The Hockey PDOcast - Film Club - Clayton Keller's offensive manipulation

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Jesse Marshall joins Dimitri to dive into the tape on Clayton Keller, and highlight all of the tricks in his game that have led to this kind of offensive explosion this season.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. 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. 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.

2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And joining me is my buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man? Good to be back as always. Great to be back. So we had a two-week little mini hiatus of the PEDAO cast, took a little break, took a trip out to New Zealand, scheduled it conveniently between the trade deadline and the playoffs. I thought that was the right time to do it. But thank you to everyone who reached out in the meantime to check in and make sure everything is okay. Everything's great.

As Jesse can tell here on our Zoom, I got a nice little tan going. I'm feeling recharge, rejuvenated, and ready to get back to it. So here's the regular schedule of programming. And I thought it would be fun as the first show back for us to really kind of like dive deep into it and bring back another film club. We did a Dylan Larkin won before the break. It was well-received. People really liked it.

You just wrote up a big piece on Clayton Keller and we thought that it was going to be good timing to give him the film club treatment as well. So I'll give you the floor here to start talking a bit about Keller. Well, you know, I think it's it's fun, Dmitri, to sit down and try to figure out ways that shooters in the NHL today are fooling goaltenders because that's like the eternal cat and mouse game of hockey, right? It's always been that way. One is adapting to the other and vice versa, you know, on through time.

And I think that, you know, now, especially goalies are really big. they're huge they're super athletic they're better probably than they've ever been and shooters i think have to go deeper into that bag of tricks they have to become poker players almost right um hide their tells you know um try to deceive the goalie do different things that hide their mechanisms right i think personally for me you know clayton keller as of the time of this recording uh 80 points on the year 36 goals high watermark for him when you sit down and you watch the video, it's uncanny to me how well he uses his own discernment and patience in a shooting process, right? I thought when I started to, you know, really dive into the tape of why he's

having such a good season and what's enabled him to produce in that environment in Arizona and be so consistent this year, it's that deception. It's his patience and he'll drag a play out offensively so long. It's almost like he's playing this game of chicken. I think it's a good way. It's a good way to think of it. He's playing chicken with the other goalie, and it's a game of whoever moves first loses. And he'll wait all day.

I posted a clip in my article of a sequence against the Jets where Clayton Keller gets the puck on the far wall, Dimitri, and cuts the whole way across the offensive zone, just dragging that thing all the way down to the near side goal line. He drags Connor Hellebuck, like he's a magnet. This is one of the best goalies in the league, right? drags him along the zone. By the time he scores,

Hellebuck's not even in the net. He's traveled such a long way and he keeps the posture of a guy who's about to shoot the puck the whole time. So if you're a goal, you're thinking it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. You think it's coming so much that by you, before you realize you've moved 10 feet,

the net's empty, right? So it's just this ability to like not do anything. It's just for him. It's in action. But, you know, he, he forces you to make, the first move a ton and he's really accurate with a shot is really all that stuff you would

traditionally say about a good shooter is true for him but he doesn't rely on those things as much as other players do because he's so good at manipulating defensemen and goalies alike in his sort of again in action and waiting for them to be the one to to move first yeah i was in watching the tape on him this morning i was um i was trying to kind of think put a mental list together of the players in the league who are most comfortable holding on to the puck for an extra second or two beyond what we're kind of accustomed to seeing. And Keller is right on that short list with like Caprizov,

Panera and Matt Barzal, right? I guess like, you know, it's more so through the neutral zone, but guys like Nick Eelers and stuff like that. But when he starts cooking in the offensive zone, he's perfectly comfortable going back and forth and cycling around the zone and holding onto it as opposed to some guys that just want to get rid of it. And I went back and reread some of the scouting reports from when he was a top prospect.

And that kind of drove scouts crazy to a degree, right? Because I think it led them to believe that sometimes he was a bit too risky or there was, you know, a fault in his decision making because sometimes he'd get himself into trouble doing so. And I think that reflects how much the game and the landscape has changed in the NHL when when he was a prospect in 2015 or whatever. The game was entirely different. Now shift forward to 2023. and that's how we want our skill players to be playing, especially if they have the talent level, creativity and vision and puck handling skills that Keller does, right?

And so now if a young player was coming into the league with Keller's sort of playing style and stature, that would, I think, just be universally considered to be a net positive. But at that time, it was still kind of unclear on how that would translate to the NHL level and whether it was something that would work for him, you know, playing against Grode Man in the best league in the world.

That's so funny. You say I did not know that. That's hilarious. It's so funny that this thing, it's discern as a knock on a scouting report turns into 36 goals and counting at the NHL level. I get it, right? Like I, you know, I think though for me, if you're looking at junior players or like even younger players, you're like, this is a good trait to have. Like I think the, you know, the mantra, and I heard this a lot because I was terrible at how I'm not terrible at hockey.

You know, I just think you always have more time and space than you think you do, right? That's the challenge for players that aren't as good as Clayton Keller. everything becomes rushed. And against the team, you know, especially if a team's been forechecking you all night, you know, if you're a defenseman or you're, you have someone bearing down on you all night long, and you're having to make really fast decisions with the puck that you're not comfortable with, that takes a toll over time. And you start to get in, you know, this, this motor is like the quickest move is my best move.

That's, you know, don't get me wrong. It's good for shooters to have a fast release. it's good to be able to get the puck off quickly. It's not good if you're doing it and it's going right into the goalie's chest, right? Like the ability to shake people out of their pants and make them move and force them to be uncomfortable is just as an important of a trait. I wanted to throw something else at you too real quick because the patience is one thing, right? But I think like once you scrape that top layer off a little bit, you start to notice the other things that he's doing on top of that. So I think there's a deception in the way he waits, right,

in the way that he'll drag a goalie around like we talked about. But then like when he sells, I would always say he's a really good actor, right? One of the clips I posted, and there's a couple instances of this, it's not just a one-time thing. He fake shots a lot, right? So one-timer opportunity comes his way or, you know, he gets into a position where if he thinks from his perception that the goalie has moved over with him, and that one-timer is not going to work, right?

And goalies are great at side-to-side movement. They're great at tracking pucks. He just won't shoot it. And he'll fake that shot. The goalie will drop, get in their butterfly or whatever position. And then he has all this space around him to shoot. But what struck me, Dimitri, was that the fake shot comes with all of the trappings of a real shot. So if you think of a goalie, like they're tracking these pucks.

They're trying to figure out what's happening. They're processing everything on the ice. That includes what they hear, right? And I'm watching Keller take these fake shots. And he's allowing, like, for instance, his blade to strike the ice surface and make that clap sound. Like you would expect you would hear on a regular shot. Well, if you're a goalie, right, and you're watching this happen, you see this puck come cross ice across the Royal Road, right? One-time opportunity for Keller.

And then you hear that noise. I'm sorry, there's no goalie in the league that's not going down on the ground and getting themselves up, like, to to save that puck, right? That is something that's like Grammy, or not Grammy, Oscar award winning on music, where he's, you know,

he's selling you the whole package. It's not just the fake shot. It's not just, there's a sound that comes with it. And I just, I thought that was so intriguing is you see people fake shot all the time, right? Like,

we see people wind up for, for slap shots that never come. And that's not in and of itself unique. What's unique is to do it in a way that produces all of the other auditory and visual cues that would, make a goalie bite. You know, it's like, you can't go, you know, I think it was like, you know, a good fishing lure and, you know, like that's going to attract the bass. This is, this is it.

Like, this thing makes noise. It looks like a fish. It acts like a fish. That to me is impressive. Like it, there's doing it and then there's adding the context and nuance and these little subtle extra layers that come with it. It has all of the triggers for a goalie to think shot. And then from there, you know, that shot never comes and he's just dragging you around after that. That to me, you know, is another thing that stood out, I think watching this video. I think Del Bell, Darrell Belfrey talks all the time about how once you have the puck on your stick for two seconds or longer, the likelihood of you beating the goalie drops so dramatically, right? Because chances are any effect that you gained from a cross-ice pass or some sort of a pre-shot movement

winds up being nullified, right? The goalie, the opposing defense and kind of gets set, can get their eyes on you, get in position, and all of a sudden, if you're just going one-on-one, chances are goalies, as you mentioned, are so good these days that they're going to stop it. And so you kind of need to incorporate that type of added deception that Keller does to his game. And it is remarkable. He certainly, we're going to talk more about the chemistry, him and Nick Schmaltab and sort of some of the looks they create based off of that chemistry and they're passing. But there's so many instances where he kind of just holds on to the puck, waits out the opposing

goalie, and then beats them cleanly. And that's very rare because I wouldn't necessarily say that he has, you know, an Austin Matthews level shot by any means. But he's consistently beating goalies despite the fact that they're able to sort of get set against him because of that delay and that deception and the fact that they don't really know when the shot's coming from. There's numerous occasions where he takes the puck off the wall and he's kind of cutting into the middle of the ice and he's got his head up and he's looking for a teammate that's cutting into the middle of the ice. and then he'll just fling the puck on net and the goalie almost like doesn't really see it coming and that ability for him to shoot off the move. I'm not sure if you noticed this, but you could probably count on one hand the number of times the opposing goalie was able to cleanly stop a puck and hold it for a draw off of his stick, right? It always seems like it's kind of like awkwardly hitting the goalie or it's being redirected somewhere else or it's never just he shoots it into the middle of the opposing goalie's chest. They stop it, they hold it and it's a draw.

it's always some sort of next action that's coming off of the shots. Yeah. No, so two things you just said that I think are really important. And I want to first agree with you. I didn't see a lot of freeze opportunities. And I saw a lot of instances, Demet, but the goalie, like, you know, you can tell those shots across the league where the goalie reacted afterwards and the only reason it didn't go in because they missed the net, you know, where you could just cleanly see

that late reaction that the goalie never saw that puck until it hit the glass. I saw a lot of that. A lot of goalies like turning around and looking behind them like, what? I think a critical piece of what you just said is head up. That can't be repeated enough for me. In all of the clips I posted, all of the video you look at surrounding Clayton Keller's 36 goals, that's the piece that's ingrained in all of them as he's staring at the goalie in every single or a teammate, right? But no matter what the situation his head is up, that is so, you hear,

people and like, I feel like TV announcers, especially ones that have played, like, love talking about heads up plays more than any person on the face of the planet. And like it's ingrained into like American television broadcasts especially. But it's, it is so freaking important. And like you look at these videos and you see like you're doing several things. One, surveying, right, assessing where you're like, where's your, where's my threat? Where's my open teammate? Two, you're fooling the goalie. The goalie is watching you. And it's the tell of a lot shooters to look down before they fire the puck. Like that's just the way it is.

Like less talented shooters that they're not picking their head up to look. When you're as accurate as he is, you're able to discern and identify placement for where your puck is going, especially when you're making goalies move first and you're dragging them out of position and you're toying with them all over the ice. This is a guy that can pick a corner because 100% has the ability to do that. You can't do that if you're not looking at the net, you know? So it's just to me, like, he constantly has a posture of a guy who's not about to do what he's about to do. That is so important.

It's every step of the way is sort of hidden and belied by his eye contact that he's making. Again, whether that's with a teammate and you're thinking while he's going cross ice, this is 100% going to be a pass and it's in the back of the net. It's a shot. Or he's staring down the goalie, you know, and giving that constant indication of I'm about to shoot. I'm about to shoot. I'm about to shoot. The puck is sort of sitting in a natural shooting position on his blade the whole time. And he's not doing anything with it.

That's all just, you know, you talk about the layers that go beyond just the patience, right? The patience is certainly the most critical trait. But these other things, like the eye contact, the head up, all those different trappings,

you know, that to me, you can't do this stuff and have your head down, Demetri. You just can't, right? It's not going to happen. You know,

it's to me it's it's just the mark of a true skill patience player when you see them approach the ice and the offensive zone in that way where their postures sort of upright and they look like they're about to take action it just that that that is to me the most critical piece of of this whole thing yeah i mean there's like there's no uh repetition in his game almost right like it's like everything is new like he's constantly shooting on the move he always he's sort of like keeping his dribble alive where he can really, um, he can shoot it from any position and from any place in the offensive zone.

Now, I would say that some of those are probably suboptimal shots. Like I feel like at times he could be, um, you know, I think that's maybe where it's part of the decision making concerns come into play where sometimes it's kind of like off balance from a weird angle. Now if it goes in or he catches the goal, he off, off balance himself and it bounces in.

We're celebrating and we're saying like, oh, great piece of trickery there, by Clayton Keller, but most times it doesn't. I'm kind of curious for your take on this because, you know, we've seen his shooting percentage spike, right? It went from like the 9, 10s for a couple years to 11.3 to 15.8 last year to 18.3 this year. his goal scoring has similarly spiked, right? He has 36 goals.

So far, we're just tied for 13th most in the league. He's probably going to crack 40 this year for the first time in his career and set a new career high by a significant margin. I'm curious for your take of if this is just a player that. you know, he's turning 25 now. He's getting into the meat and the prime of his NHL career. He's sort of putting all of those physical skills together. If it's just a matter of that,

or if it's kind of more situationally dependent where he's playing on this team, where there are necessarily too many other playmakers around him. And so he's kind of taking more responsibility on his plate because watching him play, I know he still has a ton of assists, right? He has 44 assists, 33 of them are primary. He's amongst the league leaders in primary assists. So it's not that that's lagging.

But it feels like watching his game, he would ideally, I think, want to be play the role more of a playmaker and look for his teammates. But just because of the situation he's in, maybe he's taken on more of the shooting burden than he otherwise would have. I think his bag has gotten deeper as a technician. And I think it's gotten deeper. One out of the natural progression that a player takes is they get better and accumulate more experience in the NHL. But I do think that there's a necessity element to this. And it's sort of like that grab the game by the scruff of the next. and, you know, pull the team across the line myself mentality that he sort of has.

And it's, and it's, he has to have that, right? Like that's, you know, they need him to score 40 goals, right? 100%. So I think it, for him, it's, you almost want to say he's been more selfish, right? But not in a bad way. Yeah. Not in a way that's been a detriment to his teammates. I think here's, here's the one example I would give you.

If you go back and watch early, early versions like NHL versions of Clayton Keller, One thing he does today that he didn't do that. And this is just like an example of a tangible thing that can make someone shooting and like percentage increase, right? Because there's a lot of variance to that. Don't get me wrong. But there's a reason why some players score 50 goals and some don't. Talent, bag of tricks, technical skills, all this stuff.

His edging is what I want to focus on. So he's always been fast, right? He's always been a really quick. He's always the ability to dart in and out and pick up ahead of steam really quick. And he's a fast player. But what you didn't see him do, before that's and is giving him more opportunities to score goals is coming to the zone 150 miles an hour or than a blazing uh uh amount of speed he's got d backing up right because

anytime you're coming in the zone without amount of speed you're back the defense has to match that they have to keep that we talk about gap control all the time on the show they have to match that so what does he do he flares his ankles out he's coming at you 150 miles now now he flares his ankles out and he hits his edges and now, now he's slowed. Well, what do you do as a D? You got to try to match that. So you got to edge too, but you're going backwards. It's a hell of a lot harder for you to match that speed change. And you're reacting to him. So we talk about patience and the ability. When he comes in that zone so fast, he edges off. He cuts his own speed down, breaks his ankles a little bit. The D back off him and give him room. And as soon as he gets that room to meet you, what does he do?

He cuts inside. He looks to the slot. He goes to that super, super, super. super high percentage area. Like, think about that versus a guy just coming in his own 150 miles an hour, taking a shot from a bad angle at the top of the circle, low percentage, right? If you're a good enough shooter and Clayton Keller is, sometimes that puck's going to go in the head. You're going to score. Sometimes you're going to score. You're going to get a lot more chances and a lot more goals.

If you can manipulate the tempo of the game, you can use your skates in innovative fashions, these are things you only pick up when you get to test NHL defensemen and have them react to you. and your time and your space all change. He's settled in. And now you go from, you know, sort of being the one to do the reacting to being the one to get everybody else to do it to you. And it's just those little things that make a huge difference. And again, you know, shooting percentage is not something players have generally any control over, right? But you can put yourself in situations to raise those expected goal totals up, right?

that's what it's all about is prime scoring chances and he's he's found ways to get more of them and I think that's such a huge part of the equation well yeah and a player that I compare him to quite a bit I mean you know there's certainly different but just you know I mentioned him earlier in terms of players who hold on to the puck for as long as they do a guy like Matt Berzel I'm sure if you talk to Islanders fans they like they've been for years just begging and pleading for him to to be more selfish right to take more of that shooting burden on himself and there is a necessity there because they've needed that goal scoring. And you watch Barzal, when he does shoot, it's a thing of beauty.

He can beat goalies cleanly. But for whatever reason, he just resorts back to being so unselfish, such a playmaker at all times. And it's kind of been to a bit of a detriment. It's kind of stopped him from taking that next level to true superstardom, especially as a goal scorer. And Keller has hit that this year, right? And so I didn't want to frame it as like a negative because I think part of it is

situationally dependent. And certainly when you know, you're 27th in the league or whatever that the coyotes are this year. and that's considered exceeding expectations, it's an entirely different landscape to a team that's, you know, playing low-scoring games, trying to scratch and claw towards a playoff berth. But the fact that he's shown this in his range of outcomes is something that I,

you know, he'd scored a lot of goals prior to coming to the NHL, but we hadn't necessarily seen him hit this level. I know that goal scoring is through the roof across the league, but I didn't necessarily expect Clayton Keller to just be like comfortably a 40 goal score. Look, we have to acknowledge in this too, Dimitri. He's getting some really,

difficult assignments, right? You watch this video. He's not out there doing this to third and second pairing defensemen. Like teams are throwing the kitchen sink at this guy. And, you know, that's what makes this all the more impressive. Let me throw something else at you too.

This is, I guess, more or less like, we got into like the skating piece of it. But you notice at all, like how he'll change his angle on a goalie. And you almost like, you know, I think of like growing up playing video games, you know, like old like CSGO and like first person. You could change which shoulder you were.

were operating off of. And I feel like he does that constantly where a goalie will have him lined up and he'll just open himself up, right? And it's almost like putting yourself in that natural, like, I'm going to toe drag you position where your arms are out. You're like leaning down. It's just, it's interesting to me to watch him. It's like opening and closing a door almost, you know, from a defenseman's perspective, it's really difficult to try to nail somebody down, you know, when their, when their body is, you know, both open and close to you in the same sequence, it's that same, it's the vibe that you get when you look at somebody who has a passing posture versus a shooting posture, right? If I'm going to throw a saucer past

cross-ice, that's a very different look as far as how my hands and my shoulders are dipped than me, like, hoping that I'm going to, like, throw a wrist shot on net. opening and closing the body like that is something else that I think that, you know, as a skill and is a developed thing that, you know, we think about being a selfish player and, you know,

taking the game by the scruff of the neck. These are other elements, I think, to come into a play that make him such a fascinating player to watch. It's almost fun to watch when the puck's on a stick because there's all these different things that are happening. When you watch the same sequence four or five times, you'd be like,

oh, man, I didn't even notice that the last time I watched her. Wow, that was different than the last time I watched it. you pick up these little subtle things that he's doing with his body that maybe you didn't notice the first time around. Oh, the tricks in his in what he does as a skater is, is brilliant. It's so fun to watch. Right. My colleague, Eddie Peering, Signage, Mitch Brown talks about this all the time. But I think you alluded to earlier is one thing, especially at lower levels to just be faster than

everyone, right? And just take the puck and go from point A to point B. But when you come to the NHL, you realize that doesn't necessarily work as often your ability to get in those situations where you have that much open ice, especially playing. for the coyotes where there's not that many space creators around him gets very limited. And so his ability to keep people off balance by changing speeds, by utilizing those cutbacks to get to the middle of the ice despite being undersized, his ability to kind of stop on a dive and then delay and wait for a trailer to come and then hit them with a pass, how many assists he's created that way this season.

I mean, it really kind of checks every single box of every sort of technique you'd like to see from a smart skater, utilizing and maximizing their abilities. And watching him play, honestly, it's, if you just close your eyes, you totally took away the resumes, you took away the names, you took away everything. Like him and Jack Hughes, some of the stuff they do is eerily similar, don't you think? Like, I guess, you know, he's three years older. They both come from the U.S. National Development Program. He's kind of like part of that evolutionary cycle, I guess, that eventually blessed us with

Jack Hughes. He came a bit before him. And I think Jack Hughes has certainly more juice or pop to his game as we've seen this season. But a lot of the tricks they do and how they hold on to the puck and the way they manipulate defenders is strikingly similar to me when I'm watching their tape. The worst possible thing that you could do against either of those players is if you're a defenseman is go down to the ice surface. Oh, God. Yeah. That's it. That's it. You know, that it works sometimes. You know, like we talk about like players that make rushed decisions, right? You know, you lay yourself out there. You certainly there's going to be times

or somebody's going to throw it into your body or pass it into you and you could just eat it and lay on it. They're just going to wait. You know, you're going to wait till you're no longer a threat. They're around you. And then you're completely removed yourself from the play at that point. I mean,

there's a level of physical engagement that you have. And that sounds so like boomer of me to say, but there is legitimately a level of physical engagement. You have to maintain with these players. Because, you know, the moment they're going to change the tempo on you. They're skating is deceptive. We talked about the ability to open and close their bodies up.

They're looking for the middle, right? That's what they want to get. You almost have to stay, you know, I'm thinking like one half leg inside of them. So like Keller, if he's coming down on your right, you know, you really need to let the boards be your friend and keep them as wide and as outside as they possibly can. When they change that tempo up, don't back off, go towards them. because, you know, all these clips we watch and it uses the same way, these defensemen just, you know, they get toyed with, you know, they end up dropping down to one knee or they think they're cutting a lane off.

But the player was never interested in using the lane, right? Like, that's the thing. Like, you've taken away an option that wasn't even ever on really in the cards for them. And you've kind of laid prostrate on the ice. So that, yeah, 100% agree with you. Man, I think that's a very apt comparison. And the skill sets, it's all about, it's about, you know, manipulation, right?

The ability to toy and drag people around and, you know, keep what angle you have, you know, more or less a secret. I think the other thing those players do really well, Demetri, is what they do when they attack defensemen in transition, right? I think back, you know, old old school clip of Lemieux v. Bork where he tucked the puck into his legs, they sort of choose that middle lane against everybody all the time. They're not going inside or outside. they're waiting for you to turn around first.

And if you're a defenseman that's looking to pivot and getting a face-to-face position with them, they'll attack you when you make that turn. So it's almost like no matter where there are, they're waiting for the moment where that player is the most vulnerable to be able to make their kick or their move outside. It's just, it's, I love that. It's almost, you know, it's almost reactive hockey, but it works so well.

Yeah, the amount of mental discipline it must take to give multiple efforts in defending these guys and not just like eventually. just give up and sprawl to the ice and hope to block off a pass. It must be, you know, through the roof. But I should mention as well, because I mentioned sort of how I think the one difference between the two is I think, especially in open ice, Hughes has demonstrated a bit more pop to his game, right? Like, you just see him break out into the open ice and create a breakaway out of nothing

much more frequently than Keller has. Not that Keller is slow by any means, but it is worth noting, like, less than a year ago, right? It was last March. he had a devastating leg injury or he goes leg first and through boards, fractures his leg gets stretched off the ice. And so the fact that he missed the final, whatever 10 games of last season and comes right back and produces the way he has this year without really missing a beat

is huge, especially for a player who relies on, you know, not necessarily straight line speed, but certainly deceptive skating and utilizing quick bursts the way that he does and hasn't really dropped off at all in that regard, which is great to see because whenever a player has that type of injury, you always kind of hold your breath and wonder what could be. No, 100%. And like, especially we were talking about, you know, all the stuff that's so important to his game, those ability to like change speeds or, you know, use a quick burst as advantage to fool a goaltender. Yeah, that stuff's all huge, right. So you can't, you mean, you can't do a lot of what we're talking about today if you have a degradation there. So that's still, that's still the driving force behind all this for sure. Okay. Jesse, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll close out the conversation.

on Keller. We'll talk about a variety of other things. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast, streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Discussing the biggest stories that matter to Vancouver sports fans, Halford and Brough in the morning. Subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back here in the HockeyPedio cast with Jesse Marshall, talking about Clayton Keller doing our film club study on him. So we've talked a lot about his individual.

efforts so far and certainly there's like a lot of solo dashes and him kind of creating by himself. But I did want to give Nick Schmaltz a bit of love here as well because the chemistry those two have demonstrated has been really fun to watch. And there was a while there before they traded Shane Gosses-Barre at the deadline where like the three of them, especially in the power play sometimes some of these passing sequences they would execute would just be like remarkably fun to watch. The utilization those you have of backdoor set plays has to be right up there with any combo in the league that I've seen. And I think part of that is just because Keller in particular is so comfortable,

as we mentioned, holding onto the puck that he almost waits for you to fall asleep a little bit. And then Schmaltz just goes in the back door and he passes it to him and it creates this sort of natural east-west seam for him to get the puck through. And the two of them just have this, like, beautiful chemistry between the two of them. And it's been so fun to watch that I did want to just kind of shout out that partnership as a whole rather than just exclusively focusing on what Keller does. Yeah.

So 100% agree with you. I think they both have a tendency or a skill, I would say, to take defensemen on like these long, winding offensive journeys, right? Follow them around and they kind of toy a little bit. Yeah, really. And, you know, they got their friends around ready to jump you when you get in there. So what I saw a lot that I liked was this interaction of high, low between the two of them because I keep going back to like where I think Keller has proved his best this year for me is

top far side, bottom near side. He can take that diagonal trip across the zone, almost like a crooked royal road, right, where he's going diagonally top bottom. Once the cycle gets going for them, and they sort of start getting in a loop, everything's building towards that top, that high, low motion, if you will.

And I think it naturally has this sort of like accordion-like motion on an opposing defense that opens up a lot of space for the type of run that Clayton Keller likes to make. So like people, I say like, what does chemistry look like between players? Is it a real thing? Does it exist?

I don't know. What I can tell you is that it appears to me that Schmaltz is 100% aware of what Keller likes to do. That's what I get when I watch the team. Like that the vibe I get from that line is that they like, they have a complete and honed in understanding of he wants to shoot from here. We like to work from here. No issues.

right no we're we're totally fine and throw it in there wherever the hell you want another the third wheel there like what does it make a difference at that point but they they they do have that innate sense for each other um and and again like that they have a patience that sort of belies their age a little bit in their ability to get up ice um you know attack um hold onto the puck for really long periods of time and and really ultimately uh for you to make the mistake but to me that's a very tangible example of chemistry. Chemistry is just ultimately, Dimitri, that innate understanding of, you know, where someone likes to be and you can only get that through time. I just think at this point, you look at them and it's very tangibly there. Well, on a third member of that line being

Barrett Hayden recently, I've actually liked what he's brought to that line as well because he basically just simplifies that it just drives to the net and kind of creates that net net front drive. And so it's kind of allowed them to open up a bit more space for each other than offensive zone. But let's talk about that to Demetch. A lot of people might listen to the show and not understand why that works. And it's because you have to think of it from the opponent. You have to command a resource to that. Right.

Yes. As a defensive team, you cannot let Barrett Hayden stand in front of your net uncontested. But you can't. You can. It's going to work out even. poorly. And if you just let Schmaltz and Keller run around like maniacs down there. So I think it's important to call it out.

We talk about like, we always talk about these players that can crash and bang like that. And not like in the old school Bopian head style, effectively create space. That's what it looks like. It's just all you're doing is commanding resources from the opponent and making them pay attention to you and not, you know,

other players in the guys that are in motion and moving about and all this stuff. Right. I was just, no, no, no. It's really important to stay. And like you're quite literally physically creating space because as you're moving through the middle of the ice and then going towards a net, all of a sudden you're leaving an opening there where Keller and Schmaltz want to be operating, right? And then all of a sudden they can execute that two-man game. And Hayden himself has enough skill as a former top prospect to once he gets the puck or if they hit him in stride there or get it to him in front of the net, he can actually do some stuff with the puck as opposed to just being a pure sort of net front guy. But the sad thing of this is that I think we have about eight games.

left of watching these two play together because I've been saying this since the trade deadline, but Nick Schmaltz will not be on Arizona coyotes next season. His AV is 5.85 over the next three years. His salary goes from 4.5 this year to 7.5 next year, 8.45, 8.5. And that is the type of player that the coyotes like the trade. And so I fully, I believe that he has eight games left playing for the coyotes. And that's sad because I really enjoy these two guys playing together. Now, I think Logan Cooley, who has been dominating the NCAA, will be coming up. And so I'm very curious to see how him and Keller play off of each other. Keller desperately needs someone. You know, Schmaltz is an awesome player. But you're, you, I think you hit the nail in the head there. What makes them special

is the understanding of each other's skill sets and giving Keller someone a playoff of. And so I hope that, you know, Cooley can fill that spot because if Schmaltz does get traded this offseason, I really, I need Keller to have a running mate, right? It can't just be him in a bunch of like a a who's who of a rotating cast of role players. It needs to be someone with a skill level to actually kind of live and reside on his own wavelength. So Clayton, Logan Coley from my neck of the woods out here, western Pennsylvania.

Here's what here's here's so first of all, you're 100% correct. Like you look like at the micro data, Dimitri like really dive into like the nuts and bolts of what Keller does. He's not super outstanding and retrieving pucks that are dumped into the defensive zone. He doesn't enter the. puck with possession a ton. Relative to his teammates. He doesn't, I think what I'm trying to paint is a picture of you being correct.

There's no, the micro data doesn't suggest that Clayton Keller is going to give you a huge boost to the rate at which you could carry pucks into the zone or the rate at which you could retrieve them or, you know, he's not making a lot of passes that lead to a shot attempt. But he's just a really good finisher. He's a really good finisher. And if you can surround him with a player, like, hypothetically, Logan Cooley has those traits, right? Hypothetically, like we think we're going to find out if it translates to the NHL level. But all of those things that you would think Keller kind of almost needs to have this sort of environment that works for him and that balanced ecosystem.

You know, like I said, you know, it's the ability for somebody to come in the zone, Dimitri, whoa up, stop and hit him with that pass. It allows him to take the walk, right? And that, you know, the skill set exists there. So that's a good call out. And I think that, I certainly hope you're wrong about the Schmaltz thing, but that we could have another episode someday where we talk about the Arizona coyotes business practices.

But that, you know, hypothetically, you'd think that that should be something that works out in the future. Well, the way those guys have played, just think about it, right? Like, I think the organ, we talk about how players don't tank teams do our organizations do, right? And the coyotes have done everything. And rightly so, like they weren't going to compete this season to, have as little salary as they could on their roster,

have this sort of shell of an organization trotting out this lineup out there that gives them the best chance of losing as they can so they can position themselves to be in the fight for the Connor Bardard sweepstakes. And now they're up to 27th in point percentage. I think they only have a 7.5% chance of making it. And basically since the trade deadline, they're 6-2 and 4. If you go all the way back to mid-January,

they're 14th in the league in point percentage. when this top line is out there, they're a massive net positive, especially relative to the rest of the team. And so on the one hand, it's a really great story. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder how the organization feels about this,

knowing that their whole plan this season was, let's lose as much as we can. And then all of a sudden, you've got this top line, just scoring a bunch of goals and being exciting and winning you all these extra points that you could probably do without. Let me ask you this question too, then.

What is the future for Clayton Keller? Well, that's kind of what I was trying to, trying to nudge us along too. Yeah. Like what do they do? Because this is a super, 40 goals in the NHL, that's a lot.

Like people will pay, they'll pay good money for that. I mean, what, I don't even know, I mean, you'd have to, you'd have to secure a pretty,

you'd have to think the package would be a pretty decent bag to get him out of there. But, um, I don't know. Here's the thing. Go ahead.

Well, he turns 25 this summer, right? He's got four years left or five years left. after this one at 7.15 million. Now that makes him the 56th highest paid forward, which is obviously a steal. And his salary doesn't exceed his cap hit until 2026.

So 7.1.5 million is certainly a decent chunk of change, but I don't think the coyotes are incentivized by any means to trade them unless they're, unless they're like, oh my God, this guy is too good right now for our intentions. Like, he's costing us high draft picks. but I think I would imagine it would have to take a pretty massive haul to get him. Now, I think there should be a lot of teams interested in complying with that because he's one heck of a player. And based on all the skills we've sort of highlighted in the show so far, I imagine him in a system where there's other playmakers around him that are playing at a more up-tempo playing style.

Here's what the coyotes have been as a team offensively since Clayton Cutter entered the league. 28th and goals 32nd 23rd 23rd 23rd 29 30th like he has not ever been outside the bottom 10 in his career and so now he's producing at a level where he's producing as basically a top 10 player I would love to see him in a different environment I just I wonder whether the appetite is there to pay what I imagine the coyotes would be looking for especially after the whole you know Jacob chikrin saga we just saw play out over the past year and a half yeah there's always the possibility too that like we saw a really talented player and on the defensive side of that of the puck and that same team sort of say like get me out of here um yeah maybe he follows down the same path right

i mean you take thing you take it public you know you never know and it all depends on how long this the situation stays like this there right like um i just i i don't i think depending on the length of that situation to me it wouldn't be i think out of the the realm of possibility for more talented players to eventually not want to be a part of what's of what you know the rebuild process there might look like yes although they they win a you know badard or fantilli all of a sudden you got coolly coming i mean there's going to be a lot of a lot of skill coming in but yeah i mean but yeah i mean you know when they've had keller and schmaltz on the ice they're five and five five and five five they're plus nine when they've had keller schmaltz and hayden in like four hundred five five

and five minutes together they're up 31 to 17 and the reason why i wanted to mention that is because This is the third straight year now where Keller has basically broken even or been at positive at 5-1-5, which given the state of the rest of the team when he hasn't been on the ice is notable. And something that you hit on earlier, which I think, you know, shouldn't go overlooked. There was a time where they were sheltering him, right, as like an undersized skill offensive first player where they were giving him easier minutes. And his zone deployment has dramatically shifted over the past couple years. His usage has skyrocketed. They're leaning on him as a top flight player against other teams' best players. players and he's still producing at this level. And so sometimes when players put up these kind of

point totals on teams that are finishing in the bottom five or whatever, we sort of scoff at it and we're like, all right, well, you know, they're not actually playing competitive hockey. We can't translate this to a playoff team all of a sudden when the game situations and a game environment changes, they're not going to be able to get away with this. And Keller himself has been playing competitive hockey in high usage situations and getting away with it. And still, coming out as a net positive. So I did want to note that because it's very easy to kind of hand wave it and just be like, this doesn't mean anything.

But I do think in this case, like there's something significant here that beyond just, you know, high point totals or cool highlight real plays. Yeah. And I honestly, man, I think it's super cool to go back. And if you sit down and you sort of watch the video from when he came into the league, that'd be like a cool little, you know, maybe I'll do it on a little, a little bontan project to like show, you know,

some of those older goals, right, and how he was scoring when he first got started and sort of that natural evolution that sort of happened to his game. And how much more dynamic it's gotten. And the levels, I think that he's sort of built out to it.

You know, you noted what they've gotten the system already and sort of like what they're dealing with. But Bill Armstrong's also said, like, I don't want to trade people like just, you know, to do it, right? Like that's not, that's not the way that we're, you know, handling our business.

But, you know, regardless of that, it's, I think, I think they have something really special there in a player that's learned how to create time and space for himself. And that's, like, such a rare trait to be able to do it in the way that he's doing it. You know, I said in the piece that I wrote from McKean, Demetrius flat out, like there's no player to me in the league that's utilizing this methodology to score goals this consistently. I mean, you'll see, you see it all the time. You see people do it all the time. But I just don't know that you see people do it to like this level of repetitiveness, this consistently and with this much success, you know, as far as that like extra, extra, extra patient approach goes.

So yeah, I mean, I'm with you. You know, regardless of where they end up picking in this upcoming draft. I mean, it's just they have an extraordinarily rare talent, I think, on their hands from a shooting perception. And if you're not watching the coyotes, I understand that. But, you know, I think everybody needs to go out of their way to take some time to, you know,

give him a little look ski over there because a lot of the stuff that he's doing. If you're, if you like hockey and you're just into good shooters, yeah, that's a fun little, fun little video project for you. Yeah, I mean, he's eighth in the league in five and five and five points,

13th in all situations, goals, got 80 points in 74 games. Like, it's remarkable what he's doing. Are you with me that, He is a player, though, that if you took him out of Arizona and put him on a team with other talent or a better offensive system that his game would flourish and it wouldn't necessarily sort of stagnate or aggress because sometimes we do see that, right? If a guy just needs the puck all the time, in this case, you mentioned how he doesn't

necessarily do a lot of the heavy lifting from the back end in terms of the retrievals and carrying the puck up. Once you get into the office zone, that's where he really comes alive. It feels like putting him in up with players that could get him in those positions more. more often would, if anything, just kind of shine an even brighter light on what he does already remarkably well. Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's just about, you know, getting him into situations where people can help find more

lanes for him and open up more space. You know, it just gives him a larger amount of leash to do the things that he does well and maybe even involve certain other. I mean, we've talked this whole time, right, about like how patient he is and you drag people around and he doesn't shoot when you think he's going to shoot. Like, what could he do, like, if he just was allowed to do that stuff? Like, what if that necessity and that burden wasn't on him to operate that way? And he could become a trigger man.

He could evolve his game to be like a real one-one, you know, bang, bang-type shooter. And again, these are elements that exist, but I don't think he relies on that stuff right now. You know, I think those are, those are accessory goals for him, you know. And again, that's an environmental thing. So I'm 100% with you. I think, you know, there's potential there for him. I've talked this whole time, and I've said a hundred times, he's got a good release. He's really quick, but we don't see it all the time, right?

We don't constantly see these things. He doesn't rely on them. You know, it could potentially be quite tantalizing to watch if that was what he was leaning on. Or maybe there's a whole other side to this coin that we haven't even seen yet. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's all I got on Keller. Is there any other parting thoughts that you want to give?

Or should we get to the sort of the promoting? portion part of the show. Yeah, that's fine with me. Promotion's fine. All right. All right. Well, let the listeners know because I want them to check out the piece that you wrote up on Keller that we've been talking about because I think there's a lot of, you know, visual learners on the listener to PDO cast that we would like to check out some material that kind of helps reinforce everything we've been talking about. So let them let them know where they can check that out.

Yeah, that's at McKeontalkie.com. A lot of video analysis of that nature. and the like. I think I'm going to do some more. You know, I haven't spent enough time this, Demetri on the Bruins this year. I think that's where I'm going to go this week.

Spend some time in Boston and really get into what makes them tick and why they're so good. On a team level or are you going to try to highlight some. Yeah, yeah. We're going to do the system. Yeah, yeah, go of the whole kit and go boo. We should, because, you know, once we get to the playoffs,

I think we're going to be kind of focusing on the games that are happening themselves. So we might put the film club on a bit of a hiatus. but I think we still got a couple more left in us here before we get there. So I'm kind of curious. Do you have anyone that you think we should be keeping our eyes on beyond the Bruin systems? Maybe we can kind of open it up for the listeners. That'd be great, actually. Who they'd like for us to really give this treatment for him.

I think that would be fun. Let them steer the ship for a little bit. The element of surprise, spring the element of surprise on us a little. I think that would be fun. I'm tempted to do the last Patterson because he's. That's fine with me too. I'm not going to complain about having to watch him. Yeah, everything he's doing both on and off the puck this season, right?

If the Canucks had woken up earlier or if they, you know, were in a serious playoff competition right now, I think everyone would be talking about just what a remark. Like he'd be getting MVP buzz based on the year he's had, but just because of their plays in the standings, it's got a bit overlooked, I think. Yeah, that works for me. Okay.

All right, man. Well, this is a blast. On my way out here, I'll just promote, go on search up the Hockey PDOCast on YouTube for those visual learners. I'll post a bunch of clips of everything we've talked about here of Clayton Keller shooting the puck and beating glories and doing all that fun stuff. The giving goes and back to our sets with Nick Schmaltz. You can give us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to the show. And we'll be back tomorrow with more now that we're back to our regular scheduled programming of the HockeyPedioCast.

As always, streaming on the SportsNet Radio Network.