The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 403: No Salary Retained

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Jack Fraser joins the show to discuss the Duncan Keith trade. Topics include: What kind of player he is at this point of his career How much of the defensive issues were on him vs. the team Can the Oilers can get better numbers out of him in different role Historical comparisons for this type of move Impact usage has on performance The fit for him given his present day skills Questioning why they paid the price they did, when they did The market for him and who had the leverage The risk and opportunity cost Edmonton is taking on How they could've used their cap space differently Making the most of an important offseason 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.

Are you ready for the most ridiculous internet sports show you have ever seen? Welcome to React, home of the most outrageous and hilarious videos the web has to offer. So join me, Rocky Theos, and my co-host, Raiders Pro Bowl Defensive Inn, Max Crosby, as we invite your favorite athlete, celebrities, influencers, entertainers in for an episode of games, laughs, and, of course, the funniest reactions to the wildest web clips out there. Catch React on YouTube, and that is React, R-E-A-X-X. Don't miss it. Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P-D-O-Cast

with your host, Dmitri Filipovic. The hockey P-D-O-Cast, my name is Dimitri Fulpovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Jack, Brazer-Jack. What's going on, man? Nothing much. Big trade today, finally. Good to see. Yes.

Yeah, so we don't normally do emergency shows here about individual transactions in the PD-O-cast, but I decided to try something all new here. We haven't done a show in a while because I was on vacation for the end of the cup final. And I thought it would be fun to do a quick reaction pod to kickstart, what should be, promises to be a fun two-week stretch in the NHL with a lot of transactions. And so what better way to do it than with this Duncan Keith trade? And I think on the surface, it looks rather innocuous because there's no necessarily major assets moving hands. but at the same time when you kind of consider the full context of the circumstances for me,

it's a pretty, pretty nutty trade, especially from the oilish perspective. And so I just ought to be fun to kind of get together. And I don't know how long this is going to be. It might be 20 minutes, might be 30 minutes, might be more. We're just going to try to kind of unpack it and make sense of it. And, you know, I've got so many takes on this trade swirling around my head. So I was kind of hoping to use this as is a just talking it through with you and trying to capture all of them and synthesize it in a bite-sized mini podcast.

So I'm excited to see where it goes. Yeah, I wrote a full like 2,000 word Duncan Keith article like a week ago, and I'm like halfway through a second one. There's just so much stuff to say about this player and this trade and this franchise that it really is kind of tough to narrow in on just one thing. So I'm glad we have the chance to do this. Yeah. And if people like this type of show, we're going to do more of them, hopefully,

this summer throughout the transaction period. But let's start talking. I don't know, do you think we should take this from the oilers perspective first? or do you think we should talk about Duncan Keith himself as a player at this point of his career? Or what do you think kind of the most interesting angle to start this conversation is? Yeah, I think probably going through what exactly Duncan Keith can bring at this point in his career is probably a decent starting off point. Just because I feel like Chicago is one of those teams that's fallen off the map enough that a lot of people probably haven't been watching too much Duncan Keith. They might not be familiar with how he profiles at this point.

And it really is shocking compared to how I think he looked the last time people really cared about the Blackhawks. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly I think, you know, it is always difficult to separate individual performance from team performance when a team creators the way the Chicago Blackhawks have just as a group over the past couple years. And especially for a defenseman, they've been, for my money, one of the worst defensive teams as a collective over the past, whatever, two years or something. so. And so it's kind of tricky to know, okay, how much of that is just the surroundings and how much of it is actually this individual player. And what makes it even trickier in this case is that Keith was the number one defenseman in terms of usage on this team. And so that's where it becomes really

tough to reconcile the idea that it's mostly the team's fault. And he'll be much better in a different circumstance when he was playing as much as he was. And the performance for the team was, as poor as it was with him on the ice. Yeah, I think it does give a little bit of an out or at least kind of a route to this being an okay trade for a lot of people. I think a lot of Oilers fans are probably approaching it from that direction, just from, I guess, lack of an alternative.

You know, they just have to hope that it's going to work out. And I think definitely, you know, Keith's decline and Mr. Howard Blackhawks decline. I don't think are two completely independent events. I think that there's a little bit of mixing with both of them. I think that probably having your number one defenseman, you know, I mean, Keith has never played fewer than 23 minutes a game in his entire career. Like, since he came into the NHL, that has been his role. And that has extended into his late 30s.

And I mean, you know, there were three defensemen in the league who played more, who played over the age of 37 this year. Like, it is just not that common that you see guys stay in the league at that age, let alone play in the minutes that he has. And, you know, having your number one defenseman be a guy in his late 30s who I think can be reasonably said to be declining, even if you are maybe a little bit more generous to him than other people might be, is a tough look for a franchise. But, you know, at the same time, I can definitely see the argument that the Blackhawks have not been a good place for a declining, you know, late 30s defensemen to be playing number one minutes in. I think that they maybe play a style that could be especially taxing on a guy like Keith. I think that there's a conversation to be had for sure over whether he could bounce back in Edmonton, but I think there's a whole other question to be had on whether Edmonton is a good place for a guy like Duncan Keith to bounce back or whether it's just going to be more of the same.

Yeah, yeah, certainly it was a tough spot for them to insolet him even beyond the actual raw minutes that he was playing, just the playing style and how much of the game was played on the rush on both ends. was difficult. I think the tricky thing for me here is part or a big part of Keith's value, even as his prime, I thought, when he was a significantly better player and much more effective, was his ability to eat up as many minutes, which you alluded to as he did in seemingly such effortless fashion where he would just glide around the ice and you could really just bank on him to play 25, 26 minutes, come to playoffs, maybe even closer to 30 and feel confident that when he was out there, good things would happen.

And so that's what makes it so weird now to be at this stage of his career and see the dialogue around him being like, okay, well, maybe we can get more value out of him if all of a sudden he's playing significantly less. And it's just really, like, it's obviously a very natural development for a professional athlete at the age of 38 to not be able to handle the type of workload that they did earlier in their career. But it's just, it's, it's tricky to wonder how effective he really. really would be if you just basically cut that usage significantly considering what a big sort of part of his resume or his value to the team that was for so many years. Yeah. And I mean, like the thing is that I think a lot of people have approached the, okay, well, if his role goes down, his results will go up as kind of a, just a final kind of logical thing. Like, like, it's just a guaranteed thing that's definitely going to happen. I mean, the thing is that we really don't have that much of a sample to see defensemen

especially who are Keith's age who have had that kind of difference in minutes. I actually had the chance this weekend. Out of curiosity, again, for, you know, thinking, okay, well, I've already written the one Keith piece, but there's just so much more that I want to dig into. I took a look at defenseman in the second half of their 30s who have had a significant minutes reduction of over a minute and a half just to see the change it had on their results. And, you know, I think there were kind of about 20 or so players, you know, your Andre Marcos or Sergey Gonschards, who have gone through that transition late in their

careers. And there really isn't kind of a pattern that emerges. You know, the average difference in your, you know, your wins above replacement per 60 minutes is zero. You know, there are guys who have their results spring back up. There are guys whose results completely collapsed because, you know, the reason that they're getting their minutes reduced, like in Duncan Geith's case, is because they're not the same player that they once were. They're in their late 30s. So I think that there's an understandable tendency to draw a straight line between, you know, big minutes, you know, bad results, smaller minutes, better results. But I really don't think that it's that simple.

And, you know, the gamble that the hawks are taking, or that the oilers story are taking here, I think is pretty significant. Yeah, it's, it's really strange. I get it. There's obviously much more nuance to it, but just like on the service, when you, when you see it either written out or say it out loud to yourself, the idea that, you know, the Blackhawks, everyone talks about this Mickey Mouse defensive system. They've been so bad.

Of course, everyone's going to look bad there, but he was their number one defense. that time and just the idea that they would have been better off if Duncan Keith was on the ice for fewer minutes. And then to spin that around and be like, well, that doesn't sound very encouraging for the team acquiring said player that his previous team would have been better off if he had just played less. Like, that's not something you ideally want to hear about a player. You just invested resources in. No kidding. And I mean, it's not like every Chicago Black Ox defenseman for the past five years has had these horrible results. You know, the reason that Duncan Keith's results through these, you know, adjusted or isolated metrics are so bad is because he has stood

out so egregiously in terms of how they've played when he's on the ice. You know, you look at guys who kind of started to play a bit more elevated minutes for them this year, specifically because I think even if the Hawks still were playing Keith as their number one, they were limiting his minutes relative to where they'd been in his career. And you saw, you know, guys like Connor Murphy played proper top pair of minutes and have great results in those roles. You know, you saw guys like Calvin DeHon and even Nikita Zadorov start to get tougher matchups that Keith would have in the past and get those kinds of. kind of defensive zone draw situations and all the kind of tough deployment that you'd really

associate with Keith and that I think you assume was going on when you look at the minute load and you recognize that, you know, it's not just that everyone on Chicago has these awful results and you can just, you know, completely dismiss all of Keith's numbers. It's that, you know, Duncan Keith has been a little bit of a sore thumb at this point in his career. And that's why people talk about him like that. And that's why there's so much skepticism that, you know, going to a team like the Edmonton Oilers is going to lead to this kind of massive reclamation where he's suddenly going to be a top four defenseman again. Well, if you watch him play, I still think at this point in his career remarkably,

given the miles he's accumulated and his age, he still moves really well and he's still a fluid skater. I think it was interesting just kind of parsing through Corey Snyder's tracking data over the past couple years and seeing sort of how, you know, he can still skate the puck out. his efficiency has really eroded of late in terms of his ability to effectively pass the puck out. He's turned the buck over significantly more, just not nearly as effective as he was in the past. And in terms of defending his blue line, his sort of ability to aggressively defend while skating backwards has also dropped off significantly. So I think if you're kind of looking at this from the Oilers perspective of, okay, how can they like literally on the ice aside from all of the

sort of intangible. This guy's one in the past. He's a competitor. He's going to help in the room. Just on the ice, how can the oilers squeeze value out of him and actually get more effective metrics out of him? I was thinking it would certainly make sense if you played him on a much more sheltered pair with, say, Evan Bouchard, who compensates at least offensively for a lot of what Keith is lacking at this point of his career. And maybe if they're out in the offensive zone a lot or not necessarily having to defend as much, you can mitigate a lot of those. zone entry concerns. But I wonder sort of whether those results, even in that case, would be so significant to warrant the price they paid for him in terms of the cap hit, because that's

typically not something you're saying, okay, we're going to acquire a $5.5 million cap hit, let alone in a flat cap world, and devoted to a sheltered third pairing defensement. Like, that doesn't seem like it's a particularly wise allocation of available resources. no and I think it's probably fair to say that that's not what they envision him as you know I think that in terms of the you know change in role and the change in results and everything you know I think that you have to delineate the difference between you know just picking up the 2020 or 2020 one version of Duncan Keith and just placing him in Edmonton exactly the same and how that might change his results but you also do have to remember that this is a player that's declined in a pretty linear fashion

in the past six or seven years or so and he's still getting older. Like you are not getting 37-year-old Duncan Keith in Edmonton next year. You're getting 38-year-old Duncan Keith and then you're getting 39-year-old Duncan Keith. You know, any gains that might be made by a change in role, you know, such that they may be. And it's a gamble that those are even going to happen in the first place. You're also kind of dealing with the countervailing force of the fact that he's going to be getting older as this goes along, let alone whether or not we actually believe that the Oilers are going to decide to meaningfully limit his matchups or his role or his minutes, which I think is something worth doubting, especially considering the fact that I think they paid a greater price for him unretained than a lot of people, I think, believe they would.

Well, and I think that's a key point. I think ultimately, and this is obviously going to get very obscured once they start playing games, and especially if the results are encouraging out of the gate. But to deem this trade, either a success or a failure, we shouldn't be comparing Duncan Keith's performance in Edmonton versus Duncan Keith's performance into. Chicago in terms of his metrics potentially improving in a new environment, it's what you're getting from Duncan Keith in Edmontonverse, whatever you could have used that 5.5 for whatever million dollars in cast space, let alone Caleb Jones and the draft pick they gave up. Because the opportunity cost is what I keep coming back to here where I'm really willing

to embrace the idea that Keith will look better, just play with better players and being relied upon less and being able to sort of pick their spots a bit more and sort of shelter. him, but it's especially considering what we saw last off-season, for example, where superior defensemen were going for relatively similar price tags on the open market, it's so difficult to justify spending those available resources. The Oilers did have this off-season on him. Like, just as a thought exercise, if Keith was a UFA on the open market this season, this off-season, what would he realistically have fetched from any sort of bidder that was interested in his services?

definitely not five and a half million bucks and definitely not with a no move clause included yeah i mean like what we saw tj brodie last off season went for five million for four years chris tannett went for four point five for four i mean it's just it's tough to to envision a scenario or someone would have paid more for them especially um you know we're not privy to what was going on in terms of the conversations but it seems like everything is indicating that the market was essentially just the oilers, like Keith controlled where he wanted to go. He wanted to go somewhere in the Pacific Northwest to be near his family. The Cracken would have made some sense, although it's impossible to envision scenario where they would have given up assets to acquire

his contract. The Canucks can't afford them, the flames similarly. So it basically came down to Edmonton. So they were just, it seems like they really were bidding on themselves. And that's the extra strange thing for me here, the timing of all this, where not that it impacts their expansion plans because, you know, they're not worried about which other defensemen they would have protected instead and they can comfortably protect Keat at this point. But it's so strange that they would have prioritized this and felt like there was a level of desperation to get this trade done while they still could. Not sort of like, couldn't they have conceivably just circled back after the expansion draft or after free agency kicked off if nothing else came available? Like to box

themselves in this way is the most puzzling part for me, I think. Yeah, you would. a thought. I mean, you know, like I kind of alluded to before, I think there was a lot of sense around people, you know, who are, who are kind of reacting to the speculation of rumors as it came in that, you know, there must be some kind of balance here. Like, there must be the Oilers sending back James Neal or, you know, at least sending Conalturis and getting some, uh, getting some cap retention. Uh, you know, there were all these kind of like, okay, like Keitho, maybe he's not a great player, but we're going to get him at 2.75 and all this stuff. And, you know, the word the entire time was that the Oilers were essentially, like you said, negotiating by themselves. But

the real question was just kind of what level of assets were they going to give up for Duncan Keith at $5.5 million. And I think that that was kind of the slow motion car crash that we were all observing in real time for the past two weeks. And I think a lot of people were in a little bit of a denial about what exactly the Oilers valued Duncan Keith as the kind of player they still thought he was and how much they valued the intangible aspect, which I think is what most of the Edmonton media is trumpeting today to try to make any sense of what they've just done without the retention. So it is a very weird situation. It's a weird target for Edmonton. It's a weird return, a weird negotiation. And like you said, weird timing. Like it really is,

it is one of those traits that you do make an emergency podcast for just because there's just so much weird stuff going on that you wouldn't normally see? I feel very comfortable saying, especially the circumstances of where the oilers are in their timeline that the 5.5 million in cap space was the best asset that was involved in this trade. Like I, we'll see obviously what, I don't think it matters either way. We'll see what the Blackhawks will do with the money they've opened up and the natural sort of connection to make here is that they're going to be heavily involved in the Seth Jones trade talks and potentially trying to acquire and extend them. And I don't necessarily want to get into that because

I know we both probably feel very differently about Seth Jones as a player at this point of his career than the league does in terms of the way they seem to value him and talk about him. But it's just having that $5.5 million, especially not only with the expansion draft coming, but with free agency and what we saw last off season, I think it'll be a similar thing where just having room to basically jump on other people's mistakes or potentially add talent that is going for a depreciated price that it would have compared to other regular seasons with a rising cap. That's such a valuable asset for a team like the Oilers who has as many holes as they do. and for them to just to vote that it is just, is stunning to me.

And that's why I wanted to do this podcast because I needed to talk my, I was hoping you would have some more answers for it, but it seems like we're kind of on the same page of this. Yeah, I mean, I said it in the article. That was kind of the main argument I made was that, like,

the oilers just have no room for error right now. Like they are running out of road. Like the, you know, with this, how that series against the jets went was obviously a bit of a catastrophe on their part. And, you know,

some of that was obviously hell of up. But I think that they were, a catastrophe. They got swept by a team that proceeded to get swept by the haves. Yeah. So I was being, I was being a little gentle. I've made all of those fans very upset today. So I thought I would maybe soften the blow a bit. But, you know, this is a team that has very well-documented issues. And those issues are the kinds of problems that are addressed with cap-space. You know, they have the superstars. The problem is that they don't have depth. Depth is the thing you address with cap-space. And they just decided to spend a good chunk of

it on a 38-year-old, or I guess 38-year-old in about a week, defenseman who has huge question marks over whether he can even be a solid contributor in the NHL next year. Like, it really is, like, the idea that Edmonton right now would be prioritizing intangibles and rings in the room and leadership at a time when they have demonstrable holes in their roster that could be left even more daping depending on if they are even able to bring back, you know, a guy like Adam Larson or, you know, bring back Mike Smith that had discounted great. They need to start a goalie. Their entire right side, except for Bouchard is basically

unrestricted. You know, they, they still have depth problems on the left side, despite the fact that they just made this move. And that's not even to get into their lack of scoring outside of McDavid and Drysidal and Nugent Hopkins. So, you know, on the list of the things the oilers needed to do this summer, they basically decided to go completely off the board and do it as expensively and extravagantly as possible. Right. This isn't the 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning or 2020 Tampa Bay Lightning where they have this just unassailably deep and loaded roster.

And they've fallen short, but they can justify kind of tinkering on the margins. You're trying to add to define the right combination of players. This is a team that is pretty flawed in the way it's currently constructed. And so they still do have cap space. It sounds like Oscar Clefbaum will probably not play this season in the LTIR that contract again. And so we'll see.

what happens with Adam Larson. We'll see what they do in net. We'll see what they do up front. Like they pretty clearly still need to add a bunch of talent to play with their top players and let alone a third center. So I'm curious to see what they do there. I think I've seen the pushback that I do have in particular as I've seen this trade kind of dubbed and especially by others media as a high risk, high reward move. Right. And at least like it's being acknowledged that it's a high risk because you're investing 5.5 million in caps based on a declining 38-year-old player. But where I push back is what is the realistic high reward here? Like for judging it based on Oilers team success and if that's going to be attributed

to whatever intangibles Keith brings, I guess. But in terms of his own performance, I'm struggling to come up with a realistic roadmap for where he can have the type of season that'll be, oh, he added surplus value at his price tag to the oilers just based on his individual contribution. Like, it seems like that's a very tough road to achieve for even the most optimistic Duncan Heath spores at this point. Yeah, it's practically impossible. Like I spoke about earlier, I did kind of look into possible comparables this past weekend just so I could see if there was anybody who maybe fit this description that a lot of people in Edmonton were kind of describing of the logic.

progression of Keith's career once he comes to Edmonton. And really the only player that I could find who made a late career move from a, you know, low-level team to a contender at, you know, the age that Keith is now and saw his results change so dramatically, it was Rob Blake in 2009, who moved from the catastrophic, you know, first overall pick. Los Angeles Kings came to San Jose and then finished 12th in Norris voting and played superbly played about the same number of minutes as Keith would be expected to play. And that is the absolute best case scenario.

And I would caution Oilers fans against expecting that at all. But the odds of that happening, like, that is the kind of glow up that Keith would have to have to be a, you know, like, he has sunk so low in terms of Zana's value in the past, you know, four or five seasons that it really would take that kind of like monumental glow up for him to even be a surplus value, five and a half million. dollar top four defensemen and i just don't think that it's a realistic thing to expect especially considering that the gap between chicago and edmonton especially defensively is not even remotely the same as the gap between that king's team and that sharks team kind of which was in their prime at that point yeah one one final note i have on keith as a player is i know you wrote um earlier on during the season about um you know defensemen that were shooting the most in terms of uh you know the available shot share for their team when they were on the ice and teams they were

relied on defensemen shooting the most. And I think that's something that the Oilers have leaned on too much or to a too large of a degree over the past couple years. And Keith is arguably one of like the least efficient shooters, which isn't surprising to say about a 38 year old defenseman, but he still loves fire in the puck from the point and is very, very unsuccessful at doing so. And I think just the idea of taking basically any shots away from the top forwards on this team and allocating them towards the low percentage looks that they're going to get in that regard. Not that they acquired him for his offensive talent by any means, but it's just in terms of when I was trying to sort of map out the fit here or what it

would look like in terms of the on ice product, it wasn't even a natural fit there either. So it's kind of just like it's so, it's so strange in terms of what you would identify in terms of like actual on ice skills that would help this current collection of players they have. Yeah. I mean, that's part of a larger theme with this trade and with this fit that this strikes me so odd is that, you know, all of the kind of micro-level stuff, like you're talking about with shot concentration and rush defense and all this kind of stuff, you know, Keith is really moving from a situation in Chicago to a situation in Edmonton where that kind of stuff really isn't changing. Like, he will be empowered to shoot the puck just as much in Edmonton

based on what we saw from, you know, Evan Bouchard and Tyson Barry and Arnell Nurse, who all ranked right near the top there. And in terms of rush defense, you know, Edmonton was right. right down there with Chicago in terms of their rush chances against. I think that they ranked 23rd in Chicago, ranked 24th, according to the sport logic numbers that they've published. You know, this really is not like a monumental night and day difference. You know, it's not like he's going to Boston or Minnesota. Like, he is going to be facing a lot of rush chances against,

especially if they split up McDavid and Drysiddle at any point, really, this season. And those Keith Drysiddle moments, you know, drycidal gives up so much off the rush that has always been, kind of the key to understanding his horrible defensive numbers has always been the kind of counterattack rush nature of his game is that so much comes back because he's caught below the line and Duncan Keith is going to be the guy staring down those chances

and based on everything that we've seen in Chicago from the numbers and from the eye test, like he just can't handle those opportunities and I can see everything kind of collapsing in on itself if not only if he defends against the rush like he did in Chicago but if his agility continues to decline, if maybe his decision-making starts to slip a little bit, you know, this really could be,

you know, a particularly poor fit for Duncan Keith, to the extent that, that, you know, maybe those gains that we would imagine from switching from a non-playoff team to a playoff team are a little bit illusory. Well,

yeah, certainly sounds like a great fit. It was very well thought out by the, by the Oilers management team. I, you know, it's kind of, be viewed as a surprise. Well, we've heard kind of rumblings about the connection between

Keith and the Oilers and their interest in him for a couple weeks now. But, you know, everyone you talk to around the league, basically stemming from the last trade deadline when they were surprisingly quiet and essentially basically only acquired Dimitri Gulikov for a third or fourth round pick was, and then again, Holland came out with his comments about how you kind of have to pick your spots and you can't go all in every year. And then just viewing how much cap space they had off this off season, the number of holes they had. It was everyone would always point to, okay, the Oilers are their team to watch this off season because, you know, they have both the desire and the need and the ability

to really be active. And I thought they got off to a good start this offseason with the R&H extension. I thought it was very sensible. You know, obviously, whenever you try to project eight years down the line on a player that is already in their late 20s, you're going to inherit a certain level of risk. but for the current construction of this team and the fact that you have, what, four more years of Leon Dre Seidel until he's up for a new deal, five more years on Connor McDavid's current contract, you're sort of incentivized to try to win right now, especially like you're doing

yourself a disservice when you have the best part in the world and you're not able to at least feel the competitive lineup. And so I love the idea of taking on that risk with R&H to keep him at that $5.125 million cap. And I thought that was a really smart move. And I was like, okay, this is often a good start. They're going to now utilize this extra cap space and flexibility they've afforded themselves to be even more aggressive. And for them to turn around and basically use whatever savings they had there, part of this is just, I honestly feel bad for Oilers fans that approach this offseason with a lot of a hope and optimism surrounding the potential moves they can make because this is just, it's a really, really bad allocation of resources.

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Yeah. I mean, not to twist the knife or anything, but, you know, this was kind of a free agent class that was specifically designed to fit what the Oilers needed from it. You know, there are a lot of good wingers available. You know, you got your Hyman's, your Tatars, your Brandon Sods, your Blake Coleman's, like guys who really fit exactly the mold of what they needed. You had defensemen who might be a little undervalued on the left side, like Mike Riley or like Jamie Alexiak, who they could have gotten for probably below what they're worth. And you had goalies who were worth taking a flyer on, who might be. might be, you know, interesting like Frederick Anderson or like Peter Morazek or guys like that, you know, and I'm sure that they're still going to make runs at some of those players, but it's just another $5.5 million that you have to take off the bidding block. And it makes life a little bit tighter and a little bit less easy for them to make the changes they really had to make for them to address a intangibles need that they probably could have gotten much cheaper. You know, I'm sure that nobody's going to be lining up to give Corey Perry

$5.5 million with a no trade clause this summer. And, you know, for a question mark who, you know, if he works out, that's fantastic. And Mark Spector and the rest of the Oilers media can all be right. And I'll, you know, give them credit for predicting this perfectly. But, you know, it's highly likely that it's not going to work out. And they're just going to put themselves in a weaker position, really, for no reason. You just know that Donkey Keith's starting off this next season with like a plus 10 and eight secondary assists in like his first 12 games or whatever and we're going to read a lot of articles

about how this was actually a stroke of genius by Ken Holland and how, you know, he did it again. What a move as if we haven't learned from from past mistakes and past lessons from Peter Shirelli. No kidding. I mean, an interesting thing for me too is that, you know, if I was a UFA defenseman this year and I saw that Tyson Barry just led the NHL in points because he was stable to the top power play, among defensemen, you know, this would be kind of the summer where I'd be thinking, oh, shoot, maybe I should take less than I'm worth to go play for the Edmonton Oilers.

And, you know, I'm sure that Duncan Keith will get plenty of chances on that power play. Maybe that's how he's going to end up proving us wrong is by, like you said, putting up 30 secondary assists on the power play. But it really does seem like a situation where Edmonton maybe had an opportunity to get some guys for less than their worth so that they could get the McDavid bump. And, you know, like everything else, they just fell more. that bag for no reason. Yeah. If I was an oiler's, like, how would you feel about the idea that this was a financially motivated move where there was an appeal to the fact that he's only making

$2.1 million in real cash this year and $1.5 next year? Well, it certainly wouldn't make me feel any better, especially considering that my property taxes would be going to pay for the New Rogers Arena. Yeah, I mean, I would certainly hope not because that would speak to a much bigger problem for the for the Oilers, especially I think I read that their owner made like $200 million over the pandemic, or it might have even been more than that. So I certainly hope that wasn't the case. Honestly, the only thing that would be, you know, like I remember, you know, as a Penguin's fan, when the Jack Johnson signing happened and just kind of being upset about it, but just having to just pray that it would all work out and that the intangibles would be real. And Crosby was happy

and maybe he wouldn't be so bad. And, you know, obviously that didn't work out particularly well for me. But there really isn't much else you can do it at this point, but just at least enjoy maybe the novelty of having a Hall of Fame defenseman on the back end. And maybe he teaches McDavid and drives the title something. And maybe, you know, the 10% chance pans out. And he's a strong contributing number four defenseman. I love the, I love the 4D chess idea that I think after he, if he retires after one season with the Oilers,

they actually get like 3.4 million back in cap space to go along with obviously the money. he had clear from his own cap hit, similar to what happened when, or I guess it's never happened, but what the news came out when the Penguins traded for Jeff Carter at the trade deadline. And it was like, oh, if he retires early, the Penguins are basically going to get this extra cap space because of the way the contract was structured. Obviously, that's not going to happen here. And there's no way they were thinking about that. But I love the idea that this is like a thing we're now considering in 2021 with NHL contracts.

That would be very funny. I would confidently say that the odds that Duncan Keith gets a two-year extension halfway through this deal is more likely than that that 4D Chess is happening. But it certainly would be fun. All right. Well, is there anything else on this trade or Keith or the Oilers or the Bacrox that you think is worth talking about? I feel like we've kind of hammered it from a lot of the main sort of angles or considerations. But do you have anything else?

Yeah, I think hammered is definitely the right term for it. I guess from a from a just quickly, we could touch on the black. I'm a backhawk perspective here where, you know, again, no need to get into SEP Jones, but I feel like adding Caleb Jones, who I think Oilers fans maybe made a little bit of a pet project out of this year of overrating just a little bit as teams fan bases are want to do with young depth defensemen who aren't getting into the lineup, you know, like honestly, you could make the argument that on a third pair you'd be more confident putting Caleb Jones out there than Duncan Keith at that point.

And that certainly wouldn't make a lot of people in hockey happy to hear. But the fact that they get a solid asset. And I have to say I am maybe a little bit higher on what the Hawks have assembled moving forward than a lot of people are. I kind of like the idea that there's rumors for them around Jones, obviously, which we can split hairs on with people who are maybe more enthusiastic about that. But maybe looking at Dougie Hamilton or options like that to really weaponize their. cap space. I heard a report that apparently they're looking at Mark Andre Fleury, which would be definitely an interesting acquisition for them. It is, I am glad that we're not just seeing this team kind of bottom out and tread water a little bit because I do think they have talented pieces

on the roster. And it would definitely be a lot more fun to see, you know, their young defensemen, see Valk viz, see, you know, Kirby Doc and Dominic Caballic and De Brinket and all of them kind of maybe get a little bit of a chance to actually compete for this thing in their statistical prime instead of just kind of waiting and bumming it out until Keith and until Cain and Taves's contracts are over and the rebuild can be complete. So I fully support more teams trying to compete and get creative with things. And I think that they pretty much knocked this one out of the park. Yeah, I agree, especially for a team that seemed like it was kind of back into the corner with very little leverage for them to not only have to get out of it without any sort of retention, but actually

get a NASA or two back in return was a nice piece of business. All right, Jack, we'll plug some stuff where can people check you out online and what do you working on these days? Well, they can check me out at EPRinkside where I write as well as obviously you, Dimitri and Ryan Lambert and Rachel Dory and Mitch Brown and the rest. I am currently making my way through the top names in the 2021 UFA class. I wrote about Tyson Berry, speaking of the Oilers a couple days ago. and I have a piece on Dougie Hamilton coming out tomorrow that has a whole lot of game tape and a whole lot of disagreeing opinions from different scouts and hockey people that I talk to about him.

And I'll just be making my way through essentially every player that the Edmondon dollars should have spent money on instead of Duncan Keith this summer. And then they can also find me, of course, on Twitter at J Fresh Hockey. They can find me on Patreon also under at Jafresh Hockey where they can find player cards, visualizations, and new. prospect cards that we just dropped today using the new NHL equivalency model built by Patrick Bacon. So if you're just like me and you're clueless about the upcoming draft and prospects in general, definitely check that out so that like me you can pretend to know a little bit more than you do. All right, buddy. Well, it was good to chat with you. I'm glad we got to talk our way through this one and we'll have you back on the show sometime down the road. So enjoy the impending and

upcoming series of moves that'll happen after this one. But we're off to a good start in terms of content and having something to talk about. For sure. All right. That's going to be it for today's episode of the Hockey PEOCast. Hopefully you enjoyed our imprompt to mini episode breakdown of the Duncan Keith trade as the offseason carries on and more moves like this happen. We're going to try to do more shows similar to this one and keep the content coming.

So if you did enjoy it, please consider taking a minute of your time. to leave us a quick little rating and review. Each one goes a long way towards helping us out, and I personally greatly appreciate it. A lot of you have done so already, and so thank you for doing so. If you've been waiting to do so or haven't done so yet for whatever reason, please consider changing that and getting it done. It's really, really easy to do, and it helps us a lot. We're going to be back with more episodes of the PDO cast here soon. We're planning a mock draft, similar to the one we did last year of the upcoming entry draft. So we're going to have that coming.

And then there's going to be a bunch of expansion draft content and free agency previews and analysis and all that good stuff. So keep checking the feed for more of that. And we will be back soon. The Hockey PDOCast with Dim Filippovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdf. podcast.