The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 399: Round Two Results

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Andrew Berkshire joins the show to discuss how the Canadiens beat the Jets, how the Lightning beat the Hurricanes, and round two of the NHL postseason. Topics include: Enjoying the playoffs vs. trying to learn from them Individual talent vs. team structure when it comes to defending How Montreal dominated Winnipeg at 5-on-5 Paul Maurice talking about analytics Lineup balance and depth in this year's heavy schedule Cole Caufield's early playmaking before the goals have come Trying to match up against Colorado or Vegas Tampa Bay's strategy vs. Carolina How their power play keeps scoring all of the goals Victor Hedman's movement How they exploited the cap to their advantage Big offseason decisions for the Hurricanes How they can take the next step as contenders If you haven't yet, please go take a minute to leave a rating and review for the show. If you're busy and don't feel like writing anything, it's all good. Just hit the 5-star button. Each one counts, and helps us out. If you're feeling extra generous, you can also leave a note about why you recommend people check the show out. Thanks for the help! 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.

On a beautiful run through the park, on a pleasant day, you can easily get lost. No, no, no. She didn't kill him. Huh? In your true crime podcast. It was the pool guy. So obvious. Whatever motivates you works for us. It's all about letting your run be your run. And Brooks is here for every runner.

Doing the research and sweating the details to create gear that works for you. It's your run. Brooks, run happy. progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast. Post, Dimitri. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich and joining me for the first time in a long time.

I think since the preseason, it's my good buddy, Andrew Berkshire. Andrew, what's going on, man? Not much. I'm excited to be on the PDR cast. I love this podcast so much. And I think I speak for pretty much everyone who listens that, man, you just do just great work. And I'm just, I'm glad that this podcast has gone on so long,

Demetri. and I think that it's a credit to the work that you put in. Well, first off, you have a standing invite for the show. You've been on many times. You've contributed to it. You don't need to butter me up. You'll be back. It's not the reason why I haven't had you on since the preseason.

We actually had you on for the trade deadline, and we just, the audio difficulties didn't prevent it us from that posting it. But thank you. There are some people based on the iTunes reviews, and please go leave us a five-star rating and review, of course. there's some people that for some reason just listen but really don't like the show, which is fine too. I mean,

they're helping to contribute to downloads. So just keep that coming. Get those listens in. Exactly. All right. So here's the plan today. I don't know if you feel this way. I mean, you have your own podcast.

I can talk about that as well along the way. I struggle with in-series analysis for this stuff because, you know, you could talk about a game, especially like, oh, this team's up to one. And you have all these takeaways from the first. three games. And then like if I record it and then I have to wait to post it until the next morning. And then they're already playing game four or whatever the following night. And the other team just comes back and destroys them and makes you look like an idiot. And it seems like that happens all the time. And so for me, it's like this stuff's changing so quickly. And the series are evolving

that I really like to just wait for the full whatever four to seven games to play out before I like get to rewatch it and actually have some sort of tangible takeaways from it. But obviously in the content business, I feel like people really want to hear about this stuff as it's happening in real time. Yeah, I agree. It's really tough. And I find like my podcast, like the, because I work, it goes through the locked on podcast network and they want everything to be out like really early in the morning. So we published Tuesdays and Thursdays and we often record Monday and Wednesday like late afternoon. And because of that, you're missing the games that night, right? So like we had to talk about the Canadians game against the Jets when it was three one or three

nothing and we talked about it as if they could sweep or if the jets held on right so you had you had to obviously tell the listeners like we're recording this before but it it's tough to manage like being relevant when things change so quickly in the playoffs like we talked we talked before about how like momentum game to game in the playoffs is kind of just a media thing and not real so like things can change completely like look at the colorado vegas series you know game one it looked like it was one and done, you know? And all of a sudden, Colorado is in major trouble. Well, and I think the habs are a perfect example of that.

And we're going to talk about the habs jets here off the top. I didn't really get a chance to talk about this series and in the lead up to it because the turnaround for the haves was obviously so fast where they just basically had the one day off between game seven against the leaps and game one at the start of the series. And when I was recording my round two preview, I think at the time, the haves were still down three, two to the leaves at the time. It was like over the weekend before their game six. And I remember being like, should we like just talk about this as if it's going to be Leif's Jets because it seems like that probably is the most rational outcome here.

And boy, am I glad that I did not do that because that would have been a very unfortunate take. So yeah, but listen, since then the Habs have ripped off six straight wins, seven if you include the game five overtime win. They haven't trailed in that time. So I guess that kind of segues us into talking about the Habs and Jets. And I don't know. Where do you want to kick off this conversation? can be about the series itself or it can be about the HABs specifically in terms of their playoffs so far and kind of we can even look ahead to what's the common round three yeah i think this

series is just so hard to figure out how to rate the canadians right now because i think over over the course of the season for the most part uh especially before the coaching change we knew that they were a very strong five on five team but that really faded out as the season went on but a lot of that drop came when Brennan Gallagher went down to injury, right? And then at the same time, Thomas Tatar was injured. Filippe Deneau also got a concussion near the end of the season. So it's like somewhat expected that they would be stronger at five on five, but then in the Maple Leaf series, they kind of weren't, right? Like, that's not what tilted the series. They got better as the series went on, especially at the beginning of games. But overall, like, they weren't amazing at five on

five, they just kind of weathered the storm and cut out the highest of high danger chances from Matthews, essentially, right? So it's like you give credit to, like, to know for sacrificing all offense just to be like the ultimate Thomas Placannock clone and try to shut down the best players in the playoffs. But this Jets series, like, they absolutely throttled them. And, you know, losing Mark Scheifley and Dylan DeMello in the first game makes a huge difference. but it was not even a competition. It was crazy how badly the Jets were outplayed. And the Jets aren't a great five-on-five team, right? But they just never had a hope.

Even in that game four where Price spotted Logan Stanley two freebies there, not to take anything away from Stanley's little snipe jobs, but they weren't goals that should have gone in. The Jets just outside of Halebuck and maybe Eilers didn't show up. Well, that's what I struggle with, It's not just this series, but the playoffs as a whole, it's like balancing those two parts of your brain or on the one hand you're thinking, like, as a rational human being. It's like, how do we make sense of what happened here? What do we learn from this moving forward? And then the other half of your brain, it's kind of like devil and the angel, I guess, is a better comparison for it where it's like, the NHL playoffs are complete chaos sometimes.

Yeah. You don't need to make sense of it because sometimes it doesn't make sense. And there are necessarily any lasting takeaways. It can change on a fly. We've seen countless times. I mean, this is a great example. where a team sweeps and wind one round and then they get swept in the next round. And it's like if you had taken any sort of definitive takeaways or hard stands in between those,

you'd wind up looking pretty stupid. And that sometimes just happens. And I think for me, this Habs team is a perfect example of that where I think it's okay to acknowledge that this isn't your typical final four team, right? When they play at an 86 point pace over the full season, they had a negative goal differential. they had a coaching change, their highest paid player and biggest star as a goalie. Like, yeah, acknowledge all that. But at the same time, they did, as you mentioned, just crush this Jets team, which I think we all had serious reservations about heading in even after they swept the oilers

because it was like, all right, well, if Connor Hullabuck keeps saving six goals above expected for every four games he plays or whatever he did, then they'll look pretty good. But as soon as he even, and he wasn't a problem in this series by any means, but as soon as he's not the best goalie ever and he's just really good, that's a big issue for them. And that's kind of what we saw in the series. Yeah, I mean, Hellebuck, I thought, especially in game four, was absolutely incredible.

Like that game could have been eight to nothing if Price had not made those mistakes or eight to two, I guess if he did. And just Hallibuck was unbelievable in that game. And, you know, it's hard to figure out how much of it is that the Jets just were defeated going into it. And, you know, losing two of them. their most important players, you know, took the wind out of their sales. And how much was it that the Canadian just played incredible systems hockey, right? Like in terms of the high-end talent, they just straight up don't have it offensively,

even defensively, I guess you could say outside of like a couple of players or like, Dono is a great defensive hockey player. But overall, like, they're very unified. and they played a essentially perfect series against the Jets. And part of that, of course, is due to the Jets not being a great five-on-five team and needing to get those cross-ice passes to get goals. And also the fact that, you know, as great as Halebuck was, at even strength, Price had something like 96.5% save percentage on high danger chances in the series.

It's hard to win when that happens. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting point you raised there. I think, you know, something that I've struggled with over the years is I think it's really tough to sort of fake it till you make it offensively because talent is kind of is the most important thing in terms of creating offense and scoring goals. And you can put your players in a position to succeed, I guess. But if you don't have at least like one driver on your line that is going to create those chit looks for people, you're going to have a tough time putting the puck into the net. I think defensively, like, do you think it's fair to say that the structure of the team or sort of the way, they're being played is probably a more important thing than actual defensive ability.

And that's maybe why we see such wild fluctuations in terms of defensive metrics year over year, especially when, like, if players switch teams, because it's like probably being asked to play a different position they did in the previous year. And that's why they're getting different results. I mean, I think Joel Edmondson is a good argument for that, right? Like, he was absolutely brutal on the Carolina Hurricanes last year. And this year stuck with Jeff Petrie on his hip, he was able to simplify his game. And his results have spoken for themselves.

like they're getting getting incredible quite a bit too in that regard yeah oh absolutely but i mean his underlying numbers are much much better yeah much better and have maintained that uh that like on a relative scale have maintained in the playoffs as well so like my opinion has long been that defense is more about structure than individuals and there's some individuals who can stand out anywhere like you can plot patrice bergeron on any team and he's going to have fantastic defensive numbers at Mark Stone also, although he like took a slight step down this year when he's finally nominated for the Selke. But, you know, still incredible. But overall, I think it's far more important to system wise.

Like to me, offense is where you try to break a system at even strength. And defense is the system that tries to keep those, you know, elite talents from breaking it. Right? It's all about like creating those like miniature odd man situations in, like a defensive triangle essentially everywhere all over the ice. And on the power play, systems become more of a factor for creating offense. You still have the elite talent that can boost you over, but you look at like the Maple Leafs, right?

Their power play was awful. They have all the talent in the world. That comes down to systems. But at even strength, I think offense is about individuals or chemistry between individuals, breaking systems and defense is about the system itself. Well, and we've seen this kind of start to trickle into the regular season as well, where I think, yeah, at least I can only speak for myself, but like obviously it's very predictive when a team is just dominating the shot share battle to a significant degree because that signals that are doing a lot of things well behind the scenes. But there are teams that, you know, strategically cut the ice into specific regions and basically, especially defensively, are like, yeah, we'll let you. a bunch of shots from the point.

Like we're going to talk about this Tampa Bay versus Carolina series, but it's pretty clear that Tampa Bay went into it being like, listen, Dougie Hamilton can shoot 40 times per game from the point if he wants. And yeah, there might be some screens or tips or weird deflections that go in. But in totality, we're pretty comfortable with that

because when we get the puck, we're going to get significantly more dangerous looks and we have better finishing talent that'll probably convert on that. And so it seems like every time we come to the postseason, people are like, oh, wow, this team outshot them so much and they still lost.

like, oh, PDO strikes again. And sometimes there's obviously that if your goalie plays really well, that that's very important. But it seems like once we get to this time of year, we're really kind of hammering down much more on sort of where the shots are coming from on the ice and the quality specifically. And that kind of speaks to the structure in terms of what your game plan is and sort of what you're allowing. And we saw that in the series where first off, the jets couldn't get into any dangerous areas in the ice. And second of all, I'm not sure how much of the. this was the Jets fault and how much of it was the big Canadian's defense, but they boxed them out so well where I think I saw the Jets had like three rebounds or something all series.

It was some comically low number. And that helps a lot in terms of being basically one and done sequences for your goal keeping the puck out of the net. Yeah, the only way that they were able to manufacture anything in that series, like you look at most of the goals that Price gave up were those like cross crease passes to like the wide set one timers, which is a very Winnipeg jet. Jets play, right? Like they love to have Kyle Connor, not necessarily in the scoring chance area, but like right outside it on off the circle there. And he's able to just wire that on

a thin slice of net and find it. And man, he's such a great goal score. But I think that comes down to like, you look at the Jets in total. And I've seen a lot of conversations about whether or not Paul Maurice should be back. And I think that if you had asked me three years ago, if Paul Maurice was a very good coach. I'd say yes. You know, like the Jets were really humming and things were looking good. And the roster has kind of been torn out from under him, especially on D. Like the turnover they've had there is crazy. But in going back to what I was saying just before,

offenses about individuals, right? And like the Jets, the reason why they're able to outperform expectations every year is because they have a group of players who have extremely high-end finishing and passing talent and Connor Hellebuck. And like Dylan DeMello is. Is their only defenseman who I would say is like a legitimate top four on any team? Neil Pionk has come a long way, but I'm still a little bit skeptical of him.

And I just see like something's got to go there. Like there's got to be some change. I mean, I talked about this a while back with Kevin Woodley on a podcast. And I thought it was a really great point in terms of like the psychological effect for goalies where if you don't trust the defense in front of you, it's like, there's this snowball effect. Yeah. Just watching this series. We're watching any Jets game. But like, I think it was game two.

I tweeted out a couple screen grabs were literally a minute apart. The HABs had two different two on ones with two different players involved. Like, like, how does that even happen? I know the Jets were down and they were probably pressing a little bit and trying to pinch a bit more. But it's like if you're the goalie and you're just constantly facing these barrages, we've always seen the screen grabs of it was like the three on O that I think the habs had against them earlier in the season. It's just, it's, it's comical. And so I really do feel bad for Hellabuck because he was fantastic in this series.

And I think it's pretty rare that a goal he plays as well as he did in this series and the team loses, especially in four consecutive games. But that just speaks to both the quality and the quantity being so largely in Montreal's favor in those four games. Yeah, I think that's the thing that surprised me most about this series is that Hellebuck would make those saves on like a two on one and then like three straight two on ones inside of like five minutes. And normally when that happens, you see a team rally around their goaltender. the Jets just couldn't figure out a way to build up their energy level and attack and like make it matter. And I just wonder how deflating that must be for the goaltender. Because especially when you're giving up looks like the Jets do give up, I find with goaltenders,

you know, you said Kevin Woodley talked about the snowball effect. You start to see things like a goalie assuming that a pass is going to happen that shouldn't happen, right? Like a cross crease pass where normally you would. just have a stick in the lane, but the goal is going to assume that that pass is going through. And then they get beat short side on the shot instead because they're having to think too much about what their team is going to fail at and what they have to cover for. And Hellberg somehow over the last two seasons has maintained his focus the entire time.

And just like he doesn't give those goals up very often. And man, he's not nominated for the best this year. It's crazy. It's crazy. With like a 9-14% percentage or something. But ridiculous goals say that will explain. because the quality was just insane. Yeah.

On the Paul Maurice thing really quick, I thought it was really interesting. I think there's a lot to quibble with in terms of his usage and whether it's a flawed roster, but whether he's doing the most to put them in a position to succeed, if I was a player on his team, I would love Paul Maurice because he does the most masterful spin jobs of his team's performance that I've ever seen in the media. It was like, I think it was after game three of the series where he had some quote where he's like, actually, if you look at the zone exit and zone entry numbers against, it's pretty even. Like, it's, there's no issues there. And I haven't looked at those numbers just from watching these games, though.

I'd imagine that technically that is correct, but it's very disingenuous strategically because the Jets weren't getting the puck out of their zone. but then the second pass in the neutral zone was getting picked off and coming back the other way. So I guess that'd be marked as a really good zone, clean zone exit, but the second pass after it was really bad. And similarly, yeah, they probably did a pretty good job of preventing zone entries against because the habs are just dumping it in and just destroying their defensemen. So yeah, both of those probably do, I guess, technically check out. But they really do not tell the full story here in terms of how these two teams play. Oh, and it's also like time of game matters too, right? Like if you're down three to nothing or whatever and you're like,

oh, yeah, well, we're doing great on the zone entries and zone exits because the other team is just sitting back and trying to avoid, blowing the lead, then yeah, of course it's going to look fine if you're trailing for like 40 straight minutes. And I don't have like the ticker for that whole series,

but the Jets trailed for almost that entire series. Well, the HABs haven't trailed since what game before the Leaf Series or whatever is? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I, I've got two notes here that I wanted to get on in terms of the depth and in defense. Let's do the depth first. So, you know, the Habs had this grueling schedule to start the postseason because for

whatever reason they had to wait for the Canucks and Flames to finish off, literally playing out the string of the regular season in sad fashion. They played 11 games in 19 days, nine games in 15 days. They played two sets of back-to-backs in the playoffs, only had the one day off between the two series. And I was wondering sort of what your thoughts. were in terms of whether they were positioned well, sort of in terms of the way they were constructed to handle that just because they are such a team that doesn't really have, you know,

your typical star forward that's playing 23 minutes a night and has to carry the burden every single night. They're so evenly balanced throughout their lineup, especially up front, where I think in this series, like their low watermark at 5-1-5 was Cole Field at like 10 minutes and 40 seconds per game. And then the high water mark was like Philip Dano at 14 minutes. And everyone else was basically in between that. They were, they really were rolling four lines. And I've had issues when teams like the predators do that in the past because it's like Philip Forsberg should just be playing more than Colton Sizzins. Like this is clearly a sign that your coach either doesn't

know who his best players are or doesn't think it's important to play your best player and both are big time issues. But in this case, because of the way they were constructed, because of the fact that if you look at their cap sheet, they have so many of these sort of middle tier salaries where it seems like this kind of was the plan. I'm wondering whether this is just sort of trying to fit a neat narrative in or whether like there is something to this in terms of, you know, the way they actually use their players. I mean, I think there's something to it for sure. And, you know, I talked to Eric Engels for my podcast yesterday. And he was, I don't remember who was on the podcast or like when we chat it afterward. But I asked him, like,

down the stretch, do you think the Canadians were giving it their all? And he was like, no, like, laughed. He was like, just talking to the players. Like, every veteran on that team was coasting and they were like, Cole Calfield, you get us into the playoffs. Just get a couple overtime wins for us. And we're just going to let it ride and we'll show up when it matters. And, you know, I think it took him a couple games into that Toronto series to find their feet.

But it's kind of funny to see like, a team like this that just rolls their lines essentially and balances everything out. And then those games that they won against Toronto and the first few games against the Jets as well, it was like, okay, but we're only going to use four defensemen. Right. And in talking to, I mean, Jeff Petrie's injured now. He's got to, I think, dislocated his pinky end ring finger by getting it caught in the camera hole in the glass, which is a pretty freak instance.

But yeah, he should be healthy for the next round. or healthy, playoffs healthy. Yeah, he'll play. Yeah, like Shea Weber, when that series

started against Toronto, couldn't hold a stick in one of his hands. You know, like, Brennan Gallagher couldn't shoot or handle the puck. So it's like,

these guys were pretty banged up to start, but seemed to be getting healthier. And that balanced lineup definitely helps that. And based on what Eric was saying from talking to players around the team, the top 4D seemed to be loving the amount of ice time they've been getting.

So it's an interesting situation. It seems like they're not necessarily, I think there's a narrative of like this team was built for the playoffs when they were one lucky bounce away from being swept by the Toronto Maple Leafs. But they are built for riding out to this kind of schedule, I think. Even with injuries, they're just, they're able to have enough players who are good to coast along. And they're not coasting along at the moment,

but they're dominating. But I think there's a lot to that. I thought it was an interesting note because I do think sort of the future, and we've seen it with the number of teams is like, you know, you have a couple of stars. They're making a significant chunk of your cap. And then you try to nail the timeline with a bunch of players on ELCs or values that can sort of help supplement that.

And you do it that way. And then every once in a while you see this team come around that has like eight players who are all making between three and four million dollars per year. And yeah. You know, there's pros and cons to both obvious. Yeah, I, you know, we alluded to this, but we do this every year where something happens in the postseason and then we all, after the fact, react to it. This is a way to build the team.

We bent ourselves into a pretzel trying to sort of fit that narrative of like, actually, this is, this is right all along. Whereas, as you mentioned, if a couple bounces go a different way, you'd be like, wow, they really need to change the GM, the coach and blow everything up because this is going nowhere. And it's a very dangerous game to play. But I guess it is up to us to try to figure out sort of little things here, there in terms of why stuff's happening. And so that's just throwing it out there.

But defensively, so it was significantly, you know, and in round one, I thought they did certain things. Well, especially in game seven against the Leafs, they were giving up very little. And then basically when they had the game in the bag, the Leafs started pressure in quite a bit and got, some chances, but for the most part in that game, it was about as well of a defensive game plan that you can execute as they did. And we saw that in this series as well against the flawed Jets team

where, as we talked about, they boxed out so well, they controlled the neutral zone. They didn't give them anything really in terms of quantity or quality. I'm trying to reconcile those things in terms of how we spend that forward against either the abs or the knights, depending on who they play, in terms of trying to do that against the better team, because despite the fact that Carrie Price gave up very few goals against in round one, I wouldn't really classify most of that series as a great defensive effort. Like Austin Matthews just didn't convert on his chances. And if those pucks do go in, then all of a sudden it's an entirely different story.

And so we're trying to look at the process rather than the results here. So how do we sort of preview that against a better team in terms of if Carrie Price if they're giving up those chances and carry price isn't stopping a ridiculous amount of them all of a sudden do they actually have a defensive game plan? Yeah, it's it's hard to know. I mean, I watched a super cut of Matthews shifts against De No in the first round. And it's shocking how much in the offensive zone that DeNoe is like at most three feet from Matthews. It was very 1980s shadow situation and they just allowed the rest of it to go four on four.

And I think that's why if you like break down the tape, Mitch Marner got so much heat because when you focus so much on Austin Matthews and yeah, he got his shots, but very few of them had like no sticks in his way or nothing obstructing him. Like people were in his face the whole series, especially Phil Dono. And that extra space that Marner was given, I think the fact that he did essentially nothing with it is why people are all up

in his grill right now. I don't know if Colorado is capable of being shut down in that same manner because Matthews, as great as he is, is much more of a cycle player. I don't want to say the puck, he waits for the puck to come to him. He doesn't. He does a lot of great things,

but he's not a player necessarily who is dynamic off the rush. He can be if it catches him with speed, but he's not the primary puck carrier. And I think that's why Willie Nealander excelled so well in that series is that he plays with pace through the neutral zone and attacks off the rush. And that puts the Canadians relatively slow defensive core on their heels. And Matthews is a guy who likes to own the offensive zone. Well, McKinnon is much more like a much better William Nealander, right? So it's a lot harder to shut him down.

And you need a team that has depth throughout the lineup like Vegas does to be able to do that. Well, if you look at what Vegas, one of the big turnarounds beyond just having someone like Mark Stone to throw at McKinnon's line is like their defense has been so aggressive in terms of both Theodore Petrangelo, even like White Cloud and Martinez where they're stepping up in the neutral zone and trying to basically stop the abs in their tracks before they can get a full head of steam. Yeah. And they're still fast enough to be able to go back and defend even if they get beaten, where I think it'll be a bit more concerning to me watching Sherat and Edmondson and Weber trying to pivot and go back against McKinn or even like a guy like Brendan, for example, who has beat off the wing himself. Yeah, absolutely.

And like similar to Vegas, like I think Vegas can do everything that the Canadians can do, but with more talent, right? instead of Sherat, Petrie, Edmondson, and Weber, it's Patrangelo, Theodore, and some of their young guys and Martinez. They've got some good movers back there, and they're also pretty strong defensively. So it becomes a situation where you're looking for gaps that you can find for the Canadians to exploit, and you're not finding very many. You're like, those two teams are such, it's like Godzilla versus King Kong, right? Well, and then on the other end of things, because we're recording this before the

abs and the nights have played, they're game six. So we'll see how that shakes out. But, you know, Vegas has notably given a lot of goalies the best series of their career over the past couple years. And it's very plausible. It's within the realm of possibility to envision carry price having a 957 percentage or something in seven games against Vegas. So it's, uh, yeah, in terms of kind of projecting, you know, neither one is a good matchup. I'd say, I mean, they were tied in the,

for first in the league in terms of point percentage of the season. And they were arguably the two best teams in the regular season. So it's kind of picker poison. But they are, uh, such different teams stylistically, which has made that series so great. Yeah. Trying to figure out how Montreal would sort of shake out against either of them is an interesting exercise. Yeah, it's really, is really fun. And what I'm really interested to see is like, is the North Division actually trash? Because if the Canadians just get like blown out of the water

in four straight games, I think there's a lot of people who are going to be doing, I told you so, right? Yeah, but even if they somehow, if they win a series or if they make it competitive, I don't think that necessarily proves that Calgary was actually good this year. No, and that's true.

It's just like the huge gap that is assumed between the divisions gets, there's a lot more doubt. At all this season. Yeah, exactly. We just don't know which division is the best. I think there's like speculation about which one is the best. I think that like you said,

these are the two teams that I would qualify as the best teams in the league this year. But at the same time, they had to fight each other in Minnesota and a bunch of trash. Like that division was weak at the bottom with the three California teams. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was. Is there anything else on the HABs that you wanted to talk about? We haven't really, I mean, man, Cole Cawfield.

So fun to watch, I think fair to say, their most dangerous player. It seems like creates the most, you know, frightening looks if you're the other team he had. Him or Suzuki, one of the two. Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. I just think, like, especially on a permanent basis, what, he had 14 shots and 19 attempts in that series and still hasn't scored, but obviously set up the series winner to Tofoli and made a number of great passes. And, you know, you love to see that because I think he was sort of billed as, you know, a great offensive player. obviously, but mostly a shooter who's going to score a bunch of goals.

And to see this early on in his career, the playmaking there as well, it's only going to make a shooting that much more dangerous once the goals are coming. Yeah, you can feel eventually once he gets one in the playoffs, you might open the door for a bit of a scoring streak. He's, the first few games, especially the first game against the Jets, he seemed kind of hesitant to shoot and he wanted to like set his teammates up. It's that rookie thing, right? We're like, you don't want to step on anybody's toes by being the glory hog.

and it was very clear that the coaching staff came to him was like, listen, stop thinking, shoot the puck, do what you do instinctually. And then from then on, he was just like, okay, I'm going to get seven shots a game. You know,

and it was a lot more fun to watch him when he, uh, tries to do what he's good at. And not that he's not a good passer. It's just that when you're playing with instinct, I think that makes for much better hockey. And yeah, there's little things that he does that he's just the,

the quick reactions that have caught players, completely off guard. There was a scoring chance that he created in game four against the Jets where he just kind of like tapped the puck through a player's legs and then like deaked him out without the puck. It was really, really funny, kind of like hopped over his stick and then he was in alone on on Halebuck. And it seemed like Halebuck was particularly determined not to let Cawfield score in that

series. He like flashed the leather every time. But yeah, I think he's probably going to get one in this next series. If there's anybody who can really key the Canadian to a surprising performance, I think it would be Cole Coughfield starting to score like mad. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Certainly as a different dynamic to the lineup. All right, was there anything else on the haves of the jets or do you want to talk Keynes Bolter a bit? Well, we could credit Jim Benning for Tyler Tofoli.

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Okay, Keynes Bolt. It came in with a lot of hype, and I think it wasn't the series that Vegas, Colorado, has been throughout. Obviously ended in five games, which is a bit premature. I think, you know, the games were played at a really high level, and there was a lot of drama in between those games. So even though Tampa won four or the five, they were all really close and hardly contested. I just think it played out the way probably would have thought it would, right, where Tampa

was very content to let them shoot from the points. they lost the shot count battle, but they destroyed them in high danger attempts throughout the series. And their power play just absolutely eviscerated them. And when you combine that with Vasilevsky, it's basically like a super duper high-end version of Winnipeg where they're not getting caved in at 5-on-5, but they only really need to tread water. They don't need to be a 55% shot share team with the talent that they have at the highest

leverage positions. Yeah, it helps to have Nikita Kutrov in your back pocket ready to go. right out of the gate in the playoffs. He's been incredible. I thought he was going to be a little bit rusty to start because not playing in so long. No. He was rusty against Florida at 515.

He was trying to keep up with the speed of the game. Yeah. There was some plays you could see where he was fighting the puck a little bit. And then the power play kicks on. And he's like, okay, I'm Nikita Kutrov again. But yeah, you talked about the power play. And I think that as much as there's a lot of talk, and I've mentioned it as well,

Carolina Hurricanes, I think, again, they just settle for poor quality shots and they've got to find a way to change their system a little bit to get those higher quality looks. Because I think now they have the talent. The excuses aren't there as much as they were back when they were the analytics darling but missing the playoffs. And maybe they need to add a couple more playmaking players that can move the puck into the middle for some of their shooters. but overall, I think five on five, people made a bit too much of a big deal out of how content they were to shoot from the outside. The crazy thing about this series that I was looking at was that their powerplay production in terms of inputs was essentially the same, but Tampa Bay scored on 50% of their high danger chances on the power play,

and the lightning scored, or no, the hurricane scored on only 14%. And in terms of scoring chances overall, 30.4% the lightning scored on their scoring chances on the power play. And the hurricanes just 5.5%. And that's devastating because the goals at even strength were 7 to 6. Yep. You know, not that big of a deal. But overall. I mean, the microcosm for the series was that, uh,

game for second period, which is probably the craziest period of the entire postseason where there were eight goals in like a 15 minutes span or something. But the Keynes went at that period down one. They outscored the Lightning 4-1 in that period of 5-1-5. They outshot them 10-5. And they came out of that period still down one because the Lightning scored three quick power play goals during that time. And that was like, you know, if you look at this postseason so far, in round one against the Panthers, they had 20 power play opportunities and 24 minutes on the man-of-manage. They scored eight goals. So God. And then you come out of that and you're like, all right, well, you know,

some regression is due here. Obviously, we're not going to expect the team to keep scoring at this rate. And I guess technically they did regress a little bit to the point where at round two, they had 16 power play opportunities, 22 and a half minutes with a matter of manage and seven goals. So, you know, a slight down take. They might score not quite 50% round. Yeah, exactly. Only 40-ish or so. And this is against one of the teams that we figured would be best suited to at least give them some issues with how they kill penalties, right, with a quote-unquote power kill where they're, you know, they're attacking whoever has the puck and they're not just sitting back and trying to block shots and they're creating themselves and they were one of

the stingiest penalty kills in the league throughout the season. And they just carve right through them, whether it was, you know, the cross-ice passes, the one-timers. What really stuck out to me was, and it must be so demoralizing as a penalty killer where they would just put the clamps on them for like a minute and 20 seconds to start a two minute power play where they would get the puck out of the zone right away, clear it, go for a change, just keep doing that. And you're like, okay, we're on the right track here. We're going to kill this one off. And then there's like a weird bounce in the offensive zone and someone lunges in the wrong direction. And then like the lightning just capitalize and feed off of this chaotic energy on the power of way where as soon as guys

get out of their position, it's like a domino effect where one guy's out of position, the next guy's out of position and all of a sudden it's tick that coat. It's in the back of your net in like a blink of an eye. and it happens so quickly that there's no real way to stop it once that domino effect starts. And that just sucks so much as a penalty killer because you can do everything right. And it might not even be a mistake on your part. It might literally be a weird bounce or Victor Hedman just keeps the puck in the zone at the blue line. And then all of a sudden, it's a goal. And there's just no way around it.

A shot off of a skate. Oh, look at that. It goes right to Braden Point with an open net. And he's not going to miss. Yeah. You know, part of it is, you know, getting the bounces, especially when you're getting, you know, When you're scoring on 41% of your power plays, you're getting some good bounces,

that's for sure. And luck is a part of any Stanley Cup winner and anyone getting far in the playoffs, but also the Lightning can just have so much talent. Like, their top end guys are just ridiculous. And, you know,

I forget who was pointing this out. I think it might have been Chris Johnson. The Tampa Bay Lightning last year, if you look past their top scorers, like they didn't really get offensive contributions from anyone. You know, he was like, Braden Point,

Nikita Kutcheroff and Victor Headman. And then after that, there's this giant gap. You know, and this year they also have Stamco's there. And man, I just, it's hard to imagine how they're going to get stopped. You know, they're just such an incredible team top to bottom. We'll see if the Islanders vaunted defensive system can slow the lightning down because, I mean, somebody has to try, right?

I mean, they stayed in it last year. The concern for them, I think for me is like the lightning attacks so unconventionally. in the sense that they don't use that net front guy and they have so much movement in the offensive zone that it's really tough to it's like the one of the few teams that poses this problem where they can kind of like hardwire a good team in the defensive zone

similar to what they did Dallas last year in this Dalai go out right where it's just like they can just move it around and all of a sudden Victor Hedman's in front of the net for a redirection and you're like, what the hell? How did he get here? How do we lose the biggest guy on the ice? Yeah, exactly.

And that's a big takeaway for me from this series because in round one, we know that headman, his numbers fell off after he got hurt. He shouldn't have been a Norris finalist. It was a reputation award. He, you know, admirably, I guess you could say, maybe foolishly is playing through an injury that's going to require off-season surgery

as they try to repeat here as Stanley Cup champions. And against Florida, I was wondering how much of it was that he just couldn't physically skate because he was not, he was like staying back and being like, okay, you guys attack four on five. I'm going to be back here. and once the Panthers come back and the counterattack the other way,

I'll be in the right set position. And so I was wondering how much it was physical skating, how much of it was that game plan out of respect to the Panthers. And in this series, he was much, much more active in terms of doing Victor Headman stuff in terms of jumping into the rush and being the trailer on three on twos and stuff like that. So if that can continue,

that's a huge boost for a lightning team that obviously, as you mentioned, already has a lot of weapons to choose from. Yeah, they don't need a boost. That's the crazy thing, you know? Like, oh man, this. team. I mean, I guess it makes sense that they're $18 million over the cap, but there's no cap in the playoffs, so it doesn't really matter. Well, also, we, I don't know how you feel about this, but like,

I get my, my opinion is all credit to them. Yes. Yeah. First off, first off, having an owner who's willing to foot the bills and pay for players who aren't playing for you, second, having a GM who's shrewd enough to exploit every possible avenue to, to improve your team and get a chance to understand the club. If you want to hate on someone, I want to hate on the league for having a very exploitable loophole that people can take advantage of and hate on your own team, but for not doing so. Yeah, for sure. And the fact is, like, a reckoning is coming in terms of the salary cap for the lightning. Like, they can't keep the band together forever. And I think Braden points up for a contract next year in 2022. I don't think he's going to take $6.75 million again, which is, I don't know how

they convinced him to do that. Like, I know it's a bridge deal, but like, he, there's no way Braden Point is still there, right? When you say there's a salary gap reckoning, was that a quote from 2018 or 2019 or 2020? Well, I just can't see how they're going to fit it in. But, you know, maybe they will anyway. They're magic. But I mean, maybe Stancoast decides that he's going to retire at 32, you know, like, not that that would help them. But, yeah, I just don't see how they can keep Braden point.

But I mean, Victor Headman. We'll find a way. Victor Headman has already declared that he will need off-season surgery this summer. So, oh, so he's the guy who's going to be the new Kuturav, eh? I love the idea that like one of the best two or three players at your position, just not playing all year is actually a good strategy. Like obviously come to the post season, it's great. But it's like, come on, if you can play, he's going to be in your lineup.

For sure. Although from what I heard from a couple people, Nikita Kutrov probably could have played the last month of the season. He was practicing pretty hard. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. It was like entirely within the reasonable realm of rehabilitation for him. If it was a postseason, he would have come back.

Yes, 100%. Yeah. Well, definitely something for the league to consider moving forward, but credit to them. And they're really, really good. And I'm not taking anything away from them because they've earned it full marks. For the hurricanes, though, I think it's a big off season. We're going to have plenty of time to talk about it in terms of like previews and stuff like that in July. But, you know, they've got Dougie as a UFA.

and he's going to have not only the leverage to make a lot of money, but a lot of teams who really need a high-end defenseman who all of a sudden have a bunch of cap room that are going to be pursuing, I imagine. And they have no goalies under contract in terms of NHL-level deals, although Nadirkovich is an RFA. And I'm wondering whether they're going to take the patient route in terms of sort of what the abs have done,

where it's like we have a lot of founding. additional pieces already in place. And we're going to just kind of try to keep adding to that on the margins and be smart and maybe trade a couple picks here in the offseason for a player that another team can't afford and retain or whether they're going to try to really increase their risk profile and kind of push a lot of chips in and maybe leverage some of these assets into another high-end playmaker, another high-end skater that can really try to help push them over the top offensively. And yeah, I was thinking they haven't really been linked that much to Jack Eichael, but the fit

there, I think makes a lot of sense for me in terms of how that would look and them being one of the few teams that has the assets to realistically do so. Yeah, yeah, they do. They definitely have some pieces that can move. And I mean, Jack Eichel would be a foundational change. There's definitely some questions about like what's what's going to happen for them going forward. I feel like they're, they've got a lot of money on defense that maybe is a little bit overvalued. Like is Brady Skay or Shea worth $5 million. Did Jake Gardner even play in the playoffs? I don't think I've heard his name once.

No, I don't think you did. And the thing for them, at least with that type of trade, like they could package a bunch of assets and then Buffalo could just take Jake Gardner's contract, right? Yeah. To make the money work. And so that's why I also think it's very appealing for them because they can get off of some of the bad money they have.

And for Buffalo, it's like, yeah, we'll gladly take Jake Carter. He'll instantly be a top poor dependency for us. Yeah, I do wonder at one point, at one point, though, is Buffalo going to realize like you can't do you're like, oh, we'll take your bad contract to get rid of this star player. No, it's, you know, they can't do

another Ryan O'Reilly trade, right? They're going to have to get something big for Jack Eichol in order to make it happen. I guess I, you look at the Taylor Hall trade, you don't really have a lot of faith in what they're going to get back, but yeah, I think anything where you're acquiring a guy at the like the level of Jack Eichael, you'd

expect to lose something serious. like Svetnikov, which I don't think they would be willing to part with. They're not going to see the Svetrnikov or N.Hs as far as I'm aware. So that's and you're right. If you're Buffalo at this point, like getting a volume play where you get a bunch of assets is nice. But when you're losing your best player and your front foundational piece and someone you like very actively tanked to get in the first place, it's really tough to be like, all, we're going to get these four futures that have a 12% chance of becoming half as good

is Jack Eichael six years from now. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. I feel bad for Buffalo as much as I also don't because it's funny. But Carolina, I think Carolina, you know, it's, you can make a big change and I don't think they'd be wrong to do so. But I feel like they're also a team that can work along the margins and continue, like, they can run it back next year.

I don't think anybody would necessarily blame them. I think just finding a way to play a little bit different and maximize what you, you've already built, it makes a lot of sense as well. Well, and that's the thing. Like, they, by any objective measure, had a really successful season. Yeah. And then they just ran into Tampa Bay in the second round. If they said happened in the conference finals, you'd be like, all right,

I guess this is a very good step under right direction. But unfortunately, just because of the divisional format, it happened in the second round this season. And I think especially what's disappointing is we talk about sort of what type of shots they're getting and the skill and sort of how they're trying to attack offensively. They had one of the, I think they had the second best power play in the league this season. And that failed them in the series, as you mentioned those stats earlier, where they didn't

really convert on them in score. And Tampa Bay continued to score at a historic pace on the power play. And that's disappointing, but it's a five-game sample. I'm not necessarily, like, if you can get someone of Jack Eagles caliber, of course, you do it 10 times out of 10. But I'm not sure all of a sudden panicking and trying to like fundamentally change your team because of this outcome is the right call either. Yeah, agreed. I think if anything, if anything would make me panic from the hurricanes perspective,

it would be their performance against the predators more than more than the lightning. Like the lightning you almost expect to lose and for it to be heartbreaking and over quicker than you ever thought it would be. But I think the predators, I know UC Soros was incredible, but at some point you got to stop making, you know, MVP's out of goalies. And I think the Carolina Hurricanes have a habit of that. And they also, I don't think Nadelcovic was bad in the playoffs. No. But the fact that they went to Marazik at all shows that they don't have full confidence in him. And at a certain point, I think they need to put some of the incredible intelligence that they put into their player acquisition at forward and defense into goaltending as well.

Because they haven't had a lot of luck there. And it seems like they're kind of willing to settle on, you know, fringe guys and hard. hoping that they'll have good years, as opposed to identifying a player who can be there for the future. And the last time they tried that was Scott Darling, and it clearly did not work out. Yeah, but their, I mean, their goal-tending was really good this season, right? Like, it's, and obviously, part of that helps with the way they play and defensive players they have in front of them. But I don't know, against this lightning team, there's very few goalies in the world where they could have paid any sort of price to get them. And I would have felt very

comfortable that they would have been able to shut down Kutjab and Point and Stamco's and headband and so on and so forth. So it's a tough problem, but I'm not necessarily sure just throwing a bunch of money or capital at a goalie is going to solve it. It's, it's, no, it's tough. I think it's, there's something to be said for sticking with it and bouncing back next year and hoping that you don't have to play the Tampa Bay Lightning it round two and making a longer run as a result. So we'll see. It'll be an interesting season. I think they're going to be active because they do have a lot of big decisions to make. And we know that they're certainly, you know, very progressive in terms of their talent evaluation. So I think if they see an opportunity to strike this offseason, they're

going to go for it. And I think, like, do you feel like there's going to be a lot of opportunities to do so off season because of the flat cap and because of the expansion draft and because, you know, last off season was so disappointing. It feels like there's going to be a lot of moves to be made this summer. Yeah, absolutely. I would assume so. Even with the flat cap, I think we're going to see some deals that are pretty surprisingly, like the same thing as like Tafoli last year, right? Yeah. Where he's probably a six and a half million dollar player

and signed for 4.25, you know, and I think we'll see a lot of deals like that and a lot of players who kind of had down years this year and even in last year's playoffs bounced back in a big way. I think we generally underestimate how hard the whole COVID situation has been on, on players mentally.

And, you know, like guys up here like Dubois, I've spoken openly about like this is the worst year of his life. The worst year of a lot of our lives, Peter. Yeah, he was. Yeah, so I think we're going to see a lot of players show a different level next year and some really interesting movement over the offseason. You know, looking at these two series that we're talking about, if you merged Carolina with Winnipeg,

you would have an unstoppable juggernaut. Just get some of that playmaking from Winnipeg onto the amazing processes of Carolina. You don't even need Hellebuck. Yeah. Well, I think if you combine any two playoff teams, they'll wind up making a really, really good team. They'll make the Tampa Bay Lightning. Yeah, there you go. There you go.

That's the takeaway. All right, man. I think that is going to be it for today's episode of the Hockpedio cast. Plug some stuff. Let people know where they can check you out and listen to your podcast and all that good stuff. All right. So I'm still writing for the Montreal Gazette. I've got my Buy the Numbers series that I do there.

I also have a substack that you can check out that I've got linked on my Twitter at Andrew Berkshire. And I also am the co-host of the Crosscheck NHL podcast for the Locked-on Podcast Network, where I talk with Mary Clark and a guest every Thursday. Awesome, man. Well, this was a blast. I'm glad we got to do this after a long time of not chatting. And we'll make sure to do so again soon. So enjoy the rest of the postseason and we'll catch up. You as well, man. Cheers. All right. That's going to be for today's episode of the Hockeypedio cast. Thanks, as always for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed my chat with Andrew Berkshire. We will be back.

soon hopefully to discuss some of the other round two series and preview the conference finals and the final four and as the games wind down here we'll hopefully have more time to do some more in-series analysis and turn out some shows in between games and all that good stuff so thanks for your patience I know we haven't run a show since the round two previews but we will we'll ramp up the activity here more moving forward as I said at the top if you enjoyed listening to to the PDOCAST and you want to help us out. Leaving a five-star rating interview goes a really long way towards helping us out. A lot of you have done so already, and I really, really appreciate each and every one of you that have done so. If you haven't yet for whatever reason,

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