The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 429: Regular Season Lessons and Playoff Projections

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Dom Luszczyszyn and Rob Pizzola join the show to discuss a whole bunch of different topics. Things covered include: How profitable betting favourites has been Colorado's status as top team and getting over the hump The league's problems with stat tracking The plan to include faceoff probabilities on broadcasts The freakishly good season Igor Shesterkin is having Accounting for goaltending when measuring team quality The effect that aggressive goalie pulls have had Projecting regular season success into the playoffs Optimal postseason betting strategy Revisiting our favourite preseason props If you haven't done so yet, please take a minute to leave a rating and review for the show. Smash that 5-star button. If you're feeling extra generous, you can also leave a little note about why you recommend people check the PDOcast out. Thanks for the help, each one is much appreciated! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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

Doing the research and sweating the details to create gear that works for you. It's your run. Brooks, run happy. progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey Pediocast. With your host, Dimitri. Welcome to the Hockey Pediocast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich.

And joining me is my good buddy, Robpizola. Rob, what's going on, man? Hey, Dimitri, good to be back here and talking to you again. Great to see you. And also joining us completing this trifecta is my pal, Don, Don, what's good on, man? I cannot believe Rob got good buddy and I got pal. I cannot believe you got away from Twitter.

today, Dom, to be honest, with back and forth I've seen you having with, what was it, Alan Walsh? Yeah, I was glued to my phone like all day. It was so funny. I was telling Rob before he went on air, but Alan actually, I had to go on the PDOCAST Twitter account to see what Alan was saying to you because he has my, my personal account block from making him Andre Pavlik years, many years ago. Oh my God. Yeah, good times. All right, well, let's get into this. I've got a bunch of topics. here that I wanted to run down while I have both of you.

And we're going to see how much headway we can make. So the first one is kind of second half of the season trends to watch, especially in terms of Rob, I remember last time the three of us chatted. I think it was like a season preview at the time, but we were sort of talking about when projecting for a full year, especially after the deadline when there's really a delineation between teams that are getting ready for the playoffs and teams who are obviously, you know, looking forward to the future seasons that are rebuilding and aren't going to be making a playoff push this year in terms of sort of motivations or incentives changing and kind of how

we need to account for that or adjust for that. I think this year seems like it's really bordering on the extreme of that because we've already got what two full months of the regular season left. And at least in the Eastern Conference, all eight teams that are going to be making the playoffs are basically accounted for. There's going to be a lot of jockeying for position and stuff. but it seems unlikely that anyone that's on the outside right now can even justify or talk themselves into having a chance to make a push and get in there. So how do we sort of adjust for that in our projections or our models or our expectations for these final two months acknowledging that there's probably going to be a pretty big gap

in terms of incentive for teams depending on where they stand? Yeah, I think it's going to be very difficult. I think you hit nail on the head. The range of teams this year from like top to bottom is as Lops, as I think I can remember for a long time in the sense that there's so many teams that are bucketed into this like bottom feeders group that I typically would call it. And it makes it extremely challenging because a lot of these teams have been playing with lack of motivation for a long time now, knowing that their seasons in effect are just,

I guess, rehearsals for bigger contracts or whatever they're playing for at this point. It's going to be a challenge. I mean, I'm taking the alternate perspective here. in wondering down the stretch whether or not we actually see the same motivational, like a different motivational factor for the teams that are already like shoot into the playoffs type of thing. How much is home ice going to matter? Are teams going to be willing to play for home ice down the stretch? Or are you going to see teams that with aging veterans start to rest guys akin to what we

see in the NBA sometimes as well? So I think potentially we might see some different circumstances this year. Again, it's been a tough season for a lot of these. teams, but potentially we see down the stretch, you know, playoff seating doesn't mean a whole lot for a lot of these teams and teams start to rest players. So I'm kind of looking at it from that perspective. We're already seeing lines and Dom can attest to this as a better as well. But how many times in past seasons are you regularly seeing a minus 400 or a minus 500 every night? Like it's, it's happening so consistently now. And you would see it, but typically later in the year, not in, you know,

February and early March type of thing. So different year, weird year overall, but I will not be making a motivational adjustment. I don't think at any point because I'm going to end up playing minus 500 favorites pretty regularly. And I have no interest in doing that. Well, Dom, one of those teams that has regularly been juiced as pretty significant favorites and is on the extreme of trying to potentially, you know, figure out how to best align themselves for the playoffs or the Colorado Avalancheal,

heard recently Jared Bednar, you know, he mixed around the top six, basically, and he moved to Gabe Laundascagold off that top line with McKinnon and Randon. And his justification was he wants to see what works and what doesn't, especially come playoffs where either there's going to be injuries or, you know, last year, we all kind of criticized them for they, like they ran through the regular season so smoothly. And then they ran into some adversity against the Golden Knights in terms of matchups in particular and had no real adjustments and just basically kept playing the way they played all year and never really.

seemed motivated or able to adjust on the fly. And so they've clearly learned from that. And now they're trying to test out different combinations and stuff. So I think we're also going to see that as well where I'm not sure how much we're going to see in terms of resting up stars because the NHL is just so behind in terms of its culture and being perceived as weak or soft to miss games if you feel like you can play. But it does feel like at least with these smarter teams that are well ahead right now, like they should be experimenting stuff in these final two months.

Yeah, they definitely should. And the Leafs have also mentioned something along those lines where they wanted to try different looks to see what sticks. I know they had Rast with Sandian playing with Morgan Riley against Buffalo, which went terribly, but they tried it. And that is what matters. And sometimes those things will work. Sometimes it doesn't. And you want to know well before the playoffs whether it is something that works. And I think it's really interesting that Colorado is doing that.

They have a lot of leeway. they're probably the most locked in of any team because they're not even really fighting for first in the west. They probably have that almost locked up. But yeah, a team like Toronto, Tampa, Florida, I would much rather have first in the Atlantic than second in the Atlantic. So that might be one where they still have motivation throughout the rest of the season. And those are teams that are good to look into, but someone like Colorado, they have more leeway to rest stars to tinker with their lineup. And if they really wanted adversity before the playoffs, they probably should have held on to Jonas Johansson for a few games just to see what they could do with him in that.

Yeah, that's, I mean, even they prove that as good as they are at a certain point, if your goaltending is bad enough, you can't overcome it. I mean, they really tested the outer boundaries of that this year. Yeah. I don't know, like, Rob, is there, what are some sort of trends right now, or do you find the market kind of overvaluing or undervaluing certain groups? So it's interesting that you mentioned sort of how inflated some of these ablines have been. I've especially noticed with the avalanche, I guess the Panthers as well, like these teams that can put up goals to in kind of in a frequency and an ease that I can't really remember seeing like this in the past where like Florida can be just struggling or something in down 3-1.

And then all of a sudden they just rattle off like five or six goals in the blink of an eye and are up to 55 shots on the night. and you're just like wondering what the hell happened and you feel like you had, if you had the other side of it, you felt like you had it in the bag for a while there and all of a sudden they kind of flipped the switch, the abelange or very similarly did that to Winnipeg recently. Is there, is there anything kind of along that along those lines that interest you? Well, I think it's been a great year to live bet favorites that are down after two periods. I mean, we've seen it time and time again. And I don't know if this is just like the new NHL. This is the way it's going to be going forward. But you have to remember that. these live betting models are fine-tuned to previous seasons, right?

So any sort of change in dynamic across the league is going to have an impact on this year and the models will be very slow to catch up to that. So just as a neutral observer, if you're starting to notice these types of things, there's a lot of money to be made. You know, I think about the other night, Pittsburgh was down to Columbus to one at the end of the third. And I'm looking at a live line and Columbus is minus 240 favorite in the game. And I'm like, this is insane.

like there's the who is going to lay minus 240 on the blue jackets to hold the one goal lead going into the third period. And we've seen that pretty regularly this season where you have these middling to below average teams who I think maybe in the past would have been able to lock it down a little bit better. But the offensive firepower this year and these teams that are coming from behind just seem to really rally and overcome in the third period. I mean, it could just be variance.

It doesn't seem that way though. Like just from a hockey watching perspective, I know you guys watch a lot more than I do, but typically I'm watching these third periods and they're so lopsided towards one team when they're trailing. It's like there's just another gear that they're able to find. So I know a lot of people who've done fairly well off of that this year. I don't actually really have any rationale for that. One thing I've personally noticed on a betting side of things and what's been extremely

frustrating for me is I tend to bet a lot of underdogs plus one and a half puck line bets, which historically, historically, I feel that kind of that side of the market is not looked at as much by other betters who are just typically betting money lines. And I talked to Dom about this a couple weeks ago, but, you know, I'm waking up in the morning. I'm checking my score app. I'm looking at these scores and I'm like another empty netter burn me again. Like I'm getting burned by empty netters every night in the last five seconds, 10 seconds. And as I'm like as this is continuously happening, like, okay, I'm going to actually just watch these empty netters of the course the last couple months. I literally pulled up YouTube, started watching every game that had an empty netter

over the course of the last two months. And what I noticed was teams are shooting at the empty net. Like, I watched hockey my whole life, and I remember you'd get down, you know, you'd get the puck on your stick, you'd flick it up in the air, try not to ice the puck, get it up off the boards. Now teams are really just trying to end the game and shooting for the empty nets. And Kevin BXA picked up on this. He mentioned it on hockey net in Canada this past week as well, just talking about how teams are starting to be coached to shoot for the empty nets.

That's not something I personally account for in my model. I'm training my model based off of years worth of data where this wasn't happening. So, I mean, I've got torched on that type of stuff this year and I have to make an adjustment for that. It's also affected totals because, you know, teams are taking goalies out earlier, but obviously just the chances of the goal actually happening with a goalie out now has been increased by teams going for it. So those are the types of things this year that have like, every year there's something new

in the NHL, like that always, you know, I kind of racks my brain. of whether I think this is going to continue going forward, but this to me is the new norm. If you're interested in learning more, subscribe to Rob's new website, Empty Netters.com, where he has visualized and mapped all of these. No, I mean, you're totally right.

Like, Dom, I was, what was it, the Wild Panthers game recently? It was like a Friday nighter. And I think the Wild were down a couple goals already, so it doesn't necessarily affect the line in that regard. But they pulled their goalie with like 10 minutes left on the third period or something like that. And they actually scored a goal

to claw back into it before eventually giving up a couple of empty netters themselves. But like it's hard to blame them because the math is clearly in the favor supporting that. Like this, this specific stat is obviously kind of fluky and there's variants involved. But I think the wild have like 16 goals with the empty net or something so far this year, like when their goalies pulled, not shooting into an empty net. Yeah. And it's because they've played like a hundred minutes or something with out their goalie because they're just getting so aggressive with it and it's working.

But yeah, that's certainly a new trend. I think the only drawback for me is it leads. to more conversations on these broadcasts about face-offs and the importance of them, if they ice it and wind up having to take more D-Zone draws. But I guess that's a less lesser evil. And there's also a lot of results-based analysts, right? Where a team will pull a goalie with four minutes left and they give up a goal very quickly.

And then there's the, well, why would they pull this early? And they just cost themselves the game. Well, actually, now they still have another three and a half minutes to score two goals rather than this happening later where they have no chance to come back. But that's what that's the conversation that frustrates me. I actually watch more hockey on mute than I do with volume nowadays because I get, I'm just, I mean, that's the type of person I am. But I get incredibly frustrated at that type of commentary really, really bothers me.

Yeah, I'm with you. Rob, sorry, Dom, do you have anything on empty debtors or sort of, like you can even move it in a different direction kind of trends or undervalued, overvalued stuff or whatever you want to take it? I know Rob is very passionate. about empty netters. He talks to me almost every day. Well, he hasn't left on empty netters. Well, when you lose as, when you lose as much money as I do on empty netters, you'd be talking about it with you, you just need someone to tell you you're not insane. So I message Dom. I'm like, Dom, are you

know, Dom's pretty good at, uh, you know, he's a good friend in the sense that he'll be like, you know, you know, I think there's something there. He will, he'll never tell me flat out you're crazy, Rob. Well, I'm watching as much hockey as you. And, The thing is that we both bet on underdogs a lot is that I am more brave and I'll just take them to win. And Rob is a coward and will take plus one and a half. So I will lose and get burned. But Rob will have a fleeting glimpse where he might win and then he loses from the empty net, whereas this is already not affected me. I already resolved the fact that I lost this bet the minute they were down to one because those better teams can lock it down.

lot better than the worst team. The worst teams with a lead, we're seeing them, I think, blow it a lot more this year, whereas the better teams have been able to keep it going. And this year, we're seeing, I think, the largest favorite win percentage probably we've ever seen. I think it's around like 64, 65%. And I remember back in the early 2010, people were running models and thinking that the high watermark for NHL season was around 61%. And last year, we were around there. this year we've blown by that. And that's why we're seeing these big minus 400 favorites. Today we have three of them and one of them is on the road,

which is you never see. Well, Rob, I mean, this kind of brings us back. I know we talked about this once in a recent podcast, but I didn't want to rehash a little bit here because I think it's relevant. Like we were talking about sort of, especially in football, I think the idea of like betting a team that's a massive underdog because you feel like the values there, even if you feel like they might, like you don't want to be cheering for them

throughout that game where you feel like they probably don't have a chance of winning, but you just feel like based on the price you're getting, they can probably cover whatever insane gap that is. You know, with the lines for some of these like avalanche games, for example, let's use them. Like, it must be a pretty soul crushing experience to be on the other side of that. And especially if you get teased at the start where you're like, oh, my team's that, you know, plucky underdog here. They're actually up to you nothing to start.

And then all of a sudden within the blink of the eye, it's like 6-3 avalanche, which is literally what happens all the time. I bet on that game where the jets were up three nothing after one. So did I. So did I. Yeah. I was on that. Yeah.

And I remember thinking, I should hedge. And I've never thought that. But with the abs, I'm like, I should hedge. And then I looked at what their line was down three nothing. And it was only like plus 240. So betting markets said, you know what? This team is down three goals. They still have what?

Like, what is that? I got a 30% chance to win or whatever it is. And I'm like, that seems a bit absurd. I have some hope with Hellibuck. And that hope was immediately evaporated. and I thought 240 was probably soft. I think some of the swings in hockey lend itself to, you know, I first started betting through poker.

And I tell people all the time, and it's very cliche, but like I can remember all my poker bad beats. Like every big hand or big pot I've ever lost where I, you know, somebody, you know, hit something on the river or whatever. I remember it all. I can't tell you the biggest hands I ever won in my life or anything like that. I feel the same way with hockey. Like, I, you know, full disclosure, I bet the Sabres against the Leafs last night.

I bet the Sabers money line plus one and a half plus two and a half. I won't even remember that in two weeks. I'm just going to remember another empty net goal going in and something that was very soul-crushing. And it's because of the way, the manner in which you lose hockey games, everything is just so close. Like so many of these bets come down to the wire and you just feel like you're on the wrong side of a coin flip so many times that it just, sticks with you. It's very tough. I'm not, you know, really equipped on an emotional level to get over that type of stuff very quickly. But I mean, you're right, Dmitri, in the sense that, you know, a lot of people in past seasons would have just typically avoided big favorites. I know a lot of people are like,

I'm never going to play over minus 200 favorite in hockey. It's such a random game. Why would I do that? I'm going to stick to underdogs. People who've done that this year, they just, they got crushed, like completely waxed betting the game because so many favorites won. Dom built quite a bankroll over the course of the first half of the season, betting these favorites and they were winning. So, you know, that's the other end of the spec from there is they're favored for a reason, right? And yes, there's a ton of variance in the game, but I think we're starting to see a massive discrepancy between these teams.

And early in the year, these games were being priced closer to, you know, with a much smaller range. And we learned very quickly that there's a, these elite teams are elite. There's a lot separating them from the bottom feeders. Yeah, but the Leafs facing the Sabres is basically a coin flip at this point. And I sadly was on Leaves minus one and a half, which is the rare time where me and Rob have been on opposite ends. And I ate it, which is hilarious because it feels like right now I'm in this run where if I'm on the underdog, they're getting crushed as expected. But if I do take those big favorites, like I took Florida all three times last week at home against an inferior your opponent and they disappointed me each time, which was not how things were going in the first

half. And I wonder if that is some expected regression because the favorites are winning 64% of the time. But it is a reminder that hockey, while it's getting less random this year, still has those moments where a team that is 26 and 3 at home can lose three straight to Columbus, Nashville, and Edmonton. Well, I'm going to give you a stat right now. So the Colorado Avalanche, have played 42 games this season with Kail McCarra and Devon Taves both in the lineup. What do you think the record is in those games? Colorado, I need to know their actual record really quickly now. So they're 40, 10, and 4.

Wow, I didn't even realize it got to that. Yeah. I don't know. I'll say that they have 35 wins, probably something like 35, 3, and 2. I'm going to say 33, 4, and 3. three. 36, 4 and 2 with a plus 72 goal differential. This is so stupid.

Yeah, so 364 and 2. So I guess. So how many games? So that was 42 games. Yeah. And you said plus 72 goal differential. Yeah. So they're actually minus seven goal differential in games in the rest of the games.

Yeah. Well, that checks out because Devon Taze was out for the first like six or seven games to start the year, and there's been a couple of games here or there where one of them was on COVID protocol or whatever and missed it. But yeah, that's a, uh, that's going to be a much bigger swing than people give it credit for because less McCarren Thaves means more Jack Johnson and Curtis McDermid on the blue line, which is something I think a lot of people underrated with Colorado's slow start is one of those guys was always missing. Uh, one of those bad guys was in the top four somehow. And then on top of all that, I think Darcy Kemper was out of the lineup for a bit as well. Yeah.

and they compliment each other really well stylistically in terms of especially what Taves allows McCarra to do. So yeah, the reason why I wanted to bring that up was, you know, is there any way we can justify making anyone other than them, like, not only cup favorites, but cup favorites by a significant margin. Like, I think most books, correct me if I'm wrong, have that have somewhere around like plus 375 or plus 400 right now. And then it's like Tampa Bay, Carolina, Florida, in some order, like plus 600 or something like that. do you think that's enough? Because obviously we need to bake in, you know, not only playoff path, but, you know, any number of factors.

It's not necessarily as simple as all. They've been this good so far this regular season. But just from what we've seen from them so far, like it feels like if you told someone that's that, like it would be like, all right, you just can't compare this to really anything else. I have Colorado at 26%, which is a true line of plus 285. So even I think that is a little short. I think their their path in the West is so much easier than someone like Tampa, Florida, Carolina, Toronto. And Vegas, they've been injured and who knows what they'll look like with everyone healthy, but they haven't looked right. Calgary looks very strong, but I mean, there's no guarantee they even meet.

And Minnesota, who looked like the best chance to beat them in the Central is really will. it over the last month. So never say never because even last year, Colorado looked pretty dominant as well, but this year they look like the biggest favorite. I don't think it's particularly close. Do you put any stock dom into the playoffs being a different type of game though? Because you're running your model based off of your regular season numbers, right? As I'm doing all the time. And I also am showing value on Colorado now. It just doesn't feel right to me to bet that price, knowing the variance that we typically see in the playoffs and just the way that the games, like, games can just grind, so to speak, where you get the games where there's no

whistles at all. And it's a lot easier to bring two teams with a major talent discrepancy closer together when all of a sudden it's policed in a completely different manner. Yeah, and it's a frustrating thing to watch when your favorite team doesn't really know out of police itself and frequently it gets into these modes where they are grinded to a halt. And it's a shame that the playoffs are officiated this way because ideally you want your stars to shine at the biggest stages, but they're not really allowed to. So there's probably something to that.

But then again, we might get to the playoffs this year and it'll be just like the regular season. All the big favorites crush. And then we start thinking something completely opposite. I think we're sort of framed by what we've seen in the past in the past two years where it's been a bit more of a grind. And Colorado and Toronto, disappointing relative to expectations has sort of led to that ideology maybe. Well, yeah, I think the playoff path is really important to note here because the way I see it right now, barring some sort of catastrophic injury, like realistically, I think there's only two teams in the West that can seriously pose a threat to the abs in a seven game series. and it's Vegas if they get healthy and they get Stowed and Patcheretti back along with Ikel already in the lineup and Calgary.

And they won't have to face either of those teams until the Western Conference finals, I believe. Unless the Golden Knights fall back into a wildcred spot and then all hell breaks loose. And I guess it's possible. But that's certainly working in their favor. I don't know. I feel like there's a weird sort of like the narrative around the avalanche to me is so interesting because on the one hand, like I think they're objectively the most fun. team to watch. You can make it a case for Florida just based on how crazy their offense is, but they have a bunch of stars. They play a really fun style. They're really easy to root for.

I think they were built in a very organic way in that they drafted a lot of these guys and then made a bunch of savvy trades. Like there's no real shenanigans with LTIR or anything that would potentially make people sour on them. Like put it all that together. It's by all accounts, people should be like all in on the avalanche, finally getting over the hurdle and sort of getting to the mount on top of the NHL, but instead they've already kind of been positioned as this Goliath in the league because of that 364 and two record that I cited and because of how dominant they've been in the past couple regular seasons, but they haven't actually gotten past the second round yet, right? And so it's kind of weird where they're already treated as this kind of

like Tampa Bay team, I sort of think, not nearly as much vitriol, but I think people do relish seeing them kind of stumble and lose and cheer against them. But they haven't necessarily really gotten to that point where it feels like we should be. treating them that way. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, there's also other concerns I have as ridiculous as it sounds. You know, you're one bad hit away from losing Nazim Kadri for the entire playoffs. This is the reality of the situation. And it's honestly, doesn't even have to be something terrible or with intent. He just has that track record where that's entirely possible. I don't, I think the halves are so much better than everyone else.

But, you know, I watched them, I bet them the other night when they were in Vegas. Golden Knights played a pretty solid game. Colorado really didn't deserve to win that. They scored, I think, on their only two shots of the third period. And Vegas really took it to them. There could potentially be something about that stylistic matchup that we don't account for. I know I personally don't. I've struggled with that over the years and especially watching Vegas, Colorado last season as well.

So maybe that there's something there. I don't think the blues are going to beat the avalanche, but I could see them giving them problems. And, you know, Billy Huso, I don't know, like talk about a guy that I used to rush to the computer to bet against him immediately whenever he was announced in goal and how it's flipped on its head for this season. But, you know, if he continues at that form, the blues are pretty deep in the sense that they can run out three solid forward lines, defense decores decent. They have a goalie that can steal a series. Who knows? They'll get out played by the Avalanche, but it's a, I mean, we've watched, we've all watched these games for many years now.

Anything can happen. And I know, like, I watched Colorado St. Louis in the first round last year. That was the most lopsided series I've ever seen in my entire life. But it's a different year. It's a different blues team. It is. So, I mean, it's always possible that they can get upset along the road to that conference finals.

On the subject of matchups, I definitely. notice the same thing about Vegas and Colorado, and it feels like Vegas has a style that gives Colorado fits, whereas they might not be as good as some of the other elite teams, but they look the most equipped to beat them. In the same sense, in a smaller scale, you look at the blues in the wild, and they might face each other's two-see versus three-seat, and I would no doubt have the wild favored, but if you look at like their track record over the last two years, the wild continuously get absolutely railed by the Blues. And I think they've won maybe like two of seven or eight games

and are getting out chance by a Blues team that has had a poor scoring chance differential over those last two years. So I really do wonder how big these matchup effects are and how important they are when it comes to a playoff series. Because as Rob has said in like past podcasts on this very podcast, you can sometimes just watch one or two games between two teams in a series and think this is over. Like this team just has this other team's number. Yeah.

No, I mean, you're totally right. I think that the abs, the Golden Knights thing is a great example. Rob, like I watched that full game. And for two and a half periods, definitely the first two periods, the Golden Knights were the superior team. And they did a lot of what they did in the postseason, even though they didn't have Mark Stone available in that game. And they're like, the abs just weren't allowed to fly through the neutral. zone basically.

Like they were like meeting them early every time and the abs just didn't know what to do. And then I think the game winner wound up being like, Kil McCar just basically made a freakishly athletic play where he like broke something up on an entry, took it coast to coast, passed it to McKinnon for a one time. And a blink of an eye, it was a goal. And on the one hand, I mean, that to me really showed what the abs are capable of in the sense that the Golden Knights played a nearly ideal game for the majority of it. But the abs are so good and have so much start.

power and firepower that after one play like that, they just broke that game open and won it. So that's why I would be very worried about picking against them in any matchup because I just think, I don't know what happened last year, to be honest with you. Like I went back and watched that series a bunch of times in the off season because I'm so fascinated by it. It felt like the ads were just rolling. I remember in that game one, they just destroyed the Golden Knights. And it felt like it was a wrap from that.

And then they just like, they got outplayed in game two, but still won. And just, I think, got a bit overconfident. it didn't really make any adjustments. And by the time the series shifted to Vegas, the Golden Knights had figured out how to play them. So I don't know. I'd be scared of history repeating itself, obviously, but I just think it's such a superior team in terms of the personnel we have.

There's a theory. Go ahead, Don. What was it? After game one or game two where Pete DeBore went to the media and cried about getting penalty calls for being the most obviously dirty team in that series. And then no penalties were called for the last five games. Yep. I think that has something to do with it.

I mean, good for Pete DeBore for having that gamesmanship. But I think that had a huge effect on the series because Colorado had an elite power play. And they thrive on getting calls. They get the most calls in the league. It is something that they have a skill for because the way they play at 5 and 5 is so fast. And if you can slow them down illegally and not get away with it, then that really plays in your favor. And Vegas is really good at that. And I think the Blues are another team that is also very good at that.

I think Dom's making the point for why I can't bet the avalanche at the current Stanley Cup prices. It's going to be a different game. We see it every year. I mean, it's the regular season success doesn't necessarily translate to postseason. It's not the same thing. I mean, I agree with Dom. I wish it was. I want to see hockey played at its highest caliber.

I don't want guys holding people in the neutral zone and slowing them down and interfering with them. But that's just the game that we've become accustomed to in the postseason. And until I actually see that change, I'm always going to have my hesitations in order, you know, in terms of whether or not this regular season success can be duplicated in the playoffs. Well, what's the optimal strategy for betting playoffs? Let's spin it forward then. Have you found that it's going game by game? Is it picking series winners or is it trying to project further ahead and pick either conference or cup winners and then giving yourself the room to hedge

potentially if the opportunity presents itself down the road or do you kind of take it on a more incremental basis just knowing on how wild the playoffs can be but also how as we talked about, the matchups can kind of dictate strengths and weaknesses. I'm not a big fan of hedging in general because you tend to be losing expected value every single time you make a bet that's a hedge.

Personally, for a long time, I never bet hockey playoffs just because the season was such a grind for me a daily basis of getting up early in the morning, being at a computer all day, that by the time playoffs came, I just kind of wiped my hands and said, I'm going to enjoy this as the fan for once, because I can't really do that over the course of a year. And then probably two or three years ago had a very decent opportunity to get a lot of money down on playoffs. So I started doing it. Now, inherently, what you're going to have is a problem if you're a modeler in that you're just

going to side with the same team pretty much in every game. Like, if you find value on one team in the series, you're very likely going to be meting them in the majority of their games, unless there's some sort of new situation like John Tavaar is getting hurt, for example, that would cause a drastic shift in a line over a course of time. But even then, that stuff's going to be accounted for in market anyways, and you're still going to end up betting on the team that you like pre-series. So it becomes a risky element, I guess, so to speak, in the sense that, you know, do you want to be tying up all your money on the same team regularly over and over?

and over. There are such things as series effects, which you have to take into account, specifically when teams are, like, I'll just throw out a random example here. I don't want to give away everything. But when a team is trailing 3-0 in a series, they tend to underperform their, you know, versus their traditional metrics in that fourth game. So there's like a lack of motivation or demoralization type of situation that tends to happen in that situation.

there's stuff that happens when teams are up 1-0, 2-0, depending on whether they've won both games on the road. Those things need to be accounted for as well. But general strategy for me is, I don't know, kind of like sit back and play my biggest edges, I would say, because I just don't want to be betting the same team regularly over and over. And on top of that, we do get into these situations where we're watching the games and you know, you'll bet a team in game one.

You'll be like, holy geez, that team got run out of the rink. Like, am I going to be ready to do this? five or six more times like I did with Montreal last year against the Leafs. And luckily, I, you know, I had the courage to stick that through, but it was painful making those bets, right? So it's not an exact science. I struggle with it. And certainly, I will say the eye test can take over in the playoffs.

You're like, I don't know if I can do this to myself anymore. Yeah. This is what separates a pro better like Rob from some. someone who has a very good model, but wasn't, I guess, taught the pro-betting ways is that I will just give her in the playoffs. I don't care. An edge is an edge. And I'll bet on the series. And then I will double down on those games if that edge persists. And I will adjust from game to game. So if a team gets destroyed in game one, then I will adjust accordingly. And sometimes it's big, sometimes of small, but I think there are situations where momentum can shift and a team can have a weak

performance in game one and the other team can have a great performance and the next game will see the exact opposite. And you just sort of hope for the best and trust the process really, even if it's painful to watch with the old eye test. I think one thing in the playoffs, though, that I guess we're seeing in this regular season is that live bets are very lively in the playoffs because the momentum can shift very quickly. And I think we see bigger comebacks happen because a team, I think those score effects are much larger come playoff time.

For years, you could have bet any team that went down to goals in the playoffs, any team, blindly, and been extremely profitable. I back tested all sorts of that with, and it didn't happen in last. year's playoffs. It was the first time, I think, in four or five years where it would have been a net negative had you done that last season. But Dom is right. You tend to see more comebacks like that. And I will say, like, Dom, that's just your personal preference versus my personal preference. I don't think there's anything wrong with what you do. I mean, if you're building out a model, sometimes you just got to trust it and go with it. But for me, I just, you know, I'm not really

optimizing my model for the playoffs. My model is optimized. for regular season. That's the reality of it. So using that same model for playoffs, I think has some inherent flaws. I think a lot of times just as a fan, I feel like it's the only, it sounds really weird, but it's the only bets that I make, like where I truly feel in the NHL playoffs, I'd be better off just with the eye test and subjective gut feeling on games. because it goes back and forth and you just really have a strong feeling sometimes where,

you know, this team played a good game last time, didn't really get the results, whatever, ran into hot goalie. It's going to go the other way this time around. And I'm going to probably test that this year because I've never actually tested that theory. But here's the model. Here's what I actually think is going to happen and kind of run them in parallel and see how that goes. So this year, I think we're going to have a just pick winner's model between me and Rob. We're going to go through every game and say, what is your gut feeling?

on this. And we're going to compare based on what our actual models say and we'll see if our gut feel is more profitable. I love it. All right. Let's take a quick break here and then we'll pick up the conversation on there. There. Champions aren't born. They're made. And the secret to make your business reign supreme, Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business. Forget the off-season work. Shopify makes it simple to sell to anyone, from anywhere. Whether you're selling warm-ups or wall hangers, it's time to start selling with Shopify and join the platform simplifying commerce for millions of businesses worldwide. With Shopify, you'll customize your online store to your brand, discover new customers, and build the

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online today. Shopify.com slash bluewire. 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 custom ink.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 customink.com. All right. Well, I got a bunch of other topics here. Do you want to talk a bit about

the league announced this week that they will be running face off probabilities on broadcasts? I don't know if there's enough meat on the bone here for us to make it a full topic. I just felt like it was like a relevant part of this conversation, but it's so hilarious. The league is just so out of touch with what people are interested in. Like, I guess if you're, if you're, there's a certain school of thought probably if you're a better in the sense of like if you feel like you've got an edge on something, especially when it's first introduced to the market, you can probably capitalize and profit off of it.

But man, bedding on live betting on faceoffs is going to be next level degenerate, I feel like. I do. I agree. People will do it. People will live bet anything. That's just the reality of the situation. But like when you're going to start to see. those probabilities regularly.

And I think what a lot of people are going to do is now try to tie success to face-off probabilities as well, which is going to drive me absolutely up a wall. I remember having to hear this a decade ago when the Bruins beat the Canucks in the Stanley Cup finals and they had four very good face-off men. And basically people attributed their playoff success to them being able to win face-offs, which we've learned over time really has nothing to do with anything. but we're going to start to see those conclusions be drawn by a lot of people again. But, you know, I get your point, Dimitri.

The league is definitely out of touch in terms of what people want to see. But at least it's like something new. That's kind of the way that I look at it. At least it's something different. It's just entirely random, though, Rob. Like the Panthers are 29th in team face off wind percentage of avalanche are 31st. Yeah, I agree. There's no predictive value in it whatsoever, but it's just like at least something new to spice up a broadcast, which traditionally has just been like the same forever.

So if broadcasts need anything, it's more reasons to talk about the value of face us. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking is like they, their version of spice is doing something fancy with the things they literally can't shut up about. I thought Sean Ferris had a great thread on this the other day when this came out about how analysts like, us, we'll always talk about the macro level and focus on that and how faceoffs have little value in that sense and then sort of ignore the micro context where if there is an empty net situation, obviously the face was important, but at the same time, those who always bandy about about face ops will only focus on that singular event and not realize that in the grand scheme, it doesn't matter all that much. And there is a middle ground where we can all live and we can all agree

that betting on it is still stupid. Yeah, like winning a face-off in a timely situation to either get set in the offensive zone for a power play or clear it on a late penalty goes. It's no doubt valuable. I think it's such a straw-bant argument that it's not important. But you're right. Like it's funny.

Like old school people that love face-offs, love the number like associated with face-off win percentage. And then I turn into an eye test guy where I'm like, all right, well, watch what happens in the five seconds after that face-off, which we can't assign a number to, but is just as important. Are you even watching the games or are you just looking at the analytics of face off win percentages? Well, Pierre McGuire is with a front office now and he's not on broadcast.

So that eliminates a lot of the face off conversation that would come out of games because he was very fixated on that for quite some time when he was with NBC. From a betting side of things, this was always the vision. The vision was to be able to bet on everything. Like Major League Baseball, the vision was you can bet on whether this next pitch is going to be a ball or a strike, like to get to that level. Obviously, it's just a moneymaker for sports books. It drives engagement. The league loves it because it drives engagement for their specific sport as well. But yeah, like there's not going to be value in this stuff. Like,

this is going to be, try to overcome the Vig when you, it's just like a simulation model putting these two. It's very easy for a sports book to come on, come up with a line on what a faceoff should be. And it's going to be impossible for someone to beat that over time. But, I mean, from an entertainment value perspective, you are going to get people that will actually bet it. I do wonder with this face off probability whether the betting markets will be using that and whether that model is overfit and whether there will be an edge based on that alone. That's a good question. That is a good question. Here's what I'm worried about.

It gets me to the league's tracking of events. It's remarkable that in the year 2022, with all the technological advancements we have, how the league still randomly assigns events, the stuff that happen on the ice. And I understand that I'm in the 1% of sick freaks that would care about this, but I was watching a Panthers game recently, and just to illustrate this as an example, the Panthers on the penalty kill, the puck goes to the point, the defenseman on the other team takes a point shot, Sasha Barkov jumps into the lane and blocks it with a shin pad.

The puck goes out of the zone. He retrieves it, it gets a breakaway chance, whatever. I went back to check what it marked it as, and they marked it as a takeaway for Barkov. Presumably, I don't think there was anything nefarious involved. I think there's some sort of subconscious bias where they're probably like, well, this guy's a Selky guy and we care about takeaways for Selky forwards. No one ever cites blocks for forwards, right? So they're just like, all right, well, this is probably a takeaway,

whereas if the exact same event had happened for Aaron Neckblad, I guarantee you it would have been marked as a block. And it's an irrelevant thing. Like one takeaway or one block regardless, either way, isn't going to skew things. But considering what's on the line and money's involved and everything like that, it does worry me that there's like, I mean, hopefully these advancements will cause the league or will force the league to, you know, better evaluate how they're tracking things. I'm not very confident because it's still 20, 22 and they're still doing this. But like these, they have it on their official site. They're citing it on broadcasts. And it's just like the numbers are just way off.

I have a good friend that bets tons of NHL props. I'm like tons of NHL props. And he's messaging me once a night with a clip, like some sort of clip to apply. Like can you believe they didn't rule this a shot on goal or whatever? He's tagging the NHL in his tweets of like, can you overturn this and whatever? I mean, the reality is it's annoying, but it's going to work in your favor sometimes. Right. And it's going to work against you sometimes.

When it works against you, you're going to be very upset for obvious reasons because you're like, oh, how could they not rule this a blocked shot? And you bet like over half block shots or whatever. And for those who play DFS, they know exactly what I'm talking about as well. Because it could impact you winning a huge score versus something minimal. but it tends to balance out over time is what I'll say to that. And we're not going to get to a point where like the reality is sports books want to grade this stuff quickly too, right? Sportsbooks want to get this over and done with.

They don't want to wait for some sort of body to review every single game and make a finalized box score because the quicker they give you the money back in your account when you win, the more likely you are to bet it quickly. And they know that. So we're not going to get to that point. It is annoying, agreed, but it happens across every sport is the reality of the situation with scoring errors and all sorts of stuff like that. And you just kind of have to learn to, it's sad that I say this, but you have to learn to deal with it over time. Yeah.

I just think if you're making a Selky argument for someone using takeaways, like, I mean, obviously there's so many reasons why that's a flawed way to go about it. but like the numbers themselves on the league's website are literally not correct. Like you can go back and watch any game manually and compare it to what they have on the stats and it just doesn't line up. So it is what it is. I don't know. I don't know why that bugs me so much.

But, uh, well, there's a lot of stuff like that though, Dimitri, like when you think about it, I mean, you think about the data that has, that the teams have access to relative to what the public has access to.

I mean, we use, a lot of us use public expected goals models to make our arguments for who we think, you know, for anything, really related to hockey. I do it all the time. And then, you know, I'll get someone from a team who messages me and says,

hey, like you're a little bit out to lunch over here because what we're, what we have access to, you know, is not supporting the same, you know, hypothesis that you have. So it's just the reality of the situation. I guess that's, that's another thing, too, is the fact that, you know, we're limited in the data that we can use overall. But, I mean, that's just like another scenario, I would say. Let me give you an example of that, like that'll be more concrete.

So Ewasis Terkin, we'll talk more about him and the Rangers here. a second, but he's currently on the public models at like plus 30 goals able to what I've expected, right? Next best is Freddie Anderson just behind him. And I'm very dubious that Freddie Anderson has actually saved 29 goals above expected this season as any public model would tell you. And the reason why I see that, and I brought this up on previous podcast, but I feel like there's something funky going on with Carolina's defensive metrics that are inflating

that a little bit. Because if you look a bit closer, like natural statric has them as giving up the the seven most expected goals against at 5-15, which suggests that they're worse defensively than the Detroit Red Wings. And not to be an eye test guy, but I've watched both of those teams. And it's just like, it just doesn't pass the smell test for me. And my working theory is that the way they're marking down all of these shots, it comes up as a dangerous look that the other team got.

But Carolina is so aggressive in the way to defend and pursue and use their sticks and stuff that they're like pressuring guys and forcing them to take shots fast. than they actually probably would against a team like Detroit where there's just so much loose space in the offensive zone. And so it comes up looking like, ooh, that was a really high quality shot. Let's give it this assign expected goal value based on what we'd expect from it, whereas it actually probably wasn't that top of a shot for Freddie Anderson to stop. Not to discredit the season he's having. He's blown away my expectations.

He's been like a top five goal in the league. But I just think we need to, we need to like ask some of these questions and maybe kind of consider stuff a bit deeper because there's clearly some missing context, I think. Yeah, and I wonder because Carolina is obviously a data-driven organization and has their own expect goals, models, obviously, is they probably found that something is more important than shot location. And they're defending against that more than they care about the actual location of the shot. And so if they are coached to defend in that way and in a way that makes sense to Robbrenmore, a famously strong defensive forward, then it's not going to be. going to look as good to public metrics that don't have as much access to that information. Yeah. No, I agree with that 100%.

All right. Well, let's move on then and talk about the Rangers. I don't know. Is it fair to say that they've given you guys some problems this year in terms of assigning value to them? Or do you feel like you've got a good grip on them? Because obviously, like, I think based on a lot of the metrics we typically look at and assign team strength to, especially at 5-on-5 play, they're clearly lacking, but then they've got the best goalie in the world who's helping them win a lot of games. I don't know. You haven't had any issues with that, Rob?

I haven't personally. I mean, Dom can speak to his own scenarios, but I feel like a lot of people, you know, I don't know the exact way to put this, but I think they think that expected goals and course is the be-all and end-all. Of course. But like you actually have to account for the goalie as well. Like you might know a team is going to get caved on any given night,

but they have the best goalie in the league in net. And that's part of some of the edge when you bet on the Rangers is the fact that they do have that goalie in net. Now, it's not fair for me to say I've done really well with the Rangers this year because I mean, part of the reason why is games where Shasturkin is not there. I've been able to get big bets in against them and that's worked in my favor. So, I mean, that's included. But yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people just undermine the goalier.

They feel like I see recaps of the Rangers every single night. oh, here we go again. I bet against the Rangers and they lucked one out, luck box team and whatever. Well, the goalie is part of the team. It's not, it's, they, yes, like they got outplayed. This was the expectation going in, but you have to account for the goalie as well. And so many people, I think, just dismiss it or they think, oh, goaltending is random or whatever, which it kind of is.

But like, there's certain commodities in the league that you have to account for. So they personally haven't given me trouble. I feel like they're going to give some people. in the playoffs where I can I can only I can already see the Rangers you know stealing a couple games maybe even winning a series and the amount of oh here we go again with the Rangers like there's one of those teams that seems to come across every single year come along every single year and it's just like people dismiss goaltending well it's real it's a major factor in the game like a significant fact arguably the most important if you sound like you could predict it right

right right so you know Dom I don't know if you've had any issue with them. I've been betting on the Rangers lately, and I don't think they're, I don't think they're very good. My model has them as slightly above average, a little bit more than that if you just account for Schisturkin playing, but I guess the market thinks they're worse than that. And I bet on them against St. Louis the other day, and I bet on them, I think it was on Sunday, and they won both those games. So I was really thankful for that. It just, it seems weird because I know my model does not like them and somehow I see an edge on them. That's maybe for me because the way I do goalies has goalies worth a fair bit, especially since I changed that earlier this year, where the way I regress

now takes some of the, I guess I regress in a way that's sort of dynamic where the best goalies will be regressed less because we know they're the best and because they play a lot and they have a track record and whatnot. And that has kept Shastirken rated very fondly and kept me off some bets against the Rangers that I otherwise would have lost. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of, so we typically look at especially 5-1-5 performance is generally the strongest predictor of a team success. But I think part of the, that is like based on this working assumption that goalies are just

exceedingly volatile, right? Like projecting their performance over any period. of time is dicey for us. And so we revert back to what we feel more confident in. And I guess for me, what I keep coming back to is questioning whether it's appropriate to apply that logic to Shistern at the moment because it certainly seems like he is frequently consistent in his performance. I know that he gave up three goals on three shots to St.

Louis last night. And that was random. Obviously, they came back and won. But for the most part, like it seems like in a lot of these games, he gives up one or two goals and then that's it. And then you're just not getting anything more. And if you go into a game with a working assumption that, all right, the Rangers are going to need to score two goals, three maybe to win this game because their goalie's that good. Like I feel like that should elevate their baseline a little bit.

Now come the postseason when they go up against teams that have a good goalie and significantly superior 5-1-5 play, that's going to become more challenging. But for a lot of these games, it feels like we do need to kind of, I mean, not you guys obviously, but as a community, we need to like recalibrate our expectations for. for it because this isn't just, oh, I wonder how Schisturkin's going to play tonight. It's like, he's probably going to stop 93 to 94% of the shots he faces because he does it every single game. When I grew up, like the goals against average and save percentage were like the only real metrics we had to evaluate goalies, right? And now I never look at them anymore, like almost, almost never.

And I saw a tweet today where Schisturkin's safe percentage this year is 941. Yeah. And I was like, this is the most absurd. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't even believe, I couldn't even believe it's that high. And like, it's the guy's amazing. And, and I, you know, I, I don't know how he can continuously perform, how long he can continuously perform at that level, but it's very clear that he's elite. And that's the point I'm getting across.

So part of when you are betting against the Rangers and he is in net, you are very likely going to bet on a team that is going to win, you know, puck share at five on five, generate more scoring attempts, but you are betting against the best goalie in the league. It was going to be on the ice for 60 minutes of the game. And I think some people go watch the game. They'll see the Rangers hemmed in their own zone. I watch a lot of Rangers this year. They get hemmed in their own zone a lot first period last night against St. Louis.

Holy geez, that points in that period. It looked like the Blues were playing an HL team. And that's going to happen because the Rangers third and fourth line are basically the HL caliber lines. So whenever they're out there, they're just getting caved altogether. And but that's like, but Schozykyn's there. That's the, that's like the point I'm getting crossed. He is there.

He is a physical component of the team. And I hate when people just dismiss that because of the five on five play. Well, there's a lot of like weird discounting of like, they're not even that good. Without Chisdurkin, they wouldn't be a playoff team. It's like, they do have Shisterkin. And he's the best player at the most important position. I understand. Like, it's a very, it's a slippery slope because when you rely on one player to that degree, any, any player, like, if he has an off night, you're not going to win.

And that's a scary thing for a team game. But if you're betting on anyone right now, it seems like I feel pretty comfortable with him. I was looking at something. I was curious about it. It was like how many times he's played 103 periods so far this year, not counting overtimes. He hasn't given up a goal in like 60 of them or something like that. Like, it's just like, there's so many clean sheets in terms of like, I can just confidently count that for this 20 minute span of time, the other team is just not getting on the scoreboard. And that's an insanely valuable proposition for anyone. So I don't know. I was, I was kind of curious, Dom, you, you released your MVP rankings today. You're on this.

Really? Did I? You're on this, on this Matthews bandwagon. Hey? Yeah, it's obviously because I'm from Toronto. It's why this is the first time I've ever had Matthews as the. Hart frontrunner, despite him being very strong last year and scoring a lot of goals last year. It was never a remote consideration that was anyone but McDavid last year. And for much of this year, I thought it was a wide open race. I had Ovechkin for a while. I had McDavid for a while. I still think it could be Schisturkin. It's just the heart doesn't usually go to goalies. But yeah, as far as total value stats, if you look at literally any of them, I'm pretty sure Matthews is first in all of them.

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I do think, like, if Shisterkin keeps us up for the rest of the season, I think it's going to be very tough to make a statistical argument against him. The only one I would say is what he's played, like, 65% of the team's game so far. Like, Rob, you were talking about him, you've been hammering the Rangers opponent when he hasn't been in there. I mean, that's all bad. Georgia is so bad this year, that that is, that him not only playing 65% is a, I think, a reason in his favor because you just have to watch those games.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. That's a great point. Like, the heart trophy is the player judged to be the most valuable to their team. That's the definition of the heart trophy, right? And a lot of people forget that. We get the conversation every year of like, oh, should a goalie win it? Like, we already have the Vezna or whatever. But it's like, to me, Schisturkin is by far.

Listen, I have bets on Austin Matthews. I hope Austin Matthews wins the heart. It would be very nice for me. I'll take a nice vacation and whatever. But to me, like my model, when Schisturkin is out, it's like, it's crazy. The difference is crazy. It's run to your computer bad. It's not run to my computer bad.

It's if the Rangers are playing, I'm not leaving. If the Rangers play that night, I'm not leaving the computer until I know who's in net. That's how bad it is because I don't have, I don't have time to run to the computer to bet it. because the line is already gone by the time it's announced. So it's literally at that point, right? Rangers and Lightning for me. If I'm not at the computer there, then it's over. So I think Shisterikin would should win it for those reasons.

I did read Dom's article though. Like to me, if if someone wants to make the argument, well, there already is a goalie award and we're going to have to award it to a player, for one, the NHL should change the, like the verbiage around the heart trophy, if that's going to be the case. but I would give it to Matthews this year. I think for me, the value he's shown for the Leafs this year, I think outweighs any other player in the league. Although, I think there's a lot of season left.

Things can change. And I think it's a year where you don't really have like a major frontrunner from a positional player standpoint as well. So, I mean, I think there's arguments to be made for many players and there's no, like there's no right or wrong. There's not one that I can clearly, clearly separates themselves from the rest right now. And McDavid's coming as soon as he starts getting a bit more puck luck at five on five.

I think he has a chance to make this extremely interesting. We'll talk, we'll talk more about McDavid in a second. Actually, well, let's get to it now. Dom, let's revisit the preseason best bets that you and I gave out.

Rob wasn't here. He big-timed us and he didn't want to join us. I don't know what he was doing before the season. But we did a show, it was the day of puck drop on the season opener back in October, which seems like another lifetime ago now. And I went back and listened to it this week in preparation for this. And I jotted down everything we said. And I'm going to run them by you.

And then we can talk about each one a little bit in terms of like what we got right or what we got wrong and kind of what we can learn from it. The first one was we talked about McDavid's point total. And it was set at 128.5. And we had a conversation about at what? what point we'd feel comfortable taking the under and we settled on 150. Actually, we're 140, but then we're like, then I kind of talked to you into like, couldn't you see him getting 145? And then you're like, you know what? Yes, 150. He's on pace for 119 right now, which I bring up because he's got a 515 on-eye shooting percentage of 7.7, which doesn't seem too out of line

until you realize it's McDavid. And he's never been below 9.9 for his career in a season. And so the fact that he's been unlucky and he's on pace for 120 points. I'm very curious to see if he can, he still got what, 25, 30 games or whatever here by the end of the year. I'm very curious to see whether he can hit that 128.5. He has one of those binges in him, I think, where he'll put like 30 points in like 12 games and he'll be back up to that pace. And we're going to forget that Jonathan Huberto was ever a heart trophy candidate for some

people. We just need to put famous NHL sniper Derek Ryan on the wing. And McDavid will get to that point total in no time. Okay, so next one. Seattle Cracken over 88.5. Wow. Currently on pace for 57 after last night's strong win against the national predators. Rob, I tried to talk Dom out of this one.

I mean, he made some really good points in the, and in listening back to it, like, I completely agree in the sense that I think it was a bit of a flawed argument to be like, Well, none of these players have ever been asked to score before because it was like, yeah, well, Jordan Eberle was a very featured player on his team's offense and all these guys. And it's not like they were just guys coming out and aware from the HL. But at the same time, wow, we are undershooting it just a little bit. Well, let's be real here. And this is coming from someone.

So actually, just a funny story that I will share. But someone reached out to me, a friend of mine that lives in Vegas right before the season started. Not right before. like when NHL point totals first got posted and he's like who one sports book opened at 70 and a half points and another opened at 86 and a half it's like the 70 and a half is the right one right because I'm either going to bet the over or the under I'm like no like the 86 and a half one is the right one in hindsight he would have been much better off betting the under 86 and a half than the over 70 half well he should have bet the under 70 and a half yeah exactly like he's he's sweating at

this point and I haven't talked to him since that time. But the reality is going into the year, Gru Bauer, Drieger was a very good goaltending combination. Some would think. Some would think. Right. And Gru Bauer has turned into complete pumpkin this season. We've seen that happen with goalies and Drieger too. But, you know, Gru Bauer, they've been riding him in, you know, quite a bit this year. And really, I mean, what are the cracking if they had average goal? goaltending this year, or above average goaltending, as we expected. They're probably right in line with that market number. That's what I would posit as a guess. Here's the other thing is that we talk about motivation earlier in this podcast and how absolutely demoralizing it is it to show up,

put up a 55% XG night after night and just get railed because Gruberauer gives up goals at the worst possible times in the worst possible ways. I watched so many of the first 20 cracking games and it was amazing, especially after Yanni Gord came back. That team looked like they were about to turn around and it just didn't matter because they could not buy a save whatsoever. And then they just started playing a lot worse. They ran into injury troubles, which I think people do discount. They have been without Brandtana for a while. They without Jane Schwartz for a while. They are for some reason playing Jeremy Lawson. on defense a lot.

And there's just a lot of things that I think the biggest consideration for me is that I don't account for coaching. And I knew Dave Haxall was going to be a problem. I didn't know it would be this big of a problem. Well, that's my thing. Like when you're getting this kind of goalending, nothing else matters. You basically just need to throw it out the window. And so like it is what it is.

They are 27th in goal scoring and 30th and expected goals generated. and from the talent they picked in terms of the types of players and like the lack of risk they really inherited in terms of going for guys who could potentially score goals to hiring Dave Haxstall who like the last time we saw him coach a team was running the most point shot heavy offense in the league in Philadelphia and which has carried over maybe because of the way they decided to construct their team but also probably because he thinks that's how you should play hockey is alarming and so they're not getting saves they're also not scoring and it's just been it's been a mess. So when I think of the way that the cracking are built, they're a team to me that's built to, you know, get a lead and hold a lead. Yep.

And when you have a goalie who gives up a goal in the first five minutes of every every game, excuse me, like they're forced to chase the game and that's not the team that they are. That's really not the team that, like I actually think if someone looked into it, I'd feel fairly confident that group, Philip Grubauer this season has led in the most goals in NHL history on the first shot of the game.

I would love for someone to look that up because I can't even, I, I've watched the first 10 minutes of Seattle games and turn them off so many times this year for betting related reasons, where he lets in the first goal on the first shot so regularly. It's actually borderline absurd how often it's happened this year. I've got a, I've got a serious idea for you, Rob, for empty netters.com. do a whole feature on Philip Gruvauer, you know, working along the bit that having him and net is basically as good as having an empty net and then just do it through all the times. He's giving up the first shots on first goals or goals on first shots.

The Cracken should start the game six on five to try to get that early goal and then defend it for the rest of the game. Well, I'm just going to give it back up. That's true. Then you have to still rely on Gruberauer anyways. But yeah, that's the thing. Like Seattle, obviously the goal generation is a problem for them. I don't, I think everybody thought that going into the year, though.

I don't think that's something we learned. We learned that the goal tending is bad. And that was just, I don't think anyone would have expected it to be like, this is 99th percentile type of stuff that we're seeing out of them this year. Yeah, I think the thing with the goal generation as well is that when we look back to Vegas, I don't think anyone thought they could score any goals, but they were coached in a way where they believed they could and they played a high tempo style and the way the Cracken were coached immediately was we're going to play

conservatively we know you guys can't score and it's just I wonder I really wonder what a different coach could have got out of those players to start the season because Dave Haxall was absolutely not it from the get-go yeah yeah uh abs over at 110.5 was one I like Dom you said you were a bit nervous about how high it was but you really like them at president's trophy winning the central and winning the cup and all of those are looking good. I actually doubled down on winning the Central when they started slow. I got around to like minus 110 and I put a lot on it.

And a lot of my futures bets actually did not go super well. But mid-season, I put down a lot on Carl Otto to win the division. I put down a lot on Calgary to win the division shortly after getting to Foley. and those two look pretty good right now. Calgary's over under was 89.5 and that was one we were really heavy on. And they're on pace for 110 right now. And we actually had a whole bit about how we were concerned about, oh, but they added good Branson and Zadourav and sure enough Daryl Sutter's made them

look like a perfectly fine third pair. So they're just, they're rolling. We had a whole bit about how I was arguing that the coyotes are going to be worse than the sabers. And honestly, most of my logic was that Carter Hutton was going to be the worst goalie we've ever seen play in the NHL. And he had negative 10 goals they were above expected in three games.

And then we just never saw him again. And he's been traded to the Leafs. But I think their line was like 64 and a half or something. And we were a bit worried that it was like they could easily just flukly win a couple games and get over this. But they're under on pace for 150, I think right now. I think we honestly underestimated just how hopeless they'd be this season. The extremes are always the toughest when you're betting point totals.

Agreed. you can always look back in hindsight and like, oh, yeah, we knew this team would be terrible, but some teams we know to be terrible just go on a fluky little run and look legitimate. I mean, I think Columbus is not a good hockey club, but they are on pace for like 90 points or something like that right now. The Ducks would have been another one going into the year with a very low point total that a lot of people thought would be terrible. And, oh, well, Dom and I did in this podcast, yeah. So there we go. I thought we were kind of skeptical of the Kings as well, too.

So David Pasternak over 36 and a half goals. I liked him as a long shot for the rocket. That's not going to happen. But he's on pace for 44 now, which is amazing considering he started with eight goals in his first 30 games. Yeah. And had this like 4% shooting percentage or something. And he's been remarkable since.

Rob, this one's really funny. Yeah, I think you need to go back and listen to just how high the notes, Dom's voice hits when I tell him that Elias Patterson's line for points was 60 and a half. He literally goes like six. 60. Are you sure it's not 600? And you're just losing his mind. Remarkably, this is going to be a tough one for him to hit the over. I mean, he's making a strong surge. He's making a very strong surge of late. I don't know if you, I think he's got like 11 points last five games or something like that. I've had people tweeting at me about it. So I've been, I've been following it with very, very interested eyes. It's on pace for 57. On January 15th, he'd played 37 games. He was tied. for Canucks scoring with Luke Shen, who had played 21 games, and Matthew Highmore, who had played 13 games.

Unreal. Since then, he's got 11 goals and 21 points in 18 games. So he's looking like he's healthy. He's consistently beating goalies with that wristier. I have hope, but he needs 23 in his final 27. So this one's going to be tough. This was a tough one for you, Don. Jacob Chikrin, 18 and a half goals.

You had him projected at 20.3. Nice. Love that for me. He's got three this season. some time. Remarkably, though, we talked about how, like, involved he was going to be and just banking on the volume. He's taken 31.5% of the coyotes shot attempts with him on the ice. So, like, they're running their full offense to them. But similar to what we just talked about with the coyotes line, I think we, I think we underrated just how bad they were going to be.

Yeah. And my point projections, like, they don't really do well in terms of accounting for quality of teammates. I remember a few years ago when Kessel was traded from Pittsburgh to Arizona, I had to warn people and say, look, my model doesn't know he's not playing with it any Malkin anymore, just bump him down a bit. And that is something I want to look into in the future. But with Chikrin, he no longer had like any weapons. And so it was really easy to know that he was going to take that shot from the point and defend it a lot easier. I think predicting goals scoring from defense and in of itself is a difficult thing because it can be extremely random, but up to up to that point, he had some Weber-like qualities with that heavy

shot where you could almost safely expect 10, 15 goals and 20 might have been a high water mark, but he looked really good last two seasons before this one. Yeah, yeah, you can't evaluate anything that's going on in Arizona this season. Last one, we threw out Gerard Gallant, Jack Adams, plus 1,400. I believe he's currently at plus 400 or 450 on D.K. I don't think he'll win because Daryl Sutter really should have a word. Yeah, Sutter's got to win. He's going to be a finalist. So I'm going to chalk this one up as a good value proposition. Who are the Jack Adams final?

Like I would think Mike Sullivan would be in there too. Yeah, maybe. Well, Robert Brinmore is not going to because he won it last year. Yeah, I was going to say Dean Everson maybe before Minnesota went on this swoon here. But yeah, I mean, listen, the Rangers are exceeding people's expectations. I don't think Gerard Galant magically told you were just certain to stop 94% of the shots he faces. But from a lesson learning perspective, what we highlighted here was the Rangers were 5, 9, and 6 in one goal games last year. They're 16, 5, and 5 have been one of the best teams this year.

And I've seen it talked about on broadcasts. Like, oh, the comeback kids, they're so good at pulling these out. And I think people just aren't ready to embrace how random basically winning coin flips in the NHL is from a year to year basis. Like, if you look at it, Dallas was one of the worst teams last year. They're one of the best teams now, winning one goal games. They had literally the exact same roster. So I think when we're thinking about this heading into next season, picking a coach who, like, is heading a team that just didn't win any close games last year is probably a good value bet.

Me and Rob are very aware that Dallas stars were bad at winning one goal games last year. Oh, yeah. We know that. Nine, six and 14. Yeah. Oh, 14 OT losses couldn't be the stars. In the 56 games. That's good.

Good stuff. Me and Rob bet on all 14 of those games. Oh, there's 16, 5, and 3 now. So there you have it. I made a notoriously horrible coach of the year selection, Jack Adams pick two years ago. I'm trying to remember who it was. It was a big bonus? No. No, we had a remarkable one two years ago. You liked Ralph Kruger and I liked him first coach fired.

Yes. Yes. I was closer, but you were. You were closer. I will give you that. Yeah, that was a remarkably bad one. I actually won't live that one down for a good stuff. All right.

Well, let's put a pin in here. Dom, I'll let you go first, plug some stuff where can people check you out. As always, you can check me out at The Athletic, where every day I update projected standings and my betting guide, which is turned into a fading guide over the last couple of weeks. And every month, I do an awards watch, which is so powerful. it can attract the ire of some sports agents and their clients for not being mentioned. And every Friday, Power Rankings with me and John Chantilly, where some fan bases treat this as the word of the Lord and get absolutely unhinged in the comments. Always worth it just for the comments. So that's where you can find me.

I like it. Rob, what about you? For those out there looking to get better at wagering on sports, download bets. It's a company that I'm heavily involved with. You can find that in the app store. You can check out the website, betstamp.app. It's a great line shopping utility. Anyone looking for educational content, check out my podcast. It's called Circles Off, basically anywhere that you would listen to or stream podcasts.

We're on there and potentially follow Betstamp on YouTube as well. I put out a lot of educational content there from a betting perspective as well. Well, this is a blast, fellas. Let's see this again sometime. Sounds good. Thanks, Dimitri. Cheers. The Hockey PEDEOCast with Dmitri Filippovich.

Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.