The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 445: Let the Offseason Begin

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

We're doing something a little bit different in this episode with a solo PDOcast breaking down the Kevin Fiala trade. Topics covered include: The teams that were interested in trading for him Why the Kings made the most sense as a fit How he figures to specifically help them The factors that forced Minnesota's hand How the Wild can make up for losing him 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 PEDEOCast. With your host, Dimitri Philips. I'm a hockeypedo cast. My name's Demetri Filipovich.

And joining me today is no one. It's actually going to be a solo podcast where I don't have a guest and I just talk here by myself for a little bit because we decided we're going to try out something a little different than usual. We finally got a trade on Wednesday afternoon to kick off the off season festivities, the Minnesota Wild, finally bit the bullet and moved. Kevin Fiala as we expected as soon as the season ended to the Kings for Brock Faber, defensive prospect, and the 19th overall pick in this year's draft. And we're certainly going

to get many more trades to dissect and analyze and discuss over the next month. But this is a, I thought this is a really fun one to start with because there's a couple of interesting glares to kind of sort through an unpack. And so I did want to cover it on the show. I wanted to do a bit on it. I also felt like it didn't necessarily deserve or war like doing a full. PEDO cast about it, just because I'm in full-blown prep mode for the draft, and we're going to be doing the mock draft soon, and everyone's really busy getting ready for that and other off-season stuff. And so I don't want to bug anyone to come do the show with me, but I did have some thoughts on it for both sides here. And so I'm going to kind of just work my way through them. It'll be like

a mini bite-sized P-D-O cast instead of the usual programming, and we're going to try to get it out there. And while it's still fresh in the mind and while I're still interested, and so, yeah, bear with me. recording by yourself like this is a super weird experience for me. I have no idea how people do solo podcasts where they're regularly just talking to themselves for hours or whether they're on radio or whatever. Like I certainly can't do it. Like I sometimes struggle to record just like an ad read or an outro where I'm just talking about myself for 90 seconds because it feels so strange to just talk to no one in particular and get no immediate feedback. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully you like it and get some use out of this episode. And let me

know if you do. And if that's the case, as the season goes, offseason goes along, we're going to try to do some more of these as bigger scale trades trickle out rather than just waiting for a bunch of them to kind of accumulate and then rounding them all up and doing a bigger show like I've typically done in the past. But all right, let's start unpacking this deal from the King's perspective first because I feel like that's the more interesting present-day angle here. So, listen, there was no no shortage of teams lining up with significant interest in taking Fiala off Minnesota's hands. The senators are reported as one of them. Honestly, I see no universe in which they were going to be willing and able to give him the $55 million extension that he wound up getting as part of this

deal. So I'm not sure how serious that interest really was. The Devils have been linked to pretty much everyone and I imagine they will continue to be so for the rest of the offseason until they make a big splash. I figure the hurricanes had a long chat about it internally because Fiala is certainly a player that would fit with how they're trying to play and what they're doing. But similar to senators, that's a lot of money for them and it would have been tough to see them committing to that. Someone I didn't really see mentioned as much in terms of the interested parties were the Cracken. I believe they're going to be seriously exploring pretty much every good offensive player that's available this summer because

they've just got so much calf flexibility right now and money to spend. And they presumably want, you know, want something for people to be excited about after that miserable inaugural season they had. So it wouldn't have made sense necessarily for them to depart with premium futures to get a player like Fiala. I think it'll make more sense for them to dip into the free agent market and just use that available money to potentially overpay certain players to come to Seattle and play there.

But there's certainly someone to watch. And I think that, you know, a couple of, the teams that have high-priced free agent wingers hitting the market soon or teams that are going to be interested in pursuing those guys, I suspect they considered Fiala here as a potential backup option

just to kind of get out ahead of the market and not wait till July 13th and then get into massive bidding wars. But listen, at the end of the day, the Kings were such a logical trade partner for this type of move. First off, they're dealing from a pretty clear position of strength

at elite prospects, we had their prospect pool ranked number one heading into the season, and that means they could afford to dip into it and pull out a couple assets without worrying about depleting the pipeline entirely. Like when you've got Brandt Clark and Helgate Grans and, you know, not to mention Mikey Anderson, Sean Jersey and Tobias Bjornfoot and all these young defensemen that they've accrued over the past couple years, you can afford to say goodbye to a guy like Brock Weber, even if you really like him, and not really flinch because you got so many alternatives. And most importantly, though, for them,

the biologist checks a lot of boxes for them stylistically. His particular skill set helps address their biggest existing need at the moment. And it's pretty clear that that was finding a way to turn all of the shots and chances that they were generating last season in abundance into actual goal score. The Kings are coming off a season where they finished 20th and goals, despite having the fifth most shots, the fourth most high danger chances and the sixth most most expected goals. And that's almost entirely that gap between the two is pretty much entirely due to shooting 8.2% as a team, which we've discussed on this BDOCAS in the past. And that was the lowest figure in the league. Now, I'm sure some of that

is bad, random luck. Like I wouldn't expect them to be 32nd in the league again in 2020, 2033. Even if they didn't add Fiala, like it's just, that's not typically how it works. Even if you don't have a ton of shooting talent, you're probably going to, you know, bump up a little bit. just because that's how the league operates. But, you know, we saw that limitation cost them in round one. Like in their series against the Oilers that they realistically, looking back at it, probably should have won and probably would have if not for Connor McDavid's, just heroics down the stretch of that series in game six and seven.

But, you know, they wound up losing that in seven games and bowing out rather meekly at the very end there. It didn't even score a single goal in the day. do-or-die game seven. For the series, Mike Smith had a 935 say percentage against them. They scored nearly seven fewer goals that they were expected to based on the shot profile they had. And we couldn't necessarily be surprised because that's pretty much the team they'd been all season. And, you know, through all those games, you could kind of see the outline of a dangerous offensive team to come. Like they're attacking with speed. They're getting looks off the rush. They move the puck well.

Doing a lot of the things that you want to see from a team in terms of process. But they weren't able to convert on nearly enough of those looks, and that was their ultimate undoing. And so it's always dangerous to overreact to playoff defeats like that. I think that for them making the playoffs this season, even if they've been swept, it would have been an accomplishment just because they were ahead of schedule. And we didn't necessarily project them to be at this point already in their rebuild this past season. And so that was good. They came tantalizingly close to even advancing. and I don't think it's necessarily an overreaction to identify that as a weakness for this team

and realize that they needed to address it and pursue it aggressively this off season. So if anything, it just seems like a pretty sensible evaluation in terms of how they evaluated themselves. And so I can't fault them for it. And Vialis should theoretically really help in that department, I think. Over the past three seasons, he shot 12.7% on roughly 600 shots he's taken. and he scored at about a 32 goal per 82 game pace in that time. This past year, he scored at a career high, 33 goals. And that was after an incredibly slow start.

But in that second half, you could really sort of see that when he is cooking and when he's feeling it and when he's playing up to his capabilities, he's such a scintillating talent. Like he flies around the ice, like a one man just wrecking ball. Like he takes the puck. He does whatever he wants with it. He can get to any spot on the ice that he wants to. And he can really do it all.

And in the 51 games to end the season that I referenced that he played after Matt Pold, he basically came up and joined him on the second line. We really saw him get unlocked offensively. The only players in that time that scored more 5-1-5 points than him were Austin Matthews, Mitch Marner, Johnny Goodroo, and Matthew Kuch. And he finished with 64 points in those 51 games overall. And it was an awesome end of the season. I know Wild fans will probably point out that he ended the season on a sour note.

He was pretty much ineffectual in the six games against the blues and looked frustrated and took some dumb penalties and could just couldn't get it going and that was a big reason why they lost. And I don't think we should overvalue those six games just because they were the most recent ones that we saw and they're the most kind of fresh ones on our mind. Like he's a really good player. He has been for years in this league. He's in his prime. He's also made strides in his game. Like if you, I remember like the talent's always been their skating ability, but I remember when he entered the league with the Predators. it was a bit frustrating seeing him just kind of have that one gear where he would just go as fast as he could.

He'd almost take himself out of position because he was going so fast. And then he'd wind up taking kind of a lower percentage rush shot just because he couldn't, you know, contain himself almost. And I think he's gotten much better as his career has gone along over the past couple years in, you know, better incorporating changes of gear and adding layers of deception to his game. I've noticed recently he like started really incorporating that kind of hook pass where he's skating and then he passes it to the guy either kind of kind of that's trailing him a little bit. It's a staple of Kaprizov's game and I feel like he he picked it up. I don't really remember him doing it that much before but it kind of like co-opted it to perfection almost. And so he's just become much more than a pure straight line north-south burner. And that's the kings are going to need.

And they're going to need him to tap into that and add. more of a dynamic rush element to their game in terms of not necessarily just going down the ice and then shooting it like, you know, from point A to point B and allowing the goalie to get set on that, like getting more lateral movement in their game and attacking in that regard. And so I think he can help help in that way. And the reason why I mentioned Matt Boldie earlier is I think it was really rewarding to see Fiala finally get a running mate that he could actually be. play with that could keep up with him from a talent level.

Minnesota kind of frustratingly made a habit the past couple years are just basically feeding him whoever and hoping he'd be able to make it work. The list of centers that he played 100 plus minutes with over the past two seasons in order of most shared ice time are Freddie Godro, Victor asked Joel Erickson-Eck who's good, Marcus Johansson, Nick Bukstad, and Nick Bonino. And you have to figure that in L.A., I assume part of the sell beyond the money that they gave him was, listen, you're going to get the ride shotgun with Kopitar here, at least a start. And Anze, at this point of his career, is still really good

at getting the puck and then feeding it to players. And that's going to be a very interesting combination. And it's going to make life certainly a lot easier for Fiala, if that is the case. And so it represents a huge step up in terms of playmaking talent to play alongside him. And so I imagine that's a desirable spot for him to land in. Now one final note on the Kings, a player with Fiala's offensive profile being dropped into this lineup is obviously a very exciting proposition. They're adding a bonafide top line player. Essentially, I know he's a second liner for Minnesota, but he really is a top line winger. They're adding him to last year's roster without really subtracting anything from it and not having to, you know, account for the money by all of a sudden shedding salary elsewhere.

Like they can basically just drop him in there at this point. and it represents a massive improvement for them. And even after his extension, which runs through age 26 to 32, I believe, for him, that aligns pretty nicely with the current timeline of the rest of this roster. Like, I think that that 7.875 million figure over that term would be rich for certain teams, as I mentioned earlier. But for them, they have Dowdy, five more years at 11 million. Anzi Coppeter, two more years of 10 million.

And Philip Dano, five more years at 5.5 million. But beyond that, pretty much all their players are on sort of those kind of middle-tier deals like Fiat, like Ayafalo and Arbetsonar, or there are still young players that are either on their ELCs or coming up on their second deals and you'll be able to get them at a reasonable price. And so this was the time for them to add and add aggressively. And they added a player whose timeline in terms of age fits with them. And so I think it makes a lot of sense. Like I don't think they necessarily sacrificed a lot in terms of the future here to make it happen. So it seems like a bit of a no-brainer for them. I think there's a lot of reason to be excited about the Kings and the team they're putting together here.

I think they made it pretty clear over the past calendar year or so just with everything they've done, that they're serious about getting good again and accomplishing it in a purposeful way. And so you love to see it. They've still got room for improvement, whether it's the assets they have and how movable they are. We're just keeping all those young players and hoping they develop and improve as we'd expect them to. There's a lot of upside for this team, and that's going to make them a trendy pick heading into next season, and it's easy to see why. Champions aren't born.

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I get there's going to be some sticker shock seeing a player of Fialis Calibur get traded for a package that doesn't even include a single player that'll realistically help the Minnesota Wild next season. Like you don't often see a team that was as competitive as they were last year and presumably has aspirations of keeping that that way moving forward heading into next season take a step backwards like this like you see good teams lose unrestricted free agents that are 28 29 years old hit the open market and leave and then they have to kind of adjust accordingly but they basically just had to strip away this awesome player that they had that's in the prime

of his career that they had control over because of past mistakes because of because of complications and it's just the reality of the situation like they were they were always going to have to make some tough financial moves this summer. The brunt of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter's buyouts is hitting them starting with this year, this coming year, and it'll extend for the two years after that. The cap ceiling is set at $82.5 million for the next year, and that means that just north of 15% of it is going to be tied up in two players that aren't even in the team anymore. And that's brutal. There's no way around that. It's an awfully steep hill to climb and it ostensibly forced their hand here to make a move like this. So I think they had some

leverage in terms of interested parties that could kind of play off of each other to raise the offer. And I think especially if they had dragged this out closer to draft day, maybe they could have gotten one of them to panic a little bit and potentially raise the offer even more just because they either struck out or someone else or they felt like they had to do it or whatever. And that could have happened. I think Bill Garan was saying in his comments after the fact that, you know, they kind of, they just didn't want to do that. They sort of locked in on L.A. here in their interest, and they just decided to go this route and not drag it along and kind of just rip the Band-A. off and move on.

And I certainly understand that, you know, especially with the complication of Fiala looking for such a massive financial commitment from whichever team was going to trade for them, like you needed to factor that. in as well and that obviously scared some teams off and it's another complicating factor that you got to account for it's not like this is a guy who was already locked out on a very team-friendly deal and there was always going to be interest on him like I think getting LA in on this deal before they potentially shifted gears or you know tried to just spend all the available money they had on a free agent instead made sense for Minnesota and so doing it with the timeline they did here makes sense and and listen they got two legitimate

assets back for him and that is a silver lining like I know they won't help them this coming season but that 19th overall pick they figured to get a decent prospect like they last year they landed a highly coveted goalie prospect yesper waltz did in the in the 20th slot where they traded up to get them and they were drafted remarkably well ever since they brought judd bracket into to run their scouting department uh as their director of amateur scouting so I think there should be confidence that they're going to utilize that pick well and make something of it. I can't say I'm especially familiar with the specifics of Brock Faber's game. I just don't have enough time to be watching NCAA hockey on a regular basis.

But from what I understand, and our staff at a lead prospect, certainly is very dialed into them. They like him quite a bit. They're high on his outlook as a prospect. And it should be encouraging that the Wild have historically done pretty well at developing those exact type of young defenders and turning them into, to legitimate assets in the blue line. Like guys, they can move, they can skate well,

that are necessarily super flashy or going to put up a ton of points, but are just going to wind up being good hockey players, a good 5-15 defenders in the modern game and using that skating to stay in front of players and check purposefully. And so I think, you know, there should be a lot of optimism

that they're going to get something out of Brock Faber and he's going to turn into a good defenseman for them. And they're putting together a nice kind of combination of young, drafted defensemen in their system. So I was a bit surprised that they didn't target someone like an Arthur Calliav in this deal. You know, Faber is going to be,

fear's a good prospect, I think, at best, he seems like likely two years away or so from meaningfully contributing to the wild in NHL games. And the same is true with whoever they take at 19. I figured for their purposes, just because they are still going to be a good, team that has a lot going for it, I figured a priority for theirs would have been getting back someone that could kind of step in immediately from day one on an ELC or on a very kind of cost

controlled figure that could step in and provide bang for their buck and help out during this three-year window where they're going to need it especially. They're going to need to basically optimize and maximize every single contract they have. And maybe, you know, either he wasn't available or they just felt like, you know, they preferred the two assets they got back instead. Who knows? But, you know, at the end of the day, we also had their prospect pool rank third. And so they already have a couple of particularly interesting forwards that are going to have an opportunity here to step up in the preseason in training camp to earn minutes in a scoring role.

I'd love personally to see Marco Rossi take that and run. and I'm hopeful that he will. But if any of those guys can, that'll certainly help soften the blow-up a deal like this. So you can't spin it in any other way. Like, if you're a Minnesota Wild fan, this is going to hurt. Take results aside. Fiala is just such a fun player to watch when he's playing

at the top of his game, and he's obviously been super productive for them. But just, like, from an entertainer perspective, the Minnesota Wild pretty much over the past year since Carol Caprizov came, have really done wonders for sort of remaking or rehabilitating their image as being like a boring team into an exciting one that scored a lot of goals and played a fun brand of hockey. And so that's going to take a hit here. Now they do have, as we outlined, a reasonable path for helping bridge that gap better than some other teams might,

and it won't be just completely crushing for them. So I guess that is the silver lining. But it is what it is. It seemed like this was inevitable and it wound up happening. So that is going to be it. I can't believe I've been talking here for 20 minutes all by myself. I hope several of you are still listening. That is going to be it for today's show.

That's enough on this trade. I think I got to everything I wanted to mention. Thank you for listening. If you did enjoy it, please help us out with a rating interview. Each one's greatly appreciated. We will be back soon with great guests, more fun content, and more standard programming from the PDO cast that you've become expected.

accustomed to. So thanks for coming along for the ride with us. Thanks for listening and we'll be back soon. Until then. The Hockey P.D.Ocast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast.