The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 406: Expansion Draft Takeaways

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Ryan Lambert and Jack Fraser join the show to discuss what Seattle chose to do at the expansion draft, how the Kraken will look in Year 1, what their next steps are, and specific picks that we found notable for either good or bad reasons. Topics include: The value of financial flexibility moving forward How they can spend the cap space they now have Forgoing bigger names with bigger price tags The strong defensive players they targeted The risk and reward of their goalie choices Picks we liked Picks we didn't like Why there weren't more side deals along the way How good their projection should be for Year 1 The ideal ways for them to improve moving forward If you're looking to pivot to preparing for the upcoming entry draft and need to jam in as much in-depth analysis as possible in a short period of time, the Elite Prospects Draft Guide is just the thing for you. It includes detailed scouting reports, projections, and breakdowns of every prospect that you need to know about. You can use the promo code DRAFTGUIDE, which gets your three free months on an annual subscription when you sign up. With it, you'll not only get the guide, but you'll get access to all of the great written content available at Elite Prospects Rinkside, which includes the musings of yours truly. 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. Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast. With your host, Dimitri Philipal... Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Filipovich and joining me for a special immediately after the expansion draft results podcast. It's my good buddy, Ryan Lambert.

Ryan, what's going on in? What's happening? What's happening? Not a whole lot. Other than it feels like this morning we woke up, at least I did here, on the Pacific time zone to just a tour to force performance. by our good pal Frank Serravelli where he was basically just revealing

every single thing that was going to happen tonight. And then we all tuned in to the actual televised event expecting that we had found out there to be some sort of trades and it turns out there has been nothing at all.

So I have no idea why we just spent the past hour and a half watching that thing. Yeah, that's about right. Although I will say, I don't know the college football guy's name, but the college football guy being like, you notice that the Maple Leafs

haven't gone out of the first round, I don't know what. That was fun. I don't know. You didn't have that up there. I don't think. No, we did. They were simulcasting it on sports now. Yeah, I think it was Chris Fowler. He was just like, he was doing the Steve Corral boom roasted thing where he was like, the Buffalo Sabres, a decade without the playoffs. And he's like, hey, just stating the facts over here. And I think he cited randomly that the Detroit Red Wings were like bottom five and gold differential or something last year. Like he didn't say that. Yeah. He was beautiful. I love it. Also joining us on today's show. Sorry for the delayed intro here. It's, uh, it's our other good pal.

our coworker for both of us at EP Ringsside. It's Jack Brazier. Jack, what's going on, man? How's it going on, guys? It's good. It's good. Let's get,

let's get into this then. So we're recording this right after the drafts concluded. I think the biggest complicating factor for us in this conversation is that it feels like at least of now, we kind of have a bit of an incomplete picture of what Seattle is actually going to leave this draft with in terms of the treasure chest of assets. We know that at least it's, seems like the insiders have agreed that there have been no trades in terms of like

Carolina telling them to take Morgan D.Kee and giving them another asset so they stay away from Jake Bean. But it sounds like there will be some trades once the trade freeze lifts on Thursday morning or Thursday early afternoon where Seattle's probably going to trade some of the players they did take today to other teams for assets. So we'll see what kind of draft mix they get and all that jazz. But I'll start with you, Ryan, here. Where do you want to go with this thing in terms of your initial reactions of what they came away from this draft with, whether it was the right approach, you can take it any way you want. Yeah, I mean, I thought they were going to go pretty cheap.

Like, everybody was saying that from the get-go, that they were going to try to go into free agency with as much cap space as possible. And when I put my team together, I put like my, or my, you know, mock draft of it, I was like, oh, wow, you know, you can get some pretty good players, you know, Nita Ryder and, and, and, uh, Shane Gosses Bear, I thought was, it was an intriguing option. And they, they were like, what if we went even cheaper than that? What if we took several guys that, you know, Ryan Lambert, a guy who, um, I know a lot about the NHL.

I feel like I know a lot about developmental leagues. And they were like, what if we took like three guys? Ryan Lambert has never heard of in his whole life. That was a direct shot at Carson Turingki. Yep, him and True. Yeah, Alexander True is a big guy. Yeah, Alexander True. Yeah, a guy I've definitely heard of.

And yeah, it was just like, oh, they went even cheaper than I thought. And so, yeah, like when I put my my roster together, I was I don't know, a few million bucks under the cap like with all 30 guys. And they really, they said, no, that's too, that's too expensive. Right. Well, Jack, they at least based off cap friendlies current, uh, assembly of, of figures, looks like they've committed about 52.5 million in caps based to, in terms of NHL contracts, a 10 forward, seven defensemen, two goalies.

They've got seven RFAs in the way. Most of them are going to be pretty cheap. So I don't think it'll swing it too much to you. phase and the rest on two-way deals. And so that gives them about, you know, functionally, let's say even in the in the load of mid-20s when they take care of a lot of those guys in terms of wiggle room with a full NHL roster essentially assembled. And that's much different than a lot of these other teams. You look at their current cap-friendly figures. And it's like, yeah, Minnesota has $28 million to $29 million in cap space, but they have like 12 players

under contract right now and are going to have to pay their two most expensive guys who will probably eat up most of that. So it's not like they really functionally actually have that much money. So it is, it puts them in a very unique position in terms of basically being able to go and sort of dictate the market in terms of not only the excitement of all, you get to be in this new market and we're going to, it's going to be a fun story, but also we can pay you the most. Do you think that that is the approach here in terms of how they're going to parlay it at, or do you think it's going to be much more of this sort of slow build where they're going to try to weaponize it by either facilitating trades for others or, you know, eventually taking on some bad

bad money to get future assets. Which way do you see them going with this? Yeah, it's kind of strange. I mean, you look at how this team was built. I think that they left a lot of guys on the table like Neider Rider was mentioned, who I think probably could have gotten them some decent assets if they were going the kind of slow build route. Like, I don't really see a lot of guys on this roster who I think will return that much if they trade them. The one guy who really stands out is Mark Chordano and they marched him out there in a jersey. So I feel like they're not going to turn around and send into the Rangers tomorrow. You know, I mean, I do understand the virtues of them going cheap.

And I think I may have been a little bit more liberal with, with cab space than Lambert was in his mock draft, just because I figured that there were guys on the table who they would be able to flip, who might have a higher price tag. But, I mean, at the same time, like, they went out there and they signed two free agents today to pretty sizable contracts. And those are the kinds of contracts that teams that are. trying to compete at least somewhat would sign with Adam Larson and Jamie

Alexiak and from all accounts it sounds like they're going to be out there trying to get or at least put their names in the rings for big ticket free agents so it's kind of hard to really look at this team and figure out what exactly it is they're trying to do because I mean this roster doesn't seem like it's going to be contending

for a Stanley Cup even if they add Gabriel Landiscock to it but you know at the same time if they're trying to you know it really doesn't take that much to launch them up the standings in the Pacific Division. So I think that there's kind of a weird contradictory nature to how this team is built from my perspective that I guess as free agency goes along, we'll get some clarity on what

exactly this team thinks it is. Yeah, I thought there was a nice sort of middle ground or hedge for them to go here with a lot of the picks in terms of, you know, Giardano and Yarncroc, two guys, they did take fit this bill. But I thought even JVR, although he has the second year left on his deal or even Max Domi, who's currently heard, but Nino. you know, Jason Zucker, you have a bunch of these guys who are certainly useful veterans who their current cap hits in this climate might be, you know, a tad high and their teams would

comfortably or gladly move off that money if they could. But for Vegas, they could bring them in. They could immediately be top line contributors for them. And then if things went, obviously, if things went well and they made the playoffs and were a great success story, you kind of ride that wave. But if things went south, like let's say they're an experienced goaltending, they come out of it with an 880s, a percentage, and they're suddenly losing a bunch of games. They can go ahead and retain 50% of that or whatever and flip those guys to contenders and get a bunch of those assets slightly belatedly back in return. And instead, you know, they took a couple of those guys,

but it really seemed like that wasn't their approach or their direction in terms of taking shots on some of those useful veterans and instead going, as we talked about the cheaper route. Like what they did with Philly was kind of the microcosm of this, where I really thought JVR, despite making $7 million against the cap. over the next two years, was a worthwhile flyer for them to take and potentially either use or flip down the road. And instead, they took this guy who buyer model has a 1% chance of being an HLer.

Yeah. I mean, like the thing about kind of going the youth direction is that just by the nature of the expansion draft, like literally by the rules of the expansion draft, like the young players that you have available to you are 23, 24, 25. You know, I don't see a lot of untapped potential in a lot of the guys that they took. I was informed the opposite by many of the fans of the teams that they were taken from because every depth defenseman in forward who's 25 years old is going to be a star in the NHL someday.

But yeah, I mean, that's really the thing. Like I look at this roster right now and with a few exceptions, I think that, you know, not to be, you know, too harsh or indelicate, but the vibe that I really get is kind of likable losing team. Like they're a lot more cohesive, I think, than Vegas were. stylistically, like they really went hard on these kind of low event, defensive forechecking, hardworking,

you know, like the kinds of mostly character guys who actually are pretty good at what they're supposed to be good at. There's a couple exceptions to that, obviously, but you know, I think that there's going to be a lot of fan favorites on this roster, and I think that there's virtue to that in terms

of building a team, you know, like the Brandon Tanniff contract might not be our favorite, but I'm sure he's going to play well in their market and everybody's, you know, a lot of people are going to be super psyched when he runs around and hits and four checks. But, you know, like, it's cohesive, but it's not cohesive in a way that I think is really going to lead to great results right out the door. And, you know, it's kind of with the lack of side deals reaping assets that we can get

into in a second, you know, I kind of have a difficult job seeing how this team is really going to be built up from where it's stood right now in a way that's not going to be kind of extremely painful and take a couple years. Well, Ryan, I guess if you came away, not to be liaise, compared to the Vegas expansion draft, because, you know, they had similar rules,

but obviously, I think teams approached it differently in terms of how they wanted to handle the transactions. Yeah, they didn't give Seattle a pre-top-six-four-word. Nobody did that this time. Well, certainly on paper, and what I was going to say was,

if you left Vegas's expansion draft, You know, a lot of us were very excited about Shay Theodore. For example, we thought getting Alex Tuck was a really nice asset for them. But like in terms of name brand value, it was like, all right, Mark Andre Fleury, we've heard of that guy. And then there was a lot of players who obviously wound up, you know, stepping up in bigger roles, but also similar to what Seattle did here. And I think that was part of the thought process for them or the guiding principle was

they had enough flexibility considering they didn't really take on any horrible contracts that were going to cripple them. I didn't have any baggage of past mistakes contractually, that they were able to basically year over year or even months at a time, just keep upgrading and aggressively adding to their team, you know, whether it was even moves that didn't work out, like signing Paul Staz and you're trading for Thomas Dutard,

obviously getting patcher ready and Stone and Petrangelo, they were able to keep kind of upgrading and getting better and better and bringing in those, those, you know, big names and big contributors to put them over the top. for the Seattle team, they have that opening certainly, both financially and also in terms of need. And they have a bunch of these, as Jack alluded to, kind of complimentary, you know, hardworking defensive types that a lot of great teams would certainly need and also prioritize, but they don't necessarily have the, if you're looking at like the Tampa Bay model, it's like they have a lot of,

they literally have Yanni Gore, but they have like the Blake Coleman and Barkley Goodrow types and all that good fun stuff, but they don't have the Nikita Kutcherab and Brain and Point at least on paper here. Right, yeah. And, you know, I've seen a lot of people go, oh, well, you know, who's Vegas or who's Seattle's William Carlson, where, you know, he goes from like a third line role on a not very good team and he scores 40 goals as a top line center in the first year. It's like, yeah, I mean, nobody would have said Bill Carlson was that guy, right? Like nobody would have said, if I'm looking at this, roster the guy i think is going to break out and just go absolutely nuts next season shoot 25 percent whatever it is uh nobody with a gun to their head would pick bill carlson right so uh you know like i i can totally see a scenario where like jared mccan goes nuts next season and and he's like a 30 plus goal guy and that sort of thing but i can also see a situation where it's like oh no he everybody just kind of does what we think of them doing generally.

And, you know, everybody's like a 20-ish goal guy, and they're not a very good offensive team, but they do seem to have the Jack's point earlier, the horses defensively to kind of, you know, keep it low event, low-scoring hockey, and try to get a bunch of two-one wins. Jack, when you put this list of players acknowledging that it could change, and they could wind up trading some of them.

At the time of recording now, when you put this collection of players into your lineup builder, what's the projection in terms of the point output for next season? I don't want to talk about it. I just tweeted about five minutes ago that the projection that it's shooting out is making me question the mechanics of the roster builder, because I just reject it about two weeks ago. And it's saying that this is a 100-point team.

So that is leading me to believe that something must be horribly wrong. I got to think that's the treacher thing, right? Like they're just like, well, he'll just do it forever, 930 goalie or whatever he was last season, right? Like that seems like it would be the thing that would be driving it. Yeah, well, I did set it so that his results are kind of regressed back to the mean because of how few games that he's played. But I think that the big, I would imagine that McCann and Blackwell are two guys who are driving it a lot because those guys definitely had some some PDO luck this season, some shooting luck that I feel like is probably getting overrepresented there. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, the one thing that

I can take away from that before I completely dissemble the whole thing and turn it off and on again is that it does genuinely love the blue line. And I think that there is merit in how much it likes the collection of defensemen they've put together. You know, Mark Chordano is obviously on a down swing, but he's still a perfectly good defenseman. can probably be relied upon on top pair. Vince Dunn, you know, we've been talking about for a couple of years as a potential entry in that kind of Devon Tave's category of guys who maybe wasn't fully appreciated before and now in a new environment will be able to fully break out.

And, you know, Adam Larson and even Jamie Alexiak, though I think a lot of people are down on that contract. And I think that there's reason for people to be very skeptical about paying a defensive defenseman for five years on a deal. You know, both of those players have performed. very well, specifically defensively in the past couple of years, and they project very well as a result. So I think

to Ryan's point, you know, this is a low event defensive team. Presumably if they're coached properly, and based on what Haxdoll said at the press conference, he said all the charactery, hardworking, forechecking stuff. So I imagine that's the kind of style they'll be playing. You know, I like,

this defense could definitely gut out a good number of wins. And it wouldn't surprise me, especially in the Pacific, to see them do well. But I wouldn't I won't exactly be running to bet on this team finishing above 95 points this year. I mean, yeah, it seems like it's certainly that didn't happen by accident and they prioritize it. And probably something of it just has to do with the fact that it still is, you know, a bit of a market

and efficiency in the league in terms of like defensive value and trying to quantify it and actually valuing that stuff appropriately with actual quantifiable results as opposed to, oh, this guy is, you know, wins a bunch of face off so he's good defensively. I was ready to be high on this team's blue line even before we found out that Adam Larson and Jamie Alexiak were going to be their two picks and the guys that they would sign during their negotiating window just because I thought that if you look around the league, like most teams have one really good guy, maybe even two. And then it's like they're generally giving minutes to players who are either replacement level, AHL guys or even worse. And for this team, it felt like they'd at least be able to just have six very, very solid. health defenseman and there's some value to that. And then obviously adding Lars and Alexiac with their defensive results baking into this, it really put them over the top. So I think that

is certainly going to be a big time strength of this team and it's going to keep them in the game. And I wonder how much that tied into the fact that they also have, you know, we can talk about the goalies, but a lot of question marks and uncertainty and they didn't invest a lot of resources into their goalies at all. And so if they're playing a lower event, you know, really high efficiency defensive brand of hockey. I imagine that that kind of helps make it more palatable that they invested less than $5 million in their cap into their three goalies they picked here. Yeah.

Go ahead. Okay. I will. Yeah, I mean, I look at this and I think the thing that you have to say is you have to view this through the lens of, is this team, you know, Cup competitive or, no, of course not. But is this team, if it gets a little bit of shooting slash goaltending luck, is this team like potentially the second best team in the Pacific Division next season? Yeah, I mean, it's, that's a real possibility, I think, you know, you go down, you go, okay, Vegas, fine.

Edmonton is going with a Mike Smith, Miko Koskin, and Battery again. They just took Adam Larsen from them. And they just took Adam Larson. But like, you know, everybody, talks about how good the oilers were last year in the regular season. That was an aberration season from Mike Smith, right? Like, he's older than me, and I'm 38 years old. So, you know, I look at that and I go, well, you know, the odds that they get that again aren't particularly great, and there's only so much two of the best offensive players in the world can do for you if you can't keep the puck out of your net.

Calgary, Vancouver, L.A., all teams with obvious roster flaws, serious questions that need to be answered this summer. L.A. obviously looks like they're powering up to do something like they're going to start using their cap space and things like that. Okay, but I'm not, and then San Jose and Anna. I'm not totally convinced that like this isn't just a team that kind of by default is like third best team in the Pacific right now. Well, Jack, nine of the 12 defensemen they took are left shots. I imagine some of them will probably get moved. The three righties are Adam Larson,

Will Borgon, and Kale Flurry. If only there was a right shot defenseman on the open market that could help provide the offense that the Spolwer Group might be lacking. Can you think of anyone that might fit that bill? Oh, man. I mean, honestly, if there was a forward group that would love to play with Dougie Hamilton, it would be this one.

Can you imagine these guys chasing down those rebounds for 25 minutes a night? Like, that is basically a dream come true. Well, you know what I was thinking? Sorry, God you all, but just on that note before, before I forget, I was thinking about this with the Mark Giordano pick here because, you know, Dave Haxall, the last time we saw him coached an NHL team famously ran like the most point shot heavy 5-1-5 offense in the league. and he's been the assistant coach on the Leafs in the meantime. And, you know, they last year, like, didn't shoot any point shots.

So I'm not sure how much of that is it just the thing of the past. How much of that was a philosophy he genuinely believes in? But, you know, Giordano's a guy who was always like top five in terms of defensemen and just kind of spamming from the point. And man, would Dougie Hamilton love playing in that type of system? I mean, would Dougie Hamilton love playing with Mark Jordano again? That's what everyone's talking about how Dougie Hamilton apparently, even though all the numbers say otherwise just can't function out there without a

amazing you know legendary defensive defenseman next to him i mean he had some pretty good results with mark jardano so i wonder if that might be a possible fit i mean it would definitely be you know it would make me feel a lot more comfortable in this in this point projection but you know again it kind of fits into the broader picture of what exactly does this team expect to be what do they want to be you know like i i think that you're looking at the of this roster how it stands if they weren't going to be making, you know, a lot of big moves. And if they were going to be moving out guys for assets and not being big players for stars and free agency, you know, one thing that is definitely different for this team than when Vegas came

into league, you know, one of them is obviously what Ryan alluded to, which is that the Pacific division is basically the worst division that we've seen since OV beat up the Atlanta thrashes and Carolina Hurricanes for five years and, you know, about a decade ago. But in the, other thing is that there is serious franchise level talent coming up in the draft in the next couple of years. You know, Vegas basically was staring down Nolan Patrick's and, you know, Rasmasdalian obviously was a little highly-touted prospect, but I don't think there was too much hype about who was behind him. You know, Jack Hughes, these are guys who were hyped, but not at the same level as Connor Bedard and Matvei Michkov and even Shane Wright. So when I saw this roster,

kind of the second part of me seeing it and saying, okay, well, like these are, this is a team that can lose respectably, is that, you know, if they decide or if they either decide not to go the free agent route or they just strike out on the big names, you know, I think that they can kind of be winners either way in that scenario,

because I think they can compete in the Pacific if they do get a big name like Douggy, but on the other hand, you know, if they don't, I think at least that it could help them build for the future and maybe be better down the line. Well, Ryan, I've seen it's been kind of positioned as a lot of teams have been unable to be active over the past however long because they were sort of in a gridlock or holding pattern because they were worried about the expansion draft and they didn't want to take on future commitments and all that. And I'm sure there was part of it in terms of making the protection slots fit and sort of minimizing your exposure to losing good players.

But like the flat cap was the thing heading into the expansion draft and it's going to be a thing for the next couple of years. it doesn't suddenly go away now that this draft is over. And so I really did want to key in on how valuable an asset, the flexibility they do have is because I think it's sort of natural to, especially with expectations heading in, to look at this roster on Gap Friendly and say this is pretty underwhelming. And I think all three of us, you know, the general tone is there's things we would have done differently and they could have been more ambitious and kind of recouped more assets from this process.

But at the same time, the amount of flexibility do you have, both in terms of actual dollars and in terms of how few sort of, you know, big money, short, long-term contracts they have on their books right now really is something that if they play at right can make an entire difference for this roster and for this franchise moving forward. If they are able to use it to get one or two or even more sort of big name players, it suddenly sort of shift our perception of them. Yeah. And the other thing, too, we kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, but, you know,

I'm not totally convinced. Like the thing about I thought they'd trademarked Giordano to, you know, oh, we'll take a quarter of its salary, half his salary, whatever, and flip them to the Rangers or whoever else. That made perfect sense to me, but like Jack said, the fact that they put them in a jersey

and sent them out on the stage, I don't think they're going to do that, right? So, you know, there are guys that they can that they can try to leverage that kind of thing with. And like Yanny Gord, I think the fact that he didn't show up for this, I don't maybe want to read too much into that, but all the other big money guys, they got to show up. You know what I mean? Well, I imagine part of it was winning a Stanley Cup very recently.

The other part was it sounds like he's having surgery coming up here soon. I wonder how much of that played into it. I did not see about the surgery thing. Yeah, Jack, he's out until like November or something, right? Yeah, he's out until November. I think more entertain, like he, I think he had surgery two days ago, so it might not have to trot him out with his arm in a sling in his, get excited about the first season of Seattle Cragon Hockey with this guy who has one arm. Here's a guy who's going to miss a month and a half. Here we go, folks.

I mean, if they wanted, if they wanted a guy with one arm, they should have just taken Vlad Tarasenko. Yeah, there you go. All right. Yeah, the headline on the athletic today was like chip on his shoulder or something like that. And I was like, uh-oh. Can they say that? I think he has three chips on his shoulder. Yeah.

Yeah, and that is the issue. But yeah, so I don't know. I think the thing that I keep thinking about is, boy, if they like someone in a who's a restricted free agent, why not, man, you know? Like that's the thing I keep thinking about is like they're so well positioned. They're going to get the second overall pick. They're going to pick Maddie Benning. I think is the general consensus there.

And yeah, they're not. Well, here's the thing. They have all their picks, right? So they are available to offer sheet. I guess it kind of runs counter what Jack was just saying in terms of the uncertainty of there's some great drafts coming up here and they might not be good. And committing future picks with that uncertainty

with the star talent available in these next couple of jobs. draft, I guess, would give me a bit of pause to do so. Well, I guess it comes down to who they would maybe be targeting. And again, like RFAs, whoever signs RFAs with an offer sheet in this league. Like, it doesn't happen. So, you know, but I don't know if there's a guy coming on. I don't have a list in front of me. But if there's a good player coming on to his second contract, you know, he's like 21, 22 years old,

they have the ability to. really make the other team think about it. There's a lot of fun. I can't imagine Ron Francis getting himself frozen out of all the Hall of Fame alumni dinners in the future. But I mean, that would be very fun if they just came in right away, looked at the Pacific Division and said,

oh, we're not going to be picking top five for the next five years. Yeah, that's the other thing that I kept going back to too, is like there's like kind of an artificial floor to how bad. they can be built into it because it's like, yeah, we got to play the Anaheim Ducks like eight times next year. We're going to win a lot of those games. Right. Yeah, there's a bunch of good RFAs, right? There's Laius Pedersen, which would be a tasty beefball for the Pacific Division.

Oh, can you imagine? What a dream. There's, there's, there's, there's interesting routes for them to go. What do you, what do you guys think is the best use of that cap space then? Do you think it is the RFA around? It kind of feels like a waste of time in this body gets to talk about it just because it's the NHL and it's not going to happen and you should probably devote our time to more realistic blueprints for them. Is it getting involved in the trade market and potentially becoming involved in the Jack Eichl talks? Do you think it's in the UFA waters? What do you think? I think it'll be a little from the last two. I think they're going to sign a couple. like why, you know, apparently they have the green light from ownership to spend to the cap.

You know, will they get all the way there? I kind of doubt it, but will they throw a bit of money around next week? Yeah, sure. And then, yeah, just having the ability to kind of be a team that if you're laundering cap money for a season, well, now's the time to do it. There aren't like huge expectations on you and you can kind of see what you have and maybe get an extra first round pick

for next season, that sort of thing. I don't know. Jack, what's your ideal next couple moves here for the Cracken? Yeah, I think that just anything that maximizes their assets is probably the best way to go. I mean, if they were unable to make expansion, like side deals for, you know, expansion considerations, you know, that's obviously a lot of value left on the table relative to what Vegas was able to do.

You know, like we said, there were guys who maybe could have gotten them a decent return as rentals either this year or next year who they decided not to pick. So that's just more assets again left on the table. So, I mean, looking at kind of this team and how it's formulated and the lack of kind of extra picks and prospects that they've accumulated so far, I think that probably the best route to go would be. you know, if they're doing the UFA thing, like if they want to be in Atlantis Gog and Dougie and all that stuff, it really should be kind of a go big or go home situation. Like there's, you know, they should definitely not be looking at, you know, your Philip Dano's or Zach Hyman's or that class of UFA because that just seems kind of doomed to launch them right in the middle of the Pacific for the next couple of years. Right. Whereas, you know, if they if they get Dougie, then great that maybe speeds the process along and they can try to do something interesting short term. And if they don't, then I think that the cap space should just be spent on basically doing what we kind of thought they would do at the expansion draft, which is taking some bad short-term contracts to help some teams that a cap squeezes and getting some extra picks and return.

Because that is probably in their best interest moving forward to just get as many of those assets that maybe they weren't able to get early on and help them out moving forward. Yeah, I really wonder on that note, how much of them walking away with this draft without any real Vegas-esque side deals was then, asking for too much because it did sound like, you know, the, the prices were pretty steep in terms of like, oh, give us a first and a third and we won't take Mark Giordano and stuff like that. And then how much of it was teams just being so hell bent on not being embarrassed by doing like bad trades with them that they were just like, all right, like just take one guy and we're not going to make the same mistakes we did. And that's the case, then that might limit their ability to execute on stuff like that, even moving forward, even after this draft. Yeah, well, it's kind of strange

because, you know, like you said, teams obviously lived through the expansion draft the last time. They saw what happened. They saw the result. And then they were obviously going to learn for it. And then we heard at the same time that Seattle had like, you know, was asking for double what teams were giving Vegas the last time around. Like those two things really never seemed compatible at all. Like it didn't make sense that teams would have learned from the last time, but then decide to pay way more for Seattle. But all throughout this process, you know, we heard it like a year ago that Seattle would be asking for a lot of assets.

and we heard it two days ago that they would be asking for like multiple first round picks for draft considerations and stuff like that. So those two things never really jelled in my head. And I mean, I think we were all surprised to see that there were no side deals happening. But I think based on the process that we were hearing about the entire time, it really shouldn't have surprised us that that impasse was going to happen. And I think Seattle has, as, you know, I think a lot of people are a little skeptical about the job that Seattle today as a result of that. Let's take a quick break here, and then we're going to get into some specific decisions that are made on the other side of things.

Recognized employees with Custom Ink. Show customer appreciation with Custom Ink. Outfit your teams with Custom Ink. Easily add your logo to your favorite products and brands at Customink.com. Make Custom Ink your Custom Gear partner with great customer service, quality products, and all in pricing, along with personalized help when you need it, and an easy-to-use website when you don't. All backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Do it all today at custom ink.com. Every deep playoff run starts with building an amazing team. Doing the same for your business

doesn't take a room full of scouts. You just need Indeed. Don't spend hours on multiple job sites looking for candidates with the right skills when you can do it all with Indeed. Hate waiting? Indeed's US data shows over 80% of Indeed employees find quality candidates whose resumes on Indeed matches their job description the moment they sponsor a job. Something I love about Indeed is that it makes hiring all in one place so easy because with virtual interviews, Indeed saves you time. You can message, schedule and interview top talent all in one place. Indeed knows that when you're growing your business, you have to make every dollar count. That's why when you sponsor a job, you only pay for quality applications from resumes in our

database matching your job description. Visit Indeed.com Bluewire to start hiring today. Just go to Indeed.com slash Bluewire. That's Indeed.com slash Bluewire. Terms and conditions apply. Cost per application pricing, not available for everyone. Need to hire? You need Indeed. All right. I feel like we kind of set the table there in terms of expectations and next steps and why they did what they did. Let's talk about some of the specific decisions here. I'm not necessarily as keen on spending 20 minutes talking about why they took Cole and instead of Jonah Gajewicz from the Canucks, for example. But I did think there was some interesting decisions that they made.

So I'll let you go first here, Ryan. Give me one that either you thought they'd do for sure on your mock and they didn't wind up doing, or even you can take it the other way and say, you know, you were pleasantly surprised or happy that they went throughout. They did because it was a good pick. I guess I have two here. And one is Jared McCann, which I think that. That pick is interesting more for how it happened.

That's obviously a player of people like us, Dweeb's, liked for quite a while. And, you know, I saw some people today saying, well, there's a reason he's on his, I think this is a 17th NHL team in his young career. You know, there's a reason why. And it's like, yeah, I see that, right? Like, you know, you can see where there's an argument that, oh, he maybe can't play in the lineup. But then every time he does, he looks really good doing it, you know?

And so I thought that was a really interesting, you know, like Toronto kind of daring. I mean, you wouldn't, you couldn't possibly want Jared Bacquhart. Look, Alexander Kerfut, who's like, what if Jared McCann was like worse? He's right there. You guys want him, right? And Seattle was like, no, we want the guy who's the good version. of the guy you said.

And then the other one is Kelly Yarncroke, who's a player I've liked for a long time. And I, you know, he's one of those guys where it's like, wow, he's 29 years old, huh? That's wild. And that was more of a thing of I kind of can't believe Nashville didn't really like go crazy trying to bribe Seattle to take somebody who wasn't him.

Well, let's hit both of those, Jack. as a as a long time Jared McCann and Joyer, I'm, I'm willing to believe that he's not as good as you would think based off of looking at metrics or the war models or, you know, future projections. He shot 15% personally last year. He had an on-ice 515 shooting percentage of 13.6, an on-ice 515, 70% of 931. Certainly made him look better than he probably is. At the same time, clearly a very useful point. player who can either play for you down the middle, which is obviously of importance for Seattle here, but also can bump it away and clearly has a good shot has produced. Is there a weirder career trajectory or arc for a player than Jared McCann where in 2014 he gets taken one pick ahead of David Pasternak? Then as a teenager, he gets rushed into the lineups on this horrendous

Canucks team and doesn't, you know, looks fine for a teenager, but doesn't necessarily have great results, as you would expect. And then right after that first season, it gets traded for Eric and Branson spends a couple years on Florida. They wind up essentially cap dumping him and Nick Bukes out to get off of a bunch of money and take expiring contracts back in return. And then now he gets traded to Toronto, stays on the team for a handful of days. And then now he's off to Seattle. Like what a still only 25 years old. Ryan, as you mentioned, 17th team. Like, what a, what an insane trajectory for a player who is good, even if he's still. not necessarily great is clearly a good hockey player.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with you that, you know, if you just kind of don't know anything about the player at all and you just look at his, you know, his metrics, you're probably not getting the right sense of him because like you mentioned on a shooting percentage off the charts, you know, he was playing with Jeff Carter when Jeff Carter scored 50 goals in five games for the Pittsburgh Penguins this season. And that was all because of Jared McCann. Yeah, exactly. You know, he, for, you know, I think he's like, he's like,

He was like seconding goals above replacement for 60 or something this year. I saw a lot of Penguins fans angrily citing that. And, you know, again, that's on-eye shooting. I wouldn't read too much into that. You know, the fact of the matter is that the guy that Jared McCann is, is a perfectly good middle six defense first, you know, center slash winger, who almost always eventually ends up being put on the wing. And I feel like that's probably a reason that he keeps getting moved

is because teams acquire him because they want him as a third line or second line center. And then he kind of eventually, the coaches put him at the wing and they lose patience with him because maybe they don't see him really as a particularly good winger, but he's not a guy that they want to trust that center. And I feel like that's kind of a lot of what's been going on, especially in Pittsburgh. I think that they always wanted more from him offensively in terms of generating chances for his linemates.

And he really isn't that guy. Like he is kind of a generally speaking, a low event guy who has a good shot. and maybe that limits his upside, you know, maybe he's going to be there William Carlson, like we alluded to before, or maybe he's going to be a decent second-line winger or a good third-line center or, you know, the real kind of benefit of Jared McCannies is versatility in the lineup, but I feel like it's also probably what has soured him for a lot of organizations. But, I mean, like Ryan said, he's younger, he's better, and he's cheaper than Alex Kerfut. So I don't know what made the Leafs, you know, under the impression that they were going to be losing him or that he was, you know, worth dangling to protect Alex Kerfoot.

Well, that's a thing that's strange here, right, from the Leaf's perspective. Like, it was a slam dunk, no-brainer pick for Seattle as soon as he became available. But when they made that trade, you're like, okay, they're, you know, I assume they're going to go seven and three here in terms of their protection and exposed Justin Hall. And if you lose him, he's a valuable asset at $2 million as a second pairing guy. but more replaceable or they're going to expose Alex Kerfoot. And instead, this wound up happening because they went four and four and exposed both guys. And clearly Seattle was going to take McCann. And that was kind of the strange thing to me.

Like on the one hand, you could argue, all right, well, the Leafs lost a seventh round pick. And Philip Hollander here, it's not the end of the world. If you look at what some other teams lost, it's a very palatable alternative. But it seems like it didn't need to go this way. And I wonder if they miscalculated it or what kind of what the, chain of events was that led to the ultimate outcome here. Yeah, I don't know. I've heard a lot of Leafs fans criticizing the organization by saying it's an endowment effect thing.

And I think that if you look at, you know, Justin Hull's results, you know, he's kind of the ultimately the guy, you know, more so than Kerfoot, who the Leafs did all of this maneuvering to try to protect, you know, they had, they went four on, or four and four specifically so that they could keep him as their top four right defenseman. You know, I think that Holes credentials is a top. top four defensemen are essentially he plays in the top four and doesn't immediately burst into flames when he's out there you know i don't think that he's a guy who you absolutely have to keep around i mean

he's 29 he's fine you know that's the crazy thing to me right like everybody talks about him like oh july he's got so much more to give it's like this dude's almost 30 i don't like i don't get it from from toronto's perspective where it's like you trade it like well because when they traded for Jared McCann. Everybody's like, that's the Kerfurt insurance. They're going to, they're just going to use him in Kerfurt's role. He's probably going to be really good playing behind Matthews and Tavares. And if they have to move them to the wing, they'll do it. And they were like, we actually would really like to protect our fourth best defenseman who is eminently replaceable. Yeah. It's weird. It feels like people just because I guess they have a significant part of their

a cap devoted to forwards and, you know, they score a flashy goals. It's like, oh, the Leafs are this all offense team that is set it on, set it forward and actually needs more defensive men. And it's like, they need more good forwards. If you look at what happened in the playoffs and how like obviously not having John DeVarres heard quite a bit, but like they could really use a jurid McCann player on this on this roster. And so when they did acquire them, I was like, this is a really smart trade for them. And I just, I didn't even.

They gave up almost nothing to get them. You're like, this is incredible. Well, great job by Toronto. And then they were like, yeah, we actually don't want this player at all. Yeah, there was like a beautiful, like, three-hour window where Lee's fans actually liked me again. And then they decided to just throw it all out for Justin Hull. And I'm really mad at Kyle Dubus for doing that because he almost did me a huge solid. There's still, there's still like, this, Kyle Dubus only does the good traits.

Lou Amarillo still does the bad ones, right? Like, that's how we're, that's how we have to think about it. Um, quickly on the Yarn Croke thing, uh, another smart pick by, by Seattle, one year left at two million. I believe pretty much like the type of winger. I don't think he's in a play center despite the team's needs. He's more a winger at this point of his career. But the type of player, everyone would want. I think if they want to flip him, they'll certainly have plenty of teams lining up for him.

His defensive metrics last year were off the charts. He was fantastic. I thought the hilarious takeaway from this was that the Predators protected three forwards and two of them were Luke Cunning and Tanner Geno. Like that was, I don't know. I think Nicholas Delorey still being protected was the craziest thing that I saw, but that was a close second in terms of going the five defense men and two of those forwards being that.

Like if you're going to do that, no, Tanner Geno is way. If you're going to do that, why are you panic trading Victor Arbitson for 70 cents on the dollar three weeks ago? Like, what? Do you want to hear my theory? It's that the predators do not know what they're doing. They have no idea what they want to do next season. They didn't know what they wanted to do last season.

They should have blown it up, but then they got the hottest goaltending in the league for three weeks, and they said, you know what, we're all in, baby. We're going to try. We're going to make a couple of trades at the deadline. We're going to lose in the first round. Nobody's going to be surprised. And then, yeah, I mean, they moved on from Ryan Ellis.

and I don't know. I didn't really get that trade either for them. But yeah, I just looked at that and I was like, yeah, they don't know what they have on this roster at all. They just know they don't want what it is. Yeah, I mean, like I can't imagine that anybody in that organization felt like proud when they submitted that list. Like they're looking at the list of like, all right, we have one forward in the entire organization that is. an actual like proper impact forward that we don't want to give up everybody else sure fine take them like that you know i mean like the thing with it with the yarn crow pickup is that it's it's the

smart pickup or seattle but i mean like it was the only not stupid pickup for seattle like i saw so many people in the past five days who had ryan johansson or matt de chene confidently as their number one centers and that never made an absolute lick of sense to me unless you know David Poyle realized that he was 73 years old and sent them their next 10 years of first round picks to get out of those deals. Like, you know, I mean, that one was totally obvious to be from the jump, but apparently there was some consternation about whether or not that was actually going to be the case. But in any event, regardless of how Yonkro plays, I think he fits the roster very well. He's clearly part of this philosophy of the group that they've put together. And I think that they'll be more than happy with him no matter where he fits in.

I agree. Jack, give me a couple of your most interesting picks for either good or bad reasons. So, I mean, Vince Dunn is a guy who we've touched on a little bit. Another case where I think that there was a bit of a battle between the more highly priced name brand guy and a kind of lower in the lineup player. I've had so many Sam Lewis Blues fans come at me for presenting numbers that say that he is good at. suppressing scoring chances and they just send me YouTube compilations of him getting walked and turnovers and all this stuff so I think more than anything like I am incredibly curious just to see him on a different team like it really is one of those situations where I want to see if this is a legitimate situation where we've been missing something horrible about it's done this whole time or

whether it's going to be a thing where everybody in Seattle loves this guy and they're all buying a jersey and everything and st. Louis lose fans are saying oh well he sucked when he's was with us but you know oh now he's good i guess he must have learned something from mark jordano or something yeah tersenko seemed like the the no-brainer especially when it was announced that he was going to be unprotected just based on name value um 7.5 million in cap it for the next two seasons that makes 9.5 in real dollars this year and i don't really know how to evaluate him or moving forward because he in his prime was clearly one of the most lethal and just consistent consistently great goal scorers in the league where year in a year out, you could just count on 30,

35 goals from him. Over the past two years, though, he's got seven goals in his past 34 games over that stretch, shot 6.2% last year. And it's not like, oh, that's, you know, that's a, that's an outlier. He's going to bounce back because you could, you know, argue that a big reason for that was because he has one functioning arm, basically after all of his shoulder problems and his shot profile changed in the process. and if he's not getting to the same areas and he doesn't have the same velocity and zip on his shot,

then we shouldn't expect that to bounce back. And if that's the case, it's a real stayaway in terms of the dollarhead. Now, you could argue that they could have taken him and potentially retained and flip because whether it's Philly or the Islanders, I believe there will be teams that are interested in Teresanko services and hoping that they can, you know, get him back into full goal scoring form. But I really thought, you know, just the way the discussion was framed in terms of like, oh, Lazarenko,

you have to take him, was missing some really important context there. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, I mean, this is kind of a fortunate situation for them because unlike some other situations

or other teams where they had, quote unquote, Teresanko's available and they decided to take ECHLers. You know, they at least did get a legitimate, you know, defenseman with upside who I think that they'll be able to hopefully get some value out of.

So that was definitely one that I found interesting. I think that the two free agents also, I was definitely taken aback by. I think one factor that I didn't really consider when I put together my mock team was the idea that they were going to be legitimately playing in free agency and putting together options like that. And then I think that the other one that maybe surprised me a little bit was taking on Jordan Eberley. I think that there was a lot of discussion around the fact that the islanders

were so clearly just desperately trying to get rid of cap space, you know, to the extent that they traded a pile of picks to Arizona to take on Andrew Ladd. And now, you know, we find out that, you know, they just have moved essentially a 31-year-old player who signed for three more years, making five and a half million, and they're just able to unload that contract for free.

I was very surprised that the Islanders were essentially able to get away with that. and that, you know, of all the type of player that was available to Seattle, you know, Eberley was the guy in particular that they targeted, even if I think that Eberley is a perfectly effective player. And I think that he's, he's definitely going to be the most talented offensive player on this team. See the condition for the third round pick that is going Arizona in that LAD trade? Yeah, what the requirements are.

It was bizarre. It was, I might be getting it wrong, but it was either lad, appears they don't get the pick like the islanders don't have to give up the pick if a lad appears in one game in 22, 23. So basically

he can't retire but he also can't play for them. That's what I'm saying. So it was like a situation of he just he just has to be LTIRD. Is that? Pretty much. I guess they could buy him out conceivably. I'm not sure what the details

on that would be, but it was a very lew move. I thought, I mean, I think the difference here is so the Islanders shed like, what, 15 or 16 million in cap commitments for next season. I think in Eberley's case, and listen, it was necessary because they're going to have to pay Pellick. They're probably going to, I guess, bring back Sorokan, Bobillier. They want to bring back Palmieri after the success he had for them, Zizekas. So they have a lot of money that they need to allocate moving forward. Eberley though, unlike those other two contracts that they moved, I think they really will miss him because aside from his strong underlying numbers, he's just like a consistent goal score for a team that needs it, right?

Like he had 14, 5 on 5 goals last year, which were tied with Mark Stone, David Pasternak, Braden, Port, and Alex Obechkin. Like, he is a good player who clearly had success playing with Matt Barsall. And I guess they're thinking, okay, we can just play Leo Komarov and whoever else with Matt Barsall and get success out of them. I think it's they needed to move the money, but it's not like they were just moving a bunch of dysfunction, like dysfunctional money and all of a sudden they're going to be better off for it. Like I think it's going to be tough for them to replace that even with the $5.5.5 million they've cleared now. Yeah, the Islanders going, you know what? We lost a guy who had 14-5 on five goals.

We have enough other guys who can put the puck in the net that will be. It's like, no, you're the New York Islanders. Like this is like this seemed the Everly thing. I get obviously why they exposed him and that sort of thing. But this seemed like another thing of like, we dare you to take Jordan Everly instead of Josh Bailey. You won't do it. And they're like, you're right.

We're going to take Jordan Everly, the guy who is good. Yeah. And then they brought him out in a cracking jersey. And, you know, he's another guy. Like just a really, this is the other thing I kind of noted is that like a really likable player. Like fun to watch and just seems to have like a bit of a personality in a league where that's at a premium, I think you would say. The second oldest player behind Mark Giordano, but only has a three years on his deal. I think it's not prohibitive enough that and clearly they felt it wasn't.

But all right, my big talking point here is what they decided to do in net with the goalie options. and the pro is they have less than $5 million in cap commitments on the three guys they took, which is great because I think all three of us agree that it's the most volatile or least predictable position. And while it's obviously very important, any of these guys could wind up being really good. And so I'd rather go this route than investing whatever absurd amount of money would have taken to bring carry price aboard. At the same time, though, these three goalies have 77 career NHL starts combined. and I thought that, you know, the Drieger one makes plenty of sense. I thought even the Vanichick one makes sense.

I was very surprised that they didn't take Capo-Cakinen from the Minnesota Wild. I was also moderately surprised, I guess, when they realized they could sign Gmail XIAC. They decided to go that route, but I would have even potentially medicals. We need to see the medicals. I need to be approved, but maybe even give Ben Bishop a shot, given how low of a commitment that is over the two years. but you will see. I mean, there's a lot of big name dulies that are going to be available this offseason,

especially in the free agent market. And if they have the cast base, they could be an interesting fit for high cap hit low term on a bunch of those guys. And so maybe they'll go that route to bring in someone who's a bit more reliable. But it's a risk. But at the same time, we've talked about the defensive metrics that we expect on this team. And it might just be fine. And if Chris Rieger is legit, all of a sudden you have a great deal on him and you can play

a bunch more games and you're going to be set. So I think it's the most interesting talking about for me just because, it fits in, it's like very on brand with his team in terms of like, I'm interested, but ultimately it could wind up not being nearly as good as we think. Yeah, I think that's right. I too was pretty surprised that Kachman didn't get picked. You know, Carson Sousie, I don't really have a strong feeling about one way or the other. He's like in his mid to late 20s, he's fine.

and yeah, I mean, you know, I thought, I think that these were the three best goalies you could get. How do I want to say this? Like if you're like, yeah, goal tendings, whatever happens happens. Like these are the three best guys you can get at that price point. You know what I mean? Right. and then yeah it just it frees up money to do whatever else you want to including go out and get a goal like there are going to be five or six teams in November who are like please take our overly expensive backup goalie because we have you know this other guy who's who's just better what do you what do you think about the situation that jack yeah i mean i like chris rigger you know obviously Obviously, he lights up all my charts bright blue because he's played like five games and had five

shutouts in them. You know, I think that it's obviously rolling the dice. You know, you look at the comparables for for Drieger based on what he's done so far. And, you know, you see some somewhat encouraging names like Anton Hudobin and Martin Jones. You know, I guess early Martin Jones will say. And then you see others like, you know, Scott Darling that I, you know, if you're talking about 26 year old goalies who have had really great results in tiny sample sizes, who, get signed to multi-year deals by Ron Francis.

It's kind of hard not to think about. What a niche market in that case. Yeah, exactly. I'm pretty sure it's only two guys, but don't quote me on that. But yeah, I mean, it's exactly what Ryan said. You know, they were in a position where they basically had two roads to take. They could lock themselves into carry price and, you know, sell a couple extra jerseys, which apparently is the most important thing that any team can possibly do when building for the future.

or they could just give themselves maximum flexibility, and it seems like that's what they did. So I don't have any issues with how they approached the goaltending, and if everything goes completely south, I don't think it's the end of the world, and if it works out, you know, any of those three guys theoretically could end up being legitimate goalies because it's goaltending, who knows what's going to happen.

So, yeah, you know, Kackinen was a little bit unexpected, but I do feel the need to give Carson Sousy a shout out for leading all defensemen in PDO in the past two seasons combined with like a 105.9 or something. The things he does well. That seems like a good thing to target. Hey man, Eunice Don's going to shooting percentage last season. May I interest the two of you in a 27-year-old defenseman

who posted a league where it's 36% on ice, expected goal share last year and quite visibly dragged down every single person's numbers that he shared any nice time with. You mean the guy who's going to fix my Seattle war roster builder projections by putting him on the second pair? I think I might just skip fixing the model and just do it by putting him there. Yeah, also worth pointing out, the son of Paul McDermid, who played with Ron Francis on the Hartford Whalers in the late 80s, if anybody was wondering for some of the inside baseball, right?

There's always one, right? There's always one where it's like, you know, he actually, he's been to Seattle twice. So this is, the connections have always been there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, ultimately, like, it's not going to make a break. It wasn't a great list that choose from. They missed out on Blake Lizard and Kale Kleg or Carl Grunstrom.

But that one was a weird one. I thought the Gavin Bayruther pick from Columbus was a bit wild, considering he's a 27-year-old UFA with 28 career games to his. name. Similarly, I think kind of what we talked about with Teresanko, like initially, it was like, oh, of course they're going to take Max Domi. And then immediately, whenever you talk to anyone in the league, they'd be like, yeah, they're definitely not taking him because he might be out for the first half of the season. And who knows what he's going to look like at that point. And they might not even be able to flip him. So it's just not worth it.

But I thought whether it was Dean Kuka and I heard a lot of smoke around him or Kevin Stanlon, who I'm interested in, I thought there was like, they could have at least gotten an interesting young player in return and instead they went this route and that was like when we find out that there was no side deals to to take Gavin Bay Luther. It's like they intentionally did so. Like this was their own doing. I found that one to be very bizarre. Gavin Bayruther, a class, I, um, now that I think about it, let me look this up really fast, but a classic guy who, um, was like 23 years old playing college hockey and looked incredible, you know, um, um,

And I want to say around that time there was some pretty serious interest in him from Carolina. I think he ultimately signed with Dallas, if I'm not mistaken. But like I feel like I had heard that Carolina was like, damn, this kid rocks. And it makes sense. He was a high score in defenseman in college hockey. So that's the kind of guy Carolina likes. Well, speaking of Carolina, the geeky. pick that one for me and it less to do with the player himself because i do think he has an interesting

profile um i just thought whether it was you know jake beat in terms of upside slash potentially being a trade ship for them or nino need rider similarly as a trade chip with only the one year left on his deal i thought like it was a kind of a coin flip between those two but there was no other options and they just came sort of out of left field with geeky and i imagine the hurricanes themselves are are very happy with that being the outcome so they can keep both of those two other players in the instead. Yeah, and, and, you know, there have been rumors for weeks that Warren Fogle wants out. And now maybe he doesn't is the latest, I think I've heard. I mean, clearly the guy just doesn't like geeky. I think that's the only thing that we can possibly take away from that.

Yeah, I mean, Carolina and Columbus are kind of the two teams where I thought they had a pretty straightforward, you know, take him and flip him player on the table. And they decided to go with the, okay maybe this guy will compete for the first call-up thought or in geese case you know maybe he'll be a fourth liner on this team uh yeah i i mean just strange kind of two situations where where it really seems like okay there must there has to be some kind of side deal going on here and then the desk settles and it's like oh no they just really liked i'm not even going to say his last name i i i i've given whatever ben ruther yeah hey you better get to know that name yeah no exactly it's uh But yeah, I mean, the thing with Domi was was a little strange to me because I was hearing all the same things that you were about, you know, well, they're maybe looking at Stenland or they're looking at Kukan or whoever it is.

The Domi thing is kind of strange to me because, you know, I mean, he's going to be in surgery. I think he's projected to be out until like November. You know, I mean, so is Kelly. You're on Croke. They both have the same term left on their contract. I would have imagined that the upside of maybe having a couple, even just a couple weeks where you take Max Domey out of the John Tortorello, Columbus system and let him just kind of be the pure offense guy that he clearly has been for his entire career.

Might have been worth something. But yeah, you know, it's the same thing with Nino Nader Rider. It's like, here's your rental. Obviously, a rental. Obviously, we'll get you a second or third round pick at least. And they just say, no, we're going to get our fourth line in center of the future. which, you know, I guess speaks to the kind of team they're trying to build. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think there were a number of those choices. So it'll be interesting to see what, I'm sure there's going to be more news to come out of this. But I think we did the best we could here in terms of what we know now. Was there any other notes on the expansion draft or decisions or players involved or anything that either you wanted to get to get to while we're still here? Yeah. I did want to touch a little bit more on the whole carry price thing. what was that all about?

Oh, finally, a program, a hockey program that's going to talk about Carrey Price to Seattle. I know. I get it, but like I just, did people really think Seattle is going to take Carey Price, knowing that he may miss a good chunk of time next season, knowing what the cap commitment would be,

knowing that it's an analytically inclined, organization and, you know, the analytics people would be like, Carrie Price is not worth anywhere near what he's getting paid. Like that would just be, oh, what do you, like you walked down the hall? What do you guys think of this Carrie Price thing? They go, no, and you close the door. Like, that's the end of the discussion. Yeah, I mean, and Carrie Price's dad didn't even play for the Carolina Hurricanes in the late 1990s,

so that anger doesn't even make sense. I really thought they'd take to know from Montreal and didn't sign what they did with Alexiak but that was a rumor that got shot down yesterday. And try to give up negative goals next season? They might do it. I mean, here's the thing. I didn't buy for a second that they were actually considering price.

I think like I, like I'm Elliott Friedan was reporting about how they're sort of trying to play a game of chicken and see if they could squeeze anything out of Mark Berger and to stay away from price. And he was the wrong GM to be trying to play that game with. And he played this very well where he got to keep Allen and basically gave away a player that I think he's very comfortable giving away in this process. But I mean, come on. Like prices owed $13 million, I think, in real salary next season. His signing bonus hasn't been paid out yet.

He's a full no move clause even if he got taken 10.5 million in the capital amendments over the next five seasons. Not to mention the fact that he hasn't been the goalie he was his past postseason at any point over the past couple of regular seasons. Like it was a fun story. And I think it would have been a very chaotic outcome. and Twitter would have been amazing if it actually had happened. But I like, I don't know, maybe it's a cynical party, but I didn't for a second actually let myself believe that they were really entertaining the idea of taking care of price in this draft.

Yeah, no, definitely not. I mean, one thing I think that, you know, if we just back up and just kind of appreciate that this is presumably the last expansion draft that we're going to get for quite a long time, I think part of the entertainment value of the entire thing was just that this was just an explicit moment that you don't usually see where you just have two opposing organizations clearly just playing, competing insiders against each other. Like it was just this kind of weekend long game of chess where,

Carrie where the, you know, people that were kind of, you know, Habs beat reporters or maybe, you know, Montreal adjacent were reporting about all these injuries and always he's going to have to go to the doctor because his arm has fallen off and all this stuff. And then two hours later, you would hear, oh, well, Seattle is actually, you know, they're looking into the finances and the owners giving them the sign off. And it just basically went back and forth like that for three different days. I do appreciate that we just got to see, you know, all the kind of behind the scenes, machinations that you get a little bit of,

especially during like RFA negotiations. But it was just kind of two competing teams just right out there in the open for like five days. Yeah, I like it. Okay, so let's let's put a bow on it. Let's summarize our general sort of tenor or tone or feeling heading out of this.

I think it sounds like we're all sort of, of, you know, a little bit underwhelmed, feel like they could have been more ambitious, but at the same time leaving the door open to see what's to come and also realizing that, you know, they did some good stuff as well. Like, I feel like it could have been better, but also like there weren't any necessarily catastrophic picks where you're like, what was going on here? Like even the questionable names where the alternatives weren't so good that they missed out or anything big.

Yeah, it's about, I feel like for the most part, you know, it's about what I expected. I think it'll be a pretty good team. Yeah, like I say, I think barring, you know, a total, a total goaltending meltdown or just like they don't have a single guy who can put the puck in the net. This feels like a bubble team to me

in that division at a minimum. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it would have been kind of hard for them not to be admittedly, but yeah, I mean, like, the, the thing is that like, I feel like if they weren't, going to go the star power route, which they obviously didn't.

Like they passed on price and Terrace Angolin and all those options. They definitely went the likable route for marketing. Like I don't think this team is going to have any problem marketing this couple of players. Like they're going to be fun to watch. They're going to be hardworking. You know, there's going to be, you know, double digits of fan favorites. So, you know, I think overall, if this team is bad, it's going to at least be bad in kind of a respectable and enjoyable way.

and if they're good, then it's found money. And they definitely have some good and interesting pieces on this team. All right. I like it. Sounds like we're in agreement. Plug some stuff. Ryan, you can go first. And then Jack, you can jump in after.

What are you working on these days? Where can people check you up? Tomorrow I will be writing my monthly power feelings column for EP Rinkside. And I will also be recording just in time for the, for the, the transaction embargo to not lift, we will be recording the latest episode of Puck Soup. So you'll just get to hear me say all this stuff again. Boy, wow, crazy.

We don't know what they're going to do yet. Yeah, nuts. Yeah. Well, there's only one hockey podcast. I'll get to have a Zach Hyman take, I guess. The Oilers shouldn't do this. I mean, there it is. You're assuming that Frank Saravelli isn't going to leak every single trade that's going to happen during the episode.

Fingers crossed. We need the content. I'm going to plug a little site called EPRankside. I don't know if you guys have heard of it, but pretty good. It has a handful of pretty good writers on it. I'm going to be writing what was supposed to be a free agency preview of Zach Hyman. It might have to be a free agency reflection of Zach Hyman, depending on when it drops tomorrow. uh he's uh he's a good player i don't know if he's a seven year good player i maybe eight

maybe eight could be eight i i you know what i feel like it would it would draw more eyes to the article if it's eight so let's let's pray for that uh and yeah and you can just find me on twitter at j fresh hockey uh going to be doing obviously a whole lot of stuff for the uh upcoming free agent frenzy uh but i was very glad that all of this stuff dropped earlier today so i could basically take the afternoon off and spend it outside instead of anticipating dropping 30 player cards in 15 minutes. I like it. Well, great job, guys. I appreciate you digging the time. I'm going to quickly plug some stuff myself so that I don't have to record a separate outro. Please go rate review the P.D.Ocast. It's greatly appreciated. If you want to prep for Friday's entry draft, we did a mock

draft with Chris Peters and Cam Robinson recently on the PEOCast. Also, our website, which we talked about a couple times now if your ringside has the best draft guide in the game to help prep you for it, I believe if you use the promo code draft guide in all caps, it gives you three free months off an annual subscription and you get access to the work of all three of us. So please go check that out if you haven't done so already. And yeah, enjoy the upcoming transactions and the entry draft. And we'll be back with the PDOCast soon. And we'll be back with each of you soon as well on the PEDAOcast. So thanks for listening. Thanks for the two of you for coming on the show. And enjoy.

Thanks, bud. Thanks.