The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 451: Watch the Games

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Cam Charron joins the show to discuss a variety of random offseason topics. Things we cover in this episode: How we watch games these days What we're specifically looking for Tracking games and what we're trying to quantify How our preferences have changed over the years Being willing to learn from new information The value in acknowledging what you don't know Optimizing offence and hunting for specific shots Goalies playing the puck, expected goals, and a lot more If you haven't done so yet, please take a minute to leave a rating and review for the show. Smash that 5-star button. If you're feeling extra generous, you can also leave a little note about why you recommend people check the PDOcast out. Thanks for the help, each one is much appreciated! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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

Doing the research and sweating the details to create gear that works for you. It's your run. Brooks, run happy. Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast. Host, Dimitri. The Hockey PEDYOCast, my name is Dimitri Filippovich, and joining me for the first time in a long time. It's my good buddy Camshur on. Cam, what's going on, man?

I can't believe that it's taken you eight years to have me on this show here, Tim. Yeah, I've been doing the PEDAO cast since, I guess, I think it was a 2015-16 season. Yeah. And so this is our first appearance. So a long-time listeners will remember us from the... the from the days of the HL Numbers podcast, Kness Army podcast. Logoff.

Friends with numbers, log off. Log off. You know, we experimented with a lot of different variations of the show. Well, I was also a guest on a very deep cut. So you're an expert. I don't think you weren't in Toronto for that. No, I wasn't. But that was my first show that I was doing back in like 2011.

So certainly paying my dues in the broadcasting. You're what, 11 at the time? That was pretty young. Yeah. Yeah. I remember, that was the summer of the, the Shea Weber operatory.

That was the big talking point at that point. So now he doesn't play hockey anymore. Yeah. And that contract still is what, like four years left on it? Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So we're recording this. It is, I'm just going to time it. It's Wednesday, July 20th. I think we're going to run this a bit later because I'm going to go on vacation. Okay.

And so we're just going to have an off-season show the run. So a lot of our conversation is going to be kind of more like theory-based and big picture stuff as opposed to like, like very niche what happened yesterday in hockey well it's uh we're already dating ourselves by bringing up a shea weber's 12 year offer sheet with the philadelphia flyers that's all well something's a circle do you think nashville will match that yeah by the way maybe next week we'll know maybe when this is released we'll know if nashville matched that yes yeah all right so actually i think we should we should we should start talking about um kind of what what we do in terms of watching the

games because I think that is a perfect entryway into into this podcast for us because that's something you and I have obviously, it's changed quite a bit for us over the years on a professional level. And also it's something that we've talked about quite a bit behind the scenes in terms of refining what we're looking for. Well, we've only really talked about it in case my lawyers are listening over the last four weeks. It's true. We had no contact or the previous eight years before that. But I don't know. Where do you want to start with this?

Well, I think what I would, I think the way I'd start is you and I both track games when we watch them. We're taking down. For fun, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes mostly for fun. Taking pretty detailed notes of what's

happening out there. And that does, for me, that, that, that gives viewers a better understanding of what's happening because you're having to play, you're having to pay very close attention to what's going on. So you're going to notice things like, oh, this player is actually pretty slow, or this guy isn't making any plays out there. It's not necessarily what you're tracking that matters and then being able to add up all the data, but just having something keeping you there paying close attention. And we said, you know, I noticed this effect when I used to track scoring chances for Canucks Army and the Leafs Nation.com. Yeah.

Where you're paying attention for 60 minutes and stuff is going to happen. And if you're just casually watching, you're with a buddy having a beer. I mean, it's a great time, but you're going to miss a lot of the action. So I, so the more, you know, I think the more things you're looking for, the kind of the, the closer you're actually going to be watching the game as well. and you'll appreciate players on a subjective level, as well as an objective one. Yeah, well, I think it certainly allows you to, it's kind of a two-part process, right? Because I think just paying attention closely and following it allows you to pick up on tendencies,

but then the fact that you actually also have the data then to look back and be like, all right, like, does it support what I feel like I was seeing? Especially if you have a number of games and not just an isolated game, helps you a lot and it helps you really pick up on stuff so yeah well and you know if i if i really look back at the numbers from like one game's worth of data it's always funny oh this this game was actually pretty equal um uh you know goaltending yeah it was the story right it's but yeah i i agree i think that you get a you get a good i think you get a good understanding of what happened you can test it um oh i notice this and then you can depending on what you're tracking you can

configure that to uh you can configure that to to to you know the man i'm uh by the way it's also very early it is it is we're going to let the like coffee get in no here's here's what i'd say i'd say it's important to recognize like the amount of subjectivity that goes in it though because i feel like you and i who have tracked a lot of games can watch the same play and come away with it come away from it with a wildly different perspective on what happened or who was responsible or, and ultimately there's a frustrating, I find, amount of guesswork involved that would only be satisfied by, I guess, if you were on the coaching staff, because ultimately you're kind of stuck trying to make the best educated guess you can in terms of what the player was trying

to do there. And I think a lot of guys would probably admit there's a lot of situations where something happens and it might be a good result, but the player wasn't actually trying to do. to necessarily do that. It just kind of bounced in a good direction for them or did something they weren't anticipating. Well, if it happens a couple hundred times a year, you know, you get the bounce.

Of course. You put yourself in a position to succeed from that. Of course. I'm just speaking purely like, you know, whether, let's say, you're looking at zone exits or something. I'm a very strict greater, like a defenseman who are purely looking to just exit their zone and just like fire it, like basically gain the red line and then just fired as hard as they can into the other zone.

I don't even treat those as proper exits, even though they, by the letter of the law, left their zone. But they're making the opposition come 200 feet. Well, that is true, and it is a game of territory. No doubt about that. But they're all... Stick punt. They're also, yeah, they're just giving away the puck for no reason,

especially when it's uncontested. That just drives me crazy. Yeah, well, I'd say, when I track, it's very, very objective. I've recently kind of created my own definitions of what I'm going to be, of what I've kind of tracked leading up to this, just kind of testing out what I, what I can do with, you know, a Google sheet and three hours worth of time versus, I think, what was a very rigorous controlled environment.

So what I'm seeing, though, is that in that situation where you describe, where a player breaks out of his own, just kind of dumps it in. Yeah, maybe it's not the ideal play. And he kind of had the exit. He kind of got the exit early. It wasn't necessarily him. It was really the opposition backing off. But what we're seeing is because the opposition backed off,

the defenseman's team gained territory. Gained territory and also forced... I lost possession. Not necessarily, though. Because, like, you still can't create a forecheck. If a defenseman is rushing up ice and sends the puck in and there's three forwards chasing it. Yeah. That's one thing versus a long stretch pass from the goal line to the blue line.

Yeah. And then it's redirected in and there's one forward chasing it. True. Like, there's different types of dump-ins that I think some lead to a better chance at the opposite or at the attack and team. recovering the puck. And those are valuable. And one thing I'd also notice is that, you know, as long as we're talking about deep cuts and we're looking at, we're talking about Eric Telsky's Sloan paper from 2013 about the importance of controlled zone entries. Right. Well, I think if you look at sort of the public data and our good buddy Tom Durantz has

done this and we've had some recent discussions about this. But if you, It's the entry differential. If one team enters a zone 90 times a game and the other team enters a zone 70 times a game, it doesn't necessarily matter how you're doing it. But the team that has that plus 20 differential, they're making the other team work a lot more in the defensive zone.

They're making them have to make those tough breakout one-touch passes. It's hard to do that. There aren't a lot of defensemen in the league that can do that consistently. Right. So I don't mind. a wide open dump in now as much as I did eight years ago. There are there are times when I would agree that why are you doing this?

You know, you have you have 30 feet of space in front of you take it. Yeah. But I think it's I think it's also important to remember that this, you know, the best teams are going to enter the zone with control less than half the time. If you're counting all the entries, we've already determined that you don't count all of them, that you don't count all of them. Here's what I would say to that. I completely agree with you that not every dump in is the same.

But when we're speaking over a large enough sample, I think it's very instructive in terms of the playing style or the mindset if you notice a trend that a team just keeps doing that. And I think something I've noticed a lot in hockey is that for the NHL being the best league in the world for the sport and just the high level and every player now is good. Like every player has a role. there's no one that's just running around trying to punch people for the most part.

Like it's guys are good at hockey in the NHL. Okay. If Mason Geertsen and Curtis McDermott are listening to this podcast, Stanley Cup champion Curtis McDermott. Yeah, we're sorry for erasing you. Yes, from history, yes. Something that really bugs me is I find players are, and this might be a coaching thing. Like if your coaches telling you to make quote unquote the simple play,

But a lot of times, in my opinion, the simple play is actually just passing it off to a better teammate who can make a better play. It's usually a good attribute and a defenseman. It's an amazing attribute. So like when you see like a low shot volume for an individual basis from a defenseman, I'm like, oh, like I'd love to go back and watch the video of this because I imagine there were a lot of times where they probably could have just wildly hammered it from the point. But instead they either passed it off or waited for something to open up and got it to a teammate. And that's a very valuable skill. Yeah. And that's something that I've come around on across because when we started blogging and writing about hockey, like it was all just purely like, all right, like shot attempts.

Like what's the highest raw volume? Who's doing the best at that? All right. That means they have the puck a lot. And in theory it does. But the game also has gravitated a lot more towards like being able to maximize your opportunities and optimize your offense is like a real thing. And being able to do so gives you a leg up on the competition, particularly in a seven game. off series setting.

So I've come around on that a lot more where I don't really care about pure shot attempts or shot volume in that capacity. And I know I would agree. And I think that that just goes to show how much the game has changed over the last 10 years. And you can talk about entries specifically for that. And I think maybe the casual fan might overestimate just how often someone like Connor McDavid is carrying the puck off the ice. he might be able to wind up, what, three or four times a game

and get like really going with the puck through the neutral zone. If he's lucky. And I think those are the situations where, A, if you're the opposition, don't, you know, try to shut that down before he's able to wind up, slow him down as much as you can, use your body. But once he gets it, once he gets it, he's thinking at a different level than players were, you know, 10 years ago when we were kind of really getting into

these numbers. And I remember, like, I think I've referenced this on Twitter. Like, I remember the days of David Backus being like a prototypical two-way center. Right. And that guy, you know, that guy is basically a third liner today. Like the same type of player. Obviously, David Backus is no longer in the league. Yeah. But, but that type of player doesn't really have that second gear. doesn't have that ability to take advantage of the space that defenders give them, doesn't have the ability to push the defender back and create a good passing lane and a good shooting lane. And those sorts of things that players are doing now, particularly forwards, I think it's really changed, I think, what teams can do in the offensive zone.

And a really interesting question, I think, is why have NHL's Saper? percentage that's been following for the last six years. This is your Brian Winhorst moment. What's going on with NHLC percentage? Yeah. So anyway, Donovan Mitchell is going to be the goalie of a, oh, damn, who still doesn't have a goalie? Well, it feels like everyone's kind of filled their main position.

Well, we'll find a spot for Donovan Mitchell. But, no, I mean, so yes. And also the gap between actual goals scored and expect, goals is also quite wide. I imagine a fair amount of that is probably just really shoddy tracking data in terms of where these events are coming from. It's like this play that actually was a very, very high level scoring chance is getting marked down as like a 0.01 expected

event. And it's like, that's right. And sometimes it's probably a lot less common now, but it used to be very common where, where a guy would take a shot from the slot and it was recorded as being from the other side, the complete other side of the eye, so 190 feet away instead of two feet away.

And not surprisingly, that makes a huge difference in an expected goals value. I think of that, that those mistakes are getting fixed, but a lot of my criticism with public expected goals models. And I'm not like, I really appreciate those that are,

doing the research, I think it's incredibly valuable. But I think it's cautionary to not necessarily to probably wake more recent seasons higher. Yeah. Well, the game has changed so much. Yeah, the game has changed a lot. And, yeah, players are better shooters. That has to be taken into account. I think that this was brought up.

I have to hold this mic so I can't actually look it up and reference, finally tweet referencing it. But someone suggested that five years ago, every goalie had their own coach. And now, you know, we're kind of entering the age of Daryl Belfrey and his, you know, skills development. And we're seeing his pursuit of ruining goalie's lives. Yeah. And, and it's worked.

Yes. Like, you know, we've seen a, we've seen a guy like Patrick Kane has just this, this, this run over the last six or seven years, I think would have been, inexplicable. You know, you think of someone hitting 30 and they lose a bunch of their skills, but Kane seems to have just continued to be a very strong playmaker, very strong skater, makes defenders miss,

finds teammates wide open for goals on the other side of the net, and just makes passes, makes pass and makes plays that I don't think we would have expected. Okay, here's a question for you. Yeah. Are you of the belief that you can go into a game with a plan to get certain types of shots. Because I know there's people to believe that hockey is too fast and too random and too chaotic.

And you can't necessarily, like, it's not like basketball where you can be like, all right, we're going to drop this pick and roll on the left and try to get it to a wide open shooter at the corner. Yeah. Obviously you have certain, especially on the power play, we see much more where you're like, Nikita Kutrov's trying to get it cross-seem to Stephen Stamco's, and it seems like everything they do is under the kind of trying to blow you into a false sense of security until he can complete that pass, right? Yeah. It's all a preamble for that.

At 515, obviously, it's much more, much faster, much less controlled. But I was talking about this with Kevin Woodley on the recent podcast. I'm certainly the belief, especially the higher end, more skilled players. Like, they map out what they're trying to do. accomplish in the offensive zone much more than we probably give credit for. So I do think you can steer your your shot chart in a certain direction as opposed to just being a random bubble of events in the zone. I would agree. I think that the way that the modern athlete processes the game is so far beyond our own comprehension of what's going on out there. And you

think of the things that you're really good at and a lot of things just kind of happen naturally. I'm not good at anything So that's moot But for someone like Patrick I've heard people are good at stuff Yeah Yeah So for someone like Patrick Kane

Or Austin Matthews or Connor McDavid And their brains are Just basically internal computers And they're processing all the information out there They know they don't They don't just know where their teammates are They know where all the defenders are Just because

Well I'd compare it to like You know It's going to get to sound pretty nerdy but chess grandmasters. Wow, it's really early. My alarm just went off. I'd compare to chess grandmasters who know what to do in certain positions

because they've seen something very similar before. And their brains can just remember how many, like tens of thousands of games and positions. And I would assume that hockey is very similar because these are guys and women too at just this very high level who can think that. so unfortunately i haven't really seen it in practice it's hard it's it's really hard to come up with

you know a comprehensive game plan and see it put in action um because you know as we mentioned someone like connor macdavid is only going to get three or four chances to wind up well what does that mean for the rest of us if we want to you know if we want to drive uh with speed down a certain side of the ice and, you know, make the defender spin this way. Well, we have five or six chances to do that. And, you know, say we get one extra shot more than average, more than we otherwise would.

Right. You know, can we, like, which shot is it? Yeah. Which shot is the better one. I think it's one of those, like, marginal things that does add up over the course of a season. But it's really tough to see it in. practice and I think just in general offensive players are going to find the gaps regardless of whether it's kind of planned for or not. They just have this knowledge. I think I need that. I think I need what I'm saying to be the case because otherwise our jobs will be very unsatisfying.

Maybe we should steer towards a different field because I need stuff to make sense and also be preordained at least in some like plan. in some capacity because otherwise you're telling me it's all just oh guys just skating really fast and if something opens up i'll take it man and it's like there's an element of that for a lot of players in the league yeah but i think every i think you're right like every year at least for the last 10 years i've hit some moment where i'm like well this game's all luck and i'm not i don't want to pay too much attention to it because it's not intellectually satisfying and then i'll find something that that brings me back in uh and that kind of keeps me going where the logic kind of wins out.

I think that I've made this point a lot, but the journey is always really weird to get to the end result, but the end result in hockey I think usually makes sense. The better team will win the majority of the time. A good team is going to win the Stanley Cup against another good team. We can talk about, you know, oh, well, you can't expand the playoff field because then bad teams will have a chance to win. Well, you know, when was the last time

a 7 or an 8 seed really made noise in the playoffs? That wasn't like already good going in and we knew it. Like, you know, and well, that, you know, that brings us back to my point about teams that are good at dumping it in and the 2012 and 2014 Los Angeles Kings. Right. Sort of that volume entry. Yes, sort of style, which, you know,

it's a different type of game than it is today, but Daryl Sutter showed with the flames that that kind of style still can work. I think you do need a few dynamic game breakers who can do other things, but just having nine forwards that can just come at you in waves and always have the puck in the neutral zone.

Win battles in all three zones. Yeah. It still works. It's, you know, never play the hits. Yeah. No, that's certainly a truth of that. All right. Anything else?

on while we're here anything else on tracking anything else on player types anything else

on your own journey in terms of stuff you've come to value more well we would we kept I was going to discuss this with you

and I think we decided to save it for the podcast so we're not really prepared for this but what do you track

when you were watching a game oh that's that's a great question well okay so I'm I think as people are listening to this,

I will have probably already released my playoff tracking data on EPRing side, which you'll be able to read about. But I'm much more interested in tracking the contributions of defensemen because

I find the data that we currently have publicly available on them to be so not unsatisfactory because I do think it gives you a good representation of who's good and who's not. but it doesn't give you any insight into that journey. Like you get the end result of,

okay, this guy's on the IASS teams outscoring the opposition. He must be doing good stuff. Well, I'm very interested from my perspective of what is that good stuff? I don't know if I would necessarily agree with that, though. I think that there are quite a few defensemen that their good results are, can be pretty much explained by getting to play sheltered competition, getting a lot of offensive zone starts. I think that happens more with defensemen.

than it does with four words. Of course. But yeah, like, I think, you know, if you're talking about a top pairing or a second pair of guy, I think you're correct. I think that, you know, no one is going to have a 55% coursey, four percentage. I think of how we, how do we say that these days? Yeah, just 55% shot share or whatever. Okay.

Yeah. That means something different to me. Wow. But, yeah, I think for the most part, someone with someone 55% playing top four And it's probably pretty good. If they're a third-parent guy, you know, I think it means they're playing for a pretty good team

with a lot of good forwards. Certainly. Yeah. But. Which means that you can use the micro statistics kind of track their overall contribution. Yeah. And I would also

say that, you know, a place where you can get into trouble, of course, is if you're another team and you're just purely looking at that player's results and then being like, well, I'm going to go and acquire them this offseason and then play them in an entirely different role. And then when they have wildly different results, be like, I don't know what happened here. Like, of course, that's where you can get into trouble. But in terms of purely evaluating what that player is doing in the moment for the current team they're on,

I do find tracking whether it's their zone exits or their zone entry defense to be quite valuable. I think another, like, they're two wildly separate components, though. Like, I do find that I don't love zone exits as much as I did when I first started tracking it, because I think it's much more circumstance-oriented, like if there's space, take it. And there's very few defensemen in today's game that can, like, routinely absorb a forechecker and, like, make them miss and make a creative play to get out of the zone. Yeah. It's very rudimentary otherwise.

It certainly ties into offensive results, but for me, like, defending the blue line and defending against zone injuries is one of my favorite metrics to look at, actually. Because I think it tells you, like, I was looking at, I was putting it up, putting all the data together for the playoffs. And certainly there's something to be said about, like, finding data that kind of refutes your preexisting ideas because it makes you think about either what you got wrong

or what the data is telling you. But in this case, it's like, oh, yeah, that player has good defensive results and is generally thought of pretty highly. And they're also really good at defending against zone entries. It's cool to see kind of why those two things are tied together. Yeah.

And as I mentioned with zone exits, I think it's important to be able to link those with the entries. So it's a player that exits, a team that's exiting the defensive zone with control, you know, you'll notice this if you watch 100 games or even fewer. You notice if you watch it 10 games. If you carry the puck out or pass the puck out,

your team is getting the next entry almost all the time. And that basically eats up 30, 40 seconds of the other team. If you're able to exit the zone against another team's top line, you've basically done your job. I think one of the issues, and I think that you've kind of highlighted this and just kind of the different skill sets for defensemen, So you could ask 32 NHL coaches, or however many of there are right now.

Yeah. It might be less than 32. Yeah, I think there is. Yeah. I don't think the sharks have a coach at the moment. Yeah. So you'd get 32 different answers for what a defenseman is there to do. And I think it's easy for us sitting on the outside saying, oh, well, a defenseman's job is just like any of the other players.

You want to maximize the chance of scoring and minimize the chance of allowing a goal against. But there are certain times and game situations where preventing a goal against is much more important than scoring a goal for. So it becomes more about not just entry defending, but also in zone defending and less about bringing the puck out with control and just sometimes just whipping it glass and out is okay. If you're defending a two-goal lead with five minutes to go, you're just kind of hanging on. you know rather than take that risk of carrying the puck up the middle it's it's good to get it out i'm not saying that you do that when you're trailing yeah um as we often see but yeah and one of the things uh that i think makes cala macar so valuable and one of the reasons he won the consumite trophy is he's not just elite at moving the puck he's so elite at defending in transition at top speed

poke checking, following those offensive players. And so you might not even see that in the zone entry numbers against. But you'll certainly see it if you're watching four zone entries and notice what's happening immediately after in the two to three seconds. Well, see, I think tying the coaching part of the equation into this is important. I fundamentally disagree with the approach. for a lot of these situations, though, is what I guess I'm getting at. Yeah.

Like, yes, there are certain situations where I understand it's better to play conservatively because we're basically just trying to kill clock. Yeah. But for the most part, how many of the potential upcoming problems could be totally erased if you had just proactively pinched a bit more and tried to kind of cut off Like, if you're a defensive defenseman, right, and you're in the offensive zone during a shift. Yeah. Just sagging back and then allowing the other team to carry it in against you with speed because you want to pack the middle and sort of not give them a clear path towards your goalie.

Yeah. You're already shooting yourself in the foot because if you had stepped up in the offensive zone 15 seconds prior, they might have never even gone there. You're already negating your own strength essentially. Yeah. Because you're not forcing the, you're not forcing the attacker to make a play around you. No. and that happens so much in the NHL. Yeah, I agree.

And it's just frustrating. Yeah. And it's obviously, the other team is also trying to win, so it's not like, yeah, it's hard, but I don't know,

I find the strategy sometimes to be lacking in that regard. And I wonder, a lot of these players are physically capable of playing that way. And if their coaches empowered and enable them to do so, I think we'd probably get different,

different strategies and different results. Yeah, there's, you know, I, I, you know, I'm just wondering how much I can say about this, but yeah, different. No one listens to the show, so that's good.

You're fine. But yeah, like differences in, like, we've seen coaching differences may pay, like, make immediate changes in, in zone exit schemes. Of course. You know, exiting up the middle as opposed to going up the wall. Yeah. I think, you know, we saw, well, even, even certain coaches can change that system as well. Like, I remember when Mike Sullivan first became the coach for the.

They played a very, what's the stuff? Dran's calls at punt and hunt. And they're just like sending the puck in the neutral zone and using their speed to get onto it. And now that most of their guys are not what I would call fast, a little longer in the tooth. They're a lot more, I find they're a lot more methodical in their breakout. And I think they're, despite not winning cups anymore, I think that they're, I think that they're a better team. it feels like they're a more formidable opponent. Well,

tougher to stop. Like, this is why I do believe that, I think there's a lot of coaches in today's game that are interchangeable for the most part in terms of I don't think they're very meaningfully changing their team's results for better or worse. Yeah. None of the ones that listen to this show, though, right? Well, you know, I'll just point out that Jared Bednar and John Cooper both follow me on Twitter

and they had a fair, fair bit of success this season. so I don't know, I'm just putting that out there. I do think that, like, Mike Sullivan, that's a great example, because I remember the year he came in and took over. They had really bad results at the start of the year. And I went back and watched all those games at the time. And it was remarkable how limiting their strategy was. It was basically like every time anything good happened,

it was because Sidney Crosby and Afghani Malkin went as far back in their defensive zone as they could, got the puck, lugged it up the ice, made a couple people miss, and eventually got it for a scoring chance to a teammate. And it's like, those guys are great players. But having that being your barrier to a successful shift is really hard to sustain over the course of a game or a course of a season.

And then Mike Sullivan came in and you're right. He was basically like, all right, we're just going to play really fast by just going and getting the puck as opposed to having our star players to do it the full 200 feet basically. And that changed things dramatically for them as we know. And so I love that kind of strategic component of a coach coming in and recognizing the personnel he has. Because look at the success their defensemen have had in terms of the names they've had and they brought in. We were talking about this recently with Mike Matheson after he got traded for Jeff Petrie.

And he was actually far better in Pittsburgh than I thought he was going to be based on watching him in Florida. And I'm very curious to see what he looks like next year in Montreal because he clearly has the physical skill set. But he was also coming from a place that is like, catered to making defensemen look good by making their like if you think of it as a quarterback they're like or they're like route tree in terms of the things they have to do is so minimal offensively well there's a lot of use as a negative against john merino yeah when he got traded as well because people were like oh he's kind of stagnated like he hasn't really developed offensively the way we thought it's like well most of their defensemen other than letang like have a very

minimal checklist of things they need to do and they wind up being better for it yeah and i think um I think this is a situation where, you know, I don't have the data to show this, but where I've, we're having tracked both players, I prefer Marino to Matheson. I think that he, I think he's just able to do a lot more with the puck when he's under pressure. I feel like he makes a calmer play. You know, these are like, it's, but you're right, it's very difficult because a lot of these are system effects. And I've seen, you know, and a lot of my judgment is clouded by seeing Matheson just wind the puck up and rim it around in Florida for a whole bunch of games.

Yeah, he played differently than that, especially in the playoffs last year when Dumlin went out, he was playing top-erring with LaTang and look quite good in that role. And he's a beautiful skater. Yeah. I do think, like, I like Marino Moore as a player, just because I think that the things that he does defensively are much tougher to find.

And so I thought that was a great get for New Jersey. But, yeah, I certainly think, like, knowing your personnel and then being able to to play a system or a style that gets the most out of them and makes sense for those players is really valuable which is why you can't be so rigorous as a coach because your team might change dramatically if you switch teams or in an offseason

where all of a sudden you have a lot of turnover and so if you're just like all right everyone needs to play a certain way that might work for you one year but if that's all you got it's going to be tough to have sustained success Well, another good example of that would be a defenseman that you've talked up about Cody Cici, who, you know, in Ottawa, I think just the way that they kind of act. Are you taking a Cody Cici victory lap right now?

Well, I wasn't with the O'ILE's last year, so no. That's true. But, you know, Cici and Ottawa, I think just the way that the Sends played where they really activate their left defense, kind of let their right defender hang back. I don't know if that was a system that really worked for CECD's. Cody Cici, who was like too oftentimes stuck kind of defending miniature two on ones and three on twos just based on how aggressive they were on the other side of the ice. Yeah.

So, and I, I think it would be interesting to go back and, uh, and look and see how, like, whether he had any sort of micro statistics that would, that would show that he's, he's a useful player in the right system. And I think that, uh, you know, he's played for three different teams over the last three years. I don't think he's been a bad defenseman in. he won I think and Pittsburgh

scores one of those teams he's gone from being a 45% coursey player basically to being above 50 and top four minutes which is pretty much what you can you know what you can ask for especially someone who's who kind of came with that really low

of a reputation well and he was excellent for Edmonton yeah especially in the post season like legitimately good yeah he's he's still has no puck skills. He did score a big goal in game seven against the Kings,

which I think might have wound up being the serious clinching goal. But I think I wonder how much of it is because I used to make fun of it quite a bit in in Ottawa, certainly. And he's had some famous moments where he had the puck on his stick and did comical stuff. He had one famous moment. It was a good one, though. It was one of my favorite unintentionally comedic moments in the NHL. Yeah, that was leading up to Casperi Capitin's overtime winner.

It was, yeah. Who can forget the moment like that? But here's the thing. I think because of where he was drafted and because of what he was thought of at the time, he was totally miscast. Yeah. Because really he is like whatever today's version of a pure defensive defenseman is. And he's good at it.

But if you draft him really high and you have these expectations coming out of junior of what he's going to be, And then he just doesn't have the capability to do any of that stuff. I think that's where like the perception kind of fell off. And it was self-inflicted. Like he didn't play well in Ottawa, regardless of what you think about the circumstances or whatnot. And he's done an awesome job since. So yeah.

And I think also two things that I think you and I would agree with. One, your opinions should be changing on players based on new information presenting itself. Too often I see that we make up our mind on a player. And regardless of what happens, it could be a take that's outdated for three or four years, but we just stick with it. One might say new information has come to light. Yes. Two, I think it's okay to admit when we don't know stuff. And I think we'd be much better off for it if that was a more commonly held take.

Oftentimes, like, someone asked me about a player and they're like, what do you think about this guy? And I'm like, this is going to be very unsatisfying for you, but I don't know. Yeah. Because they've played seven games in the NHL and they've been like being called up and down from the HL. And I don't watch them down there. And so I could, I guess, pull up their natural statric page and tell you about how they perform in those like a games. But that might not be representative of the player they're going to be. And so the person is probably thinking like, man, like you're a paid hockey journalist.

then that's your take on this guy? Like I expected you to know more. And it's like, well, there's so many players in the game. You cannot know everything about everyone. Yeah. You know, you need to avoid kind of that day job at the take factory from time to time. So I think, you know, I don't really know why I watch the NHL entry draft. Oh, I know is I did have the one take that if you have the first overall pick,

you should draft the guy that has been kind of earmarked as. the first overall pick for a couple years. Other than that, I didn't, like, I don't really have, I don't really have any reason to. Does I not go against new information presenting itself? Not that that doesn't necessarily apply in this case. I'm just saying purely as a thought. No, no, no, no, fair enough. But, yeah, you know, beyond that, I didn't really have, like, I don't know, I don't really

know what, what your ice Slifkovsky brings to the table. I don't really know what, what Simon Nemek or Logan Cooley or Cutter-Gote, you know, people that I follow and generally trust on prospects seem to like what Columbus did. And so I think a lot of my opinions being made of that. But these guys are wrong as much as I am or even more so. And I'm right, not a lot. Very different. Well, yeah.

Well, I would say like, you know, right relatives of the rest of the field. You can't be right on something where everyone agrees. Yeah. But you can, you can. once once you go rogue and you make and you have a take that that's kind of contrary to the rest of the field then that's when that's when I really start to pay attention to the results of that and in those situations I think information does change you know well I was wrong but based on what I knew at the time yeah yeah or when I'm right it's well of course I was like you know this is what we knew at the time

that's what we know going forward. Yeah. Like, you know, is Matthew Kachuk going to score three and a half points per 60 next season? Probably not. Is that going to change people's perception of him in Calgary or wherever he's playing? Probably. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. But, you know, but, yeah, I think it's very like, we've touched on it. This is kind of a simple game. You have,

it's fast moving, but you have six players moving the puck one way. and six players moving the puck the other way. Some of them are better than the others, and it's very simple. Okay. Now, I got to cut you off there. Okay. So you said six players,

which implies that you think the goalie should also be moving the puck up the ice. Yeah. Well, yeah. This is also something we've talked about. Is this going to be, are we going to start a 55 minute long discussion on goalies? I don't have 55 minutes worth of content about goalies.

I might have 55 seconds. Because tying into what we just said about, acknowledging when you don't know. Yeah. I will plead that for a lot of goalies. Something I do feel very strongly about is goalie. But is the value of goalies playing the puck especially with the purpose of trying to be the guy who exits the zone and play hero ball, Mike Smith style, is wildly overrated. And the risk-vers reward of breaking a forecheck three times as opposed to giving it away to one of those guys and it being an empty netter for them.

is so skewed towards the risk aspect of it, that it just, it's not worth it. Yeah, well, I would, yeah. So, you know, we talked earlier about defense, a good trait in a defenseman is knowing who the best players are. Yeah, set the puck up to your best, to a skater, someone that holds a stick the right way. Someone who's paid to handle the puck and move it up the ice.

Yeah, I think I agree with that for sure. I think that there are certainly defensemen that are better at setting the table. And there are some, times when it's good to send the puck down the ice. I know as Andre Vasselowski loves doing that when Tampa Bay is on the power play. Puck gets cleared. Penalilies are changing and just kind of out of the corner of the screen. The broadcast is cut away to watching someone who that just blocked a shot go off the ice. And all of a sudden it cuts back to the center ice camera because Vaselowski's come out. Yeah. And I think he picks his spots really well. I don't think that

Mike Smith did or does. Does Mike Smith have a contract these days? has one more year left but I believe he will not be playing next season so I you know what I'm not closing the door on his playing group yeah because it would be very mike smith if he came back but I think we can both agree that that there would be the game would be far more entertaining if you remove the trapezoid because you want to encourage goalies to play the puck because it leads to more scoring not for not for the defending team like you're right in that uh you know the the risk or ward of of a of a 30-foot pass as opposed to a two-foot pass where you're just setting the table for someone, it might get you another chance to shoot the puck in to the either team's zone.

Yeah. But it's probably not doing more than that. Yeah, but boy, it looks cool when it's completed. It really doesn't. It looks like a normal pass. True. No, that one breakout pass he had against the sharks, I believe, in the regular season when he set up a breakaway for the OT-1 error was cool.

Okay, but that's overtime. That's barely hot. That's true. That is true. All right. We're done about 45 minutes or so here. Do we have any other stuff that we should talk about here as we wind down? This is the first of many shows we're going to do together. So we don't have to cover every topic. Well, I haven't. Well, yeah, I haven't signed an extension here. We'll also watch to see what the viewership numbers are. Viewership. Yeah. I don't think anyone's watching this right now. Well, listenership might be decent. Viewership is same as our listenership from 10 years ago. Recognized employees with Custom Ink. Show customer appreciation with Custom Ink. Outfit your teams with

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Oh yeah, well my other thing that I tracked is supposed to use some shot assists, yes. Yeah. Also another thing I'm very stingy on because I don't I don't count D to D passes that wind up in weak point shots as a shot assist because I don't think that should have been a shot. If the shot went in, would you credit the player with an assist? No. You know what? I think we need to eradicate it. I think the sport would be significantly better off if the fencemen were not allowed to shoot. So I don't count that. But I do think it is incredibly valuable. And also I think it's very, you know, making that comment about what is an assist or not, I think generally the assist leaders correlate pretty well with who the best playmakers were that season. But it is still weird to me that you get credit for it, but only if the guy you pass do actually scores. Otherwise, it wasn't a good pass.

Yeah. So I treat a setup pass the same way that basketball scorers would treat an assistant basketball where it needs to be kind of direct leading to an opportunity that the attacking team wouldn't otherwise get. Or just really increases the value of the play. So, you know, even something as simple as a simple as you. the two on O right down near the goal line, moving that puck across the crease is going to up your odds of scoring by, I don't know.

X percent. It's by, yeah, at least like double or triple. Right. And that's different than, of course, the D-to-D pass where all you're doing is just kind of blasting it away or you get it to a guy in a bad spot and the defending team quickly corners you and you just kind of let one go. that happens quite often in the game, much to my chagrin. It's annoying. And yeah, I agree. I think that you know, we talked about, we talked about how defensemen, it's important to try and to measure

their contributions through micro statistics or to have a better understanding of what they can do because the stats that we have for forwards are generally pretty good. Goals and assists. They, you know, they were invented 100 years ago now. Yeah. They line up pretty well. with which players are doing things properly in the attacking zone, which players have the puck on their stick, which players are contributing to offense. And even though I know the second assist has gone out of fashion, but I think, you know, even if it doesn't directly lead to a shot, that second assist is very frequently an entry or a good zone exit. Or some play in the neutral zone or the offensive zone where you're getting away from some defender.

Sometimes it isn't, but generally the proximity to good plays is a good thing. Yeah. And I think it would be interesting if we were able to track tertiary assists or even go beyond that. Well, you and I were big St. Louis blues guys this past season. Yeah. They were 26th in shot at 10 break. Yeah. Shot at times per 60, all situations.

Yeah. they were 18th in shots on goal. Is this what website? I'm just using natural statuary. Okay. I just, I like, I like to credit the source.

26 and, yeah, all right, all right, relax. Yeah. Wow. Cool brag.

Let's get 26 and shot attempts, 18th in shots on goal, 15th in expected goals. Yeah. Third in actual goals. Yeah. And that was not by accident. Now,

they might play the same way and not score the third most goals next season. Mm-hmm. But, they were doing pretty much exactly off offensively. I have a lot of issues with their defensive personnel. Offensively, their game plan was when we, this is why we're broadcasting professionals, tying it all back to our earlier discussion

about planning out what you want to accomplish. You can't tell me that's not a thing because I watched the same Louis plays play hockey in the offensive zone this season. And they were very clearly going into it with a plan of, all right, we're going to try to get the puck to two or three areas. Yeah. And we're not going to take bad shots just for the sake of the crowd yelling to shoot. And so we're going to do it.

Don't shoot unless you can see 70% of the net. They had awesome results. Yeah. And they had fantastic personnel. Like their forward group was remarkable. Yeah. But I would love to teams to watch that and be like, oh, that's something we can do. Because I do think that's an approach thing as much as if it is a talent thing.

Yeah. And that's, you know, that's one of the, that's one of the drawbacks of public expected goals figures. Is you, there's no way to, there's no way that we can properly quantify those paths, like those passes without actually physically tracking them. And it really does increase the chances of scoring. We know this. We've seen the research from Stephen Valacette. talking about

you know talking about passes that go across the ice and then there's even more of that where it's passes that that make the goalie look from behind the goal line to front of the goal line so those behind the net plays you know we're in Vancouver

so that Cadeen slap pass tip those are very good shot those are tough to read as a goalie not only tough to read as a goalie but also it's difficult for the defend for the defenders to close in and take away the space.

If a pass happens really quickly and the attacker's able to get a shot away immediately, there's more chance that the shooter is going to have space to actually aim the shot. Well, I also think I would imagine, I haven't looked at this, it would probably lead to a higher rate of repons as well, just because, like, yeah, it feels like seeing those plays, the goalie rarely ever, even when they do stop it, like cleanly corrals the puck. It usually feels like they're, like, kind of wildly scrambling to try and just get in front of it. and then they like knock it down,

but it's still loose around the crease for a rebound. Yeah. And I think rebounds are also very important offensively. So yeah. And yeah. And I think it is, I just want to reiterate the importance of not like looking at every shot as being necessarily against the goalie,

but it's also against the defenders. You want, you need, you know, you need to have that space. You need to have that time in the attacking zone. You need to be able to, aim the shot. And so the goalie, yeah, it's interesting how we look at expected goals as being like,

basing that on, on goalie success and not necessarily defensive team success. Right. So, you know, we look at a, like, you look at a team like Carolina, where are they in expected goals to gain? Well, we, yeah, this is, this is a big

pedo cast topic this season. Thank you for listening. Yeah, they were, they were like middle of the pack especially at five-on-five avoid like their penalty kill was was yeah so historically great that it actually dragged it made their expected goals all situations better but their five-on-five defensive metrics were we're not nearly um lining up closely enough with our perception of how good they are defensively or like what you'd watch them give up yeah and so yeah i think there's something in play with that as well like our yeah our ability to measure defensive play is pretty poor.

But I do think, you know, we talk about how the best, like, a great defensive play is one that never allowed an offensive play to even happen in the first place. But that kind of goes both ways, too, because I think the team like the Blues, so if you're game planning against them, you know that, all right, well, they're going to be, like, very relentlessly trying to pass across the scene and, and, and trying to make these plays happen, that has to, as a goalie or as an opposing defense, seep into your mind when you're playing them.

And that probably also makes any original shots they do take better because you're almost like you're bracing yourself for the next pass. You're not actually committing yourself as fully to the shot as you might up against another team. Now, if you're just treating it as a robot, maybe you're playing these games and you're not actually thinking that way and you're just defending it straight up the way you otherwise would. And maybe that's why they were so good events.

because teams weren't recalibrating properly for them, so who knows? Yeah. Well, you know, we talk about our teams able to plan out what they do. Are the Blues doing that specifically against a different opponent? They specifically do something against the wild that they didn't do against the avalanche. I think they tried to do that against the Avalanche. They just weren't. It's harder to do.

It didn't have the fuck as much as much. Although, yeah, I mean, they gave them a pretty good test. Yeah, they were in that series. And they gave, like, they, it definitely was a much better test. I think of them previously. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, I'm not going to ask you to plug some stuff, although I'll let you plug your Twitter account, I guess, because you're back giving takes on. I've logged on. On the Twitter spirit. How do you get the blue check mark? I feel like I should have a blue check mark. All my friends.

You know what? I think if you keep sending out good takes, I think the blue check mark will come, but don't worry about it. Where can people follow you? Cam, Sharon, Yv, Yv, R. I like it. My old handle, Cam Chiron, was taken.

What about Sham Chiron? Sham Chiron was actually never affiliated with me. That was never something I did. Well, I was calling you that. What about the artist formerly known as Camcheron? I bet a bit, a bit, it doesn't really roll off a tongue in terms of Twitter handle. I think you also get a 15 character max when you're coming up with the handle. But if you just Google, yeah.

If you just Google me. If you Google me, find me on the Google. my Twitter page will pop up. I have decent takes from time to time. What I try to do is generally, I really only wait in if I'm kind of disagreeing with the prevailing wisdom. And I think I have something to add to the discussion.

You're going to quickly learn that you should save your thoughtful takes for Twitter or for the podcast. And then just don't, Don't tweet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, once I log back on, they tell me to log off again.

All right, man. Well, this was a blast. I'm glad we got to do this. It was eight years in the making and we're going to certainly have you back on. I can see. I'm looking forward to, yeah, once the season starts back up in the fall, we'll have a lot of fun plans. And we've been workshopping some stuff that I think people will be excited about. Yeah, I think it's a, yeah, it's easier to talk about these things when you're actually like looking at a, you know, watching a game or having something to reference.

that's fresh in people's minds. Yeah. I think we were... Well, we were gonna do a Stanley Cup final. Yeah. Recap. Yeah. But then it just didn't come together.

Yeah. I don't know. I got busy or you got busy. Yeah. That's a side summertime. I mean, that's why hockey should not be being played in it. Oh, yeah. That's the other thing I want to plug, by the way.

If you're in the Vancouver area, you know, you can come out to Sunrise Park and watch the East Van Baseball League. We're currently preparing my team, the Little Mountain Blasters. for preparing for a game against the sunrise cosmos. That game will have taken place about that. Okay, wow. Yeah, this is a great, great, great spot for us to end the podcast. Cam, this is a blast.

We'll chat soon. Yeah. All right, that is going to be it for today's episode of the Hockeypedo cast, and that is also going to mark the official end of the 2021, 2021, 2022 season here on this feed. So the plan is to take August off to try and enjoy the summer a little bit, get out on the sun, recharge the batteries, and get ready for, for another fun season of shows. So we'll be back in September with the usual preview content

to help get you ready for next season. So before I do sign out here, I just quickly wanted to thank everyone for listening to the show this year, for supporting it for all the positive feedback and for everyone that keeps coming along for the ride with us. Without you doing so, it would basically be just me incoherently rambling about hockey to myself. and that seems significantly less appealing.

So thank you for helping, you know, enable this show and empower it and allow it to keep functioning the way it has. I think this was the sixth NHL season that we've been doing this show for. You know, we just passed 450 episodes total. It's kind of surreal to think about, you know, how long it's been running, how many shows we've done, just how much time we've spent here cumulatively talking about hockey and the fact that so many of you keep listening and keep supporting us just means the world to me, and I'm forever grateful.

So thank you for all that you do and for continuing to do so. If you want to help us out, you can definitely go keep rating and reviewing the show if you haven't done so, wherever you listen to it. A ton of you have done so already, and it's really cool always seeing the feedback on there, seeing some of the inside jokes that you share in the reviews. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for listening to us. We will be back in a couple weeks. So enjoy the rest of your summer. And with that all being said, we're going to roll the outro music here and we'll all chat soon. Eocast with Dim Philipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at

SoundCloud.com slash hockey PDEOCast. I'm