The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 80: A Two-Man Advantage

Episode Date: April 20, 2016

Arik Parnass joins the show to discuss how the importance of special teams execution has carried over from the regular season to the playoffs. We discuss how the disparity in power play efficiency has broken up the series for the Capitals, the changes the Lightning have made without Steven Stamkos, and a quick fix solution for the Islanders. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 0:30 Philadelphia's march to the penalty box 4:00 Introducing ZEFR Rate 11:30 Going 6-on-4 late in games 13:45 Lightning powerplay Changes 17:45 What makes the Sharks power play tick 19:45 Fixing the Islanders 25:30 The importance of special teams Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher 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. 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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Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Demetri Filipovich. And joining me as a regular guest on this podcast, It's Eric Parnas. Eric, what's going on, man? Not much, man. Pretty pumped about the playoffs going on finally. Yeah, they've been exciting.

I mean, I was planning on having you back on anyways to kind of discuss a few things, but it worked out perfectly for us with yesterday's spectacle in Philly. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, it's funny because when I started doing this project, people sort of asked me, you know, are you worried at all that power plays seem to be becoming less prominent and special teams might be less of a factor? and I was kind of like, I don't really think that's a problem, but I think if there was any question last night,

kind of put that to rest in terms of special teams having an impact on a playoff series. Yes, yes, definitely. And, I mean, I wrote about this yesterday, but there's no real merit to the notion that, you know, people talk about it all the time. Like all referees put their whistles away in the playoffs and let the players settle it themselves. And, I mean, they might be more lenient and more willing to let stuff go,

but at the same time, it's quite possible that players are aware of that and are kind of trying to push their luck so the refs have to overcompensate the other way. And whatever the case is, penalty rates actually slightly go up in the playoffs compared to the regular season. So I think you're going to be pretty good there. Yeah, it's weird because that was sort of an impression that I had had. And I think basically everyone else had that there were less penalties in the playoffs. It just seemed to be kind of conventional wisdom. And yet it seems to be wrong. And I'd say, I mean, this year, I don't know whether, you know, there was a mandate from above that, you know, we got to cut it out a bit with putting away the whistles, if that even did exist.

But it seems like definitely this year there's been an influx of penalty calls, whether that's because referees are just calling it more as they see it or more physical play or whatever the case may be. Well, okay, so Capitals Flyers has basically been just ground zero for the work you've been doing. It's shown how important these special teams actually can be because I think that through three games for the most part, the Flyers have actually kind of held their own at 5-1-5. I mean, I was looking at it, and even when you adjust for score, acknowledging the flyers have been kind of playing from behind, and score effects might be a factor.

They've controlled like 54 or 55 percent of the shot attempts at 5 on 5, and they've been admittedly outscored 4-1 during that time, and Braden Holbees had a lot to do that, and that'll happen in a playoff series. But the big issue for them has been on the power play where they've given the capital 17 power plays so far, and the capitals have converted on eight of them, and that'll do it when the fact – and it doesn't help that, of course, on the other way, the capital. Capitals have given them some power plays themselves, but they just haven't been able to convert any of them. Yeah, and it's, you know, we talk about these last 25 or whatever recent game, stats and models that are out there. And we talk about it a lot of even strength. But, I mean, I was looking at power play and penalty killing numbers, the last sort of 25, 30 games for these two teams. And it actually looked like the flyers had had more recent success. Now, you know, I still think it was pretty obvious that the Capp's power play was a better unit and, you know, say what you will about the penalty kill.

but it's remarkable how quickly that's turned in the series, and it hasn't even been close where, you know, I figured special teams might be, have an impact in the series for sure, but I didn't think it would be a blowout like it has. Yes, it definitely has, and especially it was highlighted with four of those power play goals in the third period of last night's game.

And I don't know, just as a side note, I know sometimes people have a little bit of issue with kind of running up the score, but I have no problem with what Trots did there. Like, if you're the flyers and you're going to act like a goon squad and insist on playing recklessly and giving them those opportunities, opportunities than I'm all for kind of sticking it back in their face and embarrassing them on the scoreboard. Yeah, and as somebody, you know, I preach a lot about how coaches should spend more time practicing

their power plays and, you know, there's no better way to practice your power play. I might as well give them a few more reps. You don't want your scrubs out there. Give them some more time to get their reps in. So I think this Capitol's power play unit is a good pivot point for us in discussing the presentation you gave recently during the analytics conference here in Vancouver where I think it was pretty, it was interesting stuff just because we typically, as you know, don't have that much to work with when it comes to assessing power plays. It's, we have scoring efficiency per 60 minutes and we have shot generation. All that's fine, but it still feels like a few years from now, we're going to look back at this era and just be like, I can't believe we were putting so much

stock in, in such kind of simple, trivial things. And you've taken it a step further here with your Zephyr rate. And, I don't know, I'll just get to just open the floor here for you and explain to people who haven't necessarily read your article or watched the presentation you gave yet. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, as you said, I think at even strength, people tend to fall even, or even at even strength, that you say, people tend to fall into the trap of looking at coursey numbers or something. And we know that coursey numbers, let's say, are, you know, 60% predictive or 40%

predictive or whatever it is in saying, you know, this team is good because of that, which, you know, you're going to be right a lot of the time. And that's fair enough. You know, at power play, the work that I've done is, at least in recent years, that number has been more like 10%. So you could say, you know, this team has good shot numbers. This team has good goal numbers the first half of the season. But, you know, most of the time you really don't actually know. And the better way to get a good look at is to kind of actually look at their powerplay and use your eyes, you know, as, you know, cringe-worthy of that statement may be and sort of

see, what are the things that the team does well? Do it look like they're just kind of, you know, pounding pucks in there and getting some tips? Or are they actually, you know, doing things that look like they would be sustainable, which is sort of how I've looked at it a lot of the time. And this metric that I came up with sort of came from a lot of work both conceptually and statistically on sort of some of the objectives out there on the power play. And a lot of it just comes from looking at other sports and thinking about what makes special teams distinct. And what are the key characteristics with special teams?

And it's so different from even strength hockey in so many foundational ways in terms of one team being purely offensive and one team being purely defensive and one team essentially starting with possession and some of those concepts. And it really, in my mind, mimics what we see in football, more than it does what we see tactically and even strength hockey. And so when I look at that, I say, you know, we see a sport in football where everything's so meticulously planned out and rehearsed. And the roles are so so concretely defined that, you know, a coach in football wouldn't walk into a room with his head coach and be like, you know, we should really give Tom Brady some more reps at running back, just to keep the other team honest,

they would get laughed out of the room. And yet you see, you know, teams will have Stephen Samco's, let's say, on one side, and then they'll have him on the other side, and they'll have him at the point. And yet, you know, nobody bats an eyelash, despite the fact that, you know, when you have so much variance, these players aren't going to be as comfortable

because they haven't practiced it as much. They're not going to know exactly what they're supposed to do with the puck. And you're going to end up with guys in unenviable situations, guys in front of the net who shouldn't be in front of the net, guys on the half wall who shouldn't be on the half wall, And I think with more structure comes, you know, more polish and overall a better product. So when I look at this new metric I came up with, it revolves around zone entries, which I think are crucially important and that I don't think are practiced or planned out enough.

And the basic idea is what percentage of the entries that a team gets with a player on the ice are successful. And when I think of successful, I think of getting into formation, since we know that formation, you know, is the time when teams are just, generally at their most dangerous. And then also are they getting dangerous rush chances off? So you take those two factors and you say, you know, if one of those two things is successful off an entry, that's a good thing. That means a successful entry. And if it's not, then it's a failed entry.

And, you know, this metric basically just measures what percentage of the entries with a player on the ice is successful under that definition. Right. And I think last time we discussed this on the podcast, you were mentioning that it was a little counterintuitive that dumping the puck in on the powerplay actually didn't necessarily have significantly worse results than carrying it in, but that didn't account for the fact that you're probably wasting a good however many seconds trying to retrieve the puck in the first place and having those board battles as opposed to potentially kind of setting up the shots and the

looks that you want instead. Yeah, and I have to admit that even this new metric still doesn't account for time in that same way because, I mean, you can have an entry like the cap rolls do, which after two or three seconds because of the way in which they enter the zone, the players are all in the spots they want to be. And then you could have a team that enters the zone. Let's say like the Flyers, they'll do like a drop pass entry to Klo Juru, and he'll weave his way into the zone ahead of his teammates, and now he needs to wait for his teammates to get in position and maintain hold of the puck.

And it might still end up being a pretty successful entry because they do get into position and they get set up where they're most dangerous. But that might take them 10, 15 seconds instead of three or four seconds. and obviously that's a huge difference. But this was a first step in terms of quantifying just off of the entries in particular, what worked and what didn't. Well, I'd highly recommend anyone that watch as a Capitals game coming up here to kind of focus on when they're trying to break into the offensive zone on the power play,

it is amazing. You brought this to my attention. And now that I've kind of been paying attention to myself, I just can't stop thinking about it is how meticulous everything they do is where all the guys are in the correct. lanes and spots they need to eventually be in well before they're even in the offensive zone. And I think that's key because you watch some of these other power play units and it honestly just looks like it's five guys that just got off work from their nine to five jobs and are

meeting up for a quick little wreck game here to pull off from Steve. And none of them really know where they're going or what they're doing and there's no real kind of plan put in place. And it's remarkable considering how much is on the line that teams aren't focusing more on this stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. I think there's, you know, people, people forget yet or at least don't think enough about the fact that on the power play, you're competing against the clock just as much as you're competing against your opponent. And every little efficiency you can take advantage of in terms of how can we save a second or two at every possible outlet.

And I think that teams too often have this attitude of, you know, if we, let's say, have a power play and we get one good chance, that's a successful power play, whether or not we score on it. When in reality, the mindset should be, you know, even a good scoring chance, you're only going to score on 15 or maybe 20% of the time. So, you know, four out of those five times, you're not going to be successful on that power play, even if you do get that chance. So instead, your mindset should be, how can we maximize the number of chances we get in this power play,

which means that obviously it matters a lot whether you score 10 seconds in or a minute and 50 seconds in, because, you know, next time maybe those last 10 seconds won't go quite as well and you won't get that extra chance. So, you know, the importance is to maximize the amount of seconds you have. And part of that is rethinking and thinking highly and closely about everything that goes into a power play, whether it's face off, whether it's entries, and just making sure that everything is planned out to maximize those seconds. Yeah, maximizing the amount of seconds you had. That's a really good segue into something I did want to discuss with you, where it's this idea of whether you should pull your goalie when you have a power play late.

And I think we've seen it a few times in these playoffs where coaches have been real, luckton to do so and have opted for the five on four instead of getting the six guy out there. And I don't know, do you think that you're still better off getting that six guy out there so that you can potentially win more of those loose puck battles and retrieve rebounds? Or do you think it presents possibly a bit too much clutter where it might actually swing the risk reward pendulum the other way? Yeah. So from a statistical standpoint, I mean, there have been a couple of studies out there that have

shown that with a power play, you definitely, you know, are benefited to pull your goalie, you know, the rate of six on four offense is much higher than it is six on five. Conceptually, I think that that comes down to a little bit of how you structure your six on four. I had a post probably a few weeks ago now about what the Flyers do, which I like a lot. And they have sort of one of the most structured six on four systems I've seen where they literally just take their power play formation and they move Jacob Voracek down to the goal line so that he's another one-timer option for Girou literally on the goal mouth when he has the puck, and then they'll insert Mark Stride into the spot where his Voracek was as another

point option for a shot. So they're comfortable with all the same reads because it's literally the same stuff that they would see five on four, except literally just with an extra guy on the goal line who if the other team isn't honest or isn't careful, that guy can have an easy goal. And I think that's the way to do it because, you know, obviously teams have limited practice time and six on five, six on four, it's not stuff you're going to get to practice a lot. And that's justifiably so because it's a pretty rare situation all things considered.

So the more you can familiarize your players that they're used to the type of looks they're going to get. And this applies to, I mean, thinking generally on the power play as well, but you want to put them in situations that they're familiar with and comfortable with and that they've taken reps at. And we know they've taken probably a significant amount of power play reps. So put them in that same formation, have very similar entry schemes, even if it's a little sped up because you want to conserve time even more at the end of a game to try and score that goal.

And then just add a guy in a spot where he's an easy tap in one-timer or in another position, whether it's in the slot, or somewhere where that can be helpful, but he doesn't disrupt the flow of what the players are already used to doing. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, I mean, with the lightning, for example, have you noticed any sort of drastic structural changes or schematic changes to their power play since Stamco's has been out? or have they just kind of move the parts around and kept guys doing what they would have been doing otherwise? Yeah, Tampa's a really interesting case because if anyone looks at the Tampa Power Place standings, the last few years, it hasn't been pretty. Basically since Gie Boucher left, they've struggled a lot in that area.

And I think part of it is kind of an identity crisis because they had a situation where they had Steven St. Amco's as the shooter on the left side, and they had Marty St. Louis as the passer on the right side, both the right-handedness so they were on their off-wings. And it's sort of reminiscent of what you see in Washington with Baxter-Mun-Ovechkin. And it's so easy to just say, this guy's the passer and we run it through this guy and everyone's sort of comfortable with their roles. But as soon as San Luis moved on, Tampa was kind of missing that guy. And they still haven't really found that guy to be the passer.

And that creates problems because you have now a guy like Kuturov, let's say, on the other side, who's, you know, he can kind of do both things in the same way as Avorich. might, but he's probably more of a shooter in that role than a passer. So he's not really going to be threading those one-timers across the Stamcoast. And Tampa's always sort of favored a shot quality over-shot quantity approach on the power play. So when they're not getting those high-quality shots, they're not really getting anything. And that's really caused problems this year. So what's interesting is that when Stamcoast went down or even maybe a little bit before, they sort of changed their mindset a bit to say, listen, this isn't working, which, you know,

I give them credit for any time, you know, coaches can be stubborn. So anytime they change anything that it's not working, you got to give them some credit for that. And they've decided to move to a shot quantity approach, which is really interesting because, you know, the last couple of weeks of the season, I think they're shot quantity numbers on the power play almost doubled from what they were before. And what they did is they recognize, Kay, we don't have Samco's this great shooter on the right, but Kutrov's still a good shooter. Or sorry, on the left, Kutraov still a good shooter on the right. we can now bring in a guy like Jason Garrison, who was a spectacular power play shooter when he was on the Panther, scored a lot of goals.

They bring him in to be the same guy on the other unit, and they have lefties on the point in Nestorov and Hedman, who are more comfortable as lefties feeding one-timers to the right. And then they bring in a guy like Brian Boyle, which is an interesting decision, and it's something, you know, we talked the other day on Twitter about Ryan White as a power play option for the flyers in front of the net, and people will laugh at that and, you know,

justifiably so within our mindset to be like, oh, what's a guy like that doing on the power play? But if we think about it more in terms of strict roles, a guy like Ryan White in front of the net is going to be able to create habit, to create screens, to cash in rebounds. And, you know, that's an important quality, you know, from some of the research I've done, you know,

screenshots or high percentage shots. And so what they've done, they brought in a guy like Boyle, who's a left shot, which helps that as well, put him in front of the net and hammer one-timers with Garrison, with Kutrov and a very similar formation to the capitals. So they still struggle a bit because their entries, a little bit like the flyers, are kind of a mess.

They don't have that same structure and polish as the caps do in that regard. But when they're in formation, they look a little more assured of what they're trying to do and have a little more of an identity than I think they did in the post-S-Louis era, while Stamco's was there, which might help them also in terms of trying to evaluate, you know, if Stamco's isn't coming back, what are we going to do next year? Are we going to be able to score goals on the power play? And maybe this is something they look into more closely going forward. Yeah, the shot generation discussion is interesting because I look at a team like the Sharks, for example,

and obviously they've had great success in scoring goals in the first place. But a part of it, what kind of sets them apart from a lot of other power play units is just how tenacious they are and how frequently they're able to get the shots that they want. And obviously a lot of that has to do with the fact that you put Joe Thornton on the half wall and set them up with a puck in his office. You can make a lot of things happen and some teams don't have that luxury. But I think trying to find that balance between just simply throwing the puck on net and actually getting those good looks is an interesting dynamic.

Absolutely. And we know that going back to the McClellan era, I mean, the sharks have always been a good team along the walls. They're a team that's made due with a dump-and-chaise strategy and gotten good offensive rewards from that. So, you know, whether it's just a dump-in scheme on the power play, they're able to recover pucks and do good things with them. And, you know, the sharks are an interesting team. They're a team that I wish I would have had time to add to my study to track this year because they're a team also that's had a lot of success over a long period of time on the power play, doing things very differently from what something like a team like the Caps or even the Flyers have done.

And that's preaching a little more variability in terms of roles and more movement. And, you know, I think part of it is just the massive talent they have. And that first unit guys like Thornton is the passer. And then Povilski is an incredible shooter. and then they have Marlowe and Couture who can both play sort of a more gritty game but are also massively talented and then a guy like Burns on the point

and they just have the ingredients and they may not fit as perfectly as they do for a team like the Flyers or the Caps but they make it work and they also keep some consistency in terms of they still know that Thorne's going to be the guy who's going to touch the puck most of the time and they know that Pavelski is likely to be the guy

to take the massive shot if it's not Burns and then guys like Marlowe and Couture are more likely going to be those change of pace options or guys to cash in the rebound. So it may be a little more variable and they have a few more looks, but they still know what they're trying to do on the power play, which I think is a big thing. And having talents like that,

I mean, any team with talents like that is going to score a certain amount anyway. And it's a credit to them that they've managed to sustain a system for a number of years that is near the top of the league. Yeah, definitely. All right, let's do a fun little exercise here. We were chatting on Twitter,

trying to figure out what we wanted to discuss. And you brought up the idea of kind of an abstract thought process in terms of building the ideal powerplay unit off a team's roster from scratch. And I don't know, I think that would be kind of an interesting exercise for us to do here. Yeah, definitely. You got a team in mind or how do you want to do that? Well, okay, let's go with a team that doesn't have a good power play right now, right? Because it's easy to be like, okay, yeah, the sharks, I'll just take the five guys they're actually using right now. They're done.

We figured it out. But a team like the Islanders, for example, that you highlighted in your Zephyr piece where it's like they're one of those teams that just doesn't really seem like they have an idea of what they're doing. And it seems odd to me that they're so ineffective just because you'd think a team that has a John Tavares would be able to make it work just by putting four guys around him and being like, okay, let's just run it through him and let's hope that the talent here just kind of wins out. Yeah, so the Islanders are an interesting one, and I'm going to tell you right up front that I think the biggest problem with their power play equation, as it might be, is actually Nick Letty. And I'll tell you why that is in a minute, even though, you know, I love the guy. He's incredibly talented, maybe one of my favorite defenders to watch in the league. But so here's where I would start with this. And I mean, obviously, this is just one way to do it. I mean, part of it is based on stats, but it's also just based on my own philosophy when it comes to building at least an information power play unit. And, you know, in my mind, it starts with, okay, what are some of the unique weapons I have on this team that I want to put in specific roles? And the first person I think of for the Islanders is Andrews Lee, because he's one of the top sort of net-mouth guys.

We've seen it for a number of years now. I'm going to come out with a piece on high-quality chances, which I presented a little bit on in Vancouver, but I'm going to expand a bit more on. And the Islanders, although they struggle getting into formation, when they are in formation, they manage to get a lot of good, quality shots off. And the reason why they register so well in that in that is because Andrews Lee is always in front of the net and he's always tipping and screening shots. And he's just phenomenal at that and using his hands and his skill in front as well. So he's a guy that I would definitely want in that net front role. And he's a left-handed shot. And what that means is that if I want to work this, let's say, a one-three-one,

idealistically, I want him to be on the right side of the net when he's not in front of the net. So he can take a pass, let's say, from the guy on the right and feed it in the slot or whatever it might be. So he has kind of a dual role there. And what that means is that I want my play running from the right side of the ice so that he can be involved in that and he doesn't have to be on his backhand and making awkward passes, kind of like the caps run. So that means that I want the play working from the right. And luckily I have a pretty good guy to be a quarterback there from the right side who happens to be a lefty and that's John Tavares, who obviously one of the best players in the league has a great shot, but he's not a guy who necessarily is the

best one-timer, so it's not really a problem if you have the puck on his stick a lot. So he's the guy I would want there on the right. So far, so good. Then the next consideration you would, you would want to say is, okay, we want the shooting then, that means has to happen from the left side. It means we want a guy, ideally on the left half wall, who's a righty, who's a good one-timer, and ideally also a guy on the point who's a good one-timer, who's a righty, so that those are two immediate options there for both Lee and Tavares when they have the puck to pass it to them, and they can pass it to one another or fire off shots, and Lee can tip them or whatever the case may be.

So my instinct there, and there are a few different options, but my instinct would be to take a guy like Johnny Boychuk, who's a guy who the Islanders haven't really used very much on the powerplay since about the first 10 games when they had him. And I think he scored like four or five power play goals in the first 10 games. They were like, oh, my God, what a power play weapon the Islanders have. And then suddenly it was like, okay, now we don't really know how to use him anymore.

So he's a guy with that contract. I want on my first power play unit with his one-timer. I would put him in the Ovechkin spot. And then I would take, because, as I said, Nick Leady, sorry, is a problem because he's a lefty. You just can't get Anders Lee off your mind, huh? Yeah, no doubt. But Letty's a problem because he's a left shot. And if you want Boychuk is the primary shooter, the problem is, and I've written about this before,

if you have a left shot on the point, if you want a lefty on the point passing to a righty on the left wall for a one-timer, the point man has to open up his hips and basically tell them. the goalie and the defenders what he's going to do before he does it, which means the goalie can square up, the guy who's defending the right on the right can rush out to meet that shot. It's going to be very difficult to get clean one-timers off. So you ideally want a righty there. So I think what I would try and do at this point is put a guy like Ryan Poolock there, even though he's young, he's shown he has some shooting skill, and I'd put a guy like that on the point

of the first unit. And then that leaves you the slot guy, which you can either go to the caps direction, which is you want a righty who's a pure shooter, like a Kyle Ocposo, or you can go like the Hawks direction where they want to make things a little more usable from both sides of the ice, in which case you can go with a lefty,

like a friend's Nielsen. But I think I would probably go with an Ocposo, at least while they have him, because he's such a dynamic shooting threat from in close. And that would probably be how I would build that first unit sort of piece by piece. Yeah, I'm looking at their death chart right now on DailyFaceav.com,

and it has a... listed as Letty and Nielsen as their two point guys. And it seems very bizarre to me, as you mentioned, that they have the weapons like a Boychuk or a Poolock who have big shots and you'd think they'd be able to kind of utilize that on that first power play unit. But instead, they haven't really done what we've been discussing here for the past 25 minutes that you got to look at this stuff in terms of roles and trying to put it together that way as opposed to just putting your five kind of best players out there and hoping they figure it out. Yeah, that's exactly. And I think if you think about powerplay is more as sort of its own thing and less as an extension of even strength hockey.

I think that's a beneficial mindset for coaches and for anybody out there in terms of, you know, I saw people complaining about just an abdilcator being on the power play for Detroit yesterday. And it's like, sure, he's a guy that is going to take a lot of flack from people because of his big contract because he's more of a grinder. He's never going to put up the possession numbers or score at a rate that would justify the contract he has. And I'm not saying I endorse that contract. but you have the guy and he has a particular skill set that probably nobody else on your team has, which is he has that ability to go to the net, to cash in on rebounds, to cause havoc, to screen the goalie, to tip him, to tip the puck. And, you know, you want that on your first unit because, you know, that's a unique skill set that's important,

that people don't necessarily think about because they just think, oh, well, we want guys who are going to get shots off. We want guys who are going to contribute to our shot numbers, to our, you know, who have a particular skill in terms of puck moving. But, you know, on the power play, it's a little different because so much. of the game for that player is just that one job. He doesn't even need to really be involved in the zone entry scheme. You wouldn't want a guy like Andrews Lee or like a Brian Boyle in particular to be involved in your entries or to be involved in your puck movement more than he has to be. But you don't have to have everybody involved in that because it's such a slower moving

thing. You could be more methodical about just having the guys you want to touch the puck, touch the puck in certain situations. Is there another playoff team that you can think of that we haven't really discussed here today that does have that sort of a divide between the weapons they have on their roster and how they're actually utilizing them, do you think? That's a good question. I mean, you know, Tampa's one we touched on a little bit.

For sure, I've had some issues with that. But I think, you know, now that they've sort of resolved some of the stuff we've talked about, I think they've done a better job of it there. I'd say earlier in the season, something that really just popped off the page to me was the fact that the Rangers weren't using Keith Yandel on the first powerpoint. unit, which seemed like a very bizarre choice to me. Yeah, no, the Power Play, the Rangers are a team that has baffled me with some of the stuff they've done on the Power Play.

I think they were sort of a late team to get to the whole idea of the 131 and some of this more recent concepts we've talked about. And I think they've done a little better recently. It's looked a little better in the playoffs when I've watched it. But, yeah, they're definitely not at the forefront of that initiative at all. Yeah, I'll say so. I mean, they're just basically like putting tanner glass out there away from really putting it all together, El Envenio style. Yeah, no doubt.

Eric, man, thanks for coming on the show and chatting. Do you have any stuff you'd like to plug in terms of projects you're working on other than, of course, the high quality chances thing you mentioned? Yeah, so there'll be that. I'm probably going to have something breaking down the Flyers, Woos, a little more. more closely from a video standpoint, especially last game, but in the three games we've seen so far in the series. So that'll hopefully be out before puck drop for game four. So that's something to look at because, you know, there are things that I think the Flyers

probably will change for game four, and if not certainly should, especially on the penalty killing front. And there's some stuff that the capitals have done pretty well on the penalty killing front that I want to highlight. Other than that, yeah, I mean, that high-quality piece will be. be sort of the last piece probably in this this more large scale segment. There's still a few more things that I want to look at smaller, more specific questions about power plays that I'm sure will be out coming up and then we'll see where we go from there. Cool. Well, it was a lot of fun.

I hope you're not taking it the wrong way that I pigeonhole you as just a special teams guy because I know you're a really bright hockey mind and think about more stuff than just that. But at the same time, all this stuff is just kind of important, but yet under you, lies and under-discussed and you become my go-to guy for it. No worries at all. No, I took on this stuff with the idea that it would be something that I focused on really heavily for this season and we'll see where we go afterwards, but for now, you know, no worries there at all.

Well, it's funny because when I, like, I've been tracking the playoff games from a 5-on-5 perspective and I generally watch the games live while they're on television just so I can kind of keep up with the discussion and participate on Twitter. and then afterwards I go back and I kind of more meticulously track the 5-on-5 portion of it. And when a power play comes on, I just kind of fast forward through it because it saves me a bit of time. And it's always good to chat about it with you just because it provides some more context and I guess a bigger picture of view of things. And I think that's the attitude a lot of people have. I mean, whether it's with tracking or with anything else, it's kind of like, oh, you know, this is sort of an intermission from the hockey.

Now we have a power play. Right. Which is fair. And I mean, people sort of, you know, pigeonhol me now. also is sort of the guy who likes power plays more than anything else. And that's not really true. I mean, I would say, you know, especially when it comes to something like, you know, playoff overtime or something, I'd much rather see an end-to-end five-on-five game

than see a game filled with chinty power play calls. But to me, it's more just an area that I think that strategically it's so fascinating. And it's harder to pick up a lot of the stuff five-on-five, because teams are so similar in what they do, and it's so fast that it's hard to see exactly what's happening and so much of it is reactive that there isn't quite as much planning going into it. And I just think that power plays are an area where, you know, we talk about coaches all the time wanting to impose their will on things. You know, they analyze face-offs to death.

And yet when it comes to power plays, I feel like coaches don't, you know, use their influence enough, at least, you know, at least not in the way that I would hope they would. So it's interesting to me to see that and just see what's possible in terms of, you know, I hope to see the capitals, you know, using a few more variations. obviously they haven't had to so far, but I'm sure if they continue on in the playoffs, they're going to find a team that's going to adapt to their power play. And hopefully at that point they have a few things in their back pocket, as I've written about before, that they'll be able to pull out that are things we haven't seen before or have only seen briefly. And that kind of stuff is exciting to me.

And anything that's innovative or new or, you know, different from conventional wisdom is exciting to me. And I think that, you know, there's an opportunity here for more teams to not only adapt to what the capitals are doing on the power play. but do their own new stuff and find the next big thing and find, you know, what is the next one three one that we're going to see or what is the next inefficiency on entries or the next, you know, super useful entry scheme. And, you know, that's kind of cool to look at it and to keep following moving forward. Yeah, it does seem like, I mean, you mentioned that people like myself

view power plays as a little bit of a repriever, a little bit of a break where we can wait to the next segment of five-on-five play, but it feels like we're not the only ones, right? Like, I feel like some of these teams probably view it as, oh, great, this is a just two minutes where we can kind of relax a little bit and not worry about getting scored on instead of trying to squeeze every ounce of value they can out of it. Yeah, that's just it. I think that, you know, teams need to start thinking about, I mean, we talked about how coaches are stubborn. I mean, you have a team like Tampa Bay that's, I think, 29th on the power play in terms of goals for 60 this year. And, you know, that can make the difference. If that team was, I mean, I wrote in the first piece

I wrote from my side, I wrote about a couple of examples the last couple years of teams that if they even just had an average power play, they would have made the playoffs when they missed it. And these are teams that have the skill to do it. And yet they're sort of an afterthought for coaches when in reality, you know, that stuff could make the difference. And it's only sort of simple changes and putting a little more effort into maximizing the seconds as we talked about and also just putting more focus on it in practice and making sure that all the players are on the same page. Yeah. All right. Good stuff, Eric. We'll make sure I have a good feeling that you're probably going to be back on the show sooner rather than later. So let's just

say let's put a pen in this discussion and we'll talk soon. Absolutely. Talk to you soon. The Hockey PDOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.