The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 371: Game of Skill

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Darryl Belfry joins the show to discuss his experiences working with the best players in the NHL, how stars use the offseason to work on their game and acquire new skills, and all of the different things that go into skills training at the highest level. Topics include: 2:00 Process of adding tools during the offseason 8:00 Crosby's endless pursuit of getting better 14:00 How MacKinnon fixed his shooting % 22:00 Different components that go into shooting the puck 32:00 Incorporating skills training into game situations 42:00 Performance indicators that'll translate to next level 53:00 Playing fast vs. skating fast, and the perception of speed 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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My name is Dimitri Felpovich, and joining me is my buddy, Daryl Bellery, Daryl. What's going on, man? I'm excited to have you on the show. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this discussion. It should be interesting to see where you decide to take it. Well, the only thing that I care about is that we do better than your appearance on the full 60. I know that it was a great show. I really enjoyed listening to it, but I've got a little competitive rivalry going with our good mutual friend, Craig Custins.

And we just got to do better than that. That's all I'm striving for. Well, I will do my best. I'll do my part. There we go. There we go. So we're going to talk about your book today. And mostly we're going to use it as a as kind of a launching pad because I think hopefully people will listen to the show.

And if they haven't already, they'll be motivated to go out and read it. And, you know, for the past whatever week to 10 days, I've been basically just obsessing over it and reading it and going back and rereading stuff and trying to sort of absorb all the information and preparation for the show. And as I was going along, I was, you know, making notes of, oh, this would be a good place to circle back to and talk about this with Darrell. And by the time I got to the end of it, there were so many of those talking points that I realized it was kind of just one big jumbled mess. And I was like, oh, my God, I started panicking about how we were going to approach it, how we're going to get into this conversation. But then eventually I just realized, let's just use this hour. I'm going to kind of pick your brain about stuff I either found interesting or wanted to follow up on. And hopefully listeners will realize that those are similar questions they had or similar things they were interested in.

And it'll just be a good discussion for us about sort of skills training and skill acquisition. working with NHL players and all that good stuff. So how does that sound to you? Sounds great to me. I'm ready. Cool. All right. So here's where we'll start.

The thing I was most curious about was just the sort of the process of skill acquisition in the off season. You talked in your book about how, especially it's a player that you aren't that familiar with or you haven't worked with them yet. You would watch tape on them to get a better understanding of either their capacities or how they would deal with certain situations and sort of just so you get a better feel of what you're working with. But what I'm more interested in is, let's say it's a player that you do have that history with.

You've been working with them for years. You've kind of established that rapport. You know, there's a mutual trust there. What's the situation like in terms of a given off season? Are they coming to you with ideas of wrinkles? They'd like to add to their game or they're saying, oh, I was playing against so-and-so this past season. And they were doing this really interesting one thing that I'm.

notice that was super effective how can we incorporate that into my game or are they or are you more so breaking down their game and noticing kind of high frequency plays that have a low success rate that can be improved upon and then kind of bringing it to their attention what's the what's the dynamic like there in terms of the driving force behind change for a for a given player especially like a star player who is trying to go from great to like the best so the if it's a player that I know really well previously and have spent the whole year working with, then we have the benefit of having shared a lot of ideas all the way through that process.

So I'm talking to this player every three games or sometimes five games. So they have a really good sense of the things that I've been bringing up, maybe things that are repeatedly coming up over the course of the season, or things that are interesting to them that they then ask questions on and we're digging into those aspects. So by the time we get to the

actual like off season, the plan is kind of revealed itself. Like it's revealed itself throughout the whole season. And then once we get to the end, it's basically like I'll present some ideas on things that we were talking about at various

points in the season that they did not make effective corrections or adjustments to on their own. And so those things may be things, we'll say, okay, let's get on the ice now and let's explore this more like in depth where I'm there, you're there, we're talking through it, we're going through the different skills, the situations, et cetera. Because clearly there was a disconnect. It was probably somewhere, it was probably my fault where I didn't communicate it. I didn't communicate it properly.

And so now I got an opportunity to kind of really collect all the clips I want. and really present my case. And so, and then once we're, like, then the player, of course, like, depending on how long I've worked with them, players I've worked with for a long, long time, like, they're, they already know kind of what I want to do. And so now they're looking at ways in which they can, you know, go in different directions. So they'll say, like, I know you were talking about this particular, you know, situation and some of the skill options that I have here, but I'm also thinking,

and like maybe I could do it this way. And so they're already bringing ideas to it. So like the truth of it is that it's a true collaboration at that point because we have the history of all the development interactions with me and the player throughout the entire season. I've probably talked about this situation maybe eight, 10, 12 times before we even get to the end of the season. So now we already, it's already on the level.

list. I guess it's especially easier for the great players who can sort of more so visualize that stuff and kind of see it on the video and then maybe bring it to their game working with them in 2020 because especially for a player that went through a grueling postseason run where they're in a typical season without a pandemic in place obviously you're playing into late June ideally and then you might have some sort of an offseason surgery or something that precludes you from really kind of extensive physical activity for the next. couple months and the season's already approaching in October so maybe you don't have as much ice time as you'd like to really just kind of grind that stuff out. So being able to actually just,

you know, pop out a bunch of clips on an iPad or on your laptop makes it a lot easier to accomplish that than maybe say, you know, 10 and 15 years ago where you didn't have that luxury. Yeah, that's true. The benefit of having video and me having a better understanding now than 15 years ago about what players can actually transfer without having to go on the ice with me. I have a much better understanding of what's like a four or five clip illustration video that just describes in the great detail exactly what my thoughts are and the player interpreting that and then going out on their own and just executing that either next day in the next game or they work on it, you know, in practice after practice,

and then they're looking to put that kind of stuff in. So there's that aspect where I just didn't know 10, 15 years ago, like what parts could work and what parts couldn't. And then there just are things that you just need time on the ice with. They're just, there's, you know, aspects of the body, the way the body needs to move, that they need to, that they need me there to walk them through what that's supposed to feel like. Because the problem is they can't see themselves.

And even if they have someone there, it's just easier to go through some of those stuff. So when it's movement-based or you're trying to like rebuild a movement, a lot of times that's something that, of course, you're going to need to be hands on. But other things, if it's situational, which much of the stuff is situational. options and adding different ideas to situations that they're in quite frequently, then those types of things we can make pretty quick changes, sometimes just like literally game to game. Well, the player that I think has interested me the most from this perspective just because, you know, he's not necessarily a type of guy where you would just be able to follow him on

Instagram and see the stuff he's working on or it's not necessarily publicized. It's much more kept to himself. But, you know, Cindy Crosby, for example, where especially, early in his career, it would seem like he would just go away for the offseason and come back. And early on in that given year, you'd be able to see exactly what he had been working on. It felt like he would always add one new tool or element that he would be able to use situationally to take advantage of defenses with. And especially thinking back to early in his career in his rookie year, you'd think that a guy

who had 102 points as an 18-year-old would be sort of satisfied with what they accomplished. Instead, he was getting knocked a bit for a really poor, face-off percentage and his ability in the circle. And then he just came back and suddenly got significantly better at it to a point where three, four years down the line, he was one of the elite face-off men in the league. And it was like little stuff like that where it really interested me sort of that process of how he would go into the lab and add new elements to his game, even when he necessarily didn't need to because even without working on those things, he probably would have been one of the best players in the league. But that's how he sort of took himself up

into that rarefied air. Yeah, those, like, Sydney's not unlike all the players that are in that one percent of the one percent in that they're, they're competing for like a different, a whole different thing. Like, it's a whole different idea that they're, that they're chasing. And so that kind of early on in their career, they're very self-aware of where the areas of opportunity are for them. and they are relentless in trying to add those individual pieces to their own game. Now, as they get further down the track in their career, it starts to shift to what they can do or how they can lend their skills to situational play that improves the capacity of people around them.

So that is a phenomenal dynamic because you would think, and this skill development stuff, and we're having this discussion, and we're talking about adding skills and concepts and stuff, you wouldn't, you would assume that the player is only really thinking about themselves and they're only focused on, like, their own game and their own skill set.

But there is a shift that occurs at different times for, and it happens for different players at different times, where it becomes an understanding, of how they can utilize their talents, their skill set, and leverage that in a multitude of different ways to improve the people that are around them. And sometimes it's consistent, sometimes it's consistent line mates,

but the truth of the matter is, very few lines stay together for a long time. In today's NHL, there's a lot of, you might want that to happen, but then there's injuries and there's all kinds of factors that weigh into why lines. may not have real sustainability like it used to be. So you have to expect as a great player in the game that you're going to play

with a multitude of different players. You could probably play with most of the top nine in a given season. And so now it becomes how adaptable am I to different types of players that I'm going to play with? That becomes more of the discussion. Now, you want to talk about fascinating skill development? that's fascinating skill development. Okay, well, speaking of fascinating skill development, how much have you had a chance to work with Nathan McKinnon in the past?

A lot. Yeah, I work with him every year by video, and then we've recently spent a lot more time on the ice. And I mean, he's a different breed. Like, he's in that rarefied air of guys who, believe that he has a legitimate chance to be the best player in the world, lead his team, or be a major factor in his team winning a Stanley Cup. And he's in the, I mean, he's basically a bridesmaid every year for like the heart trophy or

what have you. Like he's, he's, he's in that conversation. And to know him is to know that you're not a real good bridesmaid. Like he's a driven guy who wants to be the best, and he has very, a really, a really astute understanding of how he can create competitive advantages. Like he, and he's always looking for more. So he's a really, he's a fascinating guy because of his age in trying to do this. and how long he's been. We forget how long he's been one of those guys

that you could be in that conversation for Best Player in the World. Like he's in there. And he continues to push the envelope. And I mean, he's a fascinating guy. I mean, I had him out. And he's so intense. Like when we train, he's like, you know,

we go in the rink and he's like, hey, Daryl, how's it going? How's your day? This and that. We go on the ice and it's, all business. Like he's really, and then you come off the ice. It's like, okay, I'll see you later.

Like, what, like, he, he just has that, like, once he puts that helmet on, like, it's about getting maximizing every second he's out there. He's fascinating guy in all aspects. Well, the reason why I asked you about him in particular when we're just speaking about skills development and sort of career arcs is because, you know, most notably for him through years one to four and now it's it's uh contextually you need to note that year one was as an 18 year old and he was highly successful but in those first four years he scored 75 goals on 929 shots at a tune of 8.1 percent and that never really lined up with when you'd see him on on a given

shot how smooth it looked and obviously just the natural talent he had and so for years it kind of left people mystified myself included wondering what's going on here why isn't he scoring to his And it got to the point where, you know, his nadir in that 2016-17 season, he was shooting just 6.4%. And that's highly uncharacteristic for a player with his skill set. And in the past three years, he bumped that all the way up 115 goals on 967 shots. That's 12%. That's much more in line with what we'd expect, especially given the volume of shots he takes. And so I wanted to talk to you about kind of how we account for that improvement, because everyone has a theory.

I've heard, you know, improved dedication to diet and train him. I've heard people speculate how not having Matt Dushan there sort of handed the car keys to him and especially gave him more consistent puck touches. My kind of theory was he learned how to better, as he kind of grew into his game, as a 22-year-old, learned how to better use his speed. And that sort of aligned with what you were talking a lot about in your book in terms of attaching new skills you're learning to your existing best assets already to kind of help smooth out that process because obviously you'd watch him.

And even when he was struggling with a shot, his skating and his power would obviously be very abundantly clear and stick out as a major skill. But I thought he sort of learned how to use that to maximize his shot more in the past couple years in terms of sometimes slowing down, allowing himself to situationally get into better places on the ice. Kind of what have you seen in terms of both the actual product

but also the behind the scenes of working with him that has helped accomplish that improvement because it's clearly changed him from being sort of an interesting player to a guy who is a top three player in the world regardless of your position and also the aves kind of have him now on this amazing team-friendly deal because they signed him at the point when his shooting percentage was where it was in the past. So as it relates to Nathan, there's a couple of interesting components that factor in. So one of the things is when he first started in the league, he spent a significant amount of time on the wing

when he first came in the league, which is, I think, underrated how difficult it is to be flipping back and forth and it's a testament to how difficult it is to play center in the National Hockey League. It's a very difficult thing to do. And so I think that's a factor because when you play wing, you get the puck in different spots. And it's a way different, like you get it in different spots and you get it in different with different angles.

and so he comes out of he comes out of junior house on fire like everything's going his way in terms of the way he was the way he was playing he gets there and then it's like he starts at center he's switched the wing he's back in center he's switched just to the wing for a young player i don't i don't think we can under undercount how difficult how difficult that is the other thing is you have a guy who's generating a lot of offense off the rush with him being the primary puck carrier and anybody who anybody who knows anything really about or has studied shooting, they'll tell you that it's incredibly difficult

to score off the rush when you're carrying the puck. So if you're carrying the puck and you want to try to shoot past a goalie, the level of deception you're going to need to have in order to be able to do that on even just shooting through one guy. So it's off the rush, maybe it's a two-on-two, and you're now going to try to shoot through this defense. You say, okay, yeah, it's a screen. The truth of the matter is, it's from distance at 25 plus feet,

trying to score in the NHL, the precision, the release speed, the ability to hide your shot, the ability to hide your intentions, the ability to change the angle, the ability to catch goalies in tough positions. That's just, like, that just gives you. you maybe a few more percentage points opportunity if you're able to do all of that.

So you got a guy who comes in who's a sophisticated hockey player with an unsophisticated shot who's trying to score on goaltenders who are squared to absolutely everything off the rush if you're carrying it. It's incredibly difficult to score that way. So most of the guys who score off the rush,

most of the guys who score well off the rush, they do have a significant number of plays that they finish that are off the past. You know, travel side to side and you get an opportunity to score off the pass. Or it might be the situations where you're getting an exorbitant number of odd man situations, which help you a lot. But if you take those numbers out, you say it's even. And in the NHL, most rushes are not even even. You're playing, you know, two versus three or three versus four on those entries.

and you're the primary puck carrier as a shooter, it's incredibly difficult. So initially early on in his career, he also didn't have an overly sophisticated low game to be able to come off the back wall or to be able to come off the half waller, or playmate coming up the waller. Now you see him in the high three on two, which I think he's reinvented that whole area. Like he's unbelievable stuff he does up there. These are all major components that contribute to, shooting percentage because you're talking about a shooting percentage that and it's not to discount it

it's just to say like he's probably shooting uh you know x number of shots call it let's say he have 250 shots in a year and he's shooting a hundred and however many off the rush and there's very few of those if they're from 25 feet plus he literally isn't capable of scoring unless unless he happens to like deflect it and it fools the goalie that way. But if it's a clear shot where even off of a screen, the odds of that going in with the level of sophistication he has and he's shooting at that given time,

it's really not, really not possible. And then you see the guy coming a mile away. Like he's coming from his own end, coming all the way through the neutral zone like a house on fire. And then without any real levels of sophistication to be able to finish that play, it just is not a hot, that's just not a high probability.

It just doesn't work. So what has he done? Well, now he has a highly sophisticated shot in which he can beat you from multitude of different angles and distances. He can score off of either foot. His shot is an absolute rocket from 25 feet plus.

He can shoot through a screen. He can shoot with no screen. And he can hide his release, probably better than most guys. Like at that speed, I mean, you can, like, McDavid, obviously is insane, insane speed. And he uses his speed differently, I think, than McKinnon in terms of generating shots. But at the high rate of speed that he's traveling, the way he shoots a puck is incredible and how deceptive it now is.

So those are all major factors into why he would be, his shooting percentage would be very low at that given time and why it took time. to get to a point where he could do it. Because the truth of the matter is, to score a clear shot a slight puck from 25 feet, the national hockey is incredibly difficult. Very few guys can do it. Very few guys could do it. Well, and that's why the act of shooting,

or more so even, you know, the trading behind it and sort of, you know, your quote-unquote shot doctors. It's something we don't really hear as much talked about in hockey circles. Like in the NBA, for example, you've got the Spurs, well-renowned coach over the years, like what he did with Kowai. entered and sort of fixing his shooting motion and that gets much more publicity but in in especially in the NHL now with how good goalies are in 2020 and as you're making a stute point there like if they can see it

and know and kind of expect even more so where it's coming from and when it's coming they'll be able to line it up and stop and more times than not we've seen um you know creative players like an austin matthews or philip forsberg sort of start incorporating deception into their game to shoot from these weird unpredictable angles to try and catch the goalie sleeping. And sort of stuff like that is so fascinating to me because it's not as simple as just in the offseason, oh, I'm going to get a lot stronger by hitting the weights or I'm going to just take a million shots like I would in basketball until I get the accuracy down or I can shoot faster.

Like it's there's so many, because obviously there's a goalie on the other side of things that's also trying to stop you from scoring. So there's such a sort of a push and pull there and a fascinating dynamic in terms of players working on their shots in the offseason that I don't think it's talked about enough. So a good example to this was one of my early studies that I did on goal scoring as I was trying to understand shooting and if I could make an impact on players who were trying to come to me to do shooting. I was like, okay, who's the best shooter? Well, okay, like you have a vetchkin, but he's a bit of an outlier.

So it's tough to study that guy because his asset base is just not, it's just it doesn't lend itself. to help others very much, right? So now I go, okay, well, let's take a look at Stamco's. He's dropping 60 balls. Like, let's take a look at this guy. So you watch him and you're like, okay, what's your first impression of Stamco? It's okay, well, yeah, he shoots it really well off the rush. You can change speeds, you've got great speed, and he can change the angle and he can score

off the rush. But he's also got that, like, one-neigh, one-timer he shoots from the dot. And you're like, okay, so those are obviously the two places he scores from him. until you study his 60 goals. And then you realize, like, yes, he does score from those two spots, but he also is scoring of those 60, probably over half of them are from other spots. He's scoring backhands.

He's scoring net front scramble goals. He's scoring, like, catch-and-shoot-type plays, one-timers off the rush, and he's late sometimes, and sometimes he's scoring off the breakaway. And so the big lesson in goals' scoring, which may be different from, like, as you're trying to, you know, create some equation to other sports or, like, for basketball, for example, is the number of tools you've got to have in the toolkit in order to score, and the number of areas in which you need to score,

be able to be effective in, in order to score a high volume of goals is a lot. So when you get to the off-season, you say, I want to improve my shots. Well, when I look at, I'm going to look at your 200 shots that you took last year or 300 shots that you took last year. I'm going to categorize them all. I'm going to put them all in buckets. Okay, this was off the rush, off wing. This is in zone backhand. This is walkouts from the back wall.

These are cross-ice one-timers on the power play. I'm going to categorize them all. I'm going to find out what the success rate is in each of those spots. And then it turns out, you might have 10, 12 spots that you're getting over 20 shots a year on. So we got to improve you in 20 different spots. Like, this is what you're asking. Like, this is what it is, right? And then you've got to say, well, how are you getting into these spots?

Because sometimes it's not even the shot, shot selection, the velocity of the shot. You wonder why it's so difficult to score in the National Hockey League. Like that's why. It's because diversity of skill, shooting skill that you have to have. You cannot just say, well, I'm this guy, and this is how I'm going to score. It just doesn't fly like that. You have to have a diversity of toolkit, which is why it takes years. Like when we embarked upon like Pat Kane's adjustment to try to find his way into 40 goals,

like it took almost just over two years to build out that skill set, to get himself where he could score from distance. He could shoot off the pass. He had always had his backhand and everything that was close to the net and his ability to deceive. He had a lot of that. But the distances didn't line up. Couldn't get into areas that you can score a high volume of goals.

So it took time to get there. And that's where you say, yeah, you're going to be able to give credibility to getting bigger and stronger and working in the gym, of course. but that's just to get the goals from 25 feet plus, which are, that's just one aspect. And then you have, you know, the dynamics of the shooting dynamics, and you have the deception, then you have the spacing and changes speed,

and you have angle change, and you have all the different elements that go into that. It makes it quite a daunting process for a lot of players. That's why it's so difficult. Yeah, there are so many elements that go into it. And you got into this in your book a little bit, but I think something that gets overlooked is, not necessarily the preparation for a pass that's coming, but your ability to receive it and kind of

in one motion take advantage of that changing puck line with the past. I think of someone like Rock Besser, for example, where I think he has one of the best pure shots in the game. And if you watch his wrist shot, it's a thing of beauty. But sometimes, especially on the power play, he's receiving a pass from Pedersen or Hughes. And between the time he receives it and then gets ready to load up his wrist shot, you could go crack yourself a beer and make a sandwich. But between in doing so. And it's like it kind of defeats the purpose of that beautiful east-west passing that every power play in today's game seems to be utilizing. So I think that like kind of that ability to maximize the passes you're receiving and score quickly is a huge asset. Whereas you see someone like

Artemi Panera or something, you really can't throw him a bad pass. You can almost in one quick swing, receive a pass behind him and instantly make something of it. So I think that that's a really important attribute to shooting that doesn't really get talked about enough because we kind of just focus on the pure mechanics of the release and whether it goes into the net or not. Well, this is where expectation is such a huge advantage. And the difference between, you know, a guy who scores 30 goals and a guy who's able to bridge himself into 40 or 40 plus is expectation, the benefit of expectation. And the benefit of expectation means I know I'm going to get these many shots every night.

and I know that they're probably going to be in these similar situations, some of which are going to be identical to the way in which I normally would be getting these situations, and some of them will have nuances because it's hockey. And while every breakout looks the same, you can call it a breakout, or every entry is an entry, you can tally it. Oh, yep, that was an entry. The truth is when you look at it, it's like a fingerprint. It looks like a finger, but when you look really closely, there's lots of different,

and every one of them is different in some way. And so every shot is different in some way. And so the benefit of expectation allows you to have variability. So if I know I'm likely in these types of situations, the players I'm playing with, probable that they're going to be looking for me in these spots, now I have the benefit of expectation. I'm going to get my feet set in a proper position.

I'm going to get my stick ready to go. So when the puck arrives, I'm already in the shooting motion, when the puck arise. There's a lot of problems with guys who score less. One of the biggest challenges they have is they don't have the benefit of expectation. They're going to get a chance to score today,

and that same chance might not occur for another four games. So they don't have the benefit of expectation. So they're not sure if they're getting this puck. They're not sure which chances are coming. They're kind of trying to be ready for everything. And in doing that, if you're ready for everything, you're ready for nothing. So that's the problem, right?

So the guys who can score at high levels, they have the benefit of expectation that's surrounded by their asset base. They know that they're going to get these many chances from these spots. They know that they can manipulate the game and bend it to their favor to create more of these particular situations.

And then if the first one doesn't go in today, that's okay because I'm going to get another one. And so now I'm ready for the next one. So it makes it a lot easier to work themselves out of those situations where another guy, you know, he's scoring one every four game by average and he's got to be diverse. He's probably only of those 20 goals, only seven are going to, his highest number is going to be seven that come from recurring situations. It's a lot of games you're playing in a lot of situations that you're going to have to score those seven. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah. That's what the benefit of expectation. is, is to have that and like the fastest to 100 to get those more chances and more instances that's the key. And that's why like so a guy like Besser, you're seeing

you go, okay, like what's the next level for him? The next level for him might be finding ways to understand his own game to the point in which he understands where he can leverage the benefit of expectation. 2020

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kind of surprised or taken aback a bit by how physically skilled like every single player in the NHL is. You think of, you know, let's say like your fourth liner or your seventh defenseman that's not trying into the lineup every night. You sort of, it's easy to talk yourself into that player just not being that skill,

but then you kind of remember that, oh, they're in the NHL for a reason. And you could watch a team practice where, you know, a fourth line guy who's kind of a grinder and might just be in the lineup to get in a fight every once in a while is out there toe dragging and picking corners with their shots and doing high level skill plays that you would never really see them do in a game setting. I do wonder how much of it as well is just sort of that mentality that we don't talk enough about what separates the great players

from the rest is sort of that willingness to use those high-risk plays that they have in their toolbag as opposed to players who can do amazing stuff in practice or when they're out there on the ice with you by themselves, but whether it's because of coaching or whether it's because of their own experiences, they're not going to be out there trying that because if it doesn't work out, they're going to get in trouble.

So instead they're making the safe play, they're dumping it out, or they're just kind of not trying to do anything that's going to get them bench. And I wonder how much of that plays into it too. Well, the amount of mental toughness that you have to have to overcome your situation or outperform your situation

in the NHL is under talked about for certain. It is incredibly difficult to outperform your situation. If you're a fourth-line player playing anywhere between four and 12 minutes a night, but you don't know, is tonight going to be four or is tonight going to be 12? Like, I don't know until I get there. And if I'm there, I might not even be in today. I'm going to get to the, I could be in, I could be out. I could be, lots of things can happen.

I could be in and then I could move up or I could be out. Anything can happen here on this particular day and I got to be. And like I said before, when you're ready for everything, you're ready for nothing at the same time. So it's very difficult for those guys. And yeah, I think that the average fan doesn't realize, like, especially in today's game, like you take away like the enforcer era where it may not be, have been as true. although like now you take a look at at some guys who might fit into that

into that box like in today's games you take a look like a guy like Matt Martin people forget like the guy's dropped 30 goals in the OHO he's a good player like you don't do that like those guys were really good my point is those guys were really good at one time someone thought that they were elite and they were they were talked about

as though they were elite for either their area or their league or what have you at one particular point. And now they've kind of progressed themselves ultimately. Now they're like either just trying to find their way in the NHL or they settled into a role in the NHL. The amount of skill that they have and the amount of skill that's really unappliable that they have, like they have a suitcase of skill that they probably just can't utilize as much because they don't have the benefit of,

of leveraging their success rate. So one of the big differences and advantages that an elite player has, an elite player means elite offensive players, you know, bona fide top three, top four player offensively on their team is they have the benefit of, they can leverage the benefit of their success rates and the frequency in which they're playing.

So the guy can come through the neutral zone and yeah, he's required, he's he has, he's in charge with the ability to carry the puck across the line. But of course, every so often, the puck's going to get turned over. He's going to get ticked. He's going to make a play that the defender breaks up and they're going to go down the other way and they're going to score. Some people in the league, the top guys in the league, have the benefit of being able to do that and get right back out there the next shift and off they go. And it doesn't really, they can leverage the fact that their entry rates are so high that the few that they don't

get are no problem and their frequency of doing it also is is a big deal and so they're good that way they don't have to worry about that now I'm fourth line guy I'm coming through the neutral zone this is my second shift of the period and this is coming out of a tv timeout in which i've already been sitting around for seven eight nine minutes of actual time not game time actual like lifetime now I get out there and I get that puck that's a whole different puck for me That's a whole different puck with a whole different set of parameters that surround it mentally of what I'm able to do with this puck, what I should be doing. It's only my second shift of the game. I need to get this puck.

I got to do something with it. Now, maybe I got time and space. Maybe I got options. Maybe I got whatever. But really, I need to make perhaps a safer play here to get myself in the game and to just not provide any reason to take me out or to give my line an opportunity. opportunity to stay in this thing. Those are real considerations for a lot of guys, and that's what I mean about a guy having a suitcase full of skills.

He's not always able to use. And it's very difficult sometimes, most of the time, for a player to outperform his situation. Because the situation I'm talking to you about that we just described, that's a real situation. We've all seen it 100 times. And you say, well, why did the guy dump it in or why didn't he make a better play? Well, the circumstances that surround that make it incredibly difficult. The level of mental toughness and the level of, you know, ability to just say like, okay, yeah, I'm going to make the right play here regardless.

I mean, you're asking too much at that point. Well, I think in the inverse in terms of a player who does have a luxury to experiment with that stuff and try something that a typical forefine I wouldn't was. And this is kind of a recent example from the postseason that really had me. thinking about this was in game one of the East Final versus Islanders, there was this goal that wound up, you know, being on all the highlight reels and it was viral. And I tweeted a video out about it and it got thousands and thousands of shares. And it was Nikita Kucharov kind of receiving this breakout pass. He's filling the center lane. Kevin Shattonkirk breaks it out. And kind of in one motion, he just flicks his blade a little bit to redirect the puck in the air to Brayden Point as he's flanking him on the right

wing and it's this one fluid motion point receives it in stride he winds up eventually getting it back to kutraov for an easy tap in and it kind of looked like this play that almost like breaks the laws of physics you're wondering how it's even possible and it was it was just a beautiful play and everyone in the comments was like wow what a talented play like how gifted is nikita kutrov and certainly just the ability to physically do that and lead point in stride is wonderful but for me what was interesting about it was the mental calculation of like who even thinks to do that and execute that play like beyond like i think your typical player would just receive that puck in a very traditional sense by stopping it on their stick and they might still wind up with the same result but it wouldn't

have been as fluid of emotion and an allowed point to keep going in stride like that and so for me that the mental part of it is almost even more interesting than like the physical skill involved in executing a play like that if that makes sense yeah like a plays like that that that is a problem solving play by an elite player who has a wide swath of skills to choose from. And he just happens to innovate a skill on the moment to create it, to solve a problem. And so you say, well, okay, how many players in the world can make that play? Well, he might be the only guy. Well, he's the only guy I've ever seen make that play.

So you can safely argue maybe he's the only guy that has that capacity to make that play. But you take the top 20 players in the national hockey that you put them in the exact same situation. They may not make that play, but they're going to make another play that solves the problem maybe as well. Just maybe not be like ramping the puck so it flips over the D stick and lands perfectly on point stick that gives him the opportunity. And so all that to say, like the innovation or situational innovation,

which is what you're talking about now, an ability to leverage skill set and understanding of situation and spacing and timing and all the things that go into that. He has a capacity to problem solve beyond the level of innovate those types of things. And you could go to the famous like Ovechkin

where he was, I think it was in Phoenix years ago where he was like rolling on the ground and you know, hit, pulled the puck back. Like that's a situational play that, you know, he's never done it since.

You know, it just happened to happen in that moment. And I would tell you that the number of times that those situations happen in a game that are less flashy because it doesn't lead to a goal, but that they are outside the player's normal skill set. They don't normally use those skills, but it's a reaction

to problem solve is way higher than we think. And much deeper in the lineup than we give credit to. All right. One final thing I want to talk to you about before we get out of here is this kind of concept of translatable skills versus placeholder skills. And I think, you know, especially come draft season every year where, you know, your scouts are trying to sort of evaluate with a young player, particularly coming out

of major junior, I'd say in terms of asking the question of, will they be able to keep doing what they've done, especially if they've done? especially if they've been putting up lofty point totals at the lower level and sort of getting by on high-scale plays versus inferior competition. I think what we really mean by that is once the game speeds up and your time and space is decreased, are you going to be able to leverage those assets you had? And there's certainly an adjustment period for every player,

as we talked about with Nathan McKinnon, who took four years to sort of kind of figure that out and figure out how to better use the skills. but just that kind of concept of players coming to the next level, identifying skills that will and won't work. That's a really interesting one to me. And I know you got into that in your book a little bit, but I've certainly had some wake-up calls in my years evaluating players

where I would just kind of look at what they did at the H.L, for example, and they'd produce offensively and you'd go, okay, well, you know, you can safely project that they'll be, be able to at least do something at the NHL level and then you actually watch them play at the NHL and you realize that it's an entirely different animal and maybe what they were doing that allow them to be successful just doesn't fly anymore and I guess it comes down to figuring out how you can sort of adjust for that and adapt for that whether it's a question of foot speed or hand speed or processing speed and how you're going to acclimate yourself but I don't know like

what's you've been your relationship with that in terms of you know either seeing players that have come through and you've worked with or seeing players that have produced at lower levels and then been kind of wary of what it was going to look like when they got to the NHL. So every time I've endeavored into this path of projection from one level to the next, the times in which I've spent there and the longer I've spent there, the more time I realize I have no business projecting anybody to do anything. Like it is a, It is, you know, there are some pretty like hard, fast things that you can take a look at and say, yeah, like, that way in which the player generates chances to score at one level is probably not going to be as translatable as he moves to the next level. And so the next question and the questions that I've evolved myself in my level of thinking to be able to start thinking about is less about the skill in, I.

isolation. So, hey, this guy scores from, you know, this guy scores 25 goals a year. And of those 25 goals a year, like 15 of them are right from the paint, like right in the paint. But he's like 5, 10 and may not have like man strength yet. He's just a kid. And so now you're like, okay, can he keep those 15 in the National Hockey League? Well, getting to the paint, the national hockey is incredibly difficult. And you're going through an ocean of men who are there that literally create a wall and make it very difficult for you to get there. So the question is, the easy answer is, well, no, he can only keep 10 of these. The other 15, he's got to get rid of because he's going to take him however many years until he gets man's strength and he figures it out. And even then we're not quite sure if he's actually going to be able to get there. So let's safely just cast those ones aside.

What we haven't factored in, which I am now starting to do a better job of, is what other skills does he have to problem solve the fact that he can't get there? So let's just take them off the table. That's fine. But that doesn't mean he may be able to keep some of them because he might now, instead of bullying his way there, he might be able to arrive there when the puck gets there. And he's got an elite stick when he gets there. and he's got great timing. He can read the 45 so he knows where he needs to go, and he's got great timing to get there.

So he can still get to the paint. He just can't get there and stand there like he did before. Does he have that ability? Where else in his game has he shown an adaptability to be able to show an elite level of timing or an elite level of anticipation or to be able to read carums and alike at a high level? If he can do that,

maybe there's some possibilities that we can get him there where he doesn't have to physically stand there, which would be not projectable. So the problem solving component of it, and then just talking, then you have to try to talk to player, which you don't have the benefit of because, you know, when most of us are trying to project, we don't, we're not there in the trenches talking to the actual player. So you don't know what other levels of capacity are, what it's learning capacity is, what other things he's thinking of. All you're going on is either stat models that you've built.

or what you're able to watch him do at that level and compare that to similar players that you have seen that you can draw some double comparison. The one thing I know for sure is that it's all individual, and that's why it's such a crapshoot. You're going to win some, you're going to lose some. But the true indicator is the one aspect that we have the hardest time identifying with, and that is ability to problem solve when it's not.

there because a great player is going to innovate so we talked about wait we had this thing uh we did this in the start of covid that i i did with my daughter and a few of her teams we or a few few kids from her team we set up these zoom calls and i had my clients come on like go through clips it's like fantasy hockey like you go through a clip and the nchl players describing like what what they're see what they factor in what things are important to them etc etc like unbelievable type stuff. So we get there, one of the guys, of course, we have was Patrick. Patrick was talking about

the delay. And he said, you know, when I was in London, I didn't have to delay. I didn't do, I didn't really pull up very much. I never really pulled up all that much. I could change speeds or I felt like I could take the corner. I could, I could generate offense without really ever having to pull up. Very few times I feel like I needed to. I get to the NHL and I realize that all those things that I was doing

in London to be able to get by this defenseman or put the defenseman in a bad spot, like none of those were working. so now all of a sudden he builds a delay game and which now he's famous for this delay game like his delay game is top two top three in the league maybe for the duration of his career he's that good off the delay he never used it hardly ever in London

like that wasn't a thing that he thought about he never really it wasn't a big part of his game he was he was generating a whole different way but now he gets there and he realizes well this is not going to fly like this doesn't work against these type of guys. I need to do something else. So I know I'm going to pull up.

I'm going to pull up and start finding people late. And now it becomes like, and then he just, you know, snowballs and builds. And that's a skill. He's adding after the fact at like 155 pounds in his rookie year in the National Hockey League, he realizes I'm probably not going to be able to step by some of these guys.

I'm going to need to do something else. That you can't account for that. How do you account for, well, he doesn't. it this way in London and this is how he scores whatever 65 goals or however many he scored there now he's

not going to be able to do like I'm sure that you could look at his game then and say well I'm sure he's probably not going to be able to do some of those things there so how many could he keep would you be able to confidently say well he never delays maybe he'll just do that you can't confidently say that but he did

and that's a big reason why he was able to generate points in those first couple of years because we didn't have that. He wasn't getting to the pain at 155 pounds. He wasn't getting into those areas. He wasn't able to step by guys like he does now. He was able to control them, control their feet,

but actually step by and be able to have to take a long route to get around some of these guys. So you have to come at it a different way. That level of problem solving you can't account for, yet that's the level of problem solving that you're going to need to be able to translate skill. And we don't know. So what other parts of Patrick's ability do we know we can leverage to be able to build a delay game if we need one?

Well, he can manipulate people off the rush. He understands how to square defenders. He understands how to move people from the inside to the outside to the inside. He can change speeds. He can do all of these. He can turn. He can face up. He can protect the puck.

He can do all the elements of things that you want a guy to be able to threaten to pass to move. stick. He can do all these things. And then it was just up to him to start packaging it together. But he had all those skills to be able to problem solve because that's the other problem. You and I can sit here and say, yeah, you need to problem solve. But if you don't have the depth of skill, you got to have the depth that we, I call it ancillary skill. Like, if you don't have all the other skills that surround it, I can't just say to Pat, hey, you know what? Maybe he should pull up. If he doesn't have those abilities to manipulate the defensemen, All I'm doing is delaying the crunch.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm just delaying the crunch. You know, do you want to get hit after you pull up and it's like a little slower? Or do you want to get hit more at full speed? Like, it's up to you, but you're going to get hit because you don't have the ancillary skills to be able to really make this work. So it's very interesting. And then the timing of the delay, which is really important too, because if you delay too early, you're going to get the, the, defending forward is going to come down and trap down on you.

So when is the right time? And the depth of the delay is really important. How do you build the depth of delay? So one of the things that we talk a lot about is when you get that puck in the neutral zone to set up the delay, where do you want to get it? Because it's a big factor. Like two feet closer to the offensive blue line means you're probably going to have to stop just after the line. But if you get it two feet closer to the red line, now you have more of an opportunity to manipulate. that might give you the opportunity to get to the top of the circle.

And the difference between a delay at the top of the circle when a delay right at the offensive blue line in terms of time, space, opportunity to be able to make plays to the backside, which is really where a lot of those real good chances come from, is significantly more. Well, I think what you were getting at there, especially with a stopping up and kind of manipulating the fenceman is the idea of playing fast for skating fast, or especially the process of speed and that's something I'd really come around to a lot over the past couple years as as a talent evaluator where I think it's really easy for us to sometimes get preoccupied or really

enamored with someone who very visibly skates fast but then after you think about it like how often at the NHL level are you even being given the ability to just skate full speed north south across the entire ice surface without like unabated right like usually someone's gaping up on you there's a structured defense in place you're going to have to use your smarts you're going to have to change speeds you're going to have to give off the illusion that you're moving faster than you are especially if you aren't a burner or you're going to have to make quick cuts and accelerate in small spaces to kind of weave through defenders and so that's something i've i really come around on that idea that um not be not necessarily just being down on a player because they

are visibly the best skater out there because most of the highest skilled players in the league aren't necessarily the fastest skaters. They are the fastest, you know, game processors and problem solvers in their ability to keep defenders on their heels with their unpredictability, which gives the illusion that they're skating faster, but they aren't, you wouldn't necessarily, you know, put like an Artemi Pernar and a foot race with Andreas Athenisi or Kisperi Kappanin, but their ability to actually make decisions with the puck and make defensemen feel like they're moving a million miles per hour faster than they actually are is incomparable to.

those other players. And so that idea of skating fast versus actually functionally playing fast with the puck is something that's taken a while to adjust to. But now is something that I consider significantly more when I'm sort of weighing how effective a player is going to be or how their game translates or if they're moving to a new team, how they're going to be able to use them. Because I do think it's such an important component in today's game. You cannot have speed as your far and away best asset and be successful in the National Hockey League. You can have speed as your best asset, but it can't be far and away above and beyond other pieces. And the difference between that, the gap between how good your speed is and how good

the other aspects of your game are, particularly processing and use of speed, then that's where you're problem lies. So as it relates to speed, the best speed, is a differential of speed. That's the best speed. So the guys who are able to manipulate speed, and you mentioned almost every one of the ways in which you do it, the real way of the real advantage of speed is the ability to have a differential, a change.

So to have, you want to have a situation in which you are speeding up and everyone else or the people that are defending, you are slowing down or you the people that are defending you are speeding up and you are slowing down or you know what I mean or you feel people slowing down so you slow down or you feel people speeding but if you feel people speeding up and you speed up that's the one problem that you're going to have all the others are good uses of speed so these things and the way you play fast is the the the play fast the NHL and the higher leagues not even the It's the speed of the puck.

So what dictates the speed of the puck? Well, that's the speed off the puck. So your speed can't be central to what you're doing on top of the puck. Most of your speed you're going to build to create the speed of the play is going to be what you're doing away from the puck. Which is also a differential because where it's contested, like where the puck is contested, And where you are, you have a laneway of speed or opportunity to build speed on that side. But where the puck is, it could be very slow because it's being contested. So the differential speed between where it's contested and where you are, that's an advantage,

which in which you can improve the speed of play. So the way I would like to take a look at speed or the way I try to look at speed is in the terms of differential and the way in which you can influence the speed of the play, not the speed of you, the speed of the play, and the capacity that the play has because of your correct application of speed. So skating, it cannot be your best far and away asset because if you don't understand how it's used in differentials, what happens is you skate really fast into people.

And we've seen players like that. They just skate really fast, and they have this initially, because people know who they are, they're really fast, and you see the defenders back up. You're like, oh, look at the space he's creating, because everyone's got to back off of him. But the guy just skates right through that advantage and right and closes off his own space.

And you're like, well, that didn't help. Or you have a guy who's unbelievable, he gets through the neutral zone. The next thing you know, you blink your eye, and he stopped in the corner. without having made a real play. You're like, well, that was great. He transported the puck brilliantly,

but then he paints himself into a corner, well, that's not effective. So his speed was ineffective in the context of the rest of the play. And the problem with speed is it's always in relation to your speed in relation to others. And you look at the guys who have elite,

elite speed and live by speed, the McDavid's of the world and, you know, like guys like McKinnon and guys like that. Yes, you can see them coming and, you know, when you watch a game, you see McDavid kind of wheel to the weak side and then he starts coming up. I mean, it's unbelievable to see and you see people back up, but his utilization of speed. I mean, this guy starts below his goal line and he's getting a breakaway from the top of the circle in at the other end. You just don't do that without knowing when to.

accelerate and where you want to get the puck and how you're going to then utilize that, that's his advantage. It's not his raw speed, although that's his asset. You could argue it's not his best asset. His best asset is his use of speed and his timing of when he uses it. That's the real asset. And yes, he has speed to burn, but it's when he uses it. That's what the key is. That's where that's where we have to be better when we're talking to players. And that's why I try to attach every skill we talk about to the mental component of how are you applying this? What situations does it apply in creating those questions because it's that application of that skill. You have to connect it.

Because if you don't connect it to the mind, you're done. Yeah. Yeah, that's very well. So it's like a pitcher who it's great if you throw 100 miles an hour and that's your fast. ball, but if you're only throwing that, eventually every hitter is just going to line it up and know what to expect, whereas if you throw 92, you can still be effective if you got a mean change up to mix in and keep them off their balance. So, Darrell, this is a, this was a blast.

I'm glad we got to do this. As we were going here, I realized that we weren't going to be able to get to everything, and I think we're just going to have to do this again sometime down the road. You got into a lot of these other sort of actionable concepts that we didn't have time to get into in your book. And this is where I recommend that everyone goes and reads it if they enjoy the show. And I'm going to give you an opportunity here to tell the listeners a little bit about it, you know, what's a call, where they can find it and kind of what they can expect from it.

So it's called Belfry Hockey and strategies to teach the world's best players, best athletes. And you can find it on Amazon. But really what it starts off as is an acknowledgement of how difficult it was for me. to learn to teach and to learn to get to this point. So it's a bit of an autobiographical, like telling you all the different mistakes I made and the things that I've uncovered to give me a chance to utilize my best asset, which is my teaching ability to be able to teach these players. And then as we go further in the book, it starts to get into a lot more about

some views on actual player development and skill development and what that that's like at the top level. And so that's pretty much what it is. Well, I highly recommend it. It really got me thinking about some of this stuff in a different, more unique way. And I'm not just saying that just because I had you on the show. I had you on the show because I really enjoyed the book.

So everyone go go check it out. And Darrell, we're going to have to do this again sometime on the road, okay? Thank you very much. I'm a great day. The Hockey Pediocast, Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim. and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast.