The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 70: The Short List of Stanley Cup Contenders

Episode Date: March 18, 2016

Jonathan Willis joins the show to help cut down the list of teams we can realistically consider to be Stanley Cup contenders this postseason. Here’s a rundown of the topics covered: 2:56 The Fringe Teams 7:20 The Blues are stuck in no man's land 11:30 Henrik Lundqvist raises New York's baseline 15:00 The Penguins without Evgeni Malkin 22:00 The streak the Ducks are on 28:10 The Lightning flying under the radar 31:40 The wide range of outcomes for the Stars 38:10 The best Capitals team in the Ovechkin Era 41:20 The Blackhawks and the Kings *Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, and can also be streamed from our website. Make sure to not only subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new shows as they’re released, but also take a minute to leave a glowing review. *This episode is brought to you by Freshbooks, an online accounting service designed to save time and help avoid all of the stresses that come with running a small business. They’re currently offering a free 30-day trial to listeners of our show at Freshbooks.com/PDOcast (just remember to enter “Hockey PDOcast” in the ‘How You Heard About Us’ section). *Also sponsoring today’s show is SeatGeek, which is making it easier than ever before to buy and sell sports and concert tickets. They’re giving our listeners a $20 rebate off of their first purchase. All you have to do is download the free SeatGeek app and enter the promo code PDO to get started. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. 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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You can try your hand out of it today with a free 30-day trial that's being offered to all of our listeners. Just go to FreshBooks.com slash PDOCast and make sure you enter PDRCast and how you heard about us box to get started. Also sponsoring today's show is Seekekek. Seek takes all the grunt work out of buying and selling tickets to sporting events and concerts by pulling all the tickets listed on various different websites and alerting you of the best deals available. It can come in particularly handy with the NHL playoffs just around the corner because now is pretty much as good of a time as any to see if you can get into the building for a reasonable

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So I went back and listened to the show we did. I guess it was about a month ago now. And it really is an uncanny comparison. I don't know if you've ever heard it before from any of your other radio hits you've done. No, I've never heard that comparison. Yeah, no, it's uncanny. Now you got to go back and listen to some Keith Law interviews because it sounds just like you. It's hilarious.

Yeah, I guess I will. Okay, so we've got just, I think about exactly. month of the season left now. And there's obviously going to be some jostling for position and the abs in the wild. They're still continuing their battle for the final wildcars spot out west. And the flyers are making a run here late and that could make things interesting over there. But for the most part, we've seen nearly 70 games worth of data now for pretty much every team. And I think that barring some sort of unforeseen event or a catastrophic injury, which we'll get to later, which you've already sort of seen, that kind of threw us for a loop. I think we, for the

most part know who's legitimately good and who isn't. So I thought it'd be a fun exercise if we brought you in here and we sort of just broke down the teams we consider legitimate contenders for the Stanley Cup moving forward. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so the first grouping that I have is sort of the quote unquote fringe teams. And these are teams that I think that if everything fell into place, like they could conceivably make a long run just because they are really competitive and they do have, they each have their own strong suits they can fall back on. But at the end of the day, I just look at the landscape as a whole, and I can't really see them winning more than a series, maybe two.

And the teams that I had in this group were the Blues, the Predators, and the Rangers. What do you think about that? I do wonder a bit about the... Well, the thing with the Rangers is if you have Hendrik Lundquist, excuse me, sorry. And sometimes that's all you need to go on a long playoff run. The Blues, I think, are a team that's probably entering the playoffs overrated.

You look at their goal differential. You look at, they're not a team that, and they're in a very competitive division. They're not a team that I like for a long run. Nashville, I wonder about a little bit, because Nashville's been a very good possession team all year. And for most of the season, Pec-or-in-A has not given them good goal-tending. And it seems like when he's given them good goaltending, they've won. and he's done that for a little while now. So they're a team I'd be,

they're kind of my dark horse pick, like of all the teams that nobody thinks is going to have a shot at it. They're the team that in the back of my mind I go, well, maybe. But yeah, you're probably right, that they're not a serious contender, but I've got a bit of a soft spot for Nashville. Well, I like the Prides a lot. I mean, their skaters,

their skater group makes a lot more sense now that they brought your hands in, right? It's obviously the actual direct, effect of Johansson being a top of the top flight goal score is one thing, but it's sort of allowed everything else to fall into place where, like Mike Fisher, for example, gets to move down to the third line instead, and then Mike Ribeiro's second line, and Philip Foresburg maybe has a little bit less kind of defensive pressure on him where the other team is constantly keying in on him, and that's allowed him to go off in the past few weeks here. And I like that group a lot. And indeed, they haven't really missed Seth Jones at all. Like, I wonder how many teams in the league there

that can, even though he wasn't necessarily logging a huge amount of minutes, there aren't very many teams that can probably take a guy that is playing sort of in their top four and doing well at it and just remove him from the equation and not really miss a beat. But I guess that kind of speaks to the immense depth they have there and just how good guys like Echholm and Ellis have been. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking was we're really going to see, well, hopefully we'll see Ryan Ellis start to get the credit he deserves.

Because when you talk about Nashville's defense, a lot of times in recent years, it's been Yose, Weber, and Jones, and Ryan Ellis has been a very good defenseman for them. He's a legitimate second-paring guy and a good second-paring guy. So it's nice to see him sort of stepping out from the shadows, even though his play had always warranted that kind of attention. Yep. And as you mentioned, the goaltending is a little bit of a concern. I mean, Rene is hovering around 9-10 right now, I believe, for the year. And he was a lot better in February after receiving a lot of ridicule for kind of getting that favorable all-star nomination because it was in his hometown. But if I'm a Preds fan, I'm still just a little bit worried because his play has been so

uneven. And I guess in theory, every team can be a little bit worried about their goaltending because it's what? It's a four to seven game sample that could potentially do you in or win the series for you. So it could really go either way. So I guess if you're going to have one issue, that's probably not the worst one in the world to have. Well, I always wonder a little bit of about goaltending and, you know, we always want to lean on sort of the longer sample size rather than the hot hand approach. And Renee's longer sample size is actually pretty good. I know he's had a bunch of down years mostly because of injury. But I mean, he's a career 918, save percentage goalie. He was a 923 guy last year and he's trending upwards now. So I do agree to concern just

because his year has been so bad, but it, because of the way he's turned his game around in the last month and a half, I feel a lot more comfortable about Nashville's chances than I did in say middle January. Yeah, that's fair. Well, I like it. I mean, that central division is insane. And let's move on to the Blues because I feel bad for them, right? Like, I understand they're sort of easy to make fun of because they just can't seem to get out of their own way come to postseason. And they've been in this weird spot for a few years now where they're really good in the regular season and then come playoffs, they just run into a complete powerhouse that blows them out of the water.

And it's not the worst position in the world to be in because, like, they still have a good team and they're at least giving themselves a chance to be in this discussion. But at the same time, I mean, you look at the Chicago's and the Dallas's and then obviously the two teams in the Pacific Division. And I just wonder if they could actually run that gauntlet where they could beat two, three of those teams. And it seems really unlikely at this point. It does.

I guess the one thing I'd say about St. Louis is their five-on-five shooting, percentage this year is is pretty low like i look at their goal differential that's sort of my go my go to my go to stat when i i don't have time to really dig into the numbers but it's i think it's a little misleading in the blues case because um they don't have a history of being a low shooting percentage club and they're i think like bottom they're certainly bottom third in the league maybe even a little bit lower than that uh and and the other thing about st louis is because of the way things have worked out they have a chance of winning the center division. And if they win the central division, things get a lot easier. Like if you play

Minnesota or Colorado in the first round and then you let Dallas and Chicago kill one of each other off, suddenly the playoff road doesn't look so tough. I'm just making devil's advocate arguments now because I don't substantially disagree with your point. I think they're in a very tough position. But you could see things come together for them, but it won't be easy. I mean, they've done an admirable job this year. They've been so snake-bidden with injuries, right? Alex Steen going out for this long. He's obviously a huge blow for them because he's just one of those underrated guys that does every single thing well in the game for them. And they've injuries with Alan and Ellie kind of alternating going on the IR.

Jayden Schwartz. Yeah, of course. And Petrangelo obviously missed a couple weeks. And I wonder how differently their year would look if they were healthy only from this perspective. I think they were a stealth candidate because they are a pretty shrewdly run organization and they realize that they can't really. they have an internal budget. They can't just be throwing money around. I wonder if they would have potentially,

I mean, they were rumored to trade away a guy like Kevin Shaddenkirk a year early, sort of like we saw with Yandel, where they could recoup a lot of value. And maybe they would have been more likely to move with David Backus, who's an impending free agent this summer. But instead, they were sort of forced to just sit on their hands and wait to see how things play out. And that's a tough spot to be in for me,

because as we just said, it's pretty unlikely they're actually going to make a long, run. And then this summer, they face a lot of interesting questions with guys like Bacchus and Brower coming up. And obviously, Shadinkar ex now just a year away from free agency and they probably won't have enough money to retain him. So I'm kind of curious to see if another first round exit here really kind of forces their hand into making some significant changes in summer. Yeah, they're in a very interesting position as a franchise. And I think with an early first round exit, though, you definitely see some of the possible changes.

the summer accelerated. And of course, I think Ken Hitchcock would be in real trouble. The one thing that's really interesting to me about St. Louis is the way their blue line is structured, because they've got such a, like, that top three on the right side is fantastic. You've got Prettranelo, you've got Chatton Kirk, and then Colton Perecoe has been tremendous this year. But I don't have the same confidence in the left side where, you know, Jay Beaumester, Carl Gunnerson, these are not bad players, but the talent falls off dramatically on the port side. So you kind of end up with three defense pairings that can do things for you because each of them has a really good player on it. But I don't know if they have sort of that one top pairing that, you know, a team like Chicago has.

Yeah, no, that's totally fair. Okay, let's do the one final team I had in this fringe group and then we'll move on and that's the Rangers. And as you mentioned, when you have Henrik Lunkwist, it's the ultimate equalizer back there because he just makes, he drags their baseline up so much where there's just like a certain level of competency they need to hit to actually be competitive just because he's going to do the rest for them. And we've seen that. I mean, what, they made the conference final in three of the past four years. And so they've built up some goodwill with us in terms of being patient with them and giving him the benefit of their doubt. But I have a tough time reconciling their performance this season where it's been incredibly uneven. I mean, you just look at that statistical resume for them as a team, and they're right next to the Oilers in terms of possession.

And there's a 63 goal swing there. You were mentioning goal differential at 5-1-5, and how does that happen? Well, they're first in the league in shooting percentage and first in the league and save percentage. And it's amazing what that sort of efficiency will do for you in terms of making you look better than you are. But I don't know, like, what do you make of the year they have? Because I love L.A. and Vino as a coach. I think that he gets a bad rap for maybe being too conservative at times. and obviously he had sort of a weird falling out of Vancouver,

but all his teams really do is win, and he seems to have a good grasp of a more progressive approach to coaching. At the same time, he seems to love guys like Tanner Glass, and you see like a J.T. Miller who has all the potential in the world, and he plays really well, and then he has three or four games where he doesn't do anything, and then all of a sudden he's on the fourth line with Dominic Moore and Tanner Glass, and I'm just like wondering, it seems like everything, the writing on the wall this year,

hasn't been very positive for them, but as you mentioned, the language factor might just really kind of change everything. Yeah, I agree with all the concerns you've raised. I do find Vino's penchant for employing people like Tanner Glass, really interesting. Interesting is the guy. Well, but he's the guy who always seems to have room for one or two big wingers on his defensive specialty line. I think some of it there's probably real, like, if you have them taking defensive zone faceoffs all the time,

you probably want a hard charging winger who can, you know, just rush the defense after that one faceoff. Like if you lose the face off, have somebody who can get out to the point in a hurry and put a lot of pressure on him. And I think that's kind of where he has employed those guys over the years. But yeah, Tanner Glass is not a guy he won't getting minutes over J.T. Miller in any situation. and you can kind of out-fox yourself there. My problem with them is their defense again. Yandel's been a good addition, but they're kind of reversed St. Louis,

and they've got all their strength on the left side, and Dan Gerardy's really fallen off the last few years. Dan Boyle's still playing pretty critical minutes for them. I mean, Henrik Lenkis can do a lot, but if their shooting percentage falls off, and at some point in one of their series that they play, it probably will. You wonder how they get past it. Yeah, well, it's such a shame too, right? Because imagine this guy, imagine the light we'd be

viewing the Rangers in if you could just swap Dan Girardi for Anton Straulman in this lineup, right? Like, that would alleviate so many of their concerns if you could just play like 20 to 22 minutes and give them another effective puck moving option from the back end and not just be such a liability where he's pretty much just a complete anchor to everything Ryan McDonough is doing. It would be, it would be so massive and that tradeoff is a realistic one because they basically chose Gerardi over Strzrollment. Yeah, that's a, if you're talking about historical what ifs the last few years, that's a big one for me.

Yeah. It's huge. Okay. So the big question here is do we put the penguins in this tier with the blues, the predators, and the Rangers? Because initially when I was kind of formulating this list, I had him in the next bucket with the ducks and the lightning as kind of upstar teams that have been playing really, really well lately.

But the Malkin injury just throws such a monkey wrench in this because now so much of the attention can go to Sidney Crosby and they don't really have that second guy to kind of spread the wealth around. Like a good defensive team is just going to send all of their ammunition Crosby's way and it's going to be really tough for the penguins to generate offense I feel like in a seven-game series. Yeah, I think that's a definite concern. to me with Pittsburgh, I just, like Trevor Daly is playing second pair of minutes.

This is what blows my mind. I look at the roster and the forwards are undeniably talented. They've done a lot of good things since the changing behind the bench. But I can't get past the idea that, you know, they're going to lean on Trevor Daly and Justin Schultz and Ian Cole. Like, once you get past that first pairing, what is there there? I wonder if you can handle a seven-game series against a team like Washington or Tampa Bay or whoever and win with that defense setup. And with Malkin-out, they don't really have the ability to outscore problems the way they did.

I mean, Nick Benino I do have time for, but the drop-off there is hard to understate. Yeah, no, it is. I mean, they definitely play a faster brand of hockey kind of team-wide, and they have been playing a lot better under Mike Johnson, but I agree it's tough to sort of look at their roster and stack it up against some of the other elite Eastern Conference teams and say they're going to be able to hang unless either Mark Andre Fleury plays out of his mind or Sidney Crosby just has a performance for the ages. You mentioned Justin Schultz and I know you being an Edmonton guy, you're very familiar with his work. The artist known as Justin Schultz.

I guess what do you think about him as a player because he seems to be divisive and I think when I say divisive, I mean, I don't really think there's any people left to think that he's that guy that he was considered to potentially be a few years ago where he was the top prospect and everyone was trying to bring him into their system. And he had a really good first year splitting between the AHL and the NHL during the lockout. What do you think about him moving forward? Like, do you think he makes for a reasonable, because he's obviously not going to be brought back at his current qualifying offer figure. Do you think he makes for a reasonable kind of low risk third pairing sheltered defensemen moving forward? Yeah, I think so. He's a guy I have time for is like a number four through six defenseman.

Number four is probably pretty ambitious, but I could see a situation where he played his way up to that. The funny thing about Schultz is he's had a bad offensive year, but his possession numbers have sort of trended upward with time. People look back at that first season, and he was tremendous in the American Hockey League, no question. When he got to the NHL, he played about 10 good games and then just completely imploded,

and he's been a problem since. And part of the problem is that he's been a number one defenseman in Edmonton when he's really a third-pair guy. But, I mean, how many flawed players can survive in a third pairing in the NHL, especially if they're right-shooting defensemen, especially if they do bring some offense to the table? He's a guy I have time for.

The guy who pops to mind as sort of a point of comparison is John Moore signing in New Jersey. as he last summer. Like, I can see a multi-year deal in, like, the $1.5 million range for a team that wanted to take a chance on him. Yeah, well, it's amazing what bumping the expectations down, like what John Moore got somewhere in the one point something range for a few years. And obviously, if Schultz is kind of playing at that figure, all of a sudden, the

way of you view him is completely different. I was speaking with someone that works in the league recently. And an interesting weight of UM came up where, let's say as a thought exercise, we strip away his name, the expectations, all that stuff. stuff from him and just look at his resume in a vacuum. And wouldn't people like you and I be sort of peddling him as a player that can contribute if he used the right way and he's been unfairly miscast and kind of been held down by the way this league operates?

Like it's funny how, like, he could be sort of a T.J. Brennan type. It's just that he had all this built-up, built-up expectations. So we've all kind of knocked him down a peg as a result. Yeah, I think, well, and I've tried, the problem you run into with Schultz the last few years is the perception among the people who are running the Edmonton Oilers versus the reality of his play. And so a lot of the pushback has just been in response to, you know, Craig McTavish calling him a Norris Trophy potential defenseman or, you know, saying he could be P.K. Suban. Like when you have the people in hockey operations saying that and then you have

the coach playing him 22 minutes a night, you're going to get pushback. I think I'd sign him this summer, absolutely. Like, if you need a, call him Cory Potter, call him Philip Larson, call him whoever you want. He's a, he's a good bet, actually, he's a better bet than some of those guys. He's a good bet on the third pair, and at the right price point, I never have a problem with him. I could definitely see the devil's bringing him in. I mean, they already have, like, Moore in Schlemko, right? And they have other guys like Green and Larson, but it seems like a very devil's thing to do. Although they've got like a zillion, uh, zillion. decent defenseman.

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To start the free 30-day trial they're offering to everyone listening to the show, all you've got to do is go to freshbooks.com slash PDOCast and remember to enter PDOCast in the how you heard about a section. That's freshbooks.com slash PDOCast. Okay, let's move on to the second grouping I have. And this is in no particular order in terms of how I think these teams kind of stack up in a hierarchy. But I think that let's just go with the ducks first because they've seen.

seen their stock skyrocket more than I think any other team in the league in the past, what, two months now. I mean, I was looking at their first 10 games and they won one of them and they were averaging a goal a game and they got shut out five times, which seems insane to me. And instead of kind of overreacting and firing Bruce Boudreau and completely changing the way they approached the game, they took a more kind of, they took a step back, let things even out. Actually, credit to Boudreau and his staff, they obviously made a more conservative effort. to adopt more of an LA King style game because they realized that they were just in shooting percentage purgatory and they weren't going to score enough goals. So they really kind of tightened their game up

defensively. And I like what they've done a lot. Obviously, they've been the hottest team in the league. I'm wondering, would we have liked to see them do something a little bit more at the deadline? Because they brought in guys like Peary and McGinn and they shipped out Patrick Maroon and they were all sort of kind of tinkering on the margins. But they had a few chips there with their young defensemen. both at the NHL level and in the AHL and a guy like Frederick Anderson who's an impending RFA they have a lot of decisions to make this summer

would you have like to see them potentially kind of make more of an all-in move to really try and put them over the top or do you think that they're good enough that might not even really matter? Sort of both. I don't... We'll see what happens once Peary gets healthy

and returns to the lineup. I don't know that Jamie McGinn is a better player for them than Patrick Maroon would have been. I know Maroon was having a time. year, but I don't know if that's an upgrade or not. And that's with due respect to me. Again, they're just both pretty decent, complementary, you know, middle six wingers. I wrote a piece about Anaheim at the start of February, and I was just looking at their score adjusted Fenwick rating. In October, they ranked 27th in the league, 46.5%. November, it was third

in the league at 54.5%. And then in December and January, they were over 57%, which was first in the league even ahead of LA. So they're a team that does all the things these days. They've kind of reversed themselves from the team that had the high shooting percentage and middling possession numbers and you couldn't count them out, but they weren't a team you liked from an analytics perspective to a point now where they are an analytics darling in a lot of different ways. To me, they're a legitimate contender. Kessler has had more in the tank this year than I thought he was going to after a couple of fairly disappointing seasons. Moving Perry and gets laughed to different lines, I think, has been a smart decision.

It's diversified their offense. It's made matchup problems for the coaches, and it's allowed those guys to build up complementary players. David Perron's been a fantastic fit there, and their defense, their defense is really good. I like everything about the team, really. And, of course, you know, the fact that they're big and tough gets talked up a lot, but this is just a very good team, even taking away the size element. Yeah.

The 180 they've done as a team, as you mentioned, it makes for a really compelling story, right? Because just a few years ago, they nearly beat the LA Kings. And I feel like everyone in sort of the community of, I don't want to even say, to analyze, people that were just kind of looking at the numbers were saying that the Kings are a way better team.

They're going to wipe the floor with the ducks. And I remember the ducks went up early in that series, and they had the 3-2 lead, I remember being like, oh my God, this is going to be really bad for our case if the Ducks win this series, because we've been all just kind of parroting that the Kings are a substantially better team. And the Kings finally won out. And then now, flash forward a couple years. And they really seem to be sort of trying to out L.A. Kings the Kings.

Like, they're playing a very similar brand of hockey. And their resumes look very, very similar, especially in the second half of the season. And I don't know. The thing that I like about them is we saw it last night. We're recording this on a Tuesday. I think it's an air on a Thursday. But we saw this on Monday night when they just absolutely steamroll the devils. And they sort of played that style of hockey where they can kind of play downhill in a hurry,

where once they get going, they can really kind of pour it on and just make you wish that you were, if you're the other team, make you wish that you were in any other building other than the one you're currently in having to play against them. And I don't know, playing against them in a series would seem like a pretty scary proposition because of that. Yeah, and they're one of those teams that really makes you wonder about, well, they make you wonder about a lot of things, but to me, they make me wonder about shot quality because Bruce Brudrow's had some interesting comments in the past. I can't remember exactly what he said, but, I mean, this Anaheim won the division three years in a row. Two years ago, they came really close to beating the Kings. Last year, they came really close to beating the Blackhawks. I know Chicago had injury issues, but even so.

And this year, you know, the shooting percentage fell off the face to the earth in the first month of the year. And, you know, all the chickens sort of came home to roost. And I think that to me, I think you can win with shooting percentage. But the problem is that at some point it's going to abandon you. And then you're in real trouble. And you can do things to encourage shooting percentage, but it's still going to abandon you at some point. So this transition, I think, is a healthy thing for them. And the thing that it really speaks to me is Bruce Boudreau's versatility and quality as a coach.

This is a guy who has never been known for being able to coach a defensive style of game. And Anaheim went Uber defensive for a little bit before sort of building up to where they are now. And I think Bob Murray deserves, and the ownership too, frankly, because a lot of times ownership seems to meddle in these things. They deserve a ton of credit for saying, no, we've got a good coach. We're going to stick with them and see where it goes. Yeah, no, for sure. All right, the other team I have in this bucket in similar vein,

and I think I like the ducks more than them, but they've also been building up here as the year has gone going, and it's the lightning. And it feels like they've flown a little bit under the radar because of all the Stamco's Drew and Drama taking up most of the headlines. But in the meantime, they've really seen. stabilize their play after an uneven start to the year, and they've been playing

significantly better, and I think Tyler Johnson coming back healthy and reuniting that triplets line and having them just terrorized people is huge for them, because that's obviously when their teams as a whole is at its best. And Stamco's hasn't really looked like the dominant scoring force

that we'd become accustomed to seeing, but it might not matter because this team does have a lot of depth, and their blue line isn't particularly great, but in the playoffs, maybe they can and mask a lot of those concerns by just playing headman and straw men, 25, 26 minutes in each of those games

and kind of cutting down the exposure to other guys. And I don't know, what do you think about their chances come playoffs? Well, I like Anaheim better than Tampa Bay too. But I certainly prefer Tampa Bay's potential road to the Stanley Cup finals over Anaheim. Like, it's going to be a lot easier to come out of the Atlantic

than out of either. if you are an NHL team, you want to be in the Atlantic Division this year. That is the place to be. They've got, at their best, they have three scoring lines. We've seen them sort of shrink down to two scoring lines in the playoffs last year at times. I actually don't mind their defense, but to me, guys like Garrison and Coburn are reasonable second unit guys. And if you've got Strullman and Headman on the top pair, you can get a away with a lot. But it's interesting to me. John Cooper doesn't seem to like to load up his

top defense pairing and just, you know, play the life out of them. He seems to stretch to seven defensemen and, you know, everybody's playing in like 20 minutes. I actually think Victor Hedman might have had a compelling Norris trophy case this year if he was playing 25 minutes a night. But he's he's nowhere near what other top defensemen play. They went to the Stanley Cup final. last year, they seem to have kind of got back to that level of play. They're not a team you can count out. Yeah. Okay.

So I think the interesting question for them spinning it forward is, is there a certain way the rest of this season can play out, particularly in the playoffs, that either dramatically increases or decreases the chance of Stamco's comes back this summer? Or do you think that's already been decided and the strings really just being played out here and it won't really matter? Oh, yeah. You kind of get that, I kind of get that impression when I read media reports. I don't have, you know, any real firsthand knowledge of the Stamco situation beyond what's been reported,

but it really does sort of feel like that's done. Tampa Bay is, I feel bad for Tampa Bay, honestly, because they've had so much off-ice drama the last few years. You had San Luis, you have Druand, you have Stamcoast, and it, they seem like a really smart, well-run organization, but they keep having these issues where players don't want to stay there. Yeah, I wonder if, uh, you know, Maybe we shouldn't feel that bad for them because maybe they're doing something to cause that. I don't know. It seems like that's a common denominator.

You leave Bernie San Luis off the Olympic team, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, no, that's true. Okay. Let's move on to the third pairing. And I think that a third grouping, I should say, and I have one team in this tier. And it's just because they could really conceivably fit into any of these teams we mentioned. And I would listen to that argument.

That's Dallas Stars. They're just the wild card. And in every sense of the word. and I don't know, does any team have a wider range of possible outcomes? Like, when they get going, there is fun a team to watch and they can score as well as anyone. But then I watch a game, like this past weekend, they were playing the blues, and they dominate the blues, and they're out shooting them, and they're playing really well at home. And Antonymi just lets in a couple soft goals, and they wind up losing in overtime.

And I wouldn't trust their ability to keep enough pucks out of their own. net to actually wind up going really far in the playoffs. But they have such an overwhelming level of talent up front and they can reach such a high level as a team that I guess anything is really possible with him. So you're saying that Chris Russell on the top defense pairing has not alleviated your defensive concerns about Dallas? It hasn't. No, it definitely hasn't.

Although it does sound like John Klingerberg will be back at some point, which is huge, of course. Obviously, if he's out. And Jason Demers. Yes, yeah, that's true. Yeah, they're a team that right now, their blue line is so beat up. It's hard to get a fair read on what they're going to be like in the first round. But I completely agree because they have a forward core that, honestly, it's second to none in the league in terms of top end talent and depth.

The combination, very few teams can compete. I don't know if there's a team that's better. But the defense concerns me. and I mean even healthy the defense is a by committee operation and prone to being exposed by teams that have high-end offense and the goal tending is extremely concerning. Niamy was an odd move last summer and he has not, I mean, it's funny, I can see a situation where Dallas wins the Stanley Cup. I can see a situation where they're swept in the furthest round. Yeah, there's that why. If the goaltending implodes.

Yeah, exactly. And I know people, some people might find this right to believe. because they seem to think that I hate their team all the time, and everyone kind of gets that. But I don't have any horse in this race. I just want to see the stars put together a string of wins come playoffs and go far, just because, A, obviously entertaining hockey, and it will be just fun to watch,

but kind of tangentially, I think it's good for the league because there's this sort of stigma where, come playoff time, you need to play a certain way, you need to play defensively, physically, to get by. And I wonder if the stars show sort of a blueprint here for winning the way they're playing, whether more teams might be likely to adopt it. Now, of course, not everyone's going to have the luxury of having a Jamie Ben and Tyler

Sagan to play with up front. But there's a few things that a lot of teams could definitely glean from their game to make the overall NHL product more fun. I will say that, yeah. Sorry, I was just interjecting. I don't think it happens. I mean, I think Dallas could win four cups in a row, and it wouldn't happen. And I say that because Chicago has been the best team in the NHL over the last five, ten years.

And they have their top three defensemen, or geez, was it, three of their top four defensemen were under six foot to 200 pounds. But you still hear you need size on the back end. Their forwards are not particularly big. They're one of the smallest teams in the league. And you tell people this and people say, well, Jonathan Taves and Patrick, or Cain are special and that changes things. And it'll be the same thing if Dallas wins. They'll say, well, Jamie Ben's a big guy and him and Sagan are special.

You can't compare them to other teams. So it's one of those things where I think the entrenched mentality is too strong. And the other thing is the power plays go away in the postseason. People get away with a lot more physical aggression. So people assume you have to play a grinding physical style to win. And scoring goes down in large, I mean, I know it goes down anyway, but in large part because power plays go away. and I think you're going to have a lot of, until that changes,

I think it's going to be hard to overcome the sort of entrenched thinking that if you don't look like the LA Kings, you can't win. Yeah, no, you make fair points. I'm going to, I'm going to choose to be optimistic here and hope that we'll be the change as a community, but no, you make, you make fair points. I think that the thing with the stars, I mean, we mentioned the goaltending. I think they're ranked 26 right now at, like, right around a 900, say, percentage. And it's crazy to me, considering they're spending more.

money on the position than any other team. And I kind of went back and as a thought exercise, looked at the track record of the conference finalists since 2005 to see what kind of play they had in that. And there's only five teams since then that have had a worse, say, percentage. The 0506 Oilers, which I'm sure you're familiar with, the 2010-2011 Lightning, and both those teams share the common feature that they acquired Dwayne Rollis in mid-season. And while he wasn't great by any means he was a significant improvement about what they were trotting out earlier. Yeah. Those are,

in Dallas, you're basically hoping that one of your established guys turns it around. I think to me the best way to explain Dallas this season is just to look at the even strength save percentage. They're right behind Montreal in an even strength save percentage. And Montreal has imploded entirely. Dallas, you know,

is in could win their division. Yeah. Well, teams on our list was the 08-09 Red Wings who had Chris Osgood and he had like an 880s percentage or something like that and the team was just so good in front of them that the other opposition really never just had the puck so it ultimately didn't matter but I guess that might be their blueprint I don't think this team is as good as that Red Wings team but it sort of speaks to that they might just be able to outscore their problems um let's so let's move on

on the final grouping here and I think there's three teams that go into this class and they're not necessarily the same based on kind of the track record they have and the out they have in the postseason, but they sort of have a relative level of they've just had the same year in the sense that they've been winning a lot of games and they haven't had that much turmoil. And I think the first team that goes in that group is the Capitals who have just run away with the Metro Division and the East as a whole. And I think the question I have for you to start this off is, is this the best Capitals team that they've put together from top to bottom since Ovechkin came into town? I think so. I mean, the emergence this year,

of Evgeny Kuznetsov has, and combined with a bunch of stuff they did over the summer, like there isn't a flaw with this team. Sorry, excuse me. Yeah, the only thing, I look at Washington and I don't see any serious concerns at any level. I might like to see just a touch more scoring from their fourth line, but we're really quibbling there. The only thing that bothers me about Washington is the way. Braden-Holt, his play has fallen off the last few months. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it has for sure. I think that I'm not that worried about it. I think that he's a really good goalie, and I think that ultimately he'll turn around. But it's definitely kind of concerning that he was running away with the Besna for a while there, and then all of a sudden how he's really come back down to the pack. The other question I had for you is, and maybe you answered this sort of with your take on how the stars winning wouldn't

really change, wouldn't change a fundamental thought process for people. Do you think that if the capital has won the cup this year and Ovechkin wins the Kahn's mit, do you think that people would finally stop with this whole xenophobic thing about how he, you know, he's lazy and he's enigmatic because he's Russian? Or do you think that they'd kind of keep up with that, but they just sort of shift it to being like, well, Barry Trots should actually get the most of the credit here because he really changed the way Ovechkin's playing his game? I do think he'd get a lot of Barry Trots fixed Alex Ovechkin's storylines. I do think it would change perceptions of Ovechkin, because the guy who kind of comes to mind,

and not that they're the same player, but is Brett Hall. And there used to be a thing you couldn't win with Brett Hall, and then Brett Hall won in Dallas, and, oh, hey, Brett Hall's a great player. I mean, he was always a great player, but it did change perceptions to him, I think. And I think the same would be true of Ovechkin. The one problem, I think, with Ovechkin in recent years is he is, I mean, he's so good it so many things, but his real bread and butter is as a pure goal scorer and as a, particularly on the power play. And, you know, if you're relying on that as a key piece of your offense,

it's hard to win in a series where you don't get calls. So that, oh, excuse me again, sorry, I just got a bit of a bug here. That's one of those things that has been hard to overcome in years passed and because his scoring tends to drop off in the playoffs, you know, probably due to no fault of his own, he gets unfairly slagged with this label. And he just draws the same sort of, it's a little bit like Joe Thornton in San Jose, where the leading cast member becomes the personification of the playoff failures of a franchise. So I think a cup win would actually substantially alter the perception of Ovecgen. Yeah. And through final teams of the Blackhawks and the Kings, of course, and I guess the question here is

I think we both agree that the Kings and Ducks are destined for a second round matchup where they're just going to beat the crap out of each other. Is it an inevitability that the Western Conference final is going to roll around and it's going to be the Blackhawks just sitting there waiting for whoever comes out of that series and then we'll see another grueling six or seven game series

between them and that team? I don't think it's a given. It's certainly possible. Chicago did something really essential at the trade deadline, which was shore up their depth forwards, because, I mean, it's sort of the dirty little secret in the league that Chicago's depth has not been good at all this year. They're actually below, I mean, forget about,

not that their advanced stats are particularly flattering at five-on-five, but they're actually below 50% goal differential. They get outscored five-on-five this season. and we sort of just miss it because Kane's having such a good year and the team's doing so well overall and Corey Crawford's having such a good year. But this is a team that has been heavily reliant on special teams. You never want to write them off because they have such good, such history and they have, excuse me, they've really done a lot to shore up their weaknesses, but they are a team that I think could be vulnerable

and might be a little bit overrated entering the postseason. Again, I say that with tremendous respect for what the team has accomplished. But at 5-on-5 this year, they have not been a particularly good hockey team. And unless that changes, they're not going to go anywhere. Yeah, no, I mean, you mentioned the trades. And at the time of them, I believe Jonathan Taze was playing with Richard Panic and Andrew Shaw, which was remarkable to me because that would be like an average third line, I think. So the fact that they were able to get Taves some legitimate,

wing help definitely is huge for them. But no, I agree. I think that Keynes made a lot of their issues go away in terms of scoring. And Corey Crawford's been remarkable this year. He's quietly been just pretty much since the start of the year in that top five discussion for the Vesna with the Holpies and the Mrazics and the Lundquist. And it's tough, right? You're trying to find that balance where I've seen them turn it up in the playoffs and be incredibly successful for so many years now that I'm really kind of cautious of just writing them off, but they do look very vulnerable. And at some point, not to say that, you know, they're going to completely fall apart and we're not going to see this incarnation of the team ever make it deep in the playoffs again.

But just like that time when they lost in the first round there are Arizona Coyotes and they lost in the first round through Vancouver Canucks, like sometimes this stuff is a little bit cyclical and you can't just keep making the Western Conference final in the final every single season. I guess it's very possible that a team like the Blues or the Stars could be primed for a second round upset against them this year, maybe even a first round depending on how that central division plays out. Yeah, that's pretty much encapsulates my feelings exactly. They're a team that you really respect, and you've seen them win the Stanley Cup with four defensemen, period.

It's impossible to write off what they've done. But at the same time, they are a team to me that, It wouldn't shock me to see them lose in the first or second round. I'd be surprised, but it wouldn't shock me just because they have been vulnerable five on five. Yeah, that's true. Okay, and the Kings, I guess this is the main question. Who are you picking in a series right now between them and the ducks? Let me just find a coin here for me to flip.

It's definitely going seven games, right? Yeah, it's the thing about the Kings that drives me baddie is who they like to play with Drew down. but other than that, you can't sleep on the Kings. The Kings do play a playoff style game, and a lot of people say that with reference to their size and physical play, and that's true. But when I say it, I mean it more. They are a dominant five-on-five puck possession team,

and they will out-chute you and eventually they generally win because of it. They don't rely on shooting percentage. They rely on just dominating the play. and so they sort of excel at those grinding two-one hockey games that too often seem to sort of dominate the postseason. The ducks and the kings are really a coin toss to me. I mean, I'd have to really dig into it. And then even then I'd probably tell you, well, this team's 53% chance of winning and this team's 47. Like, it's really close.

Yeah. No, there's going to be seven to one or three-two games where there's like 75 shots on goal combined. and a lot of physicality, a lot of, no, it's going to be great. There's a ton of talent there, of course. Obviously, the size is going to get a lot of attention, as you mentioned, in some circles, but there's an immense amount of talent on both those teams, and it'd be remarkable to watch them kind of grind it out for seven games. Jonathan, people can follow you on Twitter at Jonathan Willis,

and look for your writing at pretty much, I guess, every single platform on the internet. that's too kind yeah but at jonathan willis is the place and i tweet out links to pretty much all my articles there excellent all right man we'll make sure to get you back on as we get closer to the playoffs absolutely thanks again the hockey pdo cast with dmitri philipovic follow on twitter at dim philipovic and on soundcloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast