The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 449: The Goaltending Excellence Department

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Kevin Woodley joins the show to talk about goalies, the moves made at the position this offseason, and the details that go into finding the right fit. Topics include: Impact of environment on goalie performance Scouting to exploit opponent's tendencies Matchmaking goalie's strengths with team dynamics Level of planning that goes into shot and save selection Why measuring time and space is the next frontier What to make of John Gibson's numbers New Jersey's inability to buy a save lately Matt Murray, Jack Campbell, and the musical chairs 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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My name is Demetra Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Kevin Woodley. Kevin, what's going on, man? I'm dizzy. I'm dizzy from all the movement. This happens every year around pre-agency period. A little surprise that this year, a lot of it involved trades.

But nonetheless, I am sort of starting to get my feet under me. If you ask me a question about who landed where, I can probably answer it, but I might need the Google. help me get through it because it is like the movement is just crazy every year so it is let's get into it well so we're recording this to set the scene Friday morning here in Vancouver still yeah still really as you said a bit from Wednesday's festivities but I feel like I've I've gotten back on track a little bit here mentally in terms of sorting out everything that happened you are our the PDO cast

director of the goaltending excellence department which is definitely a thing that we didn't just steal from the floor of panthers. I love how they named it that way. It's the first time I've ever had the word excellence applied next to my name, so I'll take it. Well, we've had you on a handful of times. People always love when you come on. And I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for us to check in. I think we did a show similar timing last year, kind of right at the start of free agency or right before maybe.

As you mentioned, there was quite a game of musical chairs, and there's a lot of new situations for us to talk about and check in on. So here's a good kind of entry point for us in this conversation. In the spirit of the season we're in right now, you know, teams are going out and they're changing the dynamics of their goalie rooms. And it's usually because they're unhappy with what they had the previous season. In certain occasions like the avalanche, I'm sure they were quite happy with what they got from Darcy Kemper. But for them, they've clearly identified. It doesn't make sense for us to be devoting five plus million to one goalie,

considering all the other expenditures we have and the environment we have in place. so let's just kind of cheap out a little bit here purposefully because we feel like for three and a half or whatever for georgia you could probably get a reasonable facsimile well and hey we just won a Stanley Cup with goaltending that ranked out of the 30 guys that played in the playoffs you know neither guy was in the top 20 by the time it ended and they won the Stanley Cup so you know we've talked a lot in the past about Carolina feeling like a team that was trying to prove you didn't need elite goaltending to win a cup I think Colorado just did and that's not a slat on Kemper or Fransoz. I think Darcy was excellent, especially in the second half of last year. And having not had a chance to have a conversation with them, but just anybody that saw that Instagram post after they won the cup,

saw the swelling around the eye from that first round injury, you've got to think that had an effect. So at the end of the day, it's not a slag on Darcy to say that, but the reality is, and the numbers bore it out, you know, that they didn't need, they didn't get elite goaltending, and they're the Stanley Cup champion.

So if you're them, why are you going to go and invest heavily when you can use that money to sort of keep more parts intact on the rest of the roster that achieved that? Yeah, it's weird because, you know, the recency bias actually worked against Kemper, like based on the dialogue I saw where it was like, oh, this guy was a bum in the postseason. They won in spite of them for a large stretch. And it's so rare that you say that about a team that just literally won the Stanley Cup. Usually it's like a goalie getting hot during the postseason. and they go on a run, and then all of a sudden they enter the free-hager market, and their value is above and beyond because of that recency bias. But I'm glad you pointed out because I do think it was unfair to him.

Like, just hearing that story about how he basically had to retrain his eye to track the puck on the fly like that was pretty crazy to think about. And so certainly, you know, especially when you're going up against Vasilevsky, you're going to wind up looking like the inferior goalie. But, yeah, that second half of the regular season, like he was perfectly fine. So I don't want to do a Darcy Kemper Deep. dive here but I you know he's he's better than he was in the playoffs and I actually hadn't seen or heard that story about the tracking and if I'm Washington I want to make sure that that's not how long

I hope they did some due diligence on that before they signed that deal because but you're right like at the end of the let's just say it we got the numbers to back it up Darcy's sort of flirted with top 15 top 10 guy and adjusted numbers for the last couple of years certainly amongst this free agency crop he would have been my pick of the litter here's the question that I wanted to pose there do you think that as a community we can talk we can talk about on a team level but we can also talk about us as analysts do you think we put generally the proper amount of thought into the fit specific fit between goalie and team when these types of moves happen because it seems like the extent of analysis typically like for myself i go up on i go on evolving hockey or whatever a natural statrick we have a pretty limited

supply of stats. You using ClearSight analytics have a wider breadth of information. But typically it's limited to, all right, this team had X, say, percentage last year. Their goalies performed this way. This goalie on his previous team did a certain goal save above expected. If we transpose what that goalie did onto this team next season, they'll be X wins better or whatever. Yeah, I mean, in simple terms, Like I could take Matt Murray's adjusted save percentage from last year, ignore the, ignoring the injuries, which are obviously a question mark. Take a look at his adjusted save percentage.

Take a look at Jack Campbell's adjusted save percentage and where his raw numbers were. And in very oversimplistic terms using that, I could say that, hey, listen, Leifes fans that are losing their minds over this, Matt Murray would have run a 919 or a 920 behind that defensive environment, just on the surface level. Right. What I'd like to think, and ClearSight does this actually,

does this for clients, you can basically plug goalie A into Team X and dig down into all these different types of 34 different types of scoring chances and factors and sort of see where that fit is beyond just that sort of overall overarching, you know, say percent differential. Yeah, you can dig into, you know, hey, do they give up a ton on the rush? Is this guy good on the rush or is that a weakness? And all goalies, you know, hey, all goalies have to face rush chances, but different guys, you know, interestingly enough, like Matt and Pittsburgh and we'll get into it, like that were some of the issues where he was limited. But you can dig into that. Screens, four different types of screens.

Do we give up a lot of these? Are we a team that collapses and creates own screens, defensive screens? How does this guy fare? How is he fair throughout his career when it comes to those types of environments? You can, to a certain degree, sort of figure out roughly. how this guy fits. And I know some teams have used it. Yeah.

Somewhat successfully in past years, I'm not allowed to sort of give the examples, but they have. But at the end of the day, even within that, like we talk about high danger chances and things like I know. Obviously they measure that here. I think with the addition of the slot line plays and measuring sort of lateral passes and results off that, that's one of the elements that I think ClearSight does that others don't.

Yeah. And I think it's important. The numbers sort of bear out that it's important. But even with all that information, like everybody gives up high danger chances to varying degrees. Right. Some teams give them up more predictably than others. You know, does the goal, can the, like it's one thing to give up that chance, but does the goalie know that the guy on the end of that pass is the option the whole way? Like is his defense on the same page as everybody's so tuned?

So like even, even with all that information, it's not enough. Yeah. Because how goalies read the game and whether that environment and everyone's on the same page in terms of where that high danger is going to come from most often, like that matters. Yeah. And, you know, so we can do all the numbers we want. I don't know that we end up with a perfect result, but we can certainly add a lot more

context than just looking at the sort of narrative-based stuff. Well, it's interesting that you bring that up. A recent example that comes to mind for me. was, you know, this past postseason when I was really getting into all the round one matchups in terms of doing my previews and trying to figure everything out. I was, I got to say, I was blown away that the Wilde decided to play Mark Andre Flore for the first five games of that series. Not that Cam Talbett is necessarily a perfect goalie by any means, but from a stylistic

perspective when I was like thinking about, okay, what are the Blues going to try to do here? They were like the number one team last season in terms of passing up the first shot. So their shot quantity was immensely low to try to get those like, you know, backdoor cross-ice passes. And they were just, they were basically going for high danger shots exclusively. And so for a goalie like Mark Andre Fleury, whose greatest strength is his aggression in terms of jumping out and cutting off the angle and kind of committing to that first shooter in a way and daring them to beat them. Which fit perfectly with Vegas, right? Like that was perfect. And even when they gave up a ton of high danger stuff, Flower knew where they were coming from.

and he trusted that that backdoor was never going to be there because they'd give up that open look in the middle, but they weren't going to give up that lateral off of that open look. Well, and against this Blues team in that round-in matchup, it was like they never take that for a shot. So throughout that series, he had a good game or two, but for the most part, like the recurring theme was, it was just always someone on the back door,

basically wide open waiting for a tap-in, and if Jared Spurgeon or Jonas Brodine don't break that up, it's a goal. And so, you know, by the time they played Talba, game six, it went off the rails, it was over. Yeah. But I thought that was a miscalculation on their part. And this is the stuff that I'm very curious about because at least on the outside, I'd love to know what that conversation was like.

And if it went beyond, well, we traded for Mark Andre Fleury. He's a big game goalie. So we just got to play him. I wonder if that, like, the scouting report of what this team does offensively versus what we do defensively is nearly taken into account enough based on what I think it should be. Well, and I think part of the problem with that one, and this is where you'd love to be a fly on the wall in that room, right?

and privy to those conversation, those decisions. Part of the complications in that decisions were, and in that series, and I think there was a lot of this in the playoffs, I'm not sure that one team was necessarily better than the other on a whole, but they beat them because they didn't match up. There was a lot of, like, and I think St. Louis and Minnesota was that. Like, St. Louis just sort of fed Minnesota its lunch all season, and that included Talbot, right?

So you can look at it from a stylistic state. standpoint, yeah, does flower tend to play a little around the edges, maybe heals out, side the edge of his crease, and is one of his best skills sort of having that open look coming at him and not giving up depth? Yeah, but he's also still at 37, one of the most explosive lateral goalies in the NHL. So can he maybe give up a little ice and make that adjustment tactically in that scenario? Cam plays a little deeper, so it's a shorter path for him on those east-west. But again, the history of the regular season said he hadn't had good success against them. So there were a lot of different factors there.

I don't want to second guess them too much. I did second guess them quite a bit on how they handled, flurried down the stretch if the plan all along was to not run a tandem. Because one of the things we've talked about, the risks of getting a goalie at the deadline is there's not enough time to adjust. And I don't think it's to the system per se Because systems, I mean, there's small variances here and there But goalies, let's be honest, we're the smartest guys on the ice

We'll figure this stuff up pretty quick, right? Don't ask me about defensemen, you know, like, Can't tell you how many times I've been at camps With NHL goalies on the ice and like somebody who make a mistake And it's just like, oh, defensemen, man, they're brain dead. Anyways, apologies to all the defenseman listening. But honestly, I don't think it's systems. I think it's tendencies of teammates that takes the longest time to adjust.

And you talk to guys who have been through it and they're like, at 15 to 20 games. Well, there's usually only 15 to 20 games left in the season. And Flower had shown in previous stops, even having the start of the season, Chicago especially struggled early, right? I think there were some stylistic things before the coaching change too that didn't fit his game. Like once they made that coaching change, his numbers ramped up in Chicago. But anyways, there's going to be an adjustment period. So if you were planning to use him exclusively,

then you should have played him more down the stretch. Unless there's something I didn't know in terms of fatigue or injury where he needed more rest, he needed more starts. If you were going to run a straight split tandem like they did for the most part after fully arrived, like back and forth, back and forth, I think there's only one game where they didn't go back and forth. I was kind of hoping maybe this is a selfish pet project of mine that I wanted to see come to fruition.

I thought they might go back and forth in the playoffs, go back and forth between the two of them. because they did it for the last month or so. But if you weren't going to do that, if you weren't going to throw Cam in there until it was last chance opportunity, why didn't you give Flour more time to make some of those adjustments?

I wonder if it was Flurrie's decision. Because it's tough to read too much into the public comments. I'm sure part of it is, you know, by all accounts, he's an amazing teammate, great guy. But like after he signed his extension this summer to stay more 200 years in Minnesota while they still had Cam Talbot, It was very interesting to me the way he was, he kept during his like press wrap or whatever, he kept coming back to like, oh, we're basically going to play like 40 games each next season

because I'm old and I want to stay fresh. And he kept, he kept bringing that up. And I know every goalie, all the greats want to be in there as much as possible. I'm sure for where he wants to play. But he's probably realistic about. I like the tandem. Like I feel this is a loss from Minnesota having to trade cam for whatever reason because I really like the way that tandem was shaping up.

And I remember, because Alan Walsh, the agent, there was a point, I think last year in Vegas where he wasn't playing as much, where there was a tweet about how, you know, Flowers always at his best when he plays a lot, right? And he's right. Like that's traditionally been like we get into rhythms as goalies. But I think every goalie wants to play every game and there's a rhythm that comes with that. Well, the next best thing to me is, and this is why I hate it when coaches go in and you're in. When you got two goalies that are equal, man, just roll them out one after the other.

because every second game is still a rhythm. If they're performing at similar levels, why are we so scared of that? And for all the comments about, you know, Marc Andre Fleury playing his best when he plays a lot, the reality is his best results, I don't know if their career, but certainly his best results ever in Vegas,

was the final two months there. And they literally, other than one game, went flower, laner, flower, laner, flower, laner. They alternate it starts for two straight months. and both of them posted exceptional numbers. And then the playoffs started. And they ran flurry out against Minnesota, ironically. And he was so good in the first four games to get them that 3-1 series lead that I felt they had, like, I understood it,

why they didn't go back and forth. Yeah. Because, like, his numbers were, like, he had Jake Audinger's playoffs the year before in the first. four games of that series. Like, I'd never seen, like, the goals saved above expected in four games were like 10. It was bananas. And so I understand why they couldn't keep rolling him out there. But what happened?

His play deteriorated as the series went on. They got through it in seven games as many came back in that series. And then they had to start Robin Lane or throw him to the wolves against Chicago or against Colorado in game one because Flower was already running out of gas. And I wonder if you gave Pete the Bortruse serum, if he wouldn't have secret. admitted that he would have liked to have started that rotation a little sooner in the playoffs. Yeah, well, it's, okay. I'm a tangent.

I'm good. I apologize. We're all over the place. That was quite a tangent. I'm trying to remember what my initial point here was going to be. Oh, okay. So this is what I was going to make. So along the lines of thinking about specific fits in terms of like, especially if you're

a team trying to bring in a new goalie and maximize their performance, you know, at some point we reached this shift in in baseball where like the data revolution where teams really started to embrace the idea that you can't just put together random starting pitchers and they're going to perform the same in every ballpark and especially with like the defensive data that came around in terms of like you know strengths and weaknesses how you do defensive shifts what you give up here or there. Like, teams started giving much more thought to, all right, if we have a ballpark where we give up a lot of home runs because the ball just flies out, maybe we should get a groundball

pitcher or someone who strikes out a lot and kind of vice versa, right? And you don't have that ballpark element necessarily in hockey, but I do think that team, that team element of, all right, we have a team that gives up certain types of chances or we do certain things. I'd like to give more thought to how goalies. perspective strengths and weaknesses fit into that overarching theme. So we have seen some of that and like I said I can't give some of the examples of the teams that have used this data to actually have success.

But one of them used it had success with it early but the team wasn't having the same levels. It wasn't the goalie's fault but the team was struggling a little bit. They changed the coach and so everything changed. So you made this investment based on the data and then the environment changed. So everything you invested in the goalie and changed around him. And I guess I would go to the point.

I would hope that we would get there. Because what you're saying makes perfect sense and it's something I've argued for for years, especially once I was able to get access to this more sort of like, I guess micro stats would be the word like see some of the very specifics that you can filter through here. Yeah. I think that's absolutely worth investigating and should be a part of any decision, especially maybe not like you can't guarantee extreme success on either. end like this guy's 100% the best fit ever.

He's going to be better than he's ever been in his career just because he's in this system. And the other end being that you want to avoid is, man, like, there's no fit here at all. Like, why are we getting a goalie who struggles on rush chances when we're going to trade rush chances all day? Like those are, I think you can avoid, you know, like somewhere in the middle there, you can find some fits. But again, the environment changes, personnel changes. God, I mean, one of the reasons I think we saw numbers crater as the season went on this year is because not just did we have a hundred 19 goalies play, many of whom weren't ready for the NHL because of COVID and restrictions. But we had defensemen in front of them that just talked about Flurry.

It's not the system. It's learning to read off the guys in front of the guys in front of goalies that weren't ready to be there. And so chaos rained and say percentage cratered. And everyone's like, offense is back. And yeah, I'd be honest. Actually, in the playoffs, I started to maybe buy into it a little bit. I know we had this conversation late in the season. I think it was due to the circumstances around the season.

but some of those teams did continue to have success in the playoffs. So I've grain-assaulted. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe we will see an offensive explosion. But at the end of the day, if you're not at least looking for some of this information, you're not doing it right. But having said all that, Dmitri, I can tell you, like I can probably count on one hand the number of teams in the NHL that will base how they play on the strength and weakness of the goaltender they have. It's almost always the other way around. And that hasn't changed. And until that changes, why does it matter whether they look at the stats?

Because their answer is, this is how we play. Right. The goalie's got to adjust to it as opposed to the goalie's really good at this. Let's play in a way that allows him to have success. I think one of the examples I can give is Paul Maurice when he was with Winnipeg. Yeah. And as good as Connor Hellebuck is, and they did give up high danger, it was always in straight line. Not always, but more often than not, it was in straight lines.

And Connor's talked about this a little bit as well, especially on the PK. Like it would look like really dangerous chances, but they were always coming in straight lines. They weren't giving up laterals. And if you attack Connor in straight lines with how good he is at holding his edges and not retreating and not giving up that ice

and how big he is, he understands, despite the fact that the numbers say, the closer you get to the net, the higher danger of the chances. Connor understands that in straight lines, if he doesn't blink, the closer that guy gets to him, the smaller that net is behind him relative to puck position. Like he is closing the closer you get, the less he has to move to make that save. Because that relationship between puck, the four corners of the net, what we call box control,

he is feeling as long as he doesn't retreat, as long as he doesn't start backing up and start opening holes in the process, that box by which the puck can go through him gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Yeah. And so that's a good example of a team that I think everybody looked at, oh, they give up all these, like they were classified as high-danger chances. Yeah. But because they didn't have a lateral element played perfectly into the strengths of their goaltender, but I don't think we're at a point where that happens nearly enough in the NHL.

And if we're not looking at it on ice in terms of how we coach and how we set up systems, I think there's less likelihood that people are going to look at it in terms of how those systems might fit a goaltender in free agency or in trade. Well, take sense to all of this should 100% be included in your factors and how you play and how you acquire goalies. I just don't think we're there. Well, a couple points in that.

Along the Jets argument you're making there, we talked about this, I think last time about the hurricanes, but like it almost is irrelevant where the shot location is because if you watch the way they defend, the amount of time that the shooter has, to make an accurate shot selection in terms of what they want to do with it is so abbreviated compared to a worst defensive team

that it's showing up as a high danger chance because in theory, historically, we've shown that a shot from that location will go in a certain percentage of the time, but not if Jacob Slavin's stick is in the way and you have a millisecond to do something. Yeah, 100%. Time in space, right?

We always talking about time in space. All-Star Games, practices. Like watch the best goalies in the world just get torn apart by shooters as soon as they have time and space. So you're right. That's, again, another factor that even in the numbers I have isn't, that's not included. That's not part of it's not enough. And that's been the hidden brilliance as well of the lightning for as great as Nikita Kutrov is with the puck, all the offensive weapons they have. Like we saw even when they were running on fumes this season and during this past run to a cup final,

it's not necessarily the volume of shots they blocked, but it's like kind of the manner they did it in a way where, like I was talking to a player on one of the teams they played, and he was like, it was beyond infuriating to think that you have an open shot, and then all of a sudden either headman or Chernak or McDunna just appear out of nowhere with their stick and kind of just like harmlessly knock it away.

And that, especially over a seven-game series, that emotional wear and tear almost accumulates, as much as the physical wear and tear because you start like you start hearing footsteps in a way, right, where all of a sudden everything is contested and maybe you start rushing stuff even if the guy isn't there. And so it's such a different environment than. And then add to that, the guy behind that defensive layer is Andre Vasselowski. And I've had this conversation with other goaltenders around the league. A couple of guys have had this conversation with me about how demoralizing he can be on shooters. Like literally guys will be a backup on the bench playing Tampa Bay and the shooters will come

back to the bench on good looks off open rushes and they're like let it quite literally they're like there yeah like I just didn't see anything there's nothing there and he's just so freaking big and freaking athletic so you don't see anything there so you pass it across and that guy looks up and hondry's already there yeah and he's probably on his skates already and squaring up and looks giant again so yeah you add all those things together um and there's a reason they've got two cups and and we're in the final again this year. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. I want to give you. We've digressed. I think it's an important point. I think everyone understands that not every shot is created equal and all that. But I think the extent to which, hey, can I just say that, thank God we've gotten to this point. Yeah. Because there wasn't, it doesn't feel like it was that long ago where people kept telling me that it didn't make a difference.

Yeah. The other stuff. that we could, that location was enough. So I'm glad that we've kind of come to the. I still think in the regular season, I still think shot volume is probably the most important because over 82 games, you're going to run into enough scenarios

where you either play a poor team or you play a good team that's on the second of a back-to-back, and you can just overwhelm them with like a 40-shot game. Volume and locate, like, yeah, those all make, like, yeah, 100%. But in a playoff series, it's a totally different calculus I might. But I think even, like, I think that a lot of the numbers that are generated in terms of expected are based on massive, massive samples, right? And I will agree that in those samples, the argument was the noise of things like a cross-seem pass, it gets erased. Right.

Over a massive sample. But even within a season, the amount of cross-seem passes, like the variance from one team to the other, like, I don't think there's enough noise even within a full season to erase. that effectively. And when we get down into the smaller sample of the playoffs, even more so. I think those factors matter more and more. And that's where you need to be able to have a look. And you can see the difference is because that puck on the edge of the crease that is naturally high danger, if one team, you know, is giving up 25 of them off cross-ice passes and the other team is giving 25 of them with the goal goalie already there set square because there was no cross-ice element. Like if I'm in my butterfly on my knees there and that puck is at the edge of the

crease and it can't go east west. I just have to sit there. Like you can't, you can't score. There's no room. There's no relationship between it. Like it doesn't go in. Yeah. You have to either open me up or move it laterly. And that's where I think in smaller samples, that information becomes more and more important. And I think, honestly, I think it's within, even within a, and I could be wrong when there's much smarter people than me that will tell me if I am, but I think even within the course of a season, the difference from one team to the other in terms of whether those chances include those other elements or not is important to know. Well, Kevin, this is going to seem strange to say because the game is undoubtedly faster than

it's ever been in terms of the pace it's played at, how well everyone can skate. But I would actually argue that the game is almost slowing down in a weird way because, one, the players are so gifted that they're able to process the game. at speeds that we as people watching from either the press box or at home can't even comprehend. And two, there is so much interesting data available now that we're able to optimize certain elements of the game or kind of break it down into categories, right? And so, like, I know an NHL coach that doesn't believe that you can sort of strategically attack certain defensemen on on carrying the puck into the zone because the game happens so fast that it's not

as simple as all right this guy struggles so let's try to kind of funnel the puck over there like it like over the course of a game the puck whoever has it if it's on the right wing you can try to carry it in and vice versa right and then the data shows that the guys the defensemen who are really really good at defending the blue line don't get challenged nearly as often as they're inferior your partner and that would lead me to believe that whether it is a conscious decision that coaches are telling their players and the pre-scout, all right, we need to attack this guy, or if the players are smart enough to figure it out as the game goes along, oh, I'm not going to challenge Colton Pereco because his reach is ridiculous. I'm going to attack Callie Rosen or whoever he's, Nick Letty or whoever he's playing with, right?

It's an easier entryway into the zone. And so that happens in the offensive zone as well and the defensive zone for the defenders. But it's remarkable to me how, like, I think I have no time anymore for the argument that the game is so fast that you can't analyze it like we can in baseball or basketball because it's so random and chaotic like sure there's certain stretches where the puck's just randomly bouncing around and no one's controlling it but i really do believe especially the higher end players are like you're able to come into a game with a game plan of okay we want to get the puck into these areas of the offensive zone we want to do this we want to try to score from here and now the defenders might be like all right we know they're going to try to do that

so it's a cat and mouse game. Yeah, it's always back and forth. But it's not, I think we've moved past the days of, all right, we're going to get the puck in the zone, pass it up to a point, wildly shoot it into a shin pads, hope it gets deflected in. Like, that's not a strategy. And the hurricanes do it to a degree,

but they're so, like, tenacious at recovering the rebounds that it kind of evens out, especially throughout the regular season. But for the most part, like there's so much thought, I think, being put into this that goes beyond just the randomness of, it's too fast. That includes breaking down goal tenders, right? Like finding, we,

weaknesses perceived relative, however you want to call those. They're terrible, but relative to their strengths. Why would we attack their strengths? Let's attack their weaknesses. And I think what happens a lot of the times from a goaltending perspective is it doesn't really come to fruition until the playoffs. I do think, you know, I've had this conversation with players in the room over the past decade.

You know, how much you want to know, how much information do you want about that goaltender? And in the regular season, there are always going to be guys that, yeah, they want all that information because they are, you're right, they are thinking the game at that level and in that split second they're looking for a tendency or looking for, there are also things we can find where when the, if you get the puck off our cycle in this spot, you can, you can look for this from a sharp angle because this guy's late into this safe selection or he holds his feet. So if you're going to take this shot, shoot it in his feet or pick that spot over his ear because you're good enough to do it. Nobody's expecting the shot from here and he's probably in an RVH and he doesn't.

seal very well because he doesn't do it properly. Those things, some players pay attention to that all season long, but when it's Columbus on a Tuesday night and it's one of 82 and guys can't even tell you what day of the week it is, let alone what city they're in until the puck drops, I think that information for most of them, and again, there are some that just don't even want it. They just want to go on instinct outside of maybe a shootout. I think it gets ignored a lot of the time in the regular season. But now when we're in the playoffs,

and it's the same guy, seven straight games theoretically. Yeah, you're going to pay attention to it. And yeah, maybe the game happens super fast and it's really hard to exploit or get the shots you want. But we have this thing called power plays where, you know, like the other team has one less guy. And so you can make decisions like, hey, not that you fundamentally change your,

and go to the point you go away from strengths on a power play, but if I'm running things, you know, through the umbrella and the guy at the top has a choice whether he passes to a one-timer on the right flank or the left flank. And my pre-scout says this goalie is all guys have a strength and a weakness in terms of what side they move better to. And I've got a good shooter and either option. And I know this goalie's a little slower to his blocker than he is to his glove or

he doesn't get rotation to one side. The tendency of goalies is to because the stick sort of gets in the way. Some goalies don't get good rotation on their blocker. side so they might come across a little flat. Yeah, I might hedge toward the shooter on that side. And if I'm the shooter, and I know that goalie comes across flat rather than getting a good rotation, I am going to probably go short side post versus a goalie who might be a little quicker.

I might, and comes across with a little better rotation, I might try and go against the grain on him. Like all this information is there. I find it hard to believe, especially in the playoffs. that more and more of them don't start to pay it. And they do because I know because I've had these conversations with the goalie coaches doing the scouting report. And in some cases, you know, again,

I've got to be careful too much information here. But like I know. No one listens to the show. I just mean you. Goals that have been scored in the playoffs that the players come back and they're like 100% that was pretty scout-based. Yeah.

And sometimes there's quirky little things. I've actually seen within a playoffs a goalie have to adjust how he worked in and out of his post because a team scored two and in crucial moments from behind the goal net banked them off and he had to change that tendency right away in the course of the series because they were exploiting it like it happens but you never hear about it in the regular season or you know you don't maybe we just don't notice or maybe it doesn't happen as often but in the regular season I think it's just far less well let me give you an example so our pal Darry had uh he was telling me a

story about how he had a conference. Did you ask him if he was a goalie? Because I've heard he was a goalie in junior. I didn't ask him, but even if he was, I feel like he probably wouldn't admit it. He should because we're the smartest guys. This is where this all comes from. I'm just, I'm totally obviously. I shouldn't say we. They're the smartest guys. I don't fit that. I'm only a goalie in, oh, it's whatever, beer league trade. I'm not actually as smart as the guys that played at the high level. Well, okay, let me give you, let me give you an example of, um, of what I'm talking about here. So he was telling me that he had a work. where he had all of these elite NHLers come skaters.

Yep. And as part of their kind of meet and greet, he gets them all together in a room, and he's already queued up specific clips from the previous season of either goals they had or moves they made, kind of like interesting scenarios. And so he cues this one up with a star player in the league to get up and talk to his peers about what he saw in the play.

And it was a scenario where the player gets the puck on the wall and goes behind the net and does like the, I guess it's the Kuznetsov move where he's going behind the net and then he kind of like goes back, like against the grain and passes it back to the spot he basically just left. Yep. So and we know that, you know, the goalie all of a sudden is trying to track it. They're looking over their shoulder trying to see where the guy's going and all of a sudden they move off the net, right? Yeah. See, if they do it properly, they should be using their windows in a way where they look before they leave that short side. So they should be finding that puck over the shoulder, but not abandoning that side because you can always make the push across faster than you can. So you move your head before you move your body.

But yes. All right. Let me finish the story. Okay. Enough about the goalie aspect of this. I'm more interested about the forward component of it. So he's expecting the player to say, well, yeah, like, you know, you see the goalie looking over the wrong shoulder. you pass it back to where they aren't looking

and your shooter has a better chance of scoring, right? It's like the whole concept of why we want to initiate offense from behind the net. The player is like, oh, no, like that had nothing to do with it. I had actually mapped this out like 10 seconds before the puck even came to me because he noticed that his left winger was being covered by a right shot defenseman

and they were both along the left post. And so he felt that his winger would be able to box out the defender And leverage his handedness for an easier tap-in because the defender wouldn't be able to get across and tie him up And so he like mushroom clouds going off in my head right now He got the puck on the wall Yeah And then he was like dragging out the play to allow His teammate and the defender covering him to get to where they needed to be

Which was preordained to set this up I wonder how many guys are thinking at that level Now I'm sure also there were countless times times of the season where this player thought that and then the puck bounced or someone or there was a miscommunication or his his teammate didn't go to where he thought he was going to go and nothing comes of it right and so it's a lost play whatever you move on but and this is an elite player I do think though that I would hope that this level of detail and the thought is being put in beyond put your head down and skate as fast as you can and or shoot from wherever and so that's the stuff

that really gets me going in terms of excitement of like breaking the game game down to that minute of a level. So, and what it reminds me of, and it's a fascinating story because I am curious how many guys think of that level. Maybe I need to start. But I need to start asking players the same questions we get to ask goleys at ingolmagg.com. Like we have something called pro reeds where we have NHL goalies do film sessions with me. And we always have to be careful not to give away state secrets.

Like I drop in here when the puck gets there. But they basically share their reads with us, how they read a play. and what keys and cues they're looking for. And it sounds a lot like what you just described, like things like handedness, how they're holding the stick, where they're positioned, all play a huge role.

And it's been, the idea behind the project was to allow young goalies, because we always hear this with goalies, like they become quote unquote goalie school goalies. You know, they're in these, you know, controlled environments so often at young age is where the drill goes from here to here to here

and they're trying to perfect their movement, but they always know where the shots coming from. It's not dynamic enough. Or they become so pre-programmed within these drills that they don't really learn how to read the game. So the concept was show these kids through these video sessions with NHL guys just how much information they're processing on the fly.

I thought I had an idea what that would look like. But much like your story, the first time we did it was with Carrie Price. He was our guinea pig. We spent a day with him up in Cologne and said, hey, you want to try this? Like, we think this might be a cool idea. for Ingle.

Yeah. Oh, it was mushroom clouds then, too. I, the amount of detail, Dimitri, that he was processing on the fly and that he could recall watching the video was it blew my mind. And so it really feels a lot like that story. And so that's how, I mean, again, carries a, you know, we've had other guys that don't provide us, whether it's because they don't want to or because they're not processing it at that level, I always wonder.

But some of them are a lot more, a lot simpler in their reads. See, Puck, stop Puck. But handedness is just like one of so many factors. And to go back to our conversation about defensive environments and the predictability is a word I come back to a lot. It's not just about the high danger chances, but is it predictable where they're coming from? The other part that has been a real learning curve for me

doing these film sessions, these pro-read sessions. And we've got I think like 16 or 17 guys that have sat down. for them. And I want to say there's like there's like a hundred we're almost three years in one a week probably like 120 of these available online for subscribers shameless plug. The one that I keep coming back to that's really blowing me away is how often those reads are not just based on what the shooters are doing and the handedness of the shooter. And is he are there cues you can find pass or shot?

Are his passing options, one-time options, or do they have to go cross-body? All these different factors. And there's a ton. But quite often at the top of the list is my defenseman is taking this away. I know our system says this forward is going to come back and attack this angle. Right. So again, the predictability and the ability to trust your defenseman to execute, whether it's within the system or knowing their personal tendencies,

the amount of times that has contributed to one of these quote unquote pro reeds and allowed a guy to make a save, not more so, but certainly as much as what the attacking players are starting to do. And it all just, like just hearing that story from you, like it all just sort of, it's in a way it's sort of reassuring,

but it also tells me why they're scoring more than they have before to know that, you know, there are players out there thinking the game at that same level. I shouldn't be surprised by it. And yet, so I'm going down. a rabbit hole here but like that story was awesome and I now regret not having listened to the

belfry episode i i meant to okay well yes everyone i mean everyone should go back and listen to belpher is actually doing he's put out three of his he's starting his own podcast and he's uh he's doing breakdowns of like tape study of individual forwards and uh he's done some really cool stuff so far so another shameless plug well i'm gonna be honest with you that's this is the one of the things that uh he's ahead of the curb then because one of the things at ingle was we've had some success here and got some traction with this type of work. And we also do a lot of the drills. Like goalie coaches will share their goals and objectives and walk us through video of drills

at the NHL level. And plus we spend time with them in the summer. And I've always said, first guy to pull off this type of thing with forwards and high level skill coaches, because at the end of the day, our audience at Ingoal is two guys on every team and their audience is 20. So I think on a scalability, Daryl's on to something big there. I shouldn't be surprised because he's a genius. I've been bugging the Vegas Golden Knights for like three years now to let me talk to Mark Stone to do a video breakdown.

Just sit with them and just watch defensive plays and be like, what did you see on this one? Now, I understand why an active player has nothing really to gain from giving away their state secrets. That's one of the first caveats every time we do pro, it's like, hey, if we get into something here that you think is an exploitable tendency or. And a lot of guys are like, hey, man, like we see it. we see goalies, like goalie coaches will map out the zone, like defensive zone, like, when, like they're, and they'll have like numbers one through five or whatever. And when it's in this spot, you're in this position. And I've had a bunch of NHL goalies be like, man, the game's way too dynamic.

You can't be that structured. But there are a few that are. Like the puck hits this point and I'm dropping into my post. Right. And that's a tendency that you don't want to discuss publicly. And so the first thing we do with pro reads is, hey, if I show you a video and we're discussing it and you think there's something in here, you don't. want to share delete like I'm not going to share it last thing I want to do is burn

you and I've had a couple of guys I won't say names but I had a couple of guys say to me hey like I'm I'm just not comfortable doing it I did that I don't want to give away any information yeah but some are and so the goalies have we need we need more of that we need more of that I agree generally um okay we are 45 minutes in and we have not hit any of the topics that were on my list oh oh no Kevin that was all his usual rambling self all freelancing right there all right we're to do some quick hitters here i want to get through as much of this as we can this is why i end up doing two parters by accident i think my thing with merrick this year when elliot was off for a week

was supposed to be one session and ended up two or three parts i talk too much i'm sorry well uh jeff i mean jeff as well that's uh that's a good one the two of us in a room is trouble yeah all right champions aren't born they're made and the secret to make your business reign supreme shopify the all-on-one commerce platform to start run and grow your business 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 relationships

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That's indeed.com slash blue wire. Terms and conditions apply, cost per application pricing, not available for everyone. Need to hire? You need Indeed. The Devils. So speaking with people around the league last year, I did a big Jack Hughes. future for appearing side. And I was like, you know, I was going through all the tape. I was very curious and the projection or the progression of his game from year two to year three and the steps he took, right? And just speaking with people and different teams and stuff,

everyone agreed that as a community, we weren't talking enough about how fun the devils were last year, how much offensive talent they had, and how much of a handful they could wind up up being for other teams to deal with if they could ever get a save. And the degree to which they cratered in that last season was pretty wild to consider. I don't know what, I'm curious what you got and you can pull it up. I'll give you the stats I've got.

They use seven different goalies. Those seven goalies combined to give up 61 more goals than expected, according to evolving hockey. Those seven goalies stopped 88.1% of the shots they faced, which was only better than the Seattle Cracken. And it's been a cursed position for them, right? We can talk about Blackwood here

and sort of what happened, what went wrong, what the future outlook should be like. But, you know, they were clearly looking for a reliable backup to help cover for him. And in consecutive off-season, they signed Corey Crawford and Jonathan Bernier, and they got 10 combined games out of them. Now they traded a draft pick at the draft to bring in BTEC VAT-Chek,

who I assume they're going to try to get something out of his numbers in his first two seasons have been quite pedestrian. But it's going to come down of what they can get out of Blackwood, obviously, right? He's in kind of a crossroads season where I believe it's the last year of the bridge contract. He signed. His salary actually escalates a little bit,

so he's pretty pricey this season. He's 26 or whatever, he's turned 26 this season. And, you know, his numbers have not been good the past year and a half or so, clearly. But I'm really curious about the Devils because they're a team that I love watching.

I have high hopes for because of the personnel they have, especially in terms of upfront skaters. But for them to go from being like a frisky young team to a team that actually gives people problems, they need to stop being 31st in TNCA percentage. So how do you break that down in terms of what they actually got? Because they were obviously using goalies

who probably shouldn't have been playing in the NHL last season as well. So that's- They were one of my exhibit A's like, Nico Dawes, Akira Schmidt. They used seven goalies in an age of games even. And there were periods there. Like I think as much as on the overall, you know, where Nico's numbers ended up, there were certainly stretches there where they should be encouraged by his future. Because he shouldn't have been in the National Hockey League, like just based on just,

I mean, it was his first year pro. He played 10 games the year before in Germany, right? Like there were some periods there were, there's some real upside there. I think in Nico especially. But you're right. Like they didn't have a single goal tender above expected last year. Um, so no question. When I look at the defensive environment, um, it's bottom third of the NHL.

Yeah. Uh, that's a Lindy rough team for you. 100%. And especially, um, high danger 21st in terms of what they give up. Now, you look at Vancouver at 25th, but do you have Thatcher Dempco? Right. Like, and I think to one of the things that I've come around to this year is like there's, there's, there's that list of guys at that elite elite level.

Yeah. And, and I've got Demko in that category. if he can stay healthy and play a lot. I think he joins that group of actually predominantly Russian goal tenders. Like he's in that list. And so they were able to get away with being the 25th ranked team when it came to high danger chances that they gave up. Jersey's 21st and the guys underperformed it.

Part of that is just the, I think Jonathan Bernier is a guy that would have at least steadied the ship a little bit. Yeah, because he was. It was like league average during those years where Detroit was horrific. He was good in Detroit. I got them above in Detroit for sure. Like I liked that signing. Yeah.

The interesting thing to me that surprised me a little bit is they're expected off the rush. I thought they'd be terrible off the rush. They'd be one of the worst defensive teams. No, it's more like in zone breakdowns. Yeah. And they were. They were like top five in off the rush. But on end zone, you're right.

You know, it drops significantly. So it's, it's tough. Like, at the end of the day, and this is where there's no absolutes, right? Like, the defensive environment was not good. No. I don't think when we get down to, you know,

some of those details you talked about, Carolina time and space. Yeah. Like, I think they give up a lot of it. Yes. But they also had goaltenders that weren't ready for the environment, and nobody sort of rose up,

nobody rose above the environment. Yeah. And I think when you're in a tough defensive environment, it can usually go the other way. I sort of used to point to Edmonton for all those years. Like if that backdoor pass gets through, past the defenseman who's supposed to have it nine straight times,

chances are on the 10th, you're going to start to lean, you're going to start to cheat. And the one absolute truth in this league, and you just talked about how skilled these guys are, they're looking for. Man, as soon as you start leaning, as soon you start cheating, you're dead. And so maybe that's a little bit cumulative.

They're not the worst defensive team in the league, but their bottom third and their goaltending hasn't been good enough to bail them out. Do I think McKenzie Blackwood, man, physically he has the tools to be the guy that could bail him out. But for whatever reason, and obviously things like COVID and vaccination and I don't know how much that play into it. Well, he missed three months with like a heel injury or something. Yeah. So and health. Like he, I mean, he has the physical tools to be that guy, but for whatever reason it hasn't come together for him yet.

And it doesn't sound like it's going to happen there because, well, I mean, his name's been on the trademark at all. year. Same with Samsonoff, right? And Samsona finally moved, you know, just based on Washington, letting them go. But those were two guys that were of it. You could have had them any point this year. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the capitals are begging me to make Samson out my co-host here just so he wouldn't play a net for them anymore. I mean, so I get that. Okay, Gibson, for the 20th straight PDO cast that you and I do, we're going to talk about John Gibson. He's an enigma and I have trouble sort of solving it. So, okay, so let me give you, let me give you some stop.

All right. So last three seasons, 904's 8 percentage, 903% 904% 904% percentage. Goals able about expected in those three years, minus 10, minus 4, minus 4.5. I got them at minus 12 this last season. I have no statistical argument for what I'm about to say. It's more of a gut feel. And I understand the irony of that because I make fun of hockey people who say that stuff all the time. But I just, for some reason, I can't reconcile the fact that this guy just turned 29

yesterday. So he's not old. He's been around for a while, but there's no reason to believe that a 29-year-old Goldie should fall off to the degree that he has in terms of what his statistical output would indicate. I've seen him. I've watched individual games this past season. There was a game in Florida where I think it was like the best individual performance I saw from any goalie all year. He had a game in Toronto earlier where he just stands on his head. He makes preposterous degree of difficulty saves and the easy ones too, but he just like stops 49 to 51 is the best player on the ice. And I see a level of athleticism in his game that doesn't suggest that this is a guy

who's washed up and passed his prime and should be considered differently than he was during his peak seasons. But then at the end of the year He's clearly gifted Like clearly Yeah so that's why I see the skills I can't look at what he's done And be like this is a barometer Of how good he really is

But it's been three straight years now Of the number is not Lining up with how good he looks If you watch him on the same on the perfect night And I guess like That's what like consistency matters In this position right And so what I can't like this is going to be

One of those examples where I agree he's better than the numbers Even the adjusted numbers And mine were actually less flattering than yours. You know, I had him at like minus 12 goals saved this year. Yeah. But there were certainly some moments where he looked like he could be the best goal turn in the world. I watched him.

There were a couple of weeks stretches where that was the case. I do wonder how much of this environment, like it goes back to the Edmonton argument, because I think he was better in the first half this year when they were competitive. Well, first 33 games, I've got him at 922, say, percentage plus 16 goals save all I've expected. from February on 23 games, 876. They started, like, they started peeling off parts of that team, right? And part of that wasn't, it's not just defensive. Like, the one thing, and this is, again, where all these factors,

and I don't have the answer. Like, I'd love to tell you I got this great answer on John Gibson, but I can tell you that their inability to score, not this year, but in all the years, like the past couple of years, that weighs on you. Right. Mentally. I've had this conversation, not with John, but with Ryan Miller and with other people in that organization.

Like, when you go into every game and you're in a losing team and your mindset is, man, if I let in one tonight, it might be one too many. That is just an unreal amount of pressure. Like, that wears on you overtime. And I think it wore on the goaltenders there. Now, so this season, they start to score in the first half. Yep. And that takes some of that pressure off. And he has a, and he was really good, I thought, in the first.

step overall. But I still think, and that athleticism, that skill that is so evident that you talk about, at times there can be an over-reliance on it. Like, I think he's tightened elements of his game technically. But I know there's a wariness there, talking to the goalie coach, Soudrechaan Maharaj, who is one of the really great goalie coaches in the league. There's a sort of, they're a little wary about making too many shams. changes. Like, do you lose the things that give you those moments of brilliance and the perfection you talked about seeing in certain games if you add too much structure? And yet, I think technical structure provides consistency. So in the search for the ceiling, which we all agree is amazing,

I think you might sacrifice a lower floor. Right. You might be creating a lower floor. That's just my opinion. I could be wrong on that. I'm really not sure. He is, is a bit of an enigma. There are elements in his game. In his, the way he moves, there's a lot of opening and closing. I think it puts a lot of stress or at least early in his career put a lot of stress on his body. And all these things have sort of improved a little bit here and there. Yeah.

But there's that, they don't want to make him a technician. They don't want to make him a robot. And I agree with it, right? Because all those things that we see when he's at his best are like, oh, man, like athleticism. But anytime you rely too much on athleticism, you're going to be more prone to, to highs and lows. And what I can't rectify, what I can't answer is how much of those highs and lows come with the team around him and the frustrations that he must be experiencing mentally and how

much of it is based on that sort of, I don't want to say looseness in his game, but maybe relative to some other guys, there's some looseness in his game. So at the end of the day, what I'd come down to is when I look at that contract in that age at a time when everybody's talking about acquiring them, I think there's a lot more, there's a lot of risk there. And it's risk I would be wary of despite loving what I, like, he's fun to watch. Oh, when he's on his game, like the amount, we talked about it was the amount of swag he has, like, like, yeah. The player, like, how like, he did.

And they don't want to, and again, that's what they don't want to take away. And I fully understand that. But I, and I don't know where you get the best John Gibson. But like, like, I trust the people that are involved in shaping his game because they're, they're some of the best. And so I do think some of it is what's going on around him. I just, what I can't do, what we can never do is sort of find a way to weigh and measure that, right? That's the challenge.

Yeah, like, I almost wish, like, you'd watch him. Like, I don't have a, like, a trained technical eye like yours, but, like, I can see when a guy is, like, physically limited, or if he looks like he did four or five years ago, and, like, Gibson physically looks the same. Like, it's, it'd be so much easier to just write him off if you watch, and you're like, all right, he doesn't get post-to-post as well, he's, you know, this and that. Like, I don't trust it. There's none of that. Like, you watch him on the right night, and it's like, physically, he looks the same.

Now, it hasn't translated the way you like. I do, I'm willing to buy the argument that it is, to what you said, the sort of stress level of needing to be perfect. I think also a matter of motivation, like in that environment. In that environment, especially for someone who's so competitive. I don't think it's an accident that he started each of those three years that we just talked about with the poor numbers really well. and then as the year drags along, it plummetes. Now, how much of that is he can't keep up that level of play? And how much of it is that motivation?

That would be the $6.4 million question. Right, a reliance on athleticism or not over-reliance on athletic, but when you play at your best when you're playing that athletic, like I would argue that he's probably a guy where you need to monitor games played a little bit, right? Like maybe more so than other guys. Because again, the highs and lows of playing that way, but also the stress it puts on you physically to play that way. There's just more moving parts.

There's a sort of bigger burden physically when you play that way. And I'm making it sound like he's wild off the map like this extreme unstructured. And I don't think that at all. I think they have added some nice elements. It's just he's not. And again, if you were to turn him into this, you'd lose a lot of what makes John special. And so that's sort of the balance that you would have to find if you acquired them. And it's a balance that, like, I think they've actually,

I think there's a good chance they've found a good balance there, but some of the other things going on around him have just made it very hard to sustain it. I don't think it's a coincidence that the numbers fell off after they started stripping that team apart. It's so weird, though, because I believe I haven't checked it recently, but I believe Anthony Stollars' numbers remained relatively decent. Like, it certainly didn't plummet to the capacity that Gibson's did.

So, like, for every argument that you can make to kind of excuse his performance, there's a nagging thing of like, and we get into this with skaters all the time. How often do we say, like, the greats, once they, like, lose a step physically, they can still hit it on a given night, but doing it over an 82 game season becomes more challenging to keep up that high level of play that you've become accustomed to. And maybe that's what we're seeing as well. Now, for a 29-year-old, it's weird that it's already happening. We know that goalies age differently, especially than skaters.

So I wouldn't expect this type of depreciation in performance, but it's tough to defend after three straight seasons. I think we all want to see them in a better environment with a better chance to win and see what would happen. Yeah, because of all the things we... Well, it would be a great test case. Yeah, but because of all the things we just said, it's going to be a risk.

And listen, like, again, somebody's going to come knocking on the door here and take away my goal of a union card. But what have I... Like, I've always kind of said, the one thing I would avoid if I was running a team is term. Yeah. Because things change. Matt Murray's a perfect example.

You can win two cups. If the game changes and you, your style no longer works, so you have to change. But, you know, like, so that's one thing I would avoid. But the other part is, like, I don't know if some of the, you know, some of these guys that we've had in this stratosphere, like, is it worth the risk? Like, is it, would you, would you make that gamble as much as I think there's a ton in his game? You know, we're seeing games played come down. Yeah.

All that, like, I think Vasile's. Silesky, obviously Bob, like we're not going to see those kind of contracts anymore because outside of Vassie, who can play that much? Like, the argument that the goal is should be the highest paid, I mean, I think we're way past that. But like, I think we're going to see salaries come down, even on number one guys. Yeah. Because we've seen the threshold, 70, 65, 60, and then it was 55 to 60. And now I'm hearing Team Start talk about 50 to 55 as an ideal target for games played for a number one guy. the two of the guys that played the most last year,

UC Soros and Thatcher Dempco. Now, Connor Hellebuck, again, this is credit to him and Vaselowski. They can play a lot and stay healthy. Soros and Dempco. Neither one of them made it to the end of the season. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think we've already seen that reflected in compensation, right? You mentioned the term.

Yeah, I think money's going to come down for the dollars. It's so interesting to compare it to what we've seen with skaters, especially forwards, where teams are paying the high end. and then they're stripping out that middle class and basically going ELCs or expensive contracts, right? And for goalies, I think that uncertainty is reflected in 38 goalies, I believe, are between $2.75 million cap hit and like six. Yeah.

And so that middle, there really only is a middle class for goalies because you usually just pay them for a couple years at like $4 million and hope it works out. And we saw that even the two biggest names in this year's class, Kemper and Campbell as UFAs, both go at what, five and five point one to five or something like that, Yeah. So, you know, they got the next test case is going to be Igor. Like Igor, that deal looks like a bargain right now. Um, you know, he's making that case and I think he

will continue to make that case. You can make the argument now, Bascoly in the NHL. And again, Vasselowski gets the title just because he's done it for so long and consistency matters. Yeah. Um, but Igor, Seroke and, uh, you're going to see like they could be our next test case in terms of is a team willing to invest heavily in a goaltender who, because that list is short, guys that can dominate. Like that Demco deal, five years at five, looks like,

you know, if he can stay healthy, that's, that's going to be a hell of a deal. Schistairkins three at 5.6. Like, those are going to be the next ones. Like,

is a team, those are the few guys that can be that big a difference maker. Do you pay them, you know, on a Vaselowski-type scale? I think the answer is going to be no, but they're the next test cases to me.

All right. I, uh, we haven't even gotten into the free agents, man. I don't think we're going to get. to them. I think we've, we're all... We're an hour in and we haven't talked Matt Murray, man.

Like, my phone's been ringing off the hook about Matt Murray for the last couple of weeks. Over the last couple days, I should say. Well, I don't think there's been a shortage of Matt Murray coverage or the past couple days. I don't think most of it has been very educated. I'll be honest with you. Well, yes.

You can apply that to a lot of hockey topics, but... I don't know. You want to talk... I'll give you five minutes here. Matt Murray, Jack Campbell. What's the most interesting component of all that to you? I do find it interesting. Again, we talk about the stats. I like I like Jack Campbell. There are elements of his game that improved in Toronto that I really liked.

We all know about the story, the backstory. Like, it's a good story. He's a great person. Teammates play hard for him. At the end of the day, his numbers over the past two seasons grade out in my numbers from ClearSight, when we look at, say, adjusted say percentage. Yeah. In the 30s.

Right. High 30s, but in the 30s. And as murky as that middle is, and like you said, all goalies sort of make that range. five times five for a guy in the 30s makes me nervous. That's, that's like, there are other things he deserves credit for. Toronto's obviously a very tough market.

I thought he handled it very well. Toronto, and this is another one that doesn't come out in the stats, like they're not always an easy team to play behind because they will generate a ton if they don't finish. They give up some good looks the other way. But on the whole,

they should be a good goalie environment. defensively, but sometimes it's tough when you don't see a shot for five minutes to then face a two on one. And there's a little bit of that there. And he handled that well. But at the end of the day, the numbers don't lie. He grades out in the 30s. Are you going five times five for a guy in the 30s? That's the question I have.

Well, I'm fascinated to see how it works out. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm on the record. I would have just done a James Reimer, Stuart Skinner, tandem for like 3.5 million next season. And if that doesn't work out, then you readjust next off season. but like I get it. I would have been a lot more worried about this if this was still a Dave Tippett team because for all the reputations of him being a defensive coach,

the numbers didn't. They improve quite significant. Yeah, never bore it out. I think he's got a better chance in Edmonton under Jay Woodcroft than he would have before that coaching change. And so maybe that gives him a chance because they were better. They seemed to buy into that. On the flip side, Matt Murray, everybody's losing their mind.

And I get it. I thought it was going to be 50% retained and it's a lot easier pill to swallow it 50% retained because the comparisons are, well, we're paying him 4.6.9. and you could have had Darcy for 5.1. Right. And I just made my case on Jack why I don't think I would have gone five times five there. But in Darcy's case, because of the things we've talked about at the top, I would have been, that would have been my first choice. But in terms of plan B, what do you avoid by getting Matt Murray?

You avoid the term I talked about. Like you're two instead of five. Like you're not lucking yourself into a mistake. And for all to talk about, yes, they know him and they know his history and goalie whisper. you know, like John Elkin knows him really well, and that counts the confidence of Matt Murray already started to change his game. And I always had a nice offseason. I don't want to slag him too hard.

But that whole scenario on how it played out there. Like, I've hammered them in the past for this. It was brutal. Matt Murray's the way he won two cups, locked in, like, and this is why I don't understand, like how nobody else saw this. Well, not nobody else because other people did. Like, the game has become way.

too lateral, way too dynamic to be in your safe execution stance as soon as the puck comes over center ice of the blue line. And that's how Matt played. Locked in low and wide. As soon as you lock in low and wide in a safe execution stance, you lose your ability to move. And Matt played a lot of the game like that, didn't have a narrow upright stance.

During the pandemic year when the season was postponed, he initiated that change on his own, starting with a trainer we work with in Colonna to sort of change his ability to hold a narrower stance and hold that posture and move into pucks better and beat these plays. When Ottawa acquired him, it was a one-year project.

That was understood. I know it was understood from a goalie coaching perspective. I believe it was understood from a general manager perspective. The rest of the coaching staff maybe weren't willing to have that patience. Matt Murray, at the three-quarter point in that season, was injured for a month, right? Missed a month. Upper body injury. kind of was disparaged a little bit.

That was the one that came as a result of him pulling himself from that start. Remember, Joey DeCords for a start, Toronto and all that stuff. But my understanding is that was actually a nerve injury created by treatment by their people for a neck injury. So like throw him under the bus, behind the scenes publicly, not behind the scenes, not publicly, behind the scenes into the media, like question his decision to pull himself despite the fact that he couldn't lift his glove arm or close his glove. But it gives him a month to skate. It gives him a month to work with the goalie coach, who, by the way, they fired three quarters of the way into that month.

To skate, keep his, all the changes that he's been trying to make, make them more innate, make them more instinctual. What happened when he came back up to that month? He was really good. And people were like, ooh, he started to figure it out. The problem was then he got hurt. I remember him coming through Vancouver. I'm like, oh, you could see the changes.

You can see it with a trained eye. What's starting to happen here? It's not like he forgot how to play goal, all the intangels that go into it. He just played a style that no longer worked. And he went out and tried to change that style. You finally see signs it's coming along. And then you start the next season by dumping them to the minors. And again, tiny sample size and some of this is injuries.

And there's a very real injury risk. And that, to me, is the bigger risk of Toronto's moves than the actual game. I think his game is coming along. His adjusted save percentage last year was better than Jack Campbell's by a significant margin. It was better than Cam Talbot's. by a significant margin. So amidst all this discussion about how Ottawa's improved and I just think that was a relationship that got broken and maybe he deserves some blame for this. Maybe you should have played through a few more

things. I don't know where the blame falls, but it was not going to work there. I don't think they handled it very well, frankly. But that doesn't mean they're still not a goalie there. And as long as they can get him healthy, I think Curtis Sanford, there are some things that need to change in his postplay. I think you'll see that happen with Curtis Sanford. But I I think the biggest changes in Matt Murray's game were already initiated, but they were never, you talk to any goalie, any goalie coach, they were never going to be overnight changes. They were significant structural, foundational, fundamental changes in how he held his body and his stance and all movement is fueled from that.

That is not a snap change. That's going to take time. And I don't think it's a coincidence that it finally started to take root when he was off for a month because those types of changes are hardest to make. when the bullets are flying for real in a season. It's like a golfer on the back night on Sunday making swing changes, sets up for a fade, hits his traditional draw, the double-cross pressure comes and you go back to what you know.

So I still think there's a goalie there. I've been pretty vocal about this. I'm going to eat a lot of crap if he sucks in Toronto, but I'm willing to do it because when I look at the tape, when I look at the film, when I understand some of the background that went into it, I don't think this is outside of injury. I don't think this is as big a risk as most people have painted it out for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

I understand their win now. I still would have chosen Kemper first. Yeah. But I don't think this is quite that. Given the choices out there, I don't think this is as bad a choice as many people are casting it is. I got more questions about Samsona, to be honest with you, than I do. Yeah. I mean, I think it's pure like the opportunity cost of the $4.7 million is a real risk.

Because there's a cap strap team that has minimal. opportunities to improve their roster and choosing this as like your back to the James Reimer example right like James Reimer's consistently been around the level that Matt Murray had last season so it is that less risky and less money less money absolutely so I would go with you on that but I mean in terms of some like versus the Jack Campbell which is how a lot of this is phrase we could have just kept Jack for five yeah I don't think this tradeoff is quite as dramatic as a lot of people are suggesting well it's strange because on the one hand

the commitment is low from the perspective of I believe if it doesn't work out they can buy them out next somewhere and it's like a 700k cap hit or something so it's like it really is like a one year rental in that regard it really comes down to Matt too like there are some changes that need to happen he's got to engage on this now if it doesn't work I'd argue they will not have the benefit of seeing out whoever that next goal he's going to be like yeah he's putting job on the line is what I've heard a lot for Kyle Davis absolutely and so that's that that's risky of that element but I think you can underestimate just how much that extent stretch of goaltending that you referenced.

I believe it was from like December on. They had like an 880 say percentage as a team the Leafs did. And especially like the whiplash of starting the year the way Jack Campbell did where he was like a 940 Vesna candidate. 100%. First third of the season and a lot of people like, oh, it's team environment. Relative to team environment, he outperformed it at such a significant level through the first third that I would have had him as a Vesna candidate.

And that's the other risk. Both years he ended up being around 30th, 31st, 32nd in adjusted say percentage, each of the past two seasons. Right. But one year it was steady the whole way. Yeah. And then last year it was these two wild extremes. And when I broke down film, like that six weeks, seven week stretch we talked about, statistically he was the worst goalie in the NHL.

And I went to look at the film and I'm like, I didn't see like anything glaring. Right. He wasn't, his game didn't change, which should be a good thing. But he was just getting beat on open looks. And I'm like, it almost smells like, confidence. What are you fixing here if it's just confident? If it's all between the years. And again, just the nature of those past two seasons, I see risk there.

I hope that he has a ton of success in wins a Stanley Cup in Edmonton. Because you have to cheer for a Jack Campbell. But this is the PDO cast. I've got to look at the numbers. And that's what the numbers tell me. Well, I think the vibes in Edmonton of going from, if you're a defenseman there, going from Mike Smith yelling at you after every mistake, even when, it's his fault to like the nicest guy in the league.

The vibes are going to be immaculate in Edmonton in that regard. So I think that'll certainly help. Well, I tell you, though, those defensemen now have to come back and get the puck themselves. That's, don't get, don't get me started on goalies playing the puck. This could be a whole other show. I'm probably going to lose that one, too, so I won't. Yeah, no, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting.

I'm very curious to see. I think it's always satisfying because to bring us full circle, we started the show talking about environment and things. and how, you know, two goalies who might otherwise be comparable from a true talent level in a vacuum might fare wildly differently in two different circumstances. And so seeing goalies switch teams like this provides you with more data points in terms of seeing how that fit plays with certain strengths and weaknesses. So I'm curious to see it.

I think we could probably do another full show just on. Oh, yeah. We have a run down. Yeah, and all the other moves on free agency. Let me leave you with point because I know we got to go. Okay. I get to make a prediction at the end. Yeah.

And again, like, I'm already going to get absolutely hammered if Matt Murray fails in Toronto, and I'm willing to because I really do believe when I look at the numbers and understand the history, I think that's where I test in numbers. That's what you're looking for, like sort of the process of developing a goal tender and some of the changes required. As long as Matt embraces some changes that are further required, and I know Curtis Sanford is capable of delivering, I do believe he's going to be just fine. And it's a good environment.

But the guy I think we could look back at by the end of next season and say that was the signing of this summer, especially because he got term at a low dollar figure, is Charlie Lindgren. So I will leave you with that. I think that Charlie Lindgren, I watched him in in Montreal. He made significant structural changes after going from Montreal, very similar to Matt Murray. The way he played rush chances especially, the way he got wide and didn't narrow his feet. and this is becoming an increasingly common theme in terms of how goalies move and how they're able to sort of mitigate

this past evolving, fast-paced, offensive environment. Charlie learned some things in St. Louis that he hadn't learned in Montreal. I've had this conversation with him midway through the season. I'm not saying I think he ran a 9-58 in five games with the Blues, but he had those five games out. So I think the expected was like 906, which is really high by clear sight numbers.

I just think based on conversations based on film work based on the history and a pedigree that even though he was undrafted I think there's a high predigree there I think Charlie Lindgren in Washington is ready to pop

like I think you will see him have a very successful season I was shocked to see them let both guys go and who's all you mean you talking about the blues no no I was Lindgren went to Washington right I was shocked to see

Oh, Washington like Washington let both guys go. Yeah. I was not. I thought they'd keep one. Yeah. And I thought they'd bring in Darcy. They were pretty fed up with, I think, both of them.

And but seeing how they upgrade it. Like I think, like I mean, again, this is another one. Because, hey, it's easy for me to make predictions. I don't have to, I'm not a GM. I don't have to put my, you know, my franchise on the line. But it's a low risk at a million. You can dump them to the, just over a million dollars. You can go to the miners if it doesn't work out.

But he would be my Darcym. course for next year a guy we could be talking about us having had a really good season i like that tandem here's what we're going to do i'm going to hold you to this we are going to reconvene about a month into next season and we're going to have a month oh i need more than a month sometimes it takes more in a month for them to get comfortable what a cop out well it's like the trade deadline right you need 15 to 20 games and with darcy there i don't think that charlie's getting that early but i think honestly by the end of the season i said i think he will you will look back at that as one of the top signings of this summer okay well i won't give you by the full season but it's something

point next season we'll reconvene we're going to talk about all this stuff we're going to revisit everything we discussed today because i think i mean with the amount of player movement there's going to be a lot to uh to revisit so 100% i mean just make sure we block off enough time because you yeah we need a three hour show yeah um okay well i think we got to it got to enough here um i'll let you plug some stuff you talked about ingle um kind of what have you been working on and uh where again people check out all that because i know that every time i have you on the uh the amount of feedback of people being like, wow, I just, I learned so much and I could listen to that guy talk about goaltending all day is through the roof.

So, well, I got to plug NHL.com. Sean Rourke was my original editor there, and they've expanded the editing staff, and they're all great people, but Sean was the guy that gave me a chance to write a goalie column. The last couple of years, because access has been limited. We've done it every couple of weeks, but it's called unmasked, and I try and it's not just, it's not this type of geeky stuff. We don't get into all the numbers, but it's the fun stuff. Like, did you know that when I,

Goalie takes a puck off the mask. If the spin is, if a heavy shot has lots of spin, that's how we measure heavy shots. Right. That spin will actually leave rubber behind and it smells like you're in like your buddy's like 75 Camaro during doing burnouts in the parking lot at high school. Like you literally smell burning rubber. So we get into those types of fun stories at NHL.com and I'm so grateful for the opportunity. They've given me to write there. But the real stuff for goalies, if you're a goalie, that's also free in NHL.com.

If you're a non-goly, you'll find search unmask, you'll find lots of cool stuff. Goly stuff ingolemag.com. If you're not a goalie, it's not for you. If you're a goalie, there is, like I can say this. There is no other place in the world where you can be taken on the ice with Kerry Price working with kids and have him share tips on stick position, post-play, movement patterns. Ian Clark, one of the great gold-edding coaches in the league, walking us through videos of Thatcher, Dempco's movement. Goleys every week sharing video breakdowns of their reads on saves. Like there

is no better resource to get better as a goalie. We got a nutrition column that just started with Jamie Phillips, who's working on his PhD in sort of sports science exercise physiology. I probably just got that wrong in terms of what the actual PhD is. Sorry, Jamie, but like we bring the experts to you. It's for 50 bucks Canadian a year, which is like $2 American a year. You get access to the best goalie coaches and the best goalies in the world sharing things that nobody else shares so if you're a goalie we will make you a better goalie i love it well kevin this was a blast i'm going to quickly plug a few things before we get out of here just so i don't have to record a separate outro please rate and review the show wherever you listen uh subscribe to e p ring side for access

to written work i'm dropping a big playoff project next week we're going to be back next week with i think one or two more shows before we uh sign off for the summer and and uh i'm not going to way to the cottage like a lot of hockey riders but i uh we don't need it we're in vancouver demetri we don't need it these guys got to escape the city it's true our city we got it all right here it's a cottage that's why it's why you never leave the west coast once you've been out here absolutely all right well thanks everyone for listening kevin thank you for taking the time to come chat my pleasure enjoy the rest of your offseason and we'll i will check anything here the hockey pdo cast with dmitri philipovitch follow on twitter at dim philipovitch

and on sound cloud at soundcloud dot com slash hockey pdocast Next.