the league embraces it actually

relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things, right? It's like, you know, back when I really got interested in hockey analytics, that was 2013, not that many teams played four forwards, 1D on the power play. And now it's like not even a question, right? It's like you have to justify it to go three-fours and two deep, right? Maybe you have a Shea Weber or Brent Burr's on the half wall. You can justify that. But, you know, even then, if you look at the underlying results, it's actually not that great.

So, you know, 4 is 1D, like now it's just a no-brainer. And it happens way more quickly, but way more kind of subtly than you would expect to. Right. Well, what are, I'm trying to think because that's an obvious example on the PowerPoint. We've seen that. And I guess, you know, at 515, we sort of organically in a way, I'm not sure how much of it is copycat as much as sort of like natural evolution. You've seen that teams just like produce more offense off the rush. and they're sort of trying to get the puck to certain regions.

I know the common pushback to that as hockey is such a sort of free-flowing, crazy game. The puck's bouncing around everywhere, but you know, you do go into it, I imagine with a game plan of like specific regions you want to get the puck to because you feel like it'll improve your odds of scoring as opposed to just throwing the puck around all willy-nilly

and hoping it bounces in. Yeah. And, you know, going back the idea of the, offensive funnel, right? Like most teams that, you know, create a lot of offense at five-on-five, and most teams that are, I would say, more pleasing to watch, let's say, like, the Tampa or the Torano's or the Carolados of the world, they all use the funnel quite a bit. And that's, you know, for them, they understand that it's valuable real estate. But obviously, you know, if you try to use the funnel, you try to use the middle of the ice, you try to create high

movement, almost kind of like in a whirlpool shape in the zone, then, you know, you try to use the then teams are going to catch on and they're just going to kind of pack the slot, right? So the way that kind of unpack the slot is to rotate players in and out, in and out. So, you know, send more guys high and have them roll down. That makes them hard to cover, right? Because you can't just stand there. Now you have players, you know, skating between you or passing the puck between you. So it's always this kind of cat and mouse game.

And I think, you know, more teams are going to do that. Like, you know, I just think three teams, but I think, this time next year is probably half the league that's been used some sort of a rotation to the Ozone to create an uncertainty where instead of just, you know, parking the left wing on the left wall, parking the right wing, you know, somewhere, you know, near the right side and then having the center in the middle and having these kind of stand their ground at the line. Yeah, it drives me crazy when you're watching games and you see like, especially with defensemen sometimes they're basically just planted on the blue line when their team has it in an offensive

zone and it's like they have like a shock collar wherever they move past the certain region. they're going to get like buzzed back to their original spot like it just drives me crazy like as opposed to when you see with oerensky like it's so much more difficult to defend if your back's turned and all of a sudden you have this guy just streaming down the middle of the ice waiting for a pass it's so much more difficult to account for that as opposed to as a defender knowing where all five guys on the ice are going to be when they're in the offensive zone so so just uh because you use the conny cax expression from from you guys chatted but you know from my perspective i i got to give props because it is so, so, so hard to play D in the NHL.

It is so difficult. Like, it's impossible because, you know, first you got to be going to box out. You got to stay with their check. You know, you can't get beat back to the net. Now we're asking you to be the first guy kind of jumping at the rush and activating on the weak side. Now we're asking you to do more stuff in the ozone, you know, taking the puck off the wall and walking to the middle and sifting a shot through.

Now we're telling you, oh, well, you can't get beat back. if you can kill a player early, great, but I want you to come back. It's like, you know, you're being pulled in all these directions, and it's just the nature of the job is such that, you know, like I'd be looking to give these guys as much help as they possibly can

just because it's so challenging now to be able to play on both sides of the puck and being able to be involved all the time. It's not like, you know, for the guys that just go kind of off the board and out or just like, you know, throwing everything to the point. like we kind of we kind of think oh well these guys they're not good hockey players and they can't do all the other stuff they can't but they just know that they're stretching themselves too thin if they try to make plays all the time yeah the thing and go for an officer and the other point is like you know having kind of scouted many NHL Ds throughout the years you know seeing them come from now junior up to you know minor pro and then the NHL is a lot of guys actually they get worse over time like you have a you can have a

guy who's a point in game defenseman, let's say in the CHL, and then they'll play a few years in the HL. And then, you know, five years later, I watch him in the NHL. It's like, yeah, like, he's still got a good shot and he still making some plays, but it just looks like he's dumbed down his game so much. But it's because it's so difficult to keep, you know, executing at that level and taking chances and you're actively getting coached to not do those things. And every time you go back for a puck, it's like you're taking your life into her hands because

Tom Wilson can just board you and, you know, leave you concussed. or worse, right? So it's like, okay, well, next time I go back, I'll take one shoulder check and I'll just shoot that puck down the board. And, you know, it might go down for an icing or whatever, but I'm not going to get you all that, and I'm not going to leave the game out of stretch. And honestly, you know, these are the best athletes in the world,

but I think a lot of them do play with that mindset after spending a few years in the league. Well, and I think Connor Carrick, and that's part of what I appreciated about the conversation I had with them and whoever hasn't listened should go check that out after they're done listening to this as well, but it was that sort of, He was pretty transparent about it, right?

Where as viewers or just kind of an unbiased observer, you have this certain set of expectations of what you'd like to see a defenseman do when he's going back to get the puck or when he has it and he's breaking out. But he probably has this own, like a long checklist of things that he's got to account for and do in your typical shift that his coaches are probably asking for him. And his spot in the lineup depends on him executing that. That is completely different from what URI might be in an ideal world expecting from them when they're out there.

Yeah. And, and, you know, paradoxically, we're playing a game that's more free-flowing and more offensive and more skilled than ever, right? But I think we're asking, like, we're to a point where, like, we've kind of reached the maximum of what two defensemen can do together without having a lot more help.

Like, we're asking these guys to, you know, make a plan of the retrieval, find the middle of the eyes, getting active. But it's simply, you know, you have to have the center and low support. You have to have the wingers available for a pass. You know, to kind of, you can't play a creative, you know, pleasing game in the ozone if you can't get out of your own zone

with some sort of speed in organization, right? Like you look at soccer now, right? Like the first thing to go when teams became more possession-based and more fluid and with more rotations, you couldn't have a dedicated striker anymore. You had to bring this guy back as a fault. last night or you had to, you know, fortify your midfield. You have to get more width.

You have to get more players back. And I think that's kind of where the game is headed. Like you watch a team like, let's say, the Minnesota Wild, and they play a very effective style, but they play a very kind of traditional. Both these are back and all three forwards are up and they play a very aggressive one, two, two, four check. But there's not a lot of mingling, let's say, between, you know, the forwards coming back with the D's jumping up.

And, you know, at some point, they haven't had as much success in the playoffs because at some point, you just kind of, they max out that style of play, I think. Yeah. Well, they max out that style of playoffs. Also isn't necessarily the star-powered, the offensive driving talent there,

which, you know, hopefully, I think they're hoping, is changing a bit now with Caprizov and Rossi and all these guys are adding to their pipeline. But, yeah, I don't know. It drives back to that question of we were talking about earlier at the HL development, what you're trying to accomplish. I think similarly, I'd be really interested in what every NHL team is ultimately what their ideal game looks like and whether you're trying to win or not to lose because, you know, I think there's a, the incentive structure in the NHL is, is kind of off. Wouldn't you agree? Like, it's getting better now because there is more scoring.

So if you go down 3-0 early in a game, you have a chance to come back. So it's not as dire. But ultimately, it feels like, you know, if you're a team that's very offensively oriented, like let's say the Leafs, you're going to be critiqued much harder and more aggressively for your flaws and limitations defensively than a defensive team that can't score because they're going to lose these kind of close 2-1 games as opposed to these really jarring 6-4 back-and-forth tilts, that kind of are embarrassing. Like,

don't you agree that that is kind of a flaw in the ointment or fly in the ointment here? Okay. Okay. So we're, like, we're getting to my biggest pet peeve about NHL hockey, but by far my biggest pet peeve. Like, you have people who say that it should be played for four and four.

I don't agree with that. You have people will say that, you know, we got to take out offside. I definitely don't agree with that. But the one thing that I think the league should change is they have to go to a three-point regulation way. They just have to.

Okay, because a three-point regulation win forces teams to actually try to win the game, no matter how they do it. A two-point regulation win plus the loser point when you get to OT, that's saying, that's sending the message to everyone is, you know, try to score first if you can, but then whatever happens after that play for a tie. Yeah. And like legitimately, that's what happens. Like you look at the English premier league and they went to a three-point. point regulation win in the 80s. And actually games became way more entertaining and higher scoring because of that. Like coaches very quickly caught on to the fact that, hey, to push for a regulation win

actually gives me a better chance to maximize my team, A and B, to keep my job. So you saw, you know, coaches using kind of, you know, more risky but more offensive decisions to try to maximize their odds of winning a regulation, right, instead of playing for a tie. Yeah, there might be nothing less appealing to me than like a regular season game between two, like a Western Conference and an Eastern Conference team where it's tied with like three minutes left in the game because both teams are just agreeing basically to not do anything risky so that they can each get one point and then they're going to figure it out afterwards and overtime and you just basically have nothing happening for the final three minutes of that game. Yeah. So that's kind of my my think piece about what hockey should change. Both teams need to be trying to win at all times.

Yes, yes. And so I saw this great movie. It's a Russian movie, but I saw like a French dove version of it. It's called Number 17, which is a story about Valeri Karvalov, like the legendary Soviet player. And so he starts his pro career in like kind of like a third division, like, you know, winky dink, like kind of team that's kind of out of the way. and then the captain comes in before the game's like, okay, guys, we try to score first, and then we play for the tie.

And that from me encapsulates NHL hockey. Try to score first, because we know that if you score first, you have a pretty good chance of escaping with at least one point, and then no matter what happens after that, try to play for a tag. So that's my thing. Yeah, well, so that's your biggest irritation.

What's, without getting in trouble, what are the message threads and the group threads looking like in terms of behind the scenes of like annoyances with with things that are going around around around a tweet or an article that it's like oh did you see this like can you believe the the public thinks this like is there was there anything like that while you're working there was really bugging you like I tried not to read the news but you know or not to be be on hockey like I definitely never listen to the radio okay like podcasts are different because you listen to the hockey p.mast yes but that's not radio

Yes. Like for me, like sports talk radio is, for me, it's just, there's not one time where I open, open up sport talk radio and say like, wow, like I'm glad I listen to sports talk radio. So, you know, it's just like, it might be even worse of a venue to talk about, you know, in-depth topics than Twitter. And actually, I do love Twitter. So that's kind of my thing. You know, one final thing that I think blends in with the theme of this podcast and sort of part of the reason why I really enjoy your most reason of work is because it kind of gets at my biggest fascination now,

which is sort of like this pursuit of maximizing either individual or team performance. Like it might seem like a kind of minute thing or whatever. But, you know, in example, we're talking about the skating of certain players or tactical stuff. And, you know, you're writing about Jonathan Druand during the play-ins and this idea of kind of puck touches and involvement. And that was a really interesting thought exercise for me because obviously that's something that publicly you wouldn't have access to.

You'd think that, you know, a player who is on the ice for a significantly positive shot share, for example, will, in theory, have a puck more often than not. but that can kind of be a leap in faith or kind of not necessarily true depending on who they're playing with or what's happening while they're out on the ice. And so this is something that obviously we're going to get much more readily available public access to when we have the tracking data. And you can just basically similarly, how do we sort by shooting attempts? We can sort by puck touches or puck recoveries or what have you by zone. But that's like kind of a really fascinating thing to think about in terms of players involved.

in the flow of the game and how maybe having access to that could potentially help either explain or sort of shine a light on these like wild fluctuations in player performance where it's like why is this player all of a sudden dropping off and then you could kind of figure out from that perspective as opposed to sort of the traditional things we have now like looking at all like a depreciated shooting percentage or what have you to kind of explain why their their counting stats are lower than they usually are. Yeah, and I, like, for me, like, it's a really, it might be the most underrated statin hockey because, you know, just in terms of how many pucks you get, let's say, per hour

at five on five, you know, something like that. Because, you know, there are some players I work with who's, whether there's coaches or parents or themselves, they tell me like, oh, they're, you know, they got really good skills, but they're not always intense and it seems like they're a little bit disengaged, right? So for me, the first thing that I think about is, okay, well, you know, we know that the skills haven't gone anywhere, at least in the short term, is this player getting enough pucks? And that's like that was kind of the whole idea of the drawing study was, you know, in game, I think game four against Pittsburgh, he hardly touched the puck. Or is it game three? But, and, you know, he looked disengaged because honestly, he was just nowhere near the play.

And he's not the kind of player that's going to forecheck. or for something or throw a big hit. So for him away from to get noticed and away from him to get involved in the game is to touch the puck early and often in the shift. Whereas the following game, he did a much better job of that and then he ended up setting up the

game winning goal just because he was so engaged early on. And, you know, when you look at maybe an undersized or a skill player or a guy who's not overly intense or physical in the traditional sense, the more puck touches that he gets, the more he's in the game and the more, you know, the game runs.

through him. So it's like, he might not be trying harder. Maybe he's just in a better position. Maybe he has better linemates who can, you know, give him passes. But the more kind of,

the more touches he gets early, the more it sets up a virtual cycle. And the more you kind of become impressed with the intangible side of this game because everything seems to run through him or her. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get out of here.

Let's plug some stuff. you can plug your newsletter and just plug your book. I'm taking it personally. I know it's been out for a while and I imagine that the overlap or the Venn diagram of people who listen to this show and who are like nerdy enough to pre-order your book is probably pretty high. It's overlapping pretty smoothly. But if there's any stragglers left behind that have yet to do so, I'm taking it as a personal challenge to sell as many copies of Hockey Tactics 2020 as we can here in the show after listening to this podcast. But let the listeners know all about that and where they can find it and sort of maybe even a little tease on what they can expect to define in there once they do read it.

Yeah, so hockey tactics 2020. So I take my seven years working whether as a writer, as a video coach at the university level, as a scout and an analyst at the NHL level, as an assistant coach in the AHL level, I take all that. I boil it down to six chapters. Every chapter has a concrete example, a concrete case. study of NHL players that you know and love. And you get to think about hockey a little bit, you know, kind of, you get to borrow my brain

for the like the time that you read that book. So first of all, find me on Twitter. If you haven't already, my Twitter handle is J-H-A-N-H-K-Y. And then on there, you can sign up for my free Hockey tactics newsletter. And then you can find the links to buy my e-books online. Cool. Well, go do that. I highly recommend it and endorse it.

And Jack, this is a blast. I'm glad we got to finally do this after three long years and hopefully we'll be able to make this a regular thing or we can just get nerdy and talk about hockey tactics. Any time is a good time to nerd out about hockey. Love it. Before we get out of here, I wanted to quickly thank everyone for listening to today's show as always.

And if you did enjoy it, hopefully you'll consider taking some time to leave the PDO cast the rating and review. I know you're all really busy with a million other things going on your lives. So at this point, I'll honestly settle for a quick. click of the five-star button. But if you do somehow, I have a couple spare minutes and you want to go above and beyond

and your support for the show. I've really been happy to see that some of you have been leaving personalized reviews for either something you enjoy about the show or why you'd recommend others listen. And yeah, these reviews are honestly an easy way for your voice to be heard to provide feedback for the show. And it goes a long way to helping the show and its future success, but also just means a lot to me personally. So thank you in advance for taking the time to show the love.

It is greatly appreciated. And while we're here and showing love and giving it back and plugging stuff, I also wanted to give a shout out to these beautiful hockey theme stickers that I stumbled upon on Twitter a while back, both because A, they're awesome, and I really enjoyed having them on my laptop. And B, because it's a good opportunity to support an artist that's doing really creative and cool work and deserves love for the content she's creating.

So you can find them and more of Jordan's work at Not a Fan underscore Joe on Twitter or going straight to the source and checking out our new site at not a fan store.com. Speaking of the stickers, I got myself, one of Gritty, which is my personal favorite because it somehow perfectly captures the essence of what a crazed weirdo gritty is. But I also got a really cool one of the Cracken and another one of P.K. Sue Van doing his patented celebration on one knee. Hopefully one day I'll be able to take my laptop out to a coffee shop again and do some work there and show it off to the public. So until then, it'll just be a little treat for myself.

And I guess that's good enough too. So anyways, if you wanted to get in on the fun and check out the stickers for yourself, go check them out. I can't recommend them highly enough. They're super affordable. They got here really quickly when I ordered them and they look exactly as they were advertised, if not even better in person. So hopefully you'll be able to find something that you like there and enjoy them as much as I do.

So yeah, that's going to be it for today's show. We'll be back really soon with some more episodes of the PDO cast. We've got a really fun rewatchable coming soon that I've had a number of you ask for specifically, and it's one that I wanted to do personally since I started planning these episodes back in the spring. I think you'll really enjoy the game itself and the guests that I did it with. So we've got that to look forward to.

And listen, I know there's nothing really happening in NHL circles right now. We're kind of a limbo while we're waiting for news about when next season's starting and what that's going to look like. But we're going to try to make the most of this lull by getting creative with the content and trying to have some fun with these shows

like we did today with Jack and I think we'll do with the rewatchable is coming. So we have that. to look forward to hopefully we'll we'll get through this together and we'll make the most of this off-season as much as we can and yeah that's going to be it for today's show we're going to play the outro music now and until next time the hockey pediocast with dmitri philipovic follow on twitter at dim philipovic and on soundcloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast