The Hockey PDOcast - Film Club - Playoff Forechecking, and How the Kraken and Panthers Are Doing It

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Jesse Marshall joins Dimitri to break down the tape on how teams like the Kraken and Panthers are getting great results out of their forecheck this postseason.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.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitra Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man? Enjoying the playoffs, Dimitri. A little sleepless nights with these overtimes for us East Coasters,

but it's well worth it in the end. They've been phenomenal. The entertainment value of last nights, both game ones, the start off round two, were just fantastic games to watch. We're going to do our first playoff film club here. And it's going to be very on brand. It's going to be niche.

It's going to be something that isn't necessarily the most glamorous part of hockey to talk about, certainly. But I think you and I were just talking before we went on air, it's probably the most important or kind of the uniting theme so far of the first couple weeks of the 2023 postseason. It is forechecking and how to do it effectively, how to create issues for your opponent and sort of cripple pretty much everything they want to do themselves. and then maybe we can talk about potential sort of like workarounds or adjustments or things teams that are suffering against it can do to kind of make life a bit easier for themselves in the game theory behind it. So we're going to have some point with it. I thought it was perfect timing

for us to do this today though because the two teams that won last night were the Crack and then the Panthers. And you could make a very nice case that they're the two teams who embody this the best in terms of leveraging that forecheck into creating easy looks and then extended offensive zone time for themselves. And so it was very, I think, fitting and good timing for us to get into it today. And I think the cool part is they don't necessarily do it the exact same way, right? Their themes are the same in that they're going to throw the kitchen sink at you and try to disrupt you in what you're doing and destroy your tempo, create turnovers, and kill your zone out of your defensive zone. But beyond that, I think there's nuance and difference

and kind of how they approach. And I think Seattle is very front-footed with it. It sometimes sends two players in to be that wrecking ball, whereas Florida is like a layer, right? You layer these players up. You'll send a Matthew Kachukkin who's, you know, destructive in his own, in his own right, without anyone else. And then, you know, your first level of pass,

if you're an opponent, is gone because Florida will layer this other four-checker there. And then your other safety valve is gone because they're layering another one there. So it's been fun to watch. I think we both, you and I, to some extent, grew up me a little bit deeper. I got some years on you. Grew up in like that the remnant of the two-line pass era. And the reason that I'm bringing this up, right, is because I think four checking worked differently coming out of that era.

You could hang back. You know, that was the old New Jersey devil's trap, Dimitri, right? You don't attack the opponent. You sit back and wait and let them pass into you. and then as they get closer and closer to your defensive blue line, you collapse on them. And that's, I think, coaching in the NHL. That was the foundation of it all the way up until maybe like 2010 is when it started a shift. And you had like Dan Bilesma take over for the Penguins and the hope that he took the reins off them and let them play off ends.

And much other teams sort of followed suit. Coaches followed suit. And then it sort of developed all the way into like, you know, we mentioned last year, you know, We were talking before the show about what the lightning had done to them last year at the hands of the avalanche, an avalanche for check being very overwhelming. But my point being is that we've seen a very distinct and tangible shift in the philosophy of coaches. Sometimes in surprising cases, like the one of Dave Haxdall, who saw this coming, where he looked at the Colorado Avalanche and said, I don't have it on paper, right?

I don't. I don't have it on paper. I can't conceivably expect my team to play this like the super defensive system and survive, right? I'm opening the door up in that situation. We're going to attack. We're going to take everything we've got. We're going to change our system. We're going to do to Colorado what Colorado does to everybody else. And it worked. It worked. Shockingly, there's other intangibles that go into this. But like, I love that approach. Florida, same way, same mentality, front foot, we are not going to respect Boston at all. We have no respect for what the Bruins are going to do. We don't care about their breakout. I don't care how fancy it is. I don't care what their shooters do off the wing. Doesn't make a difference. Send the house. And that creates,

you know, hockey's about chaos to meet you. It's how much can you, of that chaos can you inflict on your opponent. And in these cases, both of these teams in Seattle and Florida's a case, have totally been dictating the terms at which the game is going to be played. Yes. Yeah, no, well, certainly. Okay, well, let's get into, let's start over the Cracken and see how far that takes us then. We can talk about the Panthers and maybe differentiate between them and sort of the little details that go into each one later. So I was mentioning the Cracken Stars game and how fun it was last night, right? There were 79 combined shots on goal. I believe Will Borgon was the only player in the game, the only skater that didn't have a shot attempt. It was a very high event game. I had the scoring chances at 23 to 20 for the Crackin, which is a a lot for one game. I think people that go on natural statics and natural stats are just like a phenomenal resource, right? And it's my go-to-for-everything for everything. But if you store it by just like scoring chances in individual games, it's always these crazy totals. It's like 45 to 37. And it's like there was absolutely no way that either these teams actually had 45 scoring chances unless you're

just counting every single random puck bounce as a theoretically it could have gone in. But in reality, actual scoring chances, if you're getting up to that 20 range in a game, It's a pretty productive game for you offensively, and both these teams crack that in this one. But on shots off the forecheck, I had 12 to 4 for the Cracken, and that is a very on-brand thing for them. It's an extension of what they did against the Abs and Round 1. It's an extension of what they did pretty much all regular season. And I don't know, let's get into sort of how they do it and sort of what you saw on tape particularly because you did a big preview of Cracken Stars and kind of going back and watching what they did to the Avalanche in round one, sort of how they do,

it why it's such a problem and why they're able to keep doing it because especially, you know, the Stars had a few days here to prepare for this series, right? So I would imagine that Pete DeBore and his staff are using that time to go back and prep and work their way through the video and sort of see what they can do. And so none of this is necessarily surprising. There's a lot of this on tape. But once again in Game One, we saw the Dallas Stars struggle with sort of the pressure that Seattle was able to incur on them. It's one of those things that I don't really think, And studying helps, right? You can amend your own system or your own preferences to the fact that you're going to be in this environment where there's going to be limited time and space available to you. But I think you have to just be in it. You know, it's like I said, it's chaos to have, you know, traditionally playing as a defenseman, right? You think about life as a defenseman. As the person responsible for the retrieval usually in the break out of the play, the first touch, so to speak, you always have a safety valve, which is usually a D to D pass. Right, your buddy on the other side of the ice, play it behind the net to them, whatever the case may be.

You've got a release there, a wheel around the back end to relieve that pressure. Or you have a first preference on breakout pass, right? There's motion occurring with your forwards. They're running in a repeated usual pattern and you know what to look for from them based on certain phases of the game. What Seattle does is they immediately put pressure on the puck carrier. So they put the puck carrier under duress. and then they immediately take away that safety vote. And they say, no more.

Like, you don't have that, we're going to eat that other defense. We're going to live all over them. And then we're going to take our third forward, and we're going to mark your primary point of breakout pass. Where do you want to go? What's your breakout look like? Usually goes this way? Take that away. So now, what do you have if you're playing against that?

You have no space to breathe. Nobody's open. if you're running your same breakout over and over and over again in that environment, recipe for disaster. It's not there. You have to adapt. I love that two-headed approach at the front end. You know, what started this for me is I was on Twitter after the first game or two of Seattle,

Colorado, and people kept talking about how good the Cracken were defensively. And, oh, man, they're locking it down in the third period. But I'm looking at the data. and usually when somebody, quote, unquote, locks it down in the third period, there's a score effect that happens. One team ends up with a gaudy amount of scoring chances and shots because the other team's just focused on playing defense. That wasn't really happening at all. It looked like, from a data perspective, Seattle was just still trying to kick the door down in the third period. And I, lo and behold on the video, that's the case.

They didn't take breaks. There was no time off in the 60-minute frame where Colorado had a moment to breathe and take the pressure off. every single time they went back to get the pluck, they had to work at it. I shared these numbers with you on Twitter, but just the tangible impact of this, right? In the regular season, and this is all tracking done by Corey Schneider's all three zones,

project was unbelievable work he does to manually track these games. In the regular season, Colorado had 79 failed exits in the games that Corey tracked. 79 total failed exits on 484 attempts getting out of the zone. that's a 16% fail rate, 79 failures, 484 attempts. Just in the first five games of the Cracket Series, this does it, Corey hasn't even tracked six and seven yet. Just the first five games,

Colorado had 53 failed attempts, failed exits, on just 268 attempts for a 19% fail rate. They had almost declipped the entire regular season total in a short pocket of games against the Cragon. And that's, that to me is the impact of living in that sort of kind of high pressure environment where you don't have that easy release to relieve that pressure off with you. Yeah, it's interesting. The mechanics of it really fascinating me here. And that's sort of what you picked up on as well, where like the F1 just hounds the Pock carrier very aggressively,

right? And then I think they're not necessarily taking off that sort of safety valve. They're sort of like, I think they would be happy if you go that way because they're sitting on it so hard. So in a sense that if you, if you, what you're saying is true where maybe over preparation in terms of like seeing the tape and knowing kind of their habits, steers you away from that before you even make that mistake. But unfortunately, then it kind of opens up this trickle down effect where now you've taken that away and then you, you're going to have a more difficult decision down the road, right? And the first, literally the first goal of the postseason that they scored in franchise history

was off of this entirely, right? And everyone's like, oh, Devon Taves made such an uncharacteristic mistake behind his own. net, but in reality, you go back and see it and it's like, all right, well, he wasn't going to pass to his defense partner, Sam Gerard, because he was too close to and he knew that was going to be trouble. It was basically just handing him a live, like a live hand grenade. And so instead, he's staring down two guys coming at him and he throws a puck up the middle of the ice, and Ely Tobin picks that off and then gets a goal off of it, right? And so in this series, it's a fascinating thing to consider because the stars, the way they like to play is they

really want to move north-south as quickly as possible out of their own zone. There isn't a lot of that kind of like lateral wiggle to their game where they're reversing it behind their own net and trying to incorporate some of these lateral east-west plays before eventually breaking it out. Like they don't want to be that slow. They don't want to give you a chance to get set in the neutral zone. They want to get it, move it up up the boards or up the middle of the ice and then attack off the rush that way, right? And so that's going to be tricky to do against this Cracken team because the first guy makes whoever goes back to retrieve, it's life difficult, and then all of a sudden there's no immediate option available to him

because the crack can essentially have another like F2 and whatever defenseman breathing down his neck, and then all of a sudden, what's that defenseman going to do? And I think that's a big issue for the stars in terms of trying to fuel that rush offense, that they're really like, they can attack you in different ways now that they added Max Domi and Afghani Dadaunov, but certainly I think when they're at their best particularly at home, it's when they get that downhill momentum and they're just attacking you and waves off the rush and Rupa Hintz is flying around completely unrestrained. And that's a, we saw stretches of it in game one against the Cracken, particularly towards the

end there where they mounted like a really intense rally to try and win in a regulation. But for the most part, we didn't see nearly as much of that as I thought we would heading in. And that's a testament to what the Cracken are doing. Yeah. Sometimes, too, is a necessity. I want to harken back to the Taves, cough. cough up that you mentioned, oh, that led to the, to the game winner early in that series against Colorado. It's like, one of the natural questions I think that you ask in the situation is,

what do you do? Right. Like, if this is the environment you're in and, you know, this is really the way the stew's going to cook, how do you get out of it? How do you relieve this pressure? And I think you saw the crack and do it on that goal. If you go back and watch what happened before the Taves turnover, you know, it's a quick north-south activity, for sure. That fits with Dallas's M.O. But it's the art of the typical. dump, right? So like if I can spend the least amount of time with a puck on a stick of somebody in the neutral zone where I have all this pressure and this environment's so chaotic, the least amount of time I touch the puck the better, right? So you have forwards coming back way, way deep to support

these defensemen deeper than they usually would, which is what you have to do, this puck support approach. And then when the deep forward gets control of the puck, they make an immediate pass up in the neutral zone where somebody is there to just tip it, right? Just tip it. And on the far side, you send a sprinter, right? And that sprinter's only objective is to go get that puck that they know is going to eventually be tipped. We're not even going to attempt to navigate our way through this mess. Forget it. Initial pass, tip, you have a sprinter already on it is going to beat everybody to that loose puck. The defense would have to go turn around and get it. They're already off to the races. They're going to cross the blue line the same moment. Boom, they're gone.

That worked for Seattle. Colorado was doing the same thing to Seattle, the Seattle was doing, to Colorado. The difference, Seattle found the way out of it. They found the way to navigate through it, spend as least amount of time as you can with the puck on somebody's stick. It's still like that. I mean, here are going to be hounded constantly. You know, that's the best approach to take. Yeah. Well, and I think they're better built to do that, right? Whereas a team of Colorado, because of one of the flaws of having the types of stars at the top of the roster they do. And those guys, to be fair, did have the most success clearly out of anyone in that series. but like they want to keep the puck on their stick and try to maneuver through and carry it themselves, right?

It's sort of a more of a kind of role player mentality to embrace playing that game. And that is what the Seattle Cracken are from top to bottom, right? So I think in a way like it actually works in their favor to sort of embrace that mentality. But also when they're the ones chasing the puck on the fordick, we should note, I think they have such a full team buy-in in terms of not only the personnel they have, but the way they play. where you're going to get the same sort of like intensity from line one as you will from line four, right? And then that's not always the case with some of these teams. Like you might have one or two really sort of potent, um, up pressure for checking lines. But then the other team will have a bit of a reprieve where they're like, all right, we can breathe. Like line three is out here. All of a

sudden we can kind of get back, reset, take our time and get this game played in terms that we much prefer. With the cracking, you don't really get that luxury because, all right, Brandon Tannes line's out now, and that's going to be complete chaos. Then Yanni Gord's out. Then Maddie Baneers is out. There's never any sort of chance to get that reset. And I think that hurts especially in this playoff setting where you're talking about a best of seven. And I fully believe there's a bit of a like a cumulative effect as a series goes along in terms of that sort of both physical but also mental fatigue. I 100% agree with you. I posted a video I think I did anyway. Maybe I didn't intend to. But of Maddie Baneer is in the offensive zone, you know, that heavy forecheck, one of the things

that does Demetri is as plays break down, right? And you're engaged in that system. It allows you to continue to play the role of bully, you know, and I'm posted a clip where there was an instance of a Baneer's goal where play breaks down for Colorado, turnover happens, the crack in her forechecking, everybody's engaged. He makes a drive to the net. And just in the motion of driving in the net, shoves the defenseman completely out of the way. Subtle enough that he's not going to get called.

He didn't knock anybody down. You know what I mean? He used his momentum in the forecheck to just take the space away from somebody. Bang, bang, play, puck's on a stick. Nobody's there to mark him. He scores. That's it. So it's the key, you know, you talk about cumulative effects.

I think over the course of a game on a micro level, it has its effect. you start to see ghosts a little bit. You start to play with short arms and you hiccup a little bit every time you touch the puck. But over the course of a series, you have the same thing happen. You have the same thing happen. And it produces these sort of organic moments in the in the in the in the happenstance of the turnover. You get these organic moments to continue to play aggressively and knock people around and create space.

So what's not fun about that? I mean, and you look at and you look at this, you know, the stars have the same. they're cursed with the same problem, right? I love the way that you phrased that. And then a guy like Miro Heiskin, what do you think he wants to do in those situations? Like, for him, you know, it's give me the puck. I'll skate it out, right?

I'll do it myself. But you just, every door is closed, right? Like all your traditional doors are closed. And it takes this superhuman level effort that, you know, is a one in 10 realistic statistical probability of happening. You try to reproduce that over and over and over and be this Hercules. And to your point to you said earlier, it's just not going to work, right? Do you have to adapt to what they're throwing at you or, you know, history repeats itself?

Well, and the stars run a lot of those tip plays, but they do it in a much more controlled fashion where, like, they're so good with Robertson and Pavowski getting off the wall, but they do it in a way where they're trying to sort of set it up for Rubehens to skate into it and attack. And so maybe the adjustment there is to have him be more off puck in terms of being the guy who you sort of shoot out of a cannon to go and retrieve it, as opposed to being the one who handles it and tries to navigate the neutral zone. And so, you know, that's an easier said than done the thing. I'm sure Hints would prefer to just do cool stuff with the puck,

but in a way, like, that might, that might lead to better, yield better results in terms of them actually being able to not only successfully move the puck up the ice without turning it over, but also then establishing offensive zone possession and kind of dictating the terms deep in that way, as opposed to constantly having a regroup and come back. because the Cracken just kind of snuffed out everything they tried to do. We have to mention here as any treat the importance of Schillop Grubauer

because you're not going to win every battle in these wars, right? You'll win, I think, and they have, I think Seattle's won the majority of them. But when teams get around this, you're vulnerable, right? Like you've put an immense amount of resources into the front of that forecheck. And when teams catch you in whatever circumstance and they're able to navigate around it, the job on your defenseman and your goalie grows larger. And that reflects in the data. I don't think the data defensively for Seattle is super tidy.

It's not. It's got a lot of mess in it. And one of the reasons it's got some mess in it is because they're living and dying by the sword. They've had the goaltending. They've had the guy back there that they can rely on. When these other teams get a chance to eat because they've invested so much in the forecheck and they got beat on it, cleanly, they've had the backup there to save them.

That is huge. If they had gotten the same level of goaltending Dimitri in the regular season as they died in that series, there's over. They don't have it. Everything falls apart. Yeah. Yeah, and the same, you can say the same thing about the Panthers. Right?

You watch that game one against the Leafs, and we can marvel and rave about the pressure they put on the Leafs on the breakout. The Leafs caught a lot of rush chances in that game. And if you will go back and watch that tape, I'm sure they probably feel pretty good about, all right, if this happens again with the shooting talent we have, we will score more goals than than we did in game one. But Sergey Berowski had to make some remarkable saves off the rush against some really

talented shooters. And that's the same thing here with Grubauer, right? Like, you're going to be exposed in a way because if more guys are deeper down the ice, if the puck gets past them, all of a sudden, you have fewer reinforcements back, right? So that makes a lot of sense. And that is a bit scary to be relying on that degree. He's held up so far, certainly, in this postseason. but things could go wrong, especially because the stars himself do have quite a bit of shooting talent as well.

I mean, they've scored a lot of goals this season. Oh, 100%. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to note here when we're talking about this that I think is important is the discipline of the Cracken. Because despite how aggressively they pursue the puck, how much they sort of like crowd you and poke away and try to like disrupt you, they don't take penalties either. I believe they were in the bottom 10 in the regular season. In round one, the abs had just 18 power play opportunities in seven games. And in game seven, they had just the one, which they scored their only goal on that one

powerplay opportunity, got nothing else. And in game one of round two, we saw the stars have just two power plays in, what, like 72 minutes of game time or something, bleeding into overtime. And that was after a round one against the wild where the wild were just taking so many dump penalties and the stars were just pulverized that, right? And another trend, we talk about how this is the postseason of forechecking. It's also the postseason of power play efficiency as well, where every team is just converting at a rate that basically would have been second behind the Oilers in the regular season.

And so every power play is just absolutely devastating. And if you give them those opportunities, they will make you pay. And the Cracken somehow, despite how hard they play, are a bit of an exception in that they don't really go over that line nearly as often as you'd expect. No, 100%. Yeah, I agree with that. And then, you know, so if we're talking about this, this like the power play discipline as a unique niche, I want to also mention how difficult it is as an opposing coach to plan against a team that keeps the shifts as short as Seattle does,

which I think is a necessity because there's playing like, you know, the old 200-foot game manager, Demetri. But like when you have to forecheck like that, you got a bunch of ground. You got to cover to your back. right into the play. And I know momentum can do a lot of the work for you and, you know, stuff like that. It doesn't matter. Like, you still have to get back. You still have to be playing defense.

It's a lot of ice to cover. And in a back and forth series where you have these transitions happening and people are going, you know, from offense to defense quickly, that's so tiring. And I think Seattle and Hacksdall specifically have done a really good job of keeping an effective forecheck by keeping shifts really short. And they're catching teams that aren't. changing as quickly as they are on the tail end of these longer shifts with tired guys versus this fresh forecheck that's now eating them alive. And they scored a couple goals off that

in the first series. So it's managed well. That's the thing. Like to your point, there's so many things that could go wrong here. There's so many like niches that could screw this up. And from taking penalties to, you know, being extending yourself on a shift length. They seem to have it all in the bag right now. When I haven't looked at the shift data for game one, so maybe the actual numbers don't back this up, but just watching the game, it certainly felt like someone like Jason Robertson was staying out there maybe a bit past his expiry date, right? Like he's like trying to, trying to circle around and wait and hope that something happens where he can make a play. And that's what great players do certainly. But against this team where it's just, all right, like one guy's off and then another guy comes on and he's fresh, that's a tough thing.

to sort of try to match up against if you yourself, if your legs are already burning and you're going up against Yanni Yort, who we're going to talk more about in a second here, that makes it even more difficult, right? And so it's tricky to tell your best players to get off the ice more quickly because you want them out there as much as they can be to try to create cool stuff for you and make positive plays happen. But in this case, that might be something to watch for in terms of managing those shifts from the stars perspective as well, just to keep up from a freshness perspective versus the Cracken. Yeah, 100%.

It's like swimming against the current, Demetri, is what it is. Yeah. That's 100% it. Okay, let's take a break here while we can because I want to get into a whole Yanikor discussion because he's been such a fun player to watch this both season.

But we'll first take our break and then we'll come back. We'll do that. You're listening to the HockeyPedio cast as always streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. Catch up on what happened in Vancouver Sports with Halford and Brough in the morning. Be sure to subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're back here in the Hockey Pediocast with Jesse Marshall. We're talking about four checks. We're talking about the Seattle Cracken in particular at the moment. Let's stick with that theme and talk a little bit about Yanni Gord because he's been true to form just an absolute maniac so far this full season. And I say that in the most, in the most, you know, endearing way possible, just a motor that simply never turns off. Right. Like even on the now infamous Brendan Tanev goal where he scores shorthanded against the avalanche in game two, I believe, and then blows the kiss to the avalanche fans in the stands, what led up to that play, they got clipped less often,

including my people like myself, because it's focusing on the Tano part of it. Yzianicord goes in, wins a battle against Kail Makar and J.D. Comfer, I believe. Then Nathan McKinnon comes to make it a one-on-three. He beats him as well, pokes the puck away, and creates that opportunity for Tand-A. and essentially just out of nothing, one on three to create that. And that was like the most Yanni Gord play possible. And that was an extreme example of that,

but he's been winning those types of little battles for years now, dating back to his Tampa Bay Day certainly. But even in this run, you know, I think Adam Larson has probably been their most important player just because of how much ice time he logs and all the little things he does. But certainly from a forward perspective, even if he's technically listed on the third line or whatever on their depth chart,

Yanni Gord has been by far their most important forward. Let me tell you where I did not respect Yanni Gord enough in his time with the Cracken and what this playoff did to open my eyes to Yonigort. Everything you just said is correct. And I think traditionally, like everyone respects Yonigort as this guy who can crash in bang which is about anybody, right? Fast, physical, quick to lose bucks, good acceleration. But like, what he can do off of a zone entry is so it's not just limited to that.

So he, first of all, he led the Crackin in that first series. And I think last night, if data is correct, in raw entries total offensively for the team. Everything is seemingly flowing through him. A lot of that is flowing through him in the puck on his stick when it crosses the offensive blue line. But then if you look at his performance from there, he's passing it with a high level of efficiency. Tons of chances created off of passes from the rush. shooting it himself, retrieving dumped pucks.

I mean, every little thing that the Cracken do offensively, you're going to find his name at or near the top of the list, stylistically speaking. That matches the eye test. I just, he's one of, I hate using the term five tool player because what are those tools who decided them? We don't know. But that's like you get this sense that that's kind of what he is.

Like he's kind of that he's eminently deployable. You can use them however you want in any situation. defensive zone face off third period great throw them out there offensive zone face off third period great throw them out there it's no limitation i think is a very much a uh a multi-use type of a player but i think for me i knew about the retrieval piece right i knew that he was good at that and i knew that everywhere he's ever been he's been good at that but i didn't enough respect what he could do with control the puck when he crossed the blue line and how much of a uh orchestrator can we say of of play he could be in driving play in different creative ways.

Well, he does everything for them. I'm going to list you some stats here because I think like the total package, particularly with the context of what he's done in these eight games, is very impressive and deserves more attention. So he has started at 5-1-5. He's been on the ice for 50 defensive zone draws, as you mentioned, compared to just 23 in the offensive zone. And I think that also plays in part where he's winning those battles,

then getting the puck up the ice, getting it into the offensive zone, and that's allowing him to establish there. He leads all cracking forwards in ice time. At 5-15, he's playing about two and a half minutes per game more than anyone else. Ely Tobinan, who they got off waivers, by the way, mid-season, and I think 22 teams passed on his second on that list. Six 5-15 points in eight games. He was out there for 55% of Nathan McKinnon's 5-15 minutes in round one.

Eddie held him, he played him to a draw. The score was 3-3. In that match-up, McKinnon won his other minutes 6-0 when Gord wasn't on the ice. In game one, he was in. out there for 631 versus Rupert Hintz, and they won that matchup 1-0 and outshot Seattle as well. And so I just, I mean, there's also a bit of an irony here as well, right? Where when you watch back that Stanley Cup final that we mentioned earlier between the lightning and the avalanche last year, it was very clear that the avalanche won that series because

they were able to just suffocate the lightning on the forject significantly more than the lightning were able to do to them. And Gord is almost like the exact player that the lightning. think we're missing and this happens right over the course of a championship window where guys get priced out go for paydays elsewhere of course the expansion draft kind of forced his process as well but when you lose these types of players that sort of deterioration or attrition is what happens and then he does everything for them to beat the a abs this year clearly a different avs team than last year certainly with all the players they were missing but still i think like the the full circle

kind of loop of that is also uh is fitting and encapsulates everything that the yani gord means to reckon. We've come full Yanni Gord. We have. Well, here's another note I got for you. His most opponent, his most common opponent in game one against the stars was the pair of Yanni Hakumpa and S.L. And that is a nightmare for the stars. He victimized them for the OT winner, right? And it was kind of like a bit of a lucky bounce, but it also showed you why that's a problem. Because Lendell and Hakumpah have defensive utility individually. They cannot be on the ice together against the player with Gord's sort of quickness and agility and motor

because he's just able to give so many efforts in the time that a guy like Lendell just can't react, right? And so there's like that loose puck, he tries to pass it, Lendell knocks it away, I think, and then he just gets under his stick and turns around and shoots it and Lendell's like not even able to move in the intervening time. because he's just a much slower player, right? It's not in his capability to handle that Hacompa even more so.

And I just think that's a really interesting thing to watch because if that's going to keep happening, they're going to keep burning them. And I think that's something that Bita Borea desperately needs to sort of revisit, watch the tape of, and then make a change as the series progresses. Yeah, I think if you were looking at it from the perspective of Yanni Gord, that's probably the pairing you'd want, right? Like we know that not to sit here in wax poetic about the star's top line too long

or top pairing too long, but their third pairing has been really good. And I don't think people have realized how much they've eaten with the deployment that they've gotten. And the trust sort of leash that they have has been getting longer and longer and longer in Dallas, I think, to some extent. And they've turned in a lot of really good results in the minutes they've been given. So they have mobility. They can move the puck around. Like you said, you know, you always have that sense, Dimitri, that like coaches love an architect. right, they want a puck mover with a state home defenseman, right?

And in this case, you have two of the same kind of coins playing together. Yeah. And it's like, there's always that thing where you're using, oh, I can target this guy, right? Or I can dump the puck in this side of the ice. But like, in this situation, like, who cares? Like, who cares? You don't even have to get down to that level of nuance because, like, you know, it's just stylistically it doesn't really work all that well.

Well, how is that, how's that pairs supposed to function, especially because they're eating a lot of defensive zone starts. for them as well, which means that at some point you need to get out of your zone. And so... Well, Dallas won 56% of their draws in the first row. So they're winning those defensive draws to these guys who've been... And then immediately losing it again, right? It's like...

It totally defeats the purpose. I think, like, I mean, I really like what I was seen for Thomas Harley. I think they need to find a way to give him more minutes. I would strongly consider even in reinserting Niels Lundquist into the lineup just to have someone who can hit the tape of a teammate stick more often. because like this combo like it's it's not even a knock against either player they just can't function together in this type of setting and we're seeing that I mean they've been outscored six nothing at five one five in the postseason so far they have like a 37 percent expected goal share

like it just it can't keep happening and so that's something that desperately needs to change and until it does like Dave Axel and and the cracking just need to keep punishing it over and over again but the problem is when you're like I bet Pete DeBoer is looking at this and being like well these are two guys I really trust so I'm actually going to try to have them on the ice against some of these more dangerous players, not realizing that that is exactly with the crack and wand. It's like slowly, it might not be as obvious, although getting out scored six, nothing will certainly catch any coach's eye, but it's not happening in like the most obvious ways where they're not necessarily just getting burned on these like catastrophic rush plays.

It's more like in zone, just, oh, this this one bad breakout pass after another, kept us in the zone, prevented us from attacking off the rush ourselves, and that cumulative effect is just draining them. And so that's something that I noticed that really needs to change. But this is the beauty of the playoffs, right? This is what it's all about, these matchups, these little adjustments. It's a small thing that isn't necessarily the end of the biggest thing, but in a series

this close, it could prove to be the difference. Yeah, 100%. Okay, do you want to quickly talk a bit about the Panthers then? Since we mentioned in the top and we sort of alluded to him, you know, speaking on that came a little bit of effect, Matthew Kichuk had a really fascinating quote before game one where he just he's straight up was like yeah by the by game seven overtime the brun's defenseman just like did not want to go back and play the puck because sam bennett was just absolutely

teeing off on them and and that Kueblood effect i was like you know what he's right that is exactly what happened and watching that overtime it was like it looked like a team that just did not want to be out there anymore they're like you know what we had this amazing regular season let's just Let's pack it in. I don't, I don't, this isn't worth it. It's like, these guys are absolutely a nightmare to deal with. They're making our lives miserable. And that's exactly what their play looked like.

Like they look petrified. They did not want to make a play. Every time they went back in their own zone, it was just a calamity of errors. And eventually the Panthers were able to turn that into a goal. And so it was cool actually like seeing him say exactly what you're seeing on the ice. You don't hear people like frankly call it out. like that all that often. Here's the data. I gave you the data on the Colorado series. Let me give you the data. It's shocking. The data on the Boston series. Regular season tracking for the Bruins was over

633 exit attempts. They only had 89 failed exits. It's 14%. Right. Playoffs just in the first five games again, 87 failed exits. It's two less than the regular season on 344 attempts. So the same amount is the other season on half the attempts in the playoffs, 26% of every zone exit, Boston attempted in that series, failed as a result of what the Panthers were doing to them. That's crazy to me that you could bully a team in that fashion in the postseason. And it works, I don't like Star Wars a ton like the original ones more than anything, but somebody was like saying to me, and I thought this analogy was really good, that they thought that the Florida forecheck was like the trash

compactor on the Death Star, on the detention level of the Death Star, because it just gets so tight on you. And a squeeze gets so real. And it doesn't, like I said, I don't think it's front heavy like Seattle's is. What it does is it has like, it's a, I call it a peel

almost, right? So where you'll send Matthew Kachuk in 150 miles an hour and he's got a support guy right with him, right? But it's off. He's off. He's not directly attacking that other passing off. He's off Kachuk. So you have this extra presence, but what the idea is is that Kachuk's going to pass the puck carrier, right? If he can't win the puck or engage with him in a way that is meaningful, he's going to use his speed to continue

and this other player is going to come in and now pick up his slack. So you have this constant wave. It's like a cycle. They're like cycling through. Right, right. And no one never gets tired. No one ever slows down. The problem with just sending one four checker, like you run a one-two-two-four check. The problem with just sending one-four checkers, that guy can only go so deep. Eventually, he's going to run into the boards. He's going to run out of space, and he's going to have to turn around and go the other way. And he's going to have to peel off or regain speed.

There's a moment where if you have a patient enough of a breakout, right, where you have a good outlet option or whatever it is, you can easily get around there. It's like swatting a fly. It really is. In today's league, it's like, get away from me. Now, you've got all this immense pressure. It's cycling on you and it's pressing you in and in and in and in to where all of a sudden now, like, they're all on top of you. And you have no time and space. And the problem with Toronto, the real problem with the Leafs in that game is it absolutely no urgency under their breakout.

It absolutely no urgency. And in that system, the longer you take, the worse it gets. It's not going to get better by coming back in regrouping or playing patty cake with someone. You've got to go. to get out as quickly as you possibly can because it's like it is like a it's like a being constricted and uh that it's again it different how seattle does it same ideals um you know you still have multiple players up front engaging um but i think the feel and the vibe and everything is just totally different um and they you know again same theme no time no space anywhere and all the

sort of like traditional things that you would think to do um to save you in a situation um are they're not available to you anymore well i should say say like and their forwards do understandably get a lot of credit because I think particularly what the chuck and bened have done has been phenomenal in this regard. I'd even say like honestly like Etu Lister Ranan has been a guy who's really impressed me in round one in terms of his attacking the puck in that way as well. So it's good. It's been throughout the lineup similar with the crack and have done. But in this case, I do think a lot more credit should also go to Panthers defensemen because they've been so involved in this as well in terms of like very actively and aggressively sealing the

walls in this case and especially the weak side guy like uh kevin bex did a really nice breakdown of this during one of the intermissions on the on the sports net broadcast last night but as soon as like let's say if montour is taking a shot from the right point as soon as he's doing that mark stall is playing the percentages and working down the wall on the weak side in case the puck goes around in case there's a rebound to be the first one on it, to keep them in the zone, and to avoid giving a team like a leaf space to retrieve it and then do something on the breakout with it, right? And so that must be a very frustrating thing to play against. Now, it does leave them a bit exposed, as you saw in that game, because if the puck bounces a

different way or if you are able to get by that guy, I got Mark Stahl does not have the foot speed to get back in the play and provide any sort of resistance. Neither does Goudis. Neither does, even Brankley Arnickblatt at this point. Like Gustav Forsling is really the only defender that I have that I feel competent backtracking and trying to keep up with some of these Leafs forwards. And so that puts you in some compromising positions. And for them, the one game one,

if they're going to win this series, it's going to take an awesome Sergey Babrovsky performance. That's just the reality. I mean, that's true for most teams, right? If your goalie isn't one of your best players, you're probably not going to win unless you're the Oilers and you're able to score five or six goals, it will. But for the most part, for most of these teams,

you do need at least some sort of saves, and So Borovsky will be tested in that regard. But you have to play that way. You mentioned earlier it's not respecting or not worrying about what the Bruins were going to do. I don't really, I mean, it's true. But this panthers team can't be successful playing any other way, right? They almost have to go down with the ship in this way. And eventually, I think they will. Like, they're going to burn out or the puck bounces won't go their way

or a team is just going to capitalize on these opportunities that it creates. But for the most part, it's, it's tough to quibble with how much they've gotten out of this. And especially watching game one, I was like, all right, well, they're certainly doing some things here that it must be at least very frustrating and challenging to deal with for any team, especially the Leafs. Yeah. And I think the longer it goes on, like, the more than likely it is that some coach out there, like, you know, at some point is going to be like, okay, enough's enough.

Like, we need more help back here. Like, we're going to get puck support on the breakout. We're going to hook and ladder our way up through the neutral zone. Like, you know, there's a ton of ways to do it. somebody will, I think, eventually, make a sweeping adjustment that, you know, helps cancel some of this out. But like you said, like, they got to keep the leg. You got to hope nobody gets injured. Your goaltending has got to hold up, you know.

I just think I'd rather do it like this. And I'm not saying you're not saying that. I mean, I know we're both in the same. Well, you're kind of dictating the terms. You're like, if we're going to lose, it's going to be because of something I did as opposed to getting beaten by by you in a way, right? even though even if like you do lose like the other team will beat you but it's like this was under my terms under my conditions and I went down I died the way that I lived basically right yeah yeah I'd rather I would rather go to work some days and leave my door wide you know wide open just

then leave and unlock and get robbed a little bit every day like I just I feel like you know these teams that have the the desire the Rangers are a great example of this to me these teams that have a desire to quell a fire or to put out good rush attempts with defense first, I think what you miss with that is you're always opening the door up a little bit. You know, your area of focus is not, it goes from like prevent this team from getting the puck at all to prevent the, you know, to keep this team to the outside, but they're allowed in my zone. You know, I just, I feel like any, any invitation is a bad invitation in 2023. And what I like about these approaches is that they are a no invitation approach.

Don't come to my house. I don't want you in here. Like we're going to knock, like, we're knocking on your door. And we're going to play that, like, we're going to play on your lawn today. Like, as a, you know, that, that just to me makes so much more sense, especially with the personality's two teams than to say like, no, no, no, everybody packeted. Right. We're going to converge on our goalies.

We're going to try to keep things to the perimeter. We're going to everybody to play outside. Take away the slot at all costs. All right. Like, great, but, like, you know, they're going to catch you in a line change. You're going to get beaten in a neutral zone. So what's your plan that, you know, like, what do you do in those? Like, you can't win 100% of the time here.

Where's your best chance? And your best chance is by, you know, just swarming them. And if you get beat honestly in that, great. Good for them. kudos, shake their hand. You did it. But you're going to win and they have one more than they've lost. As long as you can maintain.

I mean, like we said, it's a question of consistency and stuff like that. But these are teams, Dimitri, that built their success, right? And I'm talking about Boston. I'm talking about Colorado, Dallas, Toronto. These are teams that built their success off of having very, very specific ways of involving their D and forwards and their breakouts and getting what they want from other teams. You take that away from them. Who are they now?

What is their identity now without that? And then they get philosophically, has poked a lot of holes in a lot of really good systems and has kind of thrown a lot of the neutral zone X-No out the window because we haven't even, we can't even get to that point. We can't win the neutral zone because we can't get to the neutral zone. So these people are like,

the coaches are really going to have to step back and evaluate their pride. I think that's the word I would use. how proud are you and are you willing to say my way might not be the best right now and I think the person who makes that leap you know maybe the one

to break these four check parties up well when things go bad for the Panthers they have a goal against to lose a game you don't need like a PhD in hockey to do a breakdown of where I went wrong it's like very like it's very out in the open right whereas like sometimes a team like the Rangers you mentioned it's like

you have to go back three plays before this one where the wind up in their net to find out why it got to this position in a way, right? And so you're totally right. The point I do want to make here, the differentiation is the game clearly changes in the playoffs in terms of like how it's played and sort of what works and what doesn't, especially as the quality of competition increases and you're playing that team over and over again. But these are really good skilled players who are leveraging a lot of these sort of like effort, defensive plays into successful offense and goals, right? Like, that's certainly the Panthers more so than the

Cracken in terms of like Kachuk and Bennett and Verhege and even Lundel and Barkov compared to, you know, the Yanni Gords and Yili Tolbinins and the guys the Cracken are using. But these are good players. This isn't, this isn't like some, some fourth line grinder who is useless in the regular season and then it becomes a superstar in the playoffs. Like, this is just, it's, it's good, It's good players already who are playing in a way that is clearly conducive to results, especially when the games are being played this way and when you're like this sort of unabashed about it, I guess. Yeah.

We always have this acknowledgement, like going into the playoffs that things get tight, whistles get put away, so to speak, and like, you know, like time and space becoming a preradium. And that's all true, right? But like, I think this just takes that and jacks it up a notch. you know, it takes it to a whole other level. You're not, you're not limited to those moments, you know, being off of long cycles or, you know, tight neutral zone play. You know, it, it sort of loosens, it loosens hockey up a little bit, you know. And I think structure, these four checks, Dimitri, all exist in a structural form.

We've talked about it throughout the course of the whole show, right? you could draw them all up on paper, but what you can't sometimes draw up on paper is what happens after you win the puck. Right? So you've executed this forechecked by the book of the letter of the law and by the book of the way the coach is drawn it up. But then after that, everything that happens after that,

you have to have the players that can maximize on those situations and understand transition and where to attack and do I shoot, do I pass, where are my options? You know, I got to think quickly, you know, and on my feet here, it's the total package, man. Like that's, that's really what I'm driving at here is that it's not, you know, they're winning not only in the X's and O's, but they're winning on the instinctual side.

They're winning on the hockey IQ side. They're winning on the innovation and freelance side to be able to win these pucks and turn them into goals. That's really, you have to make fruit of this, right? And they've been able to do that independently of each other and how they've gone about it. Well, I love it. This was a fantastic conversation to see. I mean, I'm clearly biased, of course, being part of it.

But hopefully the listeners enjoyed it as well. I think it was an important one for what we're seeing this postseason and something to think about moving forward. All right, I'll let you plug some stuff, let the listeners know what you put out recently, where they can check you out, all that good stuff. Yeah, I just did a long piece for McKeans on the Cracken Stars preview, talking about said four check and sort of what makes the Stars good defensively.

And what I've been trying to do, I try to do it every night, Demetri. It's not working out. I got a toddler, you know, how things go. But I'm trying to take at least one, you know, really important moment a day in the National Hockey League and just go into the guts of it on Twitter and see, like, what made this moment take place? Why did this happen? What was the system or the player effort behind this, this goal that led us to this?

So it's been fun to kind of, you know, kick around with the Penguins out and, you know, cover the league as a whole. I'm having fun. This has actually been enjoyable. you know, to have the ability to kind of just sit back as a, as a viewer, if you will, and, you know, watch things unfold in a different ways. Having Jeff Carter out of your life is a more positive lifestyle. At least back next year, unfortunately. Oh, man, you can't quit them.

All right, man, well, this is a blast. Let's get some submissions going for the next film club we're going to do. Maybe in a week or two, we'll get together. My ones that I'm interested in are Nico Hishier and Matthew Kachach. I think unique players driving fantastic. result, but open to whatever the listeners want us to get into. So we'll look forward to that. We'll have you on then, Jesse. Thank you to the listeners for sticking around with us today and hopefully they enjoy the show and we'll be back tomorrow with another episode of the Hockey

podcast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.