The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 438: It's a Trap!

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Jack Han joins the show to discuss takeaways from the opening round, and what to watch for in the upcoming round two matchups. Topics include: 1:00 - Oilers vs. Kings 21:00 - Panthers vs. Capitals 32:00 - Leafs vs. Lightning 50:00 - Avalanche vs. Blues 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.

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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 P.DEOCast. Host, Dmitri. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Vovich.

And joining me is my buddy, Jack Hahn. Jack, what's going on, man? Tons of hockey to watch. Tons of hockey to watch. Indeed, we're recording this on Sunday morning. We just got to watch three amazing game sevens last night. There's two more on the way later today. The plan is we're going to work our way through the series that have already ended.

So we're going to discuss some of the important takeaways, things we saw the games. Just try to spin it forward to help preview their round two matchups and kind of identify some exploitable strengths and weaknesses that people can look out for when they're watching these games. We're not going to talk about the ones that are happening later on tonight, obviously, because by the time people listen, the results of what happened. And so we'll save those for later on in the week and I'll cover them in a future podcast. But let's jump right into Oilers Kings. I feel like that's kind of the logical starting point for us because I'm personally still kind of riding this high of just getting to watch what Connor McDavid did last night.

For my money, I've been watching hockey for a while now. And just given the circumstances involved, I think that's about as well as you can possibly expect an individual player to play. Like from really from the third period of game five, game five on, he pretty much just pitched a perfect game over the course of the final seven periods of the series. And what you get is the best player in the world playing at his very best on the biggest stage. And that kind of theater to me is what makes sports so cool. So I don't know, not to sound too corny, but that was about as fun as it gets, just watching all that play out.

Yeah. And it's not as if the Kings played particularly badly. Like I think they played just well enough to look like the Washington generals to McDavid's Harlem Goldrotters, that kind of thing. certainly for the for the series yeah game seven got away from the little bit especially as that game went along i think you know the dam kind of broke and eventually like it was just it was a bit too overwhelming for them um in terms of like mac david was just basically out there every second shift and they just got no real rest or pre from it so i don't blame them for it but you're right like for the for the entire of the series they gave about as good of an effort as you can hope for

i mean look at what they did to try to slow them down right they had mikey anderson who's their best one-on-one defender out there for like 50% of his minutes. They had either Copator or Denno on him for nearly 80% of his 5-on-5 minutes. They threw up this like brick wall in the neutral zone just trying to get the puck off of his stick whenever they possibly could. And regardless of what they threw at him, like he just problem solved for it on the fly. And I guess, you know, we talk about how it's a teen game and all that. But at the end of the day, when you have a player like that and he's able to especially play the volume of minutes that he did at that level. It's kind of like the ultimate deciding factor. Like if you're the Kings, you

ultimately just didn't have Connor McDavid and your opponent did. So, so I think in the series, if you're, if you're an Orlyus fan, it's very encouraging because first of all, in those non-McDavid minutes, certainly they were having trouble, but they weren't getting totally dummied. So at least, you know, like McDavid wasn't going onto the ice and the Oilers, you know, weren't in a spot where they hadn't touched the puck at all. Like certainly, you know, he's a huge difference maker. But I think that the base is more solid than it used to be. And then the second thing is, I think, at the very top of the game,

you see how a single elite player can just cancel out or burn through the best thought-out defenses. Like, you know, the Kings would sit back into one-three-one. And then I would say probably only maybe four players in the league. could carry through that. It'd be McDavid, McKinnon, a healthy brain point, and maybe Caprize off. Like, I might be missing a couple

of guys there, but that's probably it. Yeah. Well, I'm going to push back a little bit on the point you made there about not getting completely dumbed. I mean, certainly, you know, it wasn't catastrophic, but it was a bit of a regression from what we'd

seen down the stretch under Woodcroft, right? Like, I've got some stats here for you. So in McDavid's 120, 25-15 minutes, the oilers just, like, completely controlled, right? They were up 11-0-4. They had 71% of the expected goals. They had 71% of the high-danger chances. They were just, it was just a complete, like, one-sided affair. In the 213-5-on-5 minutes he didn't play, those numbers bumped down to a 44.8% shot share, 43% chance share, 36.2 expected goal share. And they got outscored 8 to 5, which is close enough, obviously. It didn't completely,

do them in. But I guess the one kind of workaround for that, and I'm not sure how necessarily sustainable it is, keep going into future series. But it was clearly for these final two games was, okay, we're just going to limit the number of times. We have to play without McDavid because he's going to play significantly more, right? Like he, he played 51 and a half minutes of the 122 available minutes in the final two games and 45 or so were of them at 5-on-5. Like it was just, it was the type of usage you don't see from forward. It was the equivalent of a workhorse defenseman. And for him to do it and do it as effectively and maintaining the speed he plays at was

was kind of breathtaking to watch, really. Well, I didn't realize how I guess it was a little bit more lopsided that I expected. I was expecting something along the lines of like, you know, 45 to 48 percent, that kind of thing. And I think the other thing is we got to give problems. to Mike Smith. Like at the start of the series, he was literally giving the puck to the other team for scoring chances. And he actually,

well, he finished with like 94%, say percent or something, something thereabouts. Yeah, certainly he recovered really well from that, from that game one, to rescue the cost in that game and had two shutouts along the way.

I've got a lot of non-McDavid stuff here on the Oilers. We'll get to it in a second. But I'm not done. Stop trying to move me away from the McDavid content here for a second. I'm going to give you a few more stats. So in those final two games, with him on the ice, and he was playing like half the game.

The earlier's outscored the king six to one, and he either scored or set up five of those goals. For the series, he was on the ice for 20 of their 27 overall goals and had 14 points. He had, I was tracking all the games, he had 49, 5-1-5 shot assists, and he took 45 of his own attempts. So he had 94 shot contributions at 5-1-5 in just seven games, and it just kind of shows like how much the puck was running through his stick.

But, you know, watching him, I'm not sure if you noticed this. He's been doing this for a while now, but that movie has where he did it to Dano a couple times where the defender kind of rushes at him, right? And then they're kind of hoping to have momentum to kind of match the speed that he's able to accelerate at. And instead, he uses that momentum against them to kind of get around them because he uses his off arm to sort of staple them on his hip. And then he kind of turns around. It's kind of like he's like a big guy in the NBA and he's doing like a post move. And he just gets around them. And then he has like basically a clear.

path towards a net. And he didn't score on the series on a goal like that, but he certainly set up a couple great chances just by doing so. And it made me think, like, I don't, I don't know how you really defend him in zone, because you can't really just stand there flat footed because then he's going to be able to get around you with that acceleration. But you also can't skate directly at him because he's added this element to his game where he can use that against you now.

So it's kind of like this impossible scenario where I don't really know how you do defend him in that sort of in zone setting. Obviously on the rush, it's impossible. But even in zone now, it's becoming more and more of a problem. Well, I mean, you can't really defend him because he's such a complete player. And it's not just the speed. It's not just the hands. But as you said, it's his ability to kind of read the pressure that you're bringing and then rolling off or angling himself in a way where like, it's almost like, you know, mixed martial arts where he's using jiu-jitsu on you.

And then he leaves you kind of in a pretzel. and then he just skates away. You know, the one thing that you'll see a lot of teams do is maybe pressure him earlier, kind of either in his zone or in the neutral zone to try to slow him down. But yeah, once he's in your zone, basically all you can do is you can hope to waste time and you can hope for maybe a bobbled puck and then you attack him two on one and hopefully cause a turnover. But he's one of those players that, like, he'll take,

whatever defensive plan that you have and just kind of laugh at it. You know, if he's on his game as he wasn't game seven, there's not too much you can do. And then maybe the best way that you can kind of, you know, keep his offense off the table is just to try to either pressure him early or take over the play when he's not on the ice so that the older just have to play catch up all the time. I mean, he basically just he did everything, right?

Like I think the one knock used to be like, listen, he's clearly the best offensive player. the league, but sometimes defensively you can have little lapses where he's sort of just gliding around or floating around in the defensive zone and just kind of waiting for his team to get the puck so that you can quickly break it out. And in this series, like you saw the defensive engagement get ramped up where he was just into the game off the puck. Like he was using his speed to make life hell for opposing puck carriers. He was, you know, stick lifting, taking the puck away, throwing the body around. He was physically asserting himself. Like it was, it was just cool to see,

that level of a well-roundedness from him. But you mentioned earlier, we were talking about the rest of the dealers and kind of how they navigate the minutes without him. And kind of what I did notice was a bit concerning to me is it felt like they did fall into a lot of the bad habits they previously had under Tippet that we'd always be concerned about.

And we didn't see it as much in the second half under Woodcroft because they made all these sort of offensive adjustments. But I think the reason, you know, Dreisheadle being hurt obviously affects things and doesn't help matters in terms of those non-McDavid minutes. But to me, what the Kings were doing throughout the neutral zone might not have necessarily been sort of groundbreaking or completely original because we're seeing other teams do it as well to high hockey and offenses. But I was pointing this out to you over

a text exchange, like how aggressively they were structuring their guys in the neutral zone. Like they have all these quick forwards that are just grinders and are working hard. So they're providing support from the back in terms of the back pressure. And that allowed their defensemen to basically just stand, like the strong side guy would just stand at the red line and try to force dumpins whenever he possibly could. And that allowed them to compensate for Alex Edler and Olimata, who typically, you know, you'd be concerned about how they're going to handle rush speed. But all of a sudden, they basically just have to take two steps forward and force a dump

in and not necessarily worry about getting burned by that, that carrying ability of the oilers. And I think that was a big, big, big wrinkle in terms of why they struggled because you're right. Like McDavid is one of the four or five players in the league who can carry the puck through that type of layering and still get through on the other side with it. But they didn't have anyone else that could do so. And so I'm curious if you're watching and trying to game plan against the Oilers moving forward, that seems like something that is pretty replicable in terms of getting the puck off. They're sticking forcing them to be much more of a dump and chase team as opposed. to the kind of fluid attacking transition team they were in the second half of the season. So let's kind of look at things from a defensive perspective for a second.

And one thing that I guess surprised me this year is you're seeing way more teams play the one three one trap as opposed to regular season where teams are mostly either one two, two or one one three. And what what the one three one is is essentially it's a zone defense. where guys are just standing in spots to force dumpins, as opposed to a more fluid defense where you're trying to attach to speed and maybe problem solve guys one-on-one and, you know, try to use a defensive stick to force dumpins or force turnovers. So, you know, whether you watch LA, whether you watch Washington, whether even you watch Tampa

at times against Toronto, against a skilled offensive team, if you have guys who are able to get back and clog the neutral zone, it creates a lot of problems, maybe not for the top guys, but certainly for a lot of the kind of middle six, the bottom six forwards, generally speaking, they're going to be dumping the puck. And then the advantage of a one-three-one is the last man back has a couple of steps to kind of turn and then go retrieve that dump. So it's kind of designed to counter a dump-and-chaise kind of play because the last man back is like, by the time the puck leaves the four-checkers' hands,

he's already kind of halfway back almost down to his own goal line, that kind of thing. Well, there's that. But I think also, like if you think about it, if you play out the sequence even further, right? Like if you force them to just keep playing that dump a chase type of game, there's going to be times where, you know, the first guys into the zone, you know, establish, you know, contact, make a good hit, affect the retrieval by the defenseman, and you get the puck back. But by that point, offensively, what happens most times?

All right, you get the puck back behind the net along the boards. It kind of gets rimmed back out, cycled back up to the point. And especially for a team like the Oilers who don't have a bunch of defensemen who, you know, have like skill and poise and are looking to get into the middle of the ice and distribute and make creative plays, they're just getting that back. And then they're just hammering it back towards a net. And that's how they get into this sort of negative feedback loop or kind of this like this problematic way of playing offensively at 5-1-5. because all of a sudden you're taking the puck out of your best players, your forwards sticks, and you're basically just having, you know, your defensemen take low percentage shots from the corners of the ice from far out that aren't going to go in. And so even if you don't recover

it as a defensive team there, you're kind of tricking them in a way into taking very suboptimal shots when they do get the buck. Yeah. And it's kind of, it's a very, it's a very sneaky way to play because as you said, it's almost like it has this, it creates this feedback loop where the other team starts playing a dumber offense. And the other thing that happens is the typical coaching adjustment to a team that's trapping against you is, first of all, you're going to play more dumb and chase because you don't want to force players at the offensive blue line. Fine. And then the second thing is, is that you want to maybe go for these early stretch passes to catch. the defensive team before they can set their trap.

And the problem with that sort of stretch play is who are going to be your best players at executing them? Well, it's going to be your players who are quick up the ice and who have the poise and the skill on the puck to catch a pass with their back to the opposing team's net and then somehow turn and get an entry off of that. So it's going to be your McDavid, it's going to be your dry sidos, your creeperisovs, you know, your high-end skill players. And then if you try to extrapolate that and you have your bottom six players,

attempt those plays a lot of times they're not going to be able to handle the pass. So it's going to be kind of these broken plays, these dump and chases, maybe even these turnovers that lead to counterattack opportunities. So, you know, you were saying how the Oilers were falling back into old habits. Well, you know, going up before L.A. can get set is a great game plan. if McDavid has a step, but if it's, you know, you name it, like one of their bottom six forward is doing that, it's probably going to be knifed into the offensive zone and then they're going to spend the rest of the shift chasing.

Yeah, certainly. And, you know, regardless of who they plan around to, whether it's the flames of the stars, I think if, you know, those teams are paying attention to this, they're going to be similarly structured in the neutral zone. And it'll be, I'm going to be curious to see whether the oilers are able to make some sort of adjustment there to kind of prevent themselves from falling into those habits. Um, is there anything else you have on this series? Like I, I have a point that I wanted to make about Duncan Keith because he was really bad as this series went along.

Like they overcame it, but if they keep playing as much, I do think it's going to come back to bite them. It's, he might honestly be for my money the worst rush defender in the league at this point. And I was tracking this. The Kings just absolutely feasted on him. They targeted him 49 times on entries of 515. they successfully carried it in 39 times on those. So they weren't even like being forced to dump it in, weren't creating any turnovers.

They were just basically, you know, clearly targeting him and then trying to create off the rush in that regard and against a team that has better, better finishers, especially if they play the flames around two, that I think that's going to become a real weakness. So I guess the one solution of that is just to play Brett Kulak more because he was fantastic by comparison. But for whatever reason,

they seem to be unwilling to do so. So, well, I guess we'll see how that plays out. Well, the reason is Kulak is not the toughest player to play against in the front of the net. He's not a habitual cross-checker. He doesn't have a lot of dirtiness in his game, whereas I think Keith is sneaky, dirty in that sense. But certainly, you know, whoever the Oilers end up playing the second round, we might see a healthy dose of who pay hints against Keith off the rush or Johnny drove against Keith off the rush or Manjapani or you name it. Like that's going to be interesting to say to leave.

I don't know. My Kulak is such a superior player. Like he got targeted 36 times and he gave up 10 carries on those. Like he, the game you had playing with Cody Cici on the top pair when Darnal Nurse was suspended was was fantastic. He was great all series. You're right. In front of the net, maybe not as much so, but especially in terms of defending the rush,

like his is kind of controlled aggression makes him such a valuable player for this team. And I don't know, man, with Keith, like my analogy is he kind of looks like one of those older quarterbacks in the NFL that's taken a few too many hits and kind of starts getting happy feet in the pocket like the second they start feeling any pressure. And even if there's no one actually around and they've got plenty of time to make a play. And like you see them make these decisions with the puck where it's just needlessly turning it over. And I think that's something the Oilers need to get away from. Like they got through this series, but in terms of like trying to optimize their performance.

I think that's a big area that they can improve. So some to watch for. Was there anything from the Kings that you wanted to note here? Like, Dano was obviously awesome. Any other players you kind of wanted to give a bit of spotlight to hear before we move on to another series? I mean, look, like the Kings, they've had a really good season. Even before this season, I was kind of tabbing them as a team on the rise.

I think they're ahead of schedule. It's super impressive what they've been able to do with the right side that that was Matt Roy and then some combination of Sean Jersey, Troy Stetcher, and Jordan Spence down the stretch. So this team is this team is on its way up. They got a lot of good players coming. I think at some point they're going to have to start playing with a little bit more nuance off the rush, maybe use more speed differentials or changes to sides to open things up. Right now it's very much kind of a boot strength, you know, crash in that kind of team. So I'm looking forward to seeing how their style of play evolves. I think.

think, like, I've long admired Marco Sturm as an assistant coach, like even going back to his time coaching the German national team. I thought they did some really interesting things offensively. So looking forward to see how this team evolves next year. I really liked what I saw from Mikey Anderson in the series. He's a player who every time you look at his regular season defensive metrics, they'd pop up, pop off the page and you'd be like, I wonder what's going on here. But just watching him, like, his ability to handle. speed was very impressive to me. So certainly like this structure they were playing help for that, but he did really well. And then I wouldn't be surprised at all if he becomes

kind of a trendy hipster pick for like, ooh, this is an underrated player that you should be paying attention to moving forward. So kind of wanted to get ahead of that. Should we do Panthers capitals here just because it's sort of similar in terms of what was happening, offense first defense and then we can do Leafs Lightning after that. Really similar series in terms of the dynamics.

Obviously, Carter Verhege is no Connor McDavid, but he was sort of the catalyst that really opened the floodgates for the Panthers, especially off the rush. He did a lot of the similar things that McDavid would do. Obviously, he's not quite as good, but just having a player

who's able to beat guys one-on-one and beat guys wide, you see how valuable that becomes against the team that's really tight across the neutral zone. The other thing that I noticed watching that series is we know that Florida is one of the best teams in the league at creating shots in the O zone and then, you know, creating these shoot and retrieve opportunities. And I thought Washington did something really neat to counter that, which is we know that Florida likes to get into this two, three with the third forward very, very high in the zone.

and Washington kind of, they accepted that matchup, and they instead concentrated their defensive pressure below the goal line. So any time the puck went down under the goal line, it would systematically outnumber the Panthers three against two. So the center will come down low and then help the D's fight for the puck. And more often than not, they would actually get the puck back and then be on their way out, out of the zone. And that was really frustrating for Florida because I think during the regular season,

they were used to winning a lot of cheap pucks down low because teams were playing them more man-on-man. So I think, you know, if our Tampa playing the next round, this is something that I look at, especially, you know, already, you know, with the amount of large and imposing defensemen that the lightnings have, if you win a lot of these down low pucks against Florida, you can really cut down their zone time. you can really reduce a lot of their offensive volume. I mean, similar to what we were saying with the Kings and Oilers, though, like I think the big thing here, especially in the first like three, maybe even the game four, the first like four games or so,

like what the capitals did to slow them down through the neutral zone where they were basically just like they had five guys above the pocket at pretty much all times and they were playing so disciplined in that regard. And it was just really limiting the number of times the past. Panthers could conceivably get out in transition and actually have odd man rush scenarios because they were always back and they were always kind of trying to bump up into this wall. And I guess it brought up an interesting question for me for the Panthers because or any teams in general in this regard, like when you have so much regular season success and we talked on an

earlier show, you and I a couple months ago maybe about how they were having this historic offensive season and how they were doing so in a bunch of different ways, but particularly in terms of being this kind of run-and-gun team that just absolutely kills you off of the rush. Like when the game did slow down or when you were facing a team up to seven times in a series where they could specifically a game plan for that and potentially just key in on like trying to slow down that one area of yours, how willing they'd be able to adjust whether they could have enough versatility to win in different ways. And obviously eventually they did.

But it really seemed like for those first couple of games, they were basically just trying to repeatedly jam the square peg into a round hole. Like it seemed like they didn't, they were just trying to play that way, but there was nothing there. And it seemed like at some point they kind of realized that they just had to maybe dump the puck in a little more and go ahead and try and retrieve it instead, as opposed to just skating it through because there just weren't really lanes to do so. Also, is it true that Florida didn't score a power play goal the entire series?

That sounds crazy to me. Not only is that true. They had 18 opportunities in 34 and a half minutes. on the power play and they scored zero goals on 20 shots. And, you know, if you're looking at matchups in a round two, like, you know, they're going against a lightning team that is going to score a bunch of their own power boy goals. So especially after what they did to them last postseason,

that would be something that I'd be watching for ever, certainly. So I have a theory on that, which may be completely wrong, but maybe something worth trying for the Panthers. So against, so for teams like the Lightning or for Boston, teams with really historically very strong first power plays. The problem with those units is once you're able to win the first face off and get the clear, they're way less effective. Like if we're talking about like the Bergeron unit in Boston or the brain point snapcos, Kutrov unit in Tampa, they're not as good breaking out of their zone and then getting the entry and then a setup than if they win the face off and just stay in the offensive zone the whole time.

Right. And the thing with Florida is, you know, they got Claude Juru at the deadline and Claude Jou is an elite faceoff guy. So what I've been seeing from them is they want Claude Jou to win the face off from the right side and then they're looking to set up off of that. The problem with that approach in Florida in my mind is that Florida's best players are left handed. So if you're winning a face off on the right side, you don't have a one-timer usually to a right-handed cheque. shooter from that side of the ice. Now, it could be Reinhardt or it could be Eggblad if they're playing eggblad at the point. However, what they've been doing before Giroux is they have Barkov trying to win that face off on the left side and then feeding one of their many, you know, left-handed shooters going left to right. So maybe if, you know, either they can have

Drew try to win the face off on his offside, which is the left dot, or maybe even go back to Barkov and try to run it that way. But I think maybe it's something we're trying to go away from having Jeru take the first face off on the right. Yeah, that's interesting. Definitely something to think about. Was there anything else about sort of what the capitals did to the Panthers year? Because certainly, I didn't give them much of a chance heading into this series. I just thought the talent disparity would be too much. And eventually talent did win out. But they gave them a pretty good scare.

They were three minutes away from going up three one in the series. They had a three nothing leading game five. Game six was one and overtime. And the caps had a lead in the third period even in that game. Like this was this was pretty tight. And you know, you could glass half full say, listen, this happens in the postseason. It was good for the panthers to get an experience like this under their belt and still find a way to persevere and resourcefully create offense.

enough to win, especially like they're, you know, regardless of what they do on the power plane, if they make any adjustments, they're not going to go for 18 again regardless.

So they're going to get some easier sources of offense in round two and it'll even itself out. Or do you view it from the perspective of like, it's kind of alarming that a team that was so inferior in terms of talent was able to game plan in a way that really gave them this, this much trouble for a series of games before they were ultimately able to find a way out of it.

For me, the big takeaway on, Washington's end is it goes to show how longevity or how keeping the same core together for many years is underrated. Like, you know, we kind of had written them off before they won their cup, right, because they struggle for years to convert into playoffs. And then all of a sudden, they win this cup out of nowhere at the tail end of their cycle. And then before this series against Florida, we've all pretty much written them off because they're old and slow and they're not as good they're not as good as the Panthers who've been historically dominant in the regular season,

but then they give them a good run for their money. So, you know, I think it's certainly there's not a lot of positives for teams like Toronto who are expected to go deep but then to lose early. But I think there's some merit in having patience in this league, even though, you know, paradoxically we're more and more in a career to try to exploit players on the ELCs. But I think there's value in keeping a core together for a long. time because you never know when they're going to pop and when things are going to fall in place. Yeah, that's interesting.

Okay, well, let's take a quick break here. And then we're going to do Leafs Lightning and Avalanche Blues 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 Customink 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

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I feel like a series doesn't get tighter than this, right? One goal separated the two teams, both in terms of the actual Game 7, but also for the full series cumulatively. Expected goals, according to natural statric, were 50.7 to 49.3% for the Leafs. But when you score and then you adjusted, it was 50.3 to 49.7 for the lightning. Like, it was a coin flip in terms of the 50-50 regard in pretty much every sense. Which way do you want to take this? What are your takeaways from this, whether it's from the Game 7 or for the full series, and let's fully unpack it?

So, you know how we really enjoyed geeking out about Dallas's Pavelsky line, right? How Dallas was able to extend Pavelski's career by putting him with Jason Robertson, who's a great dual threat as either a shooter or a passer and also Rupéhans, who's a guy with elite speed. The number one thing, I would say the Leafs lacked this playoff was one more player in their top six who could really make plays. You know, the fifth and six player under top two lines were Michael Bunting and Alex Kerrfoot, you know,

kind of these complementary players. And, you know, the big guy, showed up, but then the complimentary players didn't quite chip in enough to kind of put the leaves over the edge. And it's not to disparage them because I thought the entire team played very well against a very tough opponent, but that's what they were missing. I mean, it's a bit of a double-edged sword for me here for them, right? Like on the one hand, I thought just watching all seven of those games, they were pretty clearly the better team in that series. Like, they dictated play. They had a massive speed advantage.

It felt like they were routinely creating better chances with ease compared to like how the lighting had to kind of resourcefully and opportunistically manufacture theirs. But at the same time, I guess you could argue that the realization of that only makes losing yet another round one series in this fashion that much harder to swallow. I guess the one thing and the only thing I do really feel strongly about here is that like you can just completely disregard anyone that says that, you know, this time after this loss, you have to make drastic changes to this. team because like look their their top players were clearly their best players and they played a hell of a series like marner and matthews who can get into it but they were fantastic every time they were on the ice they made a bunch of spirit comebacks when i look like they could easily fade uh in a couple games there and they didn't win the goal is obviously to win and so they fell short of that goal but i don't know just pretending like there's something fundamentally rodent in this in the core of this

team it just seems so disingenuous to me it just seems like if you're a arguing that you're really only pushing an agenda because they basically lost the coin flip to a really good team and that's not making an excuse that's kind of the reality of the postseason. So if this series had happened in the Eastern Conference finals and they lost in this regard, this wouldn't be an issue for anyone, but just because it happened in round one again and with all the historical baggage, it's a big talking point. But for me, like, I think that perspective is really important. Yeah. And if you look at Toronto's top players, you see them get better in their own ways.

Like, obviously Matthews is coming off, this amazing goal scoring season. But during the regular season, he averaged about one hit per game. And then he realized midway through the series that in order to create more space for himself, he had to lay the body a little bit more to get to the defender's thinking. And then he was averaging, I think, around five hits a game in the second half to series. So he made that adjustment and he was very effective. Mitch Martyr, last playoffs against Montreal, you saw him get a little. bit tight and forcing passes and not moving well enough kind of off the catch. And this year,

it was completely different. He's, he's become a much more dynamic player and a much more, you know, fearless player going to traffic. Tavares was quiet to start the series, but then you see him kind of working as magic down low in the net area. You know, he had that goal. They got waved off. That was kind of a vintage John Tavar's goal. You know, Neil Andrew. is going to the net and, you know, he's continuing to do these William Nylander things that we love so much. So these players are getting better. Like, they're, you know, they're playing a market that has so much pressure baked in, but you see them elevate their games in small ways. So, so like you've got to take that as encouraging. I mean, well, let's take those one at times.

Matthews was a force physically. Like, I don't know, he obviously doesn't win in 100% at times, but I feel like when he goes into a crowd for a loose puck or if he's kind of standing along the boards and the opponent's trying to get it past him, like, I just feel like he's going to come away with it 100% of the time. There's a few things I'd quibble with. Like, I feel like formation wise, did it strike you a bit odd that, I know they were moving around a little bit, but like, they spent large stretches on their power play of having them in kind of this unnatural position where he couldn't one time it. And so like they'd get it to them and then you'd have to hesitate a little bit. And by that time, Tampa Bay's

penalty killers were so good at recovering and getting set. And at that point, it just became so much less feasible that he was going to beat them with a shot. And it was weird to me that they kept doing that as opposed to just setting up that natural one-timer more frequently. What do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, if you look at hockey viz, like the visualization with the powerplay heat maps, you saw that the lightning did a really good job of accessing the slot, whereas the Leafs did their show. shots were more concentrated on the flanks. The one fascinating thing I noticed in game seven and probably not before,

early in the series, but only in game seven was Marner was playing the bumper spot instead of Tavares. So Tavares was down low and then Nielander was on the left flank, Marner in the middle, and then Matthews on the right in his one-timer spot. And this was, it's something I've advocated for even back when I was working for the I thought Marner would be better use in the middle of the ice where he can kind of read the pressure and play between checks. But the player never really was comfortable doing that because he always liked to have kind of the defensive pressure to one side instead of playing in the middle of that PK box. But you saw him try to do it in game seven.

And who knows, like maybe if they were able to create that look early in the series, it would have made a difference. But just the fact that he felt comfortable to slide in there, like in game seven, again, shows some growth in his game. Yeah, I guess, okay, so the one quibble for me with their approach, you know, throughout the series, I thought they did a really good job of attacking with speed and kind of taking advantage of the speed advantage that they did have on this lightning team, right? And in game seven, especially when you got into the third period, obviously this was partly due to the fact that the lightning, like, after the first couple minutes of that third period for the final 17 or 18 minutes, just like we're not trying to score or do anything. They were basically just hanging on kind of like a prevent defense. So they were just staying back and not even, you know, getting out of position at all. but it kind of struck me like how often like how much the visually

Toronto's offense changed with regards to like they went from being this free flowing team that was just constantly getting the puck in the zone to all of a sudden having to just repeatedly dump it in and then waste time grinding along the boards trying to dig it out and you saw that especially in the final couple minutes where they wasted so much valuable time doing so and even Matthews himself had to basically just dump it in and hope for a team to crash out and try to retrieve it. And that's fine for most players, but especially in that spot for a player of that caliber,

like that seems suboptimal to me. Like board battles against Tampa Bay's best players when it's headman and Chernack and so on and so forth probably isn't how you want to be trying to generate a goal when the clock is ticking down your seasons on the line. So I think when they look back at that, I'm not sure what they could have done differently in that regard because Tampa Bay was just basically loading up on the blue line

and forcing them to dump it in. But that clearly, Like it just looked so different than basically the rest of the series did for them offensively. So I would agree with that. I thought that they were maybe a bit conservative with their tactics when they were trailing. Late in that game seven, we didn't see a lot of them using the width of the ice in transition. You know, they were instead trying to go north-south, trying to dump the puck in and try to, you know, forecheck and get it back. Whereas in the regular season, the best way to beat a one, one, three,

like Tampa plays is you find a change of sides early, so around either your blue line or the red line, and then you attack the weak side with speed. Whereas down the stretch, you saw Toronto trying to force the puck through the strong side a lot. And then, as you mentioned, very late in the game, Matthews had a look to go one-on-one to carry into the offensive zone. Instead, he just kind of spotted the puck cross corner and basically hope for bunting to go and chase that puck down. And when I think about that sequence, I can't help but think about Nick Suzuki because in the regular season, when Nick Suzuki was struggling, he would often make these sort of

conservative plays to not turn the puck over. So as soon as you would pressure him at the offensive law and he would just kind of chip the puck in and try to get around you and go chase it down. Whereas when St. Louis came in as coach, when he starts putting up more points, you saw him look for these one-on-ones because if you want to be an elite player in the NHL offensively, you've got to do things that kind of break the rules once in a while, right? Because certainly if you're a bottom six player, if you're a middle six player, you shouldn't go one-on-one at the line.

But if you're a superstar of the game, one of the very best in the league, which Matthews is, the chips are down. There's a minute left in a, in a must-win game, you should go for that one-on-one. Okay, even if it's Victor Hedman, even if it's, you know, Ryan McDonnor or Eau-Charnack, whatever.

And even if Matthews is not quite as good as McDavid is, well, McDavid is going to take that puck and trust himself to make a play, whereas you saw Matthews, he deferred in that moment. And I think if you had to do it again, he might have done it differently. Yeah, I think aside from there was like one Mikaev solo rush there where you got a really good chance with speed.

But other than that in the third period, like it was, it looked much different. I mean, and, and, you know, kudos to Tampa Bay there because I think a lot has been made of Vasilevsky stats in this series. And, you know, his stats now in these close out games over the past three years where he just has like ridiculous, you know, say percentage goals against winning all of them, of course. And he was excellent in this game seven. He made a bunch of big stops. He did everything. He needed to, no question about it. But part of the secret sauce during this entire run of excellence for the lightning has been like when it's mattered most,

they've actually been able to kind of clamp down defensively and basically lock you down. And as this series was going along, whether it was because the leaf speed and depth was just too much for them or because they were running on fumes and just didn't have it. And then this year, I just thought that they wouldn't be able to sort of replicate that kind of an effort in this type of setting and really shut them down. and when you look through the first 40 minutes of this game, the Leafs, I believe, had like, 1.5 expected goals and like 14 total shots on that in those first 40 minutes. And so you did kind of get a little bit, a glimpse of that. It wasn't obviously necessarily as dominant as the past couple of years,

but you did see that kind of DNA for the lightning of being able to in a setting like this to just, you know, they got a couple goals and then they like really just totally refined a defensive game. Yeah, and I think the mindset against Florida next round is more of the same. It's, you know, certainly they're looking to play well, but they're also looking to maybe drag their opponents down to their level, so to speak, because, you know, Tampa is not the fastest or even the most skilled team anymore. So they're looking to maybe have Florida kind of, you know, slow them down and jammed them up like they did against Toronto. So the game plan is going to be the same.

For me, the biggest question is Brayden Point because he's such a big part of what they do. And without point, that really weakens their top six. And then Kutrov is going to have to do a lot more. In Toronto, you saw him kind of be a little bit tentative or a little bit slow at times. You saw him delay instead of carrying the puck through pressure, trying to find somebody else who's cutting through the middle of the ice with speed. So he's going to have to be, I think, you know, he's going to have to be better.

Yeah. Yeah. It sucks seeing a point, get hurt the way he did in game seven, right? Like, he only scored the one five one five goal in this series. Ironically, it was in that game seven winner

that he didn't actually put into the net himself. But I thought he was just immense this series where, you know, they split him up from Lutrov and Stamco's to get that kind of matchup versatility versus Matthews and Marner with him and Sirelli. And they really took it to him a couple games there in Tampa Bay. And he was creating so much just single-handedly with his motor that this team didn't have that much of otherwise.

And so that's obviously, I mean, it's not really innovative analysis to say that's going to be irreplaceable. But hopefully he'll be able to play. I thought Edmund as well, it was kind of cool seeing him at this level again. You know, last postseason, he was clearly physically hampered and he wasn't himself and he was having to kind of pick his spots more. And in this series, you got to see kind of the full dose of how he can be the ultimate system breaker at both ends, right?

Like offensively, he's with the stretch passes, he's creating. but he's also like in game four, I think their first goal before it became a blowout. He like crashes down the wall to keep the puck in. The puck moves around and then he like flashes across the crease and basically acts as like a screener on Stamco's shot to take away Campbell's eyes. Defensively, they were using him and Chernak in the home games pretty much exclusively against the Matthews line

and they were dominating in those minutes. So you kind of got the full repertoire of what Hedman's capable of in this series and kind of what a singularly impactful player you can be. Yeah, well, you know what? What you can do is in future Tampa games, you can flip a coin. And then if it lands head, then headman is going to be on the ice. He's going to be playing every single, like every other shift. Like that's how Tapa's going to go far is to really write him and hope that he can, he can do it.

Okay, I've got one more note on this series that I noticed in these games. And it's kind of spin forward to this round. do you matchup against the Panthers. So there was an interesting cat and mouse game that I noticed where I think the lightning, by design, they started off this series, like they'd have the puck deep in the offensive zone, and then they would look to get it up to the point and make something happen with it, right? And the Leafs were pressuring the points so aggressively. Like they were sending their wingers up high, and they were basically looking to leak out at the first sign of a turnover.

And they were creating a lot of those turnovers. They were either blocking the shot and then going and retrieving it in the neutral zone. or they were pressuring the lightning defensemen and all of a sudden they're kind of flat-footed. They've got a like a bumbling puck coming their way. They're trying to do something with it. And it felt like every time there was like a 50-50 chance that it would result in a great scoring chance for the Leafs in a matter of seconds because they were just like they were just on it.

They were pressuring them so much. They were really just all over it. And if I'm the Panthers and I'm watching that, that's something that like I'm really trying to take and incorporate as much as I can in this matchup, like especially coming away from that round one series against the capitals where they struggled so much to get out in transition and create odd man opportunities. It feels like we'll see how the lightning play it, of course. I'm sure they're going to just try to grind and pound it again and keep the puck deep

in the zone for extended stretches. But as soon as it comes out to the point, like the Panthers just need to be all over that and trying to pressure it as much as possible. And they certainly have the personnel to do so. Like they have a ton of speed up front. Yeah. So the Panthers, they play slightly different D-Zone. play more of a zone defense, which means that you don't have the winger necessarily assigned to cover

that defenseman. On the minus side, sometimes that means that they're going to be late, flexing out to create that high turnover. But on the plus side, anytime the puck is going to be around the half wall, they can two on one that puck. So, you know, I think Tampa knows exactly what Florida is looking to do. And it'll be interesting to see how that evolves, because you are right. If you're able to cause a high D zone turnover, that can be an excellent way to create off the rush. Yeah, no, certainly.

Well, especially, I mean, we saw that a ton in this series. So that's something I'd be trying to do. Okay. Let's end with blues abs, which is one of the few round two matchups that we already know is happening. It's a repeat of last year's round one series at the avalanche sweat,

but I think you can kind of throw that out the window because this is an entirely different blue team not only in terms of personnel, but in terms of tactics and the way they've played this season. What interests you with this matchup, whether it's something you saw in round one from either of these two teams or just kind of how they figure to line up and play against each other in this one? Well, I think in the first round, if you just look at the possession stats, you would have expected Minnesota to come out on top, whether if you look at the regular season or even, you know, the first round stats.

St. Louis was just really opportunistic. For my money, they're actually one of the best passing teams in the league. The problem with that. The best passing team. Okay. So there you go. The problem with St. Louis is that it doesn't translate into dominant offensive shot volumes because they're not quite as good at getting up ice and also at retrieving

second opportunity. So Colorado is going to be a faster team. They're going to be a better transition team, but expect to lose to, you know, keep threading these high-danger passes, but also to have their Ds up in the rush to try to help their forwards get to the offensive zone. Yeah, I think it's partly that.

I think also part of it is it's by design, right? Like they're clearly passing up potential shots, like good ones for what they hope to be great ones. And I think that's obviously impacting the volume. And you see it on the power play, especially where I think they were second in the regular season in goals per hour. And then in round one, they scored eight times in 40 minutes or so against the wild. And really, that was a big difference maker for them. And you see that approach born out there where they'll patiently weigh you out.

They'll move the puck around the zone. And they're looking for one of two things. And they're basically the two most dangerous offensive ways you can get from an in zone setting. They're either looking to go east west across the slot line to either a pro on one timer or to Teresanko. and he'll more and more likely risk it. Or they set up that play where they get the puck to the goal line. And then they quickly one touch it out to the inner slot in front of the net to either Ryan O'Reilly or Ben and Saad.

And now I think every team in the league knows that ideally the offensive team is going to be trying to do that because those are the two most dangerous plays in that situation. But it's remarkable how they clearly have the passing talent, but also they're just really good for whatever reason at waiting it out. And then once there's like a slight opening, and the opposing penalty kill slips up, they'll make it happen. And so I think that's something to certainly watch on this matchup.

I was muted for a second there. But the solution against that is if you're Devon Taves, if you're Kail McCar, you've got to kill their exits, you've got to kill their transition plays and then counterattack off of that. If you're a Sam Gerard, you try to keep the play up by us as well

because you know that down low and in front of the net, you're going to be in trouble against the O'Reilly's of the world. And then if you're Josh Manson, then try to get in as many sneaky net front cross checks as you can to kind of stem the tide in terms of physicality. So as I said, I'm really interested to see how Gerard and Manson specifically defend the blues. But also, you know, this may be a long series and maybe we might see a little bit of Jack Johnson action. Who knows? Well, I continue to believe the one way to attack the avalanche is by targeting that pairing. like you're not going to win the minutes versus tase and macar.

Bowen Byron looked fantastic in round one, especially defensively in terms of the way he was defending the rush. And so listen, in 50 minutes in round one, the avalanche got outscored 3 to nothing with Gerard and Manson on the ice, and they got outshot and outchanced. And that was an extension of what we saw from them in the 100 or so minutes they played in the regular season. So we'll see how that goes and whether the blues are able to exploit that.

but if you're game planning, that's pretty clearly like one of the few relative weak links that you can identify on this team. But I'm not sure how much is going to matter because like what we saw from Taze McCar in round one, but also obviously all year and even last year, like you and I did a full podcast on this last postseason, I believe. But the way they attack and transition and how they control the game in that regard and how sort of easily they're able to jumpstart the office. is remarkable to me. It's so fun to watch. That play they run constantly, especially in the second period

where the puck kind of goes in the neutral zone along the board. It's near the benches. The other team's trying to decide whether they can squeeze in a change or not. And then McCar just picks it up. Taves sprints up the ice on the weak side. McCar hits him with a pass.

And then either it's a Tave's just absolute bomb as he's striding in off the rush or he waits for a trailer. Like they do that at least a couple times a game and create chances every single time. And I'm not sure. like the other team is obviously aware of it, but once you get into the game and it's moving fast

and you just had a minute and a half shift and your legs are burning and you're trying to get off the ice, I'm not sure what you can do to try to stop that. Kind of like a survival instinct kicks in, but they exploit that about as well as anyone I've ever seen. So I'm going to make maybe a not so bold prediction, but I think the St. Louis Blues are going to try to play a one-through-one trap in game one and see how that goes.

They haven't done it, but I'm expecting it. And so then what do you think the abs are going to do to compensate for that, acknowledging that they might be one of the few teams that actually might have more than one guy who can single-handedly break that? Like I would include McCar and to the few players that you mentioned earlier that they can sort of weave in and out of traffic successfully on a consistent basis. So what would you do then if you're at a abs and you see that?

And this may be the title of this podcast, but it would be let Nate cook. Give him the pill, let him cook. Yeah, well, that's not a bad strategy. He's pretty good when he's flying. So I would like to see that. All right, well, I think that's going to be it for today's show, Jack. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on while we're here,

or do you think we'll cover it all? No, that's good. And as usual, best way to keep up with my work, Twitter, J-H-A-N-H-K-Y, lots of playoff content, looking forward to what. what's going to happen the rest of the way. Cool, man. Well, thanks for taking the time. Keep watching these games.

And we will certainly check back in with you sometime down the road during this postseason. So until then, take care. Sounds good. Take care. All right. That is going to be for today's episode of the Hockey Pediocast. As always, thank you for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed the chat.

And I had to breaking down some of these round one matchups. We will certainly hope to do more in series shows in round two. It'll be hopefully easier to pull off once the nightly schedule chills out a bit. and, you know, there's only two games on every night and we can kind of actually key in on them a bit more and have more time or discuss them in a timely manner. So I'm looking forward to that. In the meantime, if you want to help us out, you can do so by leaving a rating and review. A lot of you've done so already. Each one's greatly appreciated. Thank you. If you have, if you haven't yet, please consider doing so. It's incredibly easy to do. Just smash that five-star button. And that's that. So, yeah, we'll be back here soon with some more content. We're going to do some. We're going to do some. shows covering the series that we haven't talked about yet just because it was still uncertain on terms of who's going to be playing who. So look forward to that. Stay glued to this feed. And yeah, that's going to be it for today. So enjoy these games. And we'll be back soon. Videocast with Dim Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at

SoundCloud.com slash hockey PDOCast.