The Hockey PDOcast - Film Club on Macklin Celebrini

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jesse Marshall to dig into the tape from the first 22 NHL games Macklin Celebrini has played. 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.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey-Pedio cast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man? Happy holidays, my friend. Happy holidays to you as well. And this is an exciting one.

It's the return of the film club. It's been a couple weeks since I believe we did the Nico Hissier one most recently. And today we're doing Macklin-Cellabrini. and I am just unbelievably hyped for this one in going through his tape, through his first 22 games of the season, just to give our listeners a frame of reference. When we do these shows,

I go through the players, shifts, every shift they've played this season and put together the compilation of the most interesting stuff for us to work with, kind of traits and tendencies we're seeing individual skills. And in 22 games of Celebrating so far, he's played 430 NHL minutes.

I have a 30-minute mixtape that's going to accompany today's podcast on the PDOCSE2 channel of just cool stuff he's done. So the things he's experimenting with, trying out, executing, it's increasing with each game, but it's unbelievably cool. We're going to break all of that down. I'm so excited for this one. This is one of my favorite ones, I think, that we've done so far. Yeah, that's 30. You probably could have gotten more video out of that. I mean, you probably had to hold yourself back a little bit from including more clips in order to keep it manageable.

Yeah, this is an exciting one. And I think there's a lot of places we could start with this, Dimitri, but, you know, I thought about it. I don't spew enough hot takes on this show. I'm going to, I'd like to start with one. Can we start with a hot take about Macklin Celebrini? Let's do it. Give us the sizzle. I think that he is, and this is a hill I'll die on.

I think he is present state this young in his career. the most difficult player to hit in the national hockey league. I don't think that there is a more difficult player to physically make contact with and strip of the puck by use of your body and separation and hip checking and by whatever physical means necessary, then Macklin's celebrating.

This is two prong. Well, it's really three prong, Demetre, because the first prong is speed, right? That's the first prong. Fast players are hard to hit, right? But that's not the whole of it, right? because he's not just doing it in transition. It's not just a situation where he's transitionally difficult to make contact with.

He is perhaps the best player in the league at spinning off of contact. It's absolutely unbelievable. And we see him all the time in transition using spin maneuvers around defensemen as the shot mechanic or a pass mechanic, right? Like it comes out of nowhere. He just sort of pirouettes and boom, it comes off the back of the stick and there you go. I'm talking in the boards. I'm talking, he's going in on puck retrieval, and he's looking behind him and seeing that guy coming,

and he's inviting it, right? He's saying, come get me. I'm my back to you. I'm in puck retrieval. Nothing I can do about this. I'm just a vulnerable forward. Doesn't know any better. My head's down.

And when you moment you're there to make contact with him, he peels off of you. He peels off of you, and now you're out of play. You are of no concern to him any longer. You are behind him. he's a path somewhere else and you've just wasted your time. And let's be honest, he's made you look dumb. He's made you look silly.

And I, it's just all these companies. And then I have to imagine that if he's not now, Celebrini is going to be an unbelievable golfer in his time because the way he works his shoulders and his upper body is just, it's phenomenal. He's in stride coming up through the neutral zone. You're a defenseman. You've got him at a stick length. You've got him lined up.

you feel good that you can make contact with him. He plants his left foot, Dmitri, and as he steps out of his motion, he moves laterally. He jukes you, right? You think you've got him head on, but in the middle of his stride, right, as he's skating at you, he plants and sort of kicks himself sideways

and dips his shoulders, right? So it's almost like he's an NFL player pulling off the Heisman pose, right, but with a stick and a puck. the speed, the juke ability, and the spinoff ability in the boards, I, when I sat down to prepare for this episode and I do the same thing you do, I didn't see anyone hit him. I watched the clip.

I said, did anyone actually pull it off? Like, I'm like, it's amazing to me how elusive he is and all these tools he has in his basket that's sort of like, he's saying to players, come get it. Like, let's go. I'm right here. I'm vulnerable. Come at me. And it's almost like these defensemen are left, Demetri, saying I've never seen anybody do that to me before.

Yeah, the one example I can think of was that game they played in Pittsburgh. It was the overtime and he kind of had a neutral zone collision with the Ganymalkin. I think that was more so happenstance than him getting caught. But then what ensued was literally three seconds later, he gets up and they have a high danger scoring chance. They almost win the game on to follow. So he wasn't phased by it at all. You're seeing he's certainly making people look silly. and you're seeing sort of the effects of that, I think,

and I think that's going to continue as this progresses and as teams have to deal with them more. I think in his most recent game against the Jets, there was a sequence in the third period where the Jets were clearly just a bunch of grown men who were very agitated by the fact that this kid came in and made them look silly, and we're just trying to physically after the whistle,

get after him. And so I think he's going to keep doing that. There's going to be accumulation. He's going to draw a ton of penalties. When you said you were going to give us a hot take, what I thought you were going to do was give us a player comp, and compare them to some like established great that's already in the league or was previously. And it's funny because when you mentioned that and that's the first thought that came in my head,

I was prepared for anything and I probably would have agreed because I know it's only 22 games in and we don't want to get carried away. And as we've seen with Connor Bredar this year, there's going to be some peaks and valleys and adjustments along the way. But with these young guys who come into the league now, I think Celebrity is a perfect example of this. you can make so many different comps and it would fit and be an app description because this is the generation that grew up watching all the guys who were in NHL and sort of mimicking and adopting a lot of their best tendencies and traits that they'd see on highlights, right? And I think that's what you see in Celebrini's game.

He's almost an amalgamation of a bunch of elite players and has taken individual strengths of theirs and then drop that into his game and combined it. And I think when to see more and more of that as these young players come into the league and immediately flourish. But I feel like he's probably the best example of that that I've seen so far. Yeah. I'm laughing because if you are over the age of 35 and you're still playing beer league, you probably have really late night games. There's nothing worse than an 11 o'clock game against an 18 year old. It's just the way.

I was just the word. Forget it. I'd rather pack up myself and go home than play that. I 100% agree with what you just said. I'll take it a step further. It's not just the offensive skills, I think, that we're talking about here, but it's the neutral zone behaviors, right? It's the work that he puts in in the defensive zone, right?

I mean, we can make offensive zone comps all day long. I mean, I think there's a number of things between his shot, his dangle ability, you know, that stick out, like you said, in sort of a bucket with current NHL grades. But I think beyond that, right, like the work that he's putting in between the blue lines in that critical neutral zone, the effort level that you see him expend, in the defensive zone.

I mean, you know, I always say like hockey sense is sort of like the trope that people will lean on when they run out of ideas, right? Like it's sort of ubiquitous and can mean whatever you want it to mean. But I think in this case, like if you watch Celebrity Play, that is what that is, that is a mixtape of hockey sense, right? The anticipation of knowing where to be, right? The anticipation of how a play is developing and how you can defensively cut that play off, right? I think just the activity of how he uses his stick across all three zones is crazy, right? It's super active with it. It's a huge part of what he does.

It really is that amalgamation. And I think it does extend, you know, throughout the course of all 200 feet of the ice. And I look at, I look at his games, Dimitri, and you kind of start to lose count of the number of zone rushes that he creates off of plays that take place in his defensive or neutral zone, and his ability to break those plays up and to have that sort of spirit of anticipation about him and knowing where to be and when to strike as a forechecker has gained the sharks a lot of odd man rushes

and prime scoring chances just based off his activity from, you know, 30, 40 feet from behind the offensive zone. Well, you can already see it. I think if you're just kind of surface level, watching a highlight. And I'd say the goal he scored against Hellebuck the other day was a great example of it. If you just kind of see it at first blush, I think the initial inclination is to believe that it's either luck or a poor play from the goalie or just kind of randomness. But if you go back and watch it particularly from a couple different angles, you can see that hockey IQ and how he's setting

everything up. I'd argue that everything he does is already is based around like manipulation of everyone around him and is so calculated. And even in that play, as he's cutting to the inside, you can see all the scanning that goes into his game and how he's essentially waiting for everything to fall into place where he wants and where there's like a level of timing. He's waiting for the screen to naturally come across. He's anticipating that Hellbuck is going to have to move laterally. That's going to create an opening five hole.

And so as he's moving within the stick handle and within his stride, he just flicks this soft little backhand through and it beats Hellebuck, right? And you're like, oh, wow, that was just like he randomly threw it on net. And I guarantee you there was nothing random about that play. That was an entirely purposeful play that he had set up from the moment he got the puck along the wall. So I think it's incredibly cool to watch that. Do you want to start with, you mentioned it earlier, you mentioned sort of how he gets open and how people can't really seem to hit him. I've been talking about how obviously him on puck when he's rushing the puck up the ice is incredibly dazzling and we're going to spend a lot of time on that. But I would argue that he's most fun to watch and almost most dangerous to corral right now in the offensive zone when he's off puck because as soon as he gets rid of it, there's no stopping.

It's constant motion. He's just trying to attack open space. And so there's going to be all these examples that we're going to watch once we run the tape of him essentially passing the puck to a teammate and then sort of spinning off of a check or establishing a bit of body contact that we talk about and then letting the defender think he's going one way and then all of a sudden spinning around the other way and trying to either go for a net drive or get himself open for a given go. And it's an incredibly exciting skill set and it's really fun to watch. It also makes me dream of a day where particularly the blue line on this team is better because I think even in

these 20 games so far, there's been countless examples that I've seen of him doing. this and the defensive talent just not really being up to part to actually execute on it. And part of it is the defenseman, he spent the most time playing with this season, I've been Cody Cici and Mario Ferraro and both guys don't really have the creativity or vision or playmaking ability to actually get him the puck when he does that. So there's all these times where he's like almost wide open back door and you're waiting and hoping for a pass to hit him. And then instead it's a point shot or just kind of like the easiest sort of checkdown play

where he just rims it around the board or something. And it's like, ah, in a better situation with better talent around him that's supporting him, I feel like he could even have a handful more goals right now, just based off of some of these off-puck movements and backdoor plays that he's created. And so that's going to certainly come as the Sharks team continues to rebuild and improve around him. But I feel like just watching that, it's like every single time in the offensive zone. He's just impossible to wrangle for the opposition.

Now, 100%. His feet are always moving. I'm going to add his breaks in as something that makes him so elusive. I think he's got one of the best set of breaks in the National Hockey League already for a guy that's six foot in every little bit of over 190 pounds, his ability to stop and start and to use those changes in momentum as a means of getting around defenseman is pretty impressive to me for a big guy or a bigger guy, I think I should say. I would add to that he seems to also intentionally exploit grayer,

areas in defensive responsibilities. So you see them sort of traverse areas of the ice that are split between two defenders. You know, maybe you're looking at a defensive situation where the team's trying to overload the puck side of the ice. They've got the defensive zone lined up in quadrants. He sort of sits in the line of demarcation between where someone's responsibility cuts off and another person begins as a means of, you know, confusion and not in making it difficult to mark him because, you know, who's responsibility.

is it at that point, right? And he sort of lives in those areas and it maximizes his movement in those spaces. You also see, we talk about this. This seems to be a theme for this season for us to meet true. But we talk a lot about players that follow unconventional paths in the offensive zone. Players that, for instance, you know, work against the grain. We had a clip on the screen just there. We're celebrating he skated to the blue line to take himself out of the play,

but then re-retrieved the puck on his journey back into the offensive zone, right? So it's that constant movement we talk about. That's not just down between the circles, right? That could take you all the way up by the blue line, right? And if you're being shadowed and there's a defenseman who's living on your hip and you want to get rid of them, the best way to do it is to take them on a trip somewhere they're not supposed to be because if that defenseman's going to follow you all the way up there by that blue line, that means that they've left their area of responsibility and someone else has to

cover for them. So either one, that doesn't happen and someone's open or two, you've put a forward in responsibility of covering an area that they're not supposed to be covering. So when you eat up that much real estate in the offensive zone and your feet are moving that much and you're just traversing that much space, you're also blurring those lines of responsibility again, right? Whose responsibility am I? You're taking yourself out of the play and allowing yourself to reinsert yourself offensively in the place that you feel is most conducive for you. You're all the way up by the blue line. You've got a bird's eye view of what's happening in the offensive zone.

I can go left right down the middle, right? it's all up to me. So, you know, this all ties into that moving with intent, right? Whether it's the puck or yourself, everything he does is with intent. And I think that the willingness he has, Dimitri, follow along with me here. I want to do this best job I can't explaining this, is he's willing to be selfless and used as a conduit. I don't, if that makes sense. But what I mean by that is not a lot of these highlights are him taking wild offensive journeys with the puck or pulling off sick dangles or whatever.

But what we don't put in these highlight montages is the instances where he got a puck and just banked it off the wall for a teammate, right? Or just a one motion touch pass to somebody where he barely even got a stick on the puck. He just redirected it in the right spot, right? Those are the plays I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be celebrini all the time, all the ways, right? If there's a play for him to make where he just, whoop, just one little touch, just redirect it to the right guy, throw an area pass.

He's selfless enough to make those plays too. It's all within the comprehension and understanding of the game. What is best for this moment? Is this moment built for me to take the puck on a crazy journey through two guys? Do I have someone streaking up the wall with speeds? I just need to get the puck near them and they're going to be able to get it. It's the smarts there, right? These are things that take players years of time to develop in the national hockey league

because the pace of the game changes. The players are better. They're stronger. They're faster. You don't often see players that are this young coming. and pick up the conductor's rod and just start, you know, playing everybody like a symphony, but that's really what's happening here. He understands what's best for him in that moment, what's best for the team in that

moment. And there's so many little innovative things he does with his stick that just get pucks in areas or to a guy that's in support of him that spring something beautiful that he, you know, he sits back and watches. So it's that sense of time and place. He seems to have a really masterful grasp of it. that's a great word for it. I think he's got a mastery of time and space,

and you see him work his straight time and time again. It can be obviously highlight real stuff, but as you mentioned, there's very simple plays even where in the offensive zone, he's coming up the wall. He attracts two or three defenders towards him, and then he sends a no-look pass across the ice to a defenseman, and all of a sudden now they can just work downhill

and step into space, and it's incredible to watch. This is honestly going to require a ton of self-discipline from me. Today, I just have to admit, because for those that are watching along with us here on YouTube, you can sort of get this firsthand view as well as we're watching all the clips play out. Normally, I'm putting together all these clips, right? And Jesse and I are working on it,

and I've already seen it at least a couple times. So I'm not really like that captivated by it as we're watching. And I'm allowed to just focus on the conversation you and I are having, in this case, with it playing right beside as we talk, it's like almost difficult to just focus on our conversation because it's so captivating, just watching how fun. he already is and all the cool stuff he's doing let's focus a little bit here on the transition work and the reason why i want to note that is because he's already established himself as i'd say

a top five transition player in the league he's an automatic zone entry regardless of where he starts his journey sport logic has him third in the league and controlled entries per game he's averaging 7.6 of them behind only connor macdavid and nathan mckin and he's second in the league and and rushes average and nearly three of them per game behind just Connor McDavid. And you can see how just effortlessly he sort of weaves in and out of traffic and pushes the defense back. When we were talking about player comps earlier, one that I really see in his game in the open ice is Jack Eichael because he's so effortlessly creates speed. And I think a recent broadcast that I was watching The Sharks was actually talking about this very phenomenon where it doesn't look like he's moving that fast. and his skating stride looks pretty casual.

And then all of a sudden, he's just covered so much ground, and he's able to accelerate so freely and so effortlessly. And so it allows him to just carry the puck up ice. And you can tell the opposing defense is already very cognizant and worried of that. And so they're giving him a lot of space. And he's basically be able to just transport it from zone to zone with very little hesitation. Obviously, if a roadblock does come in front of him, he's able to then stick handle around it.

But a lot of the times, he's just. sort of effortlessly going from blue line to blue line with very little opposition. And it's not, it's not that he's taking people wide with speed all the time, right? Like, I think that's the critical piece to this is that you can't be a one-trick pony in this space. You know, defensemen are smart. They know player tendencies.

They figure it out even over the course of the game. He's, I don't, you rarely ever see the same thing twice from him, right? And I got to go back to his shoulder. His upper body is such an important part of this process to me, It's such an important part because when he turns himself laterally and opens himself up, right? And when that happens as a defenseman, you're going to react, right?

You're anticipating something from him, right? Whether he's going to cut around you, he's going to toe drag you. He's opening his body up like that for a reason. No, sometimes that's just what he's like sometimes, you know what I mean? Like sometimes nothing happens. It's almost like he's waiting for you to make that move. Like he opens himself up as an invitation. and then the moment that you move and prep, he's, there you go.

Like, it's right past you. There's a lot of around player stuff in this, right? Like, one-on-one beating a guy clean with a deke, right? Like, that isn't a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of one arm off the stick, rushing players off, right? Just moving them while you're moving the puck yourself. There's the constant spinning I talked about. Like, I think he's.

spun more in his career than most NHL forwards have in the duration of theirs and some of them have played over a thousand games. It's whatever means necessary he has at that time, right? And if you're, you know, a defenseman that's looking for cues, right, or even for a goaltender for that matter, Dimitri, right? A goaltender that's looking for cues, your sense of peripheral vision better be good. because he you know his ability to sort of just seamlessly send things off of his backhand in a swift seamless motion it you don't see it coming you know that and i and i the randomness of it is what's

striking to me right is that there are some guys that lean on a thing to get their zone entries right maybe it's just speed maybe it's their foot or whatever this is a number of things and i think that's that's the terrifying prospect here is that when you go through these clips it's not just just by one means. It's by a number of means. Some of it is surely speed, like you pointed out, and some of it is, you know, dusting guys. But a lot of it is too, upper body movement, shoulder movement, seeking out, seeking out contact lanes as a means of deeking, right? So I'm going into an area where I know you can hip check me in an event, like, purposefully, because I know it's going to allow me to get around you. You're going to take yourself out of

position against me. I'm moving too fast. Or I have this angle. The way he opens himself up again, it's just so unique. Sometimes he looks like he's so horizontal when he skates and he makes his body so wide that again, one, it's really difficult to get the puck off of him when he's doing that. And two, it gives him the opportunity to sort of act from that space. That's almost his jumping off platform into whatever he's going to do next. And good luck figuring out what that is. Well, his control of the puck is also worth mentioning.

right like you almost cannot throw him a bad pass and in fact sometimes you see sharks defensemen testing the the limitations of it and regardless of what pass they give him like he's already just in full speed without breaking a stride able to just collect a puck off of his skate or reach back and get it and within the first touch he's got it back to where he wants it in his wheelhouse and he's cooking in transition right and so part of that almost reminds me i know it's kind of sacrilegious to say but it's very crum Cosby-esque in terms of his control of the puck, right? Whether it's with hand-eye, like we've seen the clip against the sabres, we're in the neutral zone. He creatively tightens up on the stick in mid-air and bats it down to a teammate or kind of like redirect it to them to create a transition opportunity. There's been countless times where he's using his stick, his skate, whatever option he has available to him to receive a puck and then do something with it

in a very controlled manner. And the fact that the game is already that slow for him and he's in that complete command is kind of frightening to think about actually. You have to have the tools that match your skills. And I want to talk about exactly what you just said for a second because there's a really important note that we have to make here. He worked really hard this offseason to develop his own blade. He wanted a blade that suited his skill set and his skill style.

First things first, a lot of these youngans, well, he's young whippersnappers, right? They're using the flex in the 70s, right? They want a max, they want max momentum coming off. stick. Macklin Celebrini is in the mid to high 80s. He wants to feel that puck on there, right? He wants to know that he's making contact with it and he wants to use that stick as a weapon in his forecheck. The second thing is his blade. You talk about his ability to sort of have this Crosby-esque control, right? There's a reason for that. He has developed the middle ground between a P28 and a P-92. He has his own

McLean-Colabini blade. It's a toe curve on the front end, a box toe, but the blade on the back to So it comes down off the sixth straight, and then the only curve you get is this sort of like box toe blade that allows you to cup the puck and tributiate before you fire it. Because from his perspective and what he said was, I needed to stick a blade, let me rephrase. I needed a blade that did two things. It allowed me to accept all of my pucks on the backhand because that's what I like to do. I like to take the puck on the backhand, and I like to take the puck at the back part of my blade, right?

I also like to distribute pucks on the backhand. If I'm going to do that, the level of effectiveness that I want, I need a blade that's straighter as it meets the stick. However, my wrist shot I like to have on the front. I like to keep it on the toe, and when I'm going to shoot, I keep it coming off the toe. In order to do that effectively, I need some kind of toe curve and you know, a box curve on the front.

So he's taken sort of two styles and found this. distinguished middle ground between them and sort of made a blade that serves two full purposes for him. And what I heard him saw that, or when I heard him say that, I went back and sort of rewatching these clips. And sure enough, yeah, not only like you said, is he getting dead pucks out of the air, right? Or he's able to whack dead pucks down. He's able to kill pucks quickly when they get to him, right? All of these things in the way that he accepts the puck on his backhand, all of this is possible because he spent time in the summer working with CCM making a blade that was specifically going to serve him this purpose. So it's not surprising to hear you say that.

And I'm sure knowing that about his stick probably doesn't shock you now that you've watched all these clips to know that he sort of spent that time in the off season to really craft a tool that was meant for him. I also, the one other call out I do want to make about a stick to me, it's just absurdly long for his height. Right. Like it's like Toby Endstrom long. I don't know if you remember Toby instrument from back in the tragedy days. Yeah, but when you think about it in the scope of how many of these clips are dependent on that stick and him using it as a weapon in the forecheck to separate man from puck and how many turnovers he generates, it's no secret as to why.

He himself is not a small individual. He's using this huge, huge stick that's got little flex and a blade that allows him to do exactly what he wants. I love hearing when players are in the lab like that, Dmitri, and they are going to a company and saying, look, this is exactly what I need, right? Also, mostly seven lies. So he wants that sucker on the ice, right? Like, he wants that thing down there. He wants to be able to use that thing to get that blade on the ice and keep no space there. So I, you know, for me, I think when you watch these clips, then you think about the kind of stickies boat, it all, it all ties together beautifully. What a freak. I love the attention to detail there. Both on Celebrini's part and also on yours for calling that out and breaking it down. We're going to take our quick little break here. And then when we come back, we'll jump right back into it and we'll keep breaking down Macklin Celebrini's tape today here on his film club.

You're listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right. We're back here on the HockeyPedio cast joined by Jesse Marshall. Jesse, we're doing the Macklin Celebrini Film Club today and we're breaking down everything we're seeing from them. I go one final note on his rush game and then we can move on. I think I want to focus spent some time certainly on his shot and maybe that ties into the conversation we were having before a break about his stick and sort of the details and intricacies behind that. But the other note that I wanted to, we're mentioning kind of how you can't throw him a bad pass and his ability to sort of receive pucks everywhere. And what a massive radius I guess he has because of the length of his stick.

The other thing is, is there's so much deception in his rush game once he enters the offensive zone as well, like his ability to just kind of flick either on the forehand or backhand, these passes to teammates who are maybe got a better angle towards a net than him. There's so much deception. His utilization, I'd say, of no look stuff is it's not just window dressing. Like it's very functional and purposeful, right? But we've seen him score a couple goals off of no look, Sean. already. We've certainly seen him set up a couple beautiful goals for teammates off of of no look passes. But it seems like it's almost impossible to diagnose what his intentions are

as soon as he steps into the offensive zone because he is such a dual threat that you can't really even shade or play him one way because he's just as happy to beat you the other way, if you know what I mean? So I don't know, I find that part of his game incredibly enthralling as well. It's almost like, you know, if you think about this from the perspective of a defense been like what's the best thing to do? And it's almost like to just never capitulate, right? Like you don't ever want to make the move to step up on him and try to hit him because you probably aren't going to make contact with them. Your best bet is just to keep them a stick length away from you at all times, right? Like just try to sort of just back up

perpetually, I think, until you're, you know, you've no more options around you. I don't know, you've seen him, you know, we talked about John Carl. John Carlson is not a small man, right? Like he's not a small defenseman. These are not small players that are trying to make contact with them. These are really big guys that are stepping up with their shoulders down, ready to, you know, put them on the ice. And he's not, not giving them that opportunity. I just, I'm amazed by how much he can accomplish with his head down. You know, like, you normally, that's like a death sentence for players, right? They come through the middle with their head down. But it's like he's doing it. Again, I don't know he's the term intentionally,

but like he's cognizant of it, right? Like it's, you talk about these no look shots. Like so many of them come with him. You know, he's got the puck out at a distance from his body, you know, sort of doing the wrist curl and he's looking at it. You know, like his eyes aren't on the net. They're on the puck. So like if you're a goalie and you're, you're trying to pick up on what's coming, like good luck, right? From a posture perspective, he's not giving me any towels. Again, that blade style allows him to execute a lot of really nifty stuff off the backhand, right? And the fact that he's a player who prefers to take the puck in stride on the backhand. Like that's, that's, you know, giving him a ton of options, you know, from a menu selection

perspective in terms of what he can do when he accepts it. I could pull forehand and dance around the guy. I can lean in on the backhand and go around someone. I can chip around them, right? I can make, like, the options are endless. So I agree with you. I mean, from a rush perspective, the versatility is through the roof. I was cutting these clips and I said, wow, I'm really looking forward to doing the show with Dimitri in 2028 and juxtaposing it with this one to see exactly how far he can go with this stuff right like in this if this is you know some sophomore slumps and like those types of things aside demitri right like you usually see offensive players and i'll use like crosbie again as an example evolved over time right sid sid crosbie today is

not dancing through the neutral zone and dangling the five guys at full speed and then sprawling out for a highlight real goal, right? His means of zone entry has changed with time as have his physical capabilities, right? Given that Salabrini is not even in his prime yet, like he's just figuring this stuff out now on the fly, like this is his introduction to pro hockey, for him to have this deep of a bag now, like I really think as years go by and we start looking at him, you know, specifically in this zone entry space, I think this, I think he's going to be an innovation. Bater, Demetri. I think that, like, you know, we talked earlier about how he was influenced by this current crop of players. Like, I think he's about to start doing the influencing.

I mean, he's already, I think, sort of in a class of his own, as we see him on the screen, just spin around off another player to make a look past. He's in a class of his own with some of this stuff. And you have to think there's going to be an evolution for him here where he's going to develop new things. I can't wait to see what those new things are. Because a lot of this stuff, I'll just be, again, I'm being frank and transparent here. A lot of the stuff that I've seen him do on the zone entry space regarding his brakes, his ability to turn, his ability to spin, I've just never seen before, right? I said the same thing about Connor McDavid when he came up and could just dust people with speed that you've never seen before in your life. It's,

it feels the same way to me, you know, it's almost like you're watching it and you're like, this is alien. This is foreign. And I have never seen. seen this in the game before. Yeah, I imagine as he goes along, similar to McDavid and pretty much every player, like you're going to get better at sort of picking your spots, I guess, and learning that less is more sometimes and everything just becomes a bit more optimized and refined as you go along. I do find this entry point very compelling, though, from like an experimentation perspective,

right? And even if it sometimes fails, just watching him in his first 20 games, try stuff and kind of see what sticks. And then I'm sure he'll go back to the drawing board in the offseason or in future, years and sort of scrap some of the stuff that isn't working and then just kind of focus more on the stuff that is. I'm curious to see what happens with the spin passes because he's, as you mentioned earlier, he's spinning a lot in terms of off puck. He's also spinning a lot on puck too. Like he's just, he's just smashing. He's spamming the spin pass button and seeing what works.

Yeah, he is. And I mean, he's incredibly effective doing so. And a lot of the times, I think the intentions behind it are very pure from a perspective of first he's disguising the intention but also he's trying to with that long stick kind of sometimes spin around and take it out wide and create a bit of space for himself and then he's trying to funnel the puck either for a backdoor tap in or into the slot for a teammate unfortunately there's not that many guys on this team right now that I think can both think and then react to the game at the level he does so a lot of it is kind of falling on deaf ears at times in terms of you can just see teammates just being sort of surprised at the puck came to them all of a sudden in the slot instead of being ready for it and being able to execute when it comes.

And so I think that'll certainly come with time as well. Let's get into the shot and the shot mechanics. He scored 11 goals in 22 games. A couple of them have been through pure kind of beating the goalie one-on-one with the shot. And what I've really appreciated and watching so far, you see it off of the rush as well, but I think in particular most prominently on the power play when he's kind of posted up on his one-time position at the right circle is when he gets it, how he's actively changing the angle to try to first kind of elude the defender's stick and even position them so they're screening

their own goalie, but obviously change the angle for the goalie as well, right? He's kind of like stepping forward with his inside foot at times, and that's forcing the goalie to kind of drop down and react as if a shot's coming. And then he just kind of bumps it aside a little bit and flicks it with high velocity as he just did there against Hallibuck. And that seems like a nightmare for opposing goalies, right? Because you're kind of, I think, taught to just read and react based off what you're seeing in front of you. And oftentimes he's giving you a few breadcrumbs before ultimately doing what he's really trying to do.

And similar to all the great sort of shooters that we see today, whether it's an Austin Matthews or whoever you want to name, he's already integrating into that into his game. And that's also what I was thinking about when I was saying, like, he's an amalgamation of all these great players and their individual traits. You can tell that he grew up watching Austin Matthews wrist shots, right? Because he's essentially just sort of trying to incorporate all of that stuff into his game. He doesn't really have, I don't think, that level of shooting talent, because Matthews is a one-of-one in that sense. But he's doing a lot of the sort of finer points and details that you're already seeing there. Yeah.

And, you know, if you talk about that hybrid blade I mentioned earlier, the two players in the league that are using something close to this, or Trevor Zeggress and Austin Matthew. So there you go. uh, Matt lines up with your assessment you just made perfectly. Um, yeah, I look, here's the thing I wrote down in all the clips I watched,

Dometri is like, it's an always an appropriate selection. Right. Like he's got this deep offensive tool bag. He can shoot the puck in a number of ways. This isn't a situation where he's just constantly using hyper speed and brute force, right, to pick corners or,

or, you know, um, just use velocity. as a means for scoring, they're situationally appropriate shots. And I watched a lot of clips. This isn't tie into his goals. But I watched a lot of clips of him in one-on-three situations where he throws just the softest

marshmallow in on the goalie, catches him by surprise, and he has to kick it out for a rebound. Right. And most of the time it's to the side. So now you've given yourself an opportunity to go get a loose puck retrieval. You bought your teammates' time. right, whatever the situation is, it's the variety that I enjoy. Like, I think that's the best part. Great backhander loves to cut inside, really dig down low and scoop that thing,

like with a whole, sort of that whole body momentum, right? Great velocity off the backhand. Again, can appropriately keep them soft and serve them up for teammates too, but not afraid to use it. And then, you know, that he, when he, when he, when he, he does want to wind him up though that's probably my favorite thing to watch is like really letting him dig in and get behind one um you know he uses that front part of the blade a lot to to get that max lift and that max momentum and action off of the blade so that's just i think another thing that

really is confusing for goaltenders is if you're trying to you know track what's what angle the puck's going to come off the blade it's really difficult to do that because sometimes it's extreme sometimes it's super extreme and sort of like belize physics right he can get a lot of lift at short extreme angles from really in tight to the net uh that was another another i wrote that down and highlighted it uh i feel like he can get that low base and in lower um you know his lower hand in order to to get that a big scoop off the blade and an angle that really sort of i think belize what should be happening physically Yeah, as much as I appreciate, as I said, when he changes the angle and sort of tries to beat you with position, sometimes when he just uncorks it with pure velocity, I just, I like to see that.

And it always gets a hell yeah out of me when I'm sitting at home watching on the couch. You got any other stuff on his shot as we watch him beat David Riddick here very cleanly off the rush picking his spot? And once again, do you have any other notes on the shot or do you want to move on to a couple of other components? his game. Yeah, we can move on. Okay, here's one that I got for use. He's only played two minutes and two seconds or two minutes and nine seconds, sorry, so far on the PK this year. And I think part of that is already he's leading the team amongst forwards and five one five usage obviously plays a bunch of the power play. I think he's playing a tonne's nearly 20 minutes per game, all situations. I imagine they don't want to put too much on his plate already and it's kind of unnecessary in a year where

you're not really competing to just be loading this guy up with a bunch of high leverage defensive minutes and PK situations where that can be frustrating and potentially lead to injury. But I will say in watching his game at 5-1-5, I feel like there's no reason why when he's closer to his prime and when the Sharks team is good, that he can't be a really good to potentially elite penalty killer because his stick work, the command of the puck that we're talking about, his instincts, his skating ability and closing speed. You put all that stuff together.

He wins so many battles. We've kind of noted that Sport Logic has him third in a league in puck battle wins per game. Yeah, the sandwich between Nico Hissier and Alexander Barkov, the top two players on every single person's Selky ballot. And part of it is certainly because the sharks just have the puck a bit less frequently. And so he's in the defensive zone. I haven't win battles.

I can see it all of that. But you watch this stuff, and it's remarkable to me how often he can go into a crowd, and regardless of the numbers or who's involved, he's just going to come out with it. And so you see all these instances where he's winning battles. He's got so much dog in him. Hopefully we'll see a clip here where he essentially just in the neutral zone. There's a loose puck, and he battles Cindy Crosby for it, and he gets there. He eliminates his stick.

He outmuscles them to get inside position, which is incredibly hard to do, because we know, we know how strong Crosby is, as you see here. And so all of these little traits, like, man, I think once they unleash this guy on a penalty kill, he's going to be another weapon there. And so I think that's just another thing to look forward to as his career progresses. I 100% agree with you. We already talked about how long that stick is.

You already talked about his willingness to use it. I think the way that he plays off puck, I could make a sure, he's very shark-like, but I don't want to do that too. listeners. Yeah. We're going to pretend you don't. But you know what I'm getting at, though, is that he stocks, right, is what he does,

is I think he lays off laterally to a player, right? So defenseman's got a gap, right? There's a one-on-one situation, celebrating is off that to the side on the hip. And he sort of like will angle and wait for that moment to sort of gain speed and angle himself into the play to come away at the puck, right? What is the most disadgent advantageous time for this forward? I'm convinced he would be a good defenseman. I'm convinced. I mean, just the way he plays and his understanding of Lane shut down and how to pinch somebody off and what angle to take on them.

You know, he's opportunistic is the word I would use, right? It's not like, you know, I love watching Brandon Tanna for check, but it's like a bull in a china shop, right? You let him loose up there and he just goes and hits everybody. And it's like a Hanson brother almost in that sense, right? This is not that, right? This is like very calculated. It's still utilizing speed and it's still creating happy. but it's doing it very opportune times and at the right moments to dispossess Dimitri

and counterattack right like that's that's the goal here is like you keep talking about he's walking away with the puck because he's immediately turning these situations in like offensive threats and you know these situations i mean there were so many of them i watched where there's this mass of humanity tied up along the wall here comes celebrating he into it with speed and he just jams this stick in there and somehow or another, like, you know, all that speed and momentum's got, so it's enough to dislodge the puck enough to create like a two-foot foot race that he can win, right? So it's, it's, you know, it's, I agree with you. He has a tangible understanding of how and when to attack players in both his own and in the neutral

zone. And I, that was perhaps the most impressive part of it to me. Because I, you know, I, you've seen it throughout the course of the year, but like the dedication. to it is very extreme. I think he's got a very good pulse on the more I participate in this facet of the game, the more I get to eat offensively, right, at the end of the day. And I think that he's very much enjoying the odd man rushes and scoring chances he's getting from walking away with those situations with the puck. Yeah. I'm glad you brought up Brandon Tann. I don't think there's too much pre-planning in a measurement to his game. He sees a nail and he hammers it. With Celebrity, it's much different.

You got any other notes on him? I kind of had a few just in terms of like, it's been cool watching the progression even within this season of how sort of, I guess, opponent specific, his plan of action and attacking is, right?

Like there was this game they played recently in Carolina where you could just see like, Carolina's the most aggressive team in the league, certainly, right? They pressure every single puck. They try to, everyone has a good stick. They're trying to aggressively poke it away,

and they're constantly leaning and kind of pushing forward. And I felt like he really went above and beyond to leverage that against them, right? There was the one Luke gun and goal he sets up where, like, he's drawing in multiple guys along the way as he's weaving through the neutral zone, and he's sort of just deacon around them and beating them that way. It felt like, I think you're right where the best way to probably defend him is to give him bit of space because kind of checking him tightly is probably not going to work out for you. But then the issue is what we talked about earlier.

That just allows him to essentially freely skate into the offensive zone. And then at that point, he's such a threat as both a shooter and passer that you're essentially allowing him to step into his preferred options. So I don't know what the right response there is, but it's been kind of cool. And then obviously I mentioned the Jets game earlier and kind of all the stuff he was doing to frustrate them as he goes along here and plays different teams and including the top ones in the league. It's fun watching him assert himself, but also in real time

kind of figure out what's working and what's not against them specifically and then using that against them within the same game. Yeah. No, the only other note I had was giving goes. I just think that's the other call out I'd make is that he sets himself up and

his teammates up. And I think that the sharks as a whole are starting to get more comfortable with this. I've seen Jake Walman do this a lot with him now and sort of respond pretty well, I think, to this style, but we talk about how he can find himself high in the offensive zone all the time, right, like up by the blue line. He's looking for defenseman to pinch there and, like, play that giving going game with him along the wall, like that back and forth patty cake around guys, even if it's just one, but mostly it's just one pass, right? Like, we're going to catch

each other in transition and let's dump it off, right? That's, that's been a lot of fun to watch, too. I think another one of his tools that I think is worth a call out for me is that like, these aren't situations that are happening organically. There are situations, that he's designing, right? Like, he is creating these circumstances that create these give and go passes, like by the nature of the way that he plays on offense. And that's impressive to me. Like, I think that, you know, it's one thing to be good at it when the opportunity arises

is it's another thing to create the opportunity for yourself. And I think that's what he's, that he's been exceptionally good at this year. Well, and that's exactly what I'm saying, right? Walman is probably one of the few guys along with, I guess, Timothy, Liljigran, that is actually able to sort of, has the skill, I guess, offensively to get involved in that.

And so I'm not surprised to hear you say that and specifically call that out. It's been interesting also watching them sort of experiment with and play around with what the best line combinations are for him and what works and what doesn't. There's been a few flourishes here where they put him and Will Smith on the ice together. And it's this like just ball of unbridled energy and the results aren't necessarily there yet. But I feel like that's going to be an interesting fit move. went for. We saw him playing with William Eklund and Fabian Zetterlin. I thought that Eklund in particular, you talk about the giving goes, that really flourished with the two of those guys.

Now he's playing with Nikolai Koblenko, where they got in the Blackwood, Georgia of Trade, and Tyler Topholi. And it's been a couple games, but I really like what I'm seeing from them. So I don't think there's really a wrong answer necessarily, but I think this is right for the sharks under Worsowski to be sort of just using this time to, I guess, figure out who the long-term running mates are going to be for him and what's going to be the best situation for him to optimize all these skills that we've described here today. Yeah. All right.

Got any parting shots? I'm amazed that we got through it because heading in, you and I were kind of talking off-air. It's like, oh, man, I don't know if 50 minutes today is going to be enough because I've got so much stuff on him. I feel like we did a really good job of concisely sort of working our way through it. Similar to the way Macklin-Cellibrini works his way through the neutral zone. I think we did a good job of, of inquiries. incorporating everything and efficiently getting through it.

You got any other stuff or do you want to get to the plugs? That's it. Yeah, no nothing for me. That was a lot of fun. I think from a perspective, Demetri, this is probably the most fun I've had in the time that we've been doing this just because, like I said, it was hard to not clip everything, right?

Like, even the most innocuous of things that celebrating is doing, you feel like you could put in highlights real somehow and explain to people, you know? It's, yeah, so it was pretty enjoyable from that perspective. everything's got such a fun flare to it it's uh you just can't take your eyes away with it i agree if you're living out in the east coast or whatever i highly recommend stand up for some sharks games or catching up

uh the next morning hopefully today's episode and also the the mixtape and the compilation of clips that we put up is going to help you i think familiarize yourself better with this guy's game because this isn't a type of thing where it's like all right i can't i mean i certainly can't wait to see what he looks like in twenty twenty eight when you and i are hopefully still doing the film clubs, but it's already like the, the present, it's now. Like, he's doing it immediately every single day and it's seemingly getting better with each passing game. So I'm glad we're able to get through this. Jesse, I'll let you plug some stuff here. What do you want to let the

listeners know about? Nothing to plug, man. It's Christmas. So taking some time off and I'm going to enjoy it with the kiddo and we'll be back to, we'll be back to discuss, are the penguins good after the new year? Very exciting stuff. I'm glad we were. able to squeeze in one more film club here before the, the end of the calendar year. We've done a couple of them this year. I know that we keep teasing this. Hopefully it doesn't become a running bit where we ran out of time and we didn't get to

him today. But I feel like we really should pick a defenseman and finally break down their game. I think Zach Wrenzki's going to be really fun one for us because I feel like he's worked this way into that Norris conversation with Hughes and McCar. I don't know if you feel this way because obviously even in doing Celebrity, we spent a bunch of time talking about his defensive. play and work off the puck and everything. But defensemen are just so much less involved generally.

And so, you know, a lot of the offense, the Blue Jackets run does funnel through Werenski. So I feel like he's a good candidate for this exercise. But for the most part, I feel like the reason we gravitate towards the forwards is because they're just so much more involved on puck. And I feel like the skill sets are more interesting, I guess, for us to break down. And what's hilarious, Demetri, is when we do do defensemen, it's like Mikey Anderson. It's like offensive ones. It's like the, it's like the.

defensive defenseman out there. So yeah, I know we got to give some love to the blue line soon. I got to be honest to breaking down the fourth wall. In doing these, as I said,

we work through every single shift the player has done this season. And the nice thing about forwards is generally it's a pretty manageable amount. But as the season progresses here, it's like you look and it's like, Zach Ranski's played 900 minutes already. Oh my God.

That is going to be a gauntlet to run through. But that's why we do what we do. And hopefully that's why the listeners enjoy listening to us. My plug is if you're not watching along with us here every time we do the film club, go on the HockeyPedio guest YouTube channel and watch along with us. We try to strike a nice balance and hopefully we're getting better at it of making it accessible for listeners who are listening on radio and podcasts. So we're not like stopping on every play and just describing it sequence by sequence so that you can just listen to us if you aren't watching. But we do

recommend you watch along with us if you can because I feel like the clips were showing and we were referencing help explain a lot and help you visualize it. And so hopefully it works for you. That's going to be all for today. We're going to be back with one more episode to close out the week. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.