The Hockey PDOcast - Goalies, and Evaluating Their Playoff Performance With Existing Goalie Stats

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Kevin Woodley joins Dimitri to talk about Sergei Bobrovksky's postseason run, the types of shots the Hurricanes were able to generate against him, Jake Oettinger's workload, and the theory behind everything that goes into 'expected goals' numbers.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.

Since 2050, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedio cast. My name is Dimitri Filipovich, and joining me here in studio on this sunny Thursday is my good buddy, Kevin Woodley. Kevin, what's going on, man? Not much, not much. It's just, I mean, we're on the eve potentially of a cup final. That feels like a little crazy to me. I think this is, you know, not to get ahead of ourselves here, but if Vegas, you know,

wraps this up somewhat quickly in the Western Conference, this would be the first time ever that I will have done second round conference finals and cup final goalie previews in the same calendar month, which is a really nice boon for the, you know, the old that invoicing for the month of May to set me up for the summer. Well, it's also fresh on the mind. Yeah, but it's just like, like it's just, I don't know, a little surprised at how quickly this is gone in this round in particular, obviously. It's definitely spread through. Okay. We got you in studio today. We're going to have an honest, nuanced conversation about goalies.

And in particular, goalie stats, because I think I want to discuss our ability to use them in a fashion that accurately evaluates them and then quantifies their impact. And we're going to talk about both series, the goalies involved, kind of what's been happening, how the types of shots they've been facing, whether the public metrics are seeing are representative of. it and I think a great entry point in that conversation for us is this Hurricanes panthers series right because it feels like the narrative coming out of it fresh off of last night's sweep by the Panthers is while the hurricanes got goalied right they ran into a hot goalie bobrowski stood on his head for the second series now after all he did to the Leafs as well in round two and you kind of raise your hands in the air and go well what can you do you run into a goalie like this in a playoff environment he's the best player at the most valuable position there's

not much you can do. And I don't know about you, but I just find that to be such a unsatisfying way to think about it. Maybe you as a member, card-carrying member of the goalie union disagree, and you do think that this is as simple as the hurricane just had no chance because of the level Bobrovsky was playing at. But in our kind of conversations off area that we've had throughout this postseason, I think we are sort of on the same page about maybe some of the gaps between some of these numbers we're seeing and how they're being used and how they're being reported

and that not necessarily being completely accurate. Yeah, I just think, um, listen, like the playoffs are a time of hyperbole, right? Like where storylines and narratives go crazy. And I think like, I'm kind of caught here, right? Because Bob's on heater, man. And Bob is fun to watch right now. And he reminds me when I look at sort of the technical,

you know, the power, the precision. the way he's moving, like this is peak Bob. And peak Bob at his best, like this was a guy who, there's a reason he's got two business, right? Like, he's that good.

And yet some of the stuff we've seen publicly, some of the public numbers, like, what were the numbers on game one? I can't remember off the thought my head, but like something like... They had the hurricanes of like 7.2 or 7.3 expected goals,

which was essentially two games worth, right? There were four older. Yeah, of course, but they're basically saying he saved like five plus. Yes. And they had the Panthers at like four or something. And to my mind, it was about as even a game as you're going to see. Bang on, exactly.

And again, not saying these metrics are better, but they've certainly got more detail. They've certainly got more sort of layers of measurement in terms of shot quality. And they had both teams, I think around top of my head, I don't have it in front of me, pretty sure it's right around 5.85 expected goals. For game one. For game one. And obviously, the difference between the goal is was the overtime winner, like right up and then they're dead even. Bob says 3.85 and Freddie ends up around 2.85.

Like they were almost a dead heat. And obviously there were points in that game where one team controlled play and created a lot more. But I thought at other points, you know, the hurricanes did the same. And so, um, or sorry, Florida did the same. And, and Freddie was really good. So it's, I just think some of the, you know, and this probably goes to a little bit about how Carolina attacks. And I'm sure you want to get into that as well. But, um, you know, I think there are some nuances within those public metrics relative to the private that get lost a little bit. And at the end of the day, none of it changes the fact that Bob was fantastic. He was.

He was. He was. It's just the level of fantasticness, according to some of the public data, sort of, like, we're getting into some absurd sort of territory. And the reality is, I think it was absurd. I mean, ultimately it doesn't necessarily matter in the sense that the parents, The Panthers won the series, right? Right. So this kind of, uh, the semantics conversation of, was he just good?

Was he really good? Or was he a pantheon level, hash-esque performance? It's like, it makes for fun conversation fodder, right? On Twitter to talk about it. Ultimately, it doesn't necessarily take away from, from the result or change it in any way. I do, you know, for the postseason, he's got a 934 percentage now, 966 in this series against Carolina gave up the six goals in four games. Now, according to Natural Statrick, expected goals in this series were 18.9 by the hurricanes, the 13.7 for Florida, which means that Bob had a 12.9 goal save above expected in four games, which to my eye seems high and inflated.

And I'll give you a few other numbers that kind of... Sorry, how many did they have them at? They had the hurricanes at 18.9 for the series, expected goals, which puts Bob because he gave up six goals at 12.9. You know, it's not that far off. I just pulled it up, you know, with last night's included. And, you know, it's basically has, it has, sorry, Carolina right around 15 expected goals and giving up six. So it's nine. You know, like that's a difference for sure.

So he saved nine in the series in four games. Like nine goals in four games is freaking remarkable. Even that seems to me a bit high. And it's five, you know, like it's essentially five games, right? Because of the game one in the length. of it, but yeah, well, that's what the numbers are here. Let me give you a few metrics on this, because I tracked all these games. Do you need me to get into timely saves?

Because he made a bunch. He made a bunch of very clutch saves, no doubt about it. Okay, scoring chances for this series, by my count. 61 for Carolina, 60 for the Panthers through four games. So there was one scoring chance separating these two teams. I got high percentage chances, if we want to call that. I wasn't differentiating between. Okay, so mid and high combined.

You know, I have, you know, I'm just trying to look here. So this is, I got Florida at around 62. Yep. And Carolina is 42. So Florida was had significantly more high danger chances. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Well, here's an explanation for that. For the series, percentage of shots for each team taken by defect. defensemen. So who accounted for the shots. 46% of Carolina's shot attempts were by their defensemen. In most games, it was Shea, Burns, and Pesci leading the charge. 34% for Florida. In the final two games, where I had the scoring chances, 27, 22 for the Panthers, Carolina forwards took two more shots total than the Florida forward. So it was basically even. All of the, all the stats you'll see about how, you know,

Carolina had significantly more shot attempts and shot on goals and dominated possession and spent more time in the panther zone is the only difference between the two teams, in my opinion, is that the Hurricanes defensemen just took significantly more shots. And you and I have had a lot of conversations here over the season about how, especially point shots by defensemen, are the most inefficient form of offense, right? Okay. Now, they're not always the most in it because this goes back to our discussion on Vasilevsky and screens and dips and traffic.

Like, there are types of screenshots with, if you add a deflection to a screen and a layered screen, like you can get up to 40% on a scoring chance, but you have to have guys actually in front of the opposing goaltender and adept at tipping those pucks, and I don't think Carolina had either. Like Bob had sightlines all serious. Also, yeah, the Florida Panthers defensemen did a great job.

I also think, though, that there's a difference, differentiating a point shot between ones where the defenseman is moving towards the middle of the ice and giving more of more options or more vantage points for tips, right? Something like the stars throughout the year I do so well, whereas some of these hurricanes point shots where it's someone like literally standing right beside the blue line up against the boards

and just firing a shot with no real angle at it. And that's much more difficult, I think, to establish that sort of tip opportunity and create further rebounds. I had point shots in this series of five on five, Kevin, at 82 to 31 for Carolina. They took 51 more point shots than the Panthers. And so I would generally view those as about like a 1 to 2% chance of going in. So when you see a lot of these say percentages, a lot of these inflated numbers, I do think taking that into context helps explain a lot of this.

And I agree with you about the tips and deflections and screens. I view a lot of this. Like if you watch when they're down one, they're trying to create a goal and it's just a lot of hope plays from the point. to me that is not an offensive strategy. No, and interestingly enough, like there is one screen chance that is a really low percentage chance, and that's the single player offensive screen. Goleys can manage one right in front of them,

unless that guy's really good at moving through those lanes as the defenseman does, forcing a goalie to pick a side, and then, you know, basically moving out of the way right as that shot is coming after you've gotten him to commit, like a single person offensive screen, like that's, that is the kind of thing, that goalies typically feast on, and that's the type that Carolina generated the most.

There wasn't enough. I'm looking at Bob sort of like his, you know, his, he only faced 14, only faced 14 screen. Out of all those point shots, only 14 would be classified as, yeah.

They were very manageable for him. Yeah. So without, we said, without that traffic in front, you're right, they're one percenters, and there was too much of that.

So where I do think that hurt, Cains were unlucky. I fully agree that all four games of the sweep were essentially 50-50 coin flips. I think they could have gone in either way. I've said that. And it's unlucky that they didn't win at least one of those to extend this series, particularly the two overtime games. They very easily could have won one of those. And then this series gets extended and anything can happen. The other is, and I don't know how much of this Bob deserves credit four versus how much of it, Carolina deserves blame or it just being randomness. But over the past couple years, and particularly this season, we saw Bob give up a lot of goals on shots that were necessarily high dangerous shots, right?

Like, there are bad ones beat him, squeak through, and that did not happen in this series either, right? So it's one thing to say that Carolina's offense was entirely predicated on low percentage shots. But if the goal he's not playing well, sometimes those do go in or you get lucky and they bounce off of someone and into the net. And that happened a couple times in game four, right? There was one like a stick breaks, pops up in the slot for Terabine, and he buries a high percentage chance. the other one off the post that sneaks behind him and then Stas and he taps it in. That happens. But at the time you get to an Eastern Conference final,

it's probably not against a goalie that it's going to happen against. Yeah, but it didn't wind up happening in the first three games really in particular. And so I guess that that's a point that needs to be made here, right? Yeah, and listen, like I talk to like I'm joking about timely saves because I know, you know, from an analytics standpoint, we don't necessarily love talking about those things. But you look at when they did create high danger, like he made some incredible stops.

I mean, I think of the one where he goes, he reaches a little bit, and out of the sort of the quote unquote pre-scout breakdown, him being really active with his stick was something you had to be cognizant of. The only time it really becomes a weakness is when he reaches around to his glove side to try and cut off a pass because obviously that, you know, to reach your stick across your body pulls you away from that side of the net. And in theory, that delays your ability to get back into that space. But he reaches, he misses, the pass gets through.

and he still gets back door on Ojo. And there's elements there that like Bob style, the blocker. You know, a trend. We can talk about the blocker trend and teams going after. But that willingness to drop his stick to prioritize his blocker coverage and filling space rather than having a stick in his hands

is something that is somewhat unique to him. And we saw that in that example. Like if he holds on to his stick, does he get that blocker across? Does it get caught up in something? somebody in front of him, is it the extra weight as much as sticks way almost nothing these days? Is that enough to slow it, that fraction of a second? Like, there are things he does when he's on that are just at another level.

And in big moments at tough times, he did those things. Like, to the endth degree, like, you know, there weren't a lot of, he didn't make a lot of mistakes, and he made a lot of really nice, really difficult saves. You know, they weren't all that way. Carolina had a tendency to funnel pucks into the middle of the net. on some tough chances rather than making him go all the way across this crease. But man, like, he was good. So I'm going to be careful because I'm sort of a little counterintuitive on some of the

public numbers and you push back a little bit on how good he was. Right. But, dude, he was good. He was fantastic. He was so good. He was absolutely fantastic. So good. I just, like, so one of the plays, which I'm sure comes across as a very high

danger attempt because it certainly was in game two really sticks in my mind. It was the one Marty Natchez makes a couple of sweet angles. gets open and then instead of taking a low percentage shot does exactly what we want more from the hurricanes which is it wasn't necessarily in east-west pass through the slot line it was right into the inner slot to tayot tarvainen who redirects it on to net and in the moment it's like what an athletic save by bobrowski to get across and it was it was and then you go back and watch it middle the net didn't really get across because if the shot was placed well He was not covering the far post.

He didn't get across all the way. The shot was right into the middle of the cage, and so he was able to block her to side. And that's the one thing about Bob. If you can get him to widen out from his tall to his narrow stance as you get into the slot area and then go east-west on him, because he will paint outside the lines, I call it, he plays outside of the blue ice because he's got the speed to recover that position.

But we saw Toronto take advantage of where they would freeze him outside of the blue ice and then go east-west and end up with tap-ins. This wasn't quite that situation, but he was that far out. And so the way to target that is by making those passes because he has a further distance to cover than a goalie who, like Aden Hill, who is never outside of his crease unless he's fallen, right? Like he is always, you know, Sean Burke style. Everything is goal line out.

But with Bob, that's how you score on him because he's got such a distance to cover. But if you don't make him go all the way to the far post, that distance is essentially cut in half. And that was an example. Well, now it's really easy for me to say, like, execute that one touch path. Of course, yeah. But there's a rule of thumb as goaltenders. Like empty nets, empty six by fours.

Yeah. If somebody has an empty net, the first thing you do as a goaltender, your first sort of priority is to get something into the middle of it. Because chances are that guy's not picking a corner. He's putting it right into it. It's just human nature. They don't want to miss around the edges. So they go into the middle. And as great as that save was, and it was.

like if you look at the power, the rotation, the way he moved across, the fact that he had an active blocker, he wasn't coming across in a block, the early eyes on the rotation and the push he made. Like it's textbook goaltending and Sergey Barbarowski executing textbook goaltending. But in order to take advantage of the way he plays positionally on the initial pass, you also have to execute with a shot that's into the far side of the net. They didn't. They put it in the middle. They gave him a chance. And the way he's playing right now, if you give him a chance,

he's making a save. Okay, well, one more point on Mabrovsky before we kind of transition into more of a big picture theoretical perspective about this because I have a lot of questions that I want to run by you as well

that I've been thinking about. You mentioned Henrik Lunk was talking about this on the TNT panel. I think at the start of the series, maybe it was between the Leafs and the Hurricanes matchups where he was noting how Bobrovsky holds his stick

and how that, influences the placement of his blocker and how that ties into his ability to make some of these saves, right? And I'm going to let you go on more of this in a second, but I'm just curious about because then Lebrowski, because then Henrik Unquist, sorry, kept talking after about how the way to beat him, of course, is to just buzz the tower, right? Like, you need to shoot up high and try to pick those corners. And obviously, that's the kryptonite for every single goalie in today's game, right? If you perfectly place a shot just below the bar, it will probably go in more. More often than not.

But I will, before we get to Bob's blocker, I'll give you a little counterpoint on that. And this has come up in a lot of sort of the NHL.com previews that I do. And I know it comes up in conversations around the league with what goalie coaches are telling shooters, especially on the glove side. If you, goalies and sort of the modern goaltending technique, and I shouldn't say modern because not everybody does it,

but like that fingers up glove positioning, where you're almost the fingers are pointing straight up as you hold that glove out in front of you almost like you if you can imagine you were telling someone to stop at a crosswalk like you're reaching your hand out versus what I would consider more of a handshake position where you're holding that hand and that glove very neutral

almost like reaching to someone to shake their hand if you see fingers up position other than right around the ear because the tendency as you drop into butterflies to lower it and then you've got to go back up with it but a lot of guys like we saw grubauer in the first round like just sitting and i covered that series but just like sitting on rattan and at times mckinan high glove with the fingers up position and just not just not moving it and they kept shooting to that spot and he didn't move it just

went right in there right like so shooters are taught that if you see fingers up glove position you know just go over the pads because that's a very difficult rotation to turn that hand down and so that's part of the evolution of the give and take of goal tending and shooters and that back and forth and that chess game that goes on and i think even in that seattle series with grubauer uh mckinion on a breakaway quick shot from above the hash marks where does he go he goes low glove and grubauer doesn't at a time when grubauer was just absolutely sensational doesn't make that save so yes routing pucks around goalie's ears and going bar down is a great way to score especially if you get them moving it's a difference between a goalie being set and

staring at is you come in a straight line and being able to sort of keep those hands out in front of him versus when he moves that tendency to drop the hands to his side or lose access to his hands as he moves, that's where you got a route pox. We talked about Akira Schmidt, right? Like the Rangers had the right idea and then they kept going back to high glove, but on plays where he was set and the fingers were up and they kept shooting it right into his glove, the time to shoot glove on him was when you got a moving pre-shot. and then they kept shooting low in those situations and the glove was down over the pad because he was in more of a blocking mode. Like they just,

they basically had the concept. They just flip when to do each one. And so these things matter. So the one thing about Bob is he will maintain those active hands. And right now, like you saw the glove save the other night, like he never moved it. Like he's feeling it and reading the game at the point right now that any,

because of quote unquote weakness is like, man, it's relative because he's on a heater. Yes. But watch when he moves, like even that gloves, or the blocker save we talked about where they didn't, pick a corner, they went to the middle of the net. Watch how active that is. He keeps it out in front of him.

The way he holds his stick, we've got an article up at ingolmag.com right now. It's something we've talked to him about in the past. Other Russian goalies have imitated, Ilya Sorokin has got that, it's what we call a slope shoulder on the paddle. So it looks like it's shaved down, but CCM actually makes it for Bob like that. And it allows you to hold that stick lower. And in a way that allows you to sort of maintain a really good wrist cock and present, or present that blocker nice and square.

A lot of goalies that hold it on a more traditional steeper shoulder paddle, they'll end up with their blocker almost turned to the shooter a little bit on an angle. And I thought Lundquist did a great job of explaining this. And they're making saves almost, they have a tendency then to sort of turn with the blocker and make saves almost not behind them but more parallel to them rather than having it squared up and cutting pucks off in fronty like Bob does. And so, yeah, you need to route puck.

high on him, but when he's as active as he is right now, like we saw him in the Toronto series where he'd have that blocker out in front, and if a puck was going highly, he's actually lifting himself up, almost leaping at times into it. Like, he's just reading the game exceptionally well now. Um, but that, to me, the one part about that blocker thing was, yeah, in the first round and we lose sight of this. Like, he was below expected in that series against Boston. He finished below expected. Right. Um, and... Part of that might have also been like, he, there was a pretty... I think cold hadn't played in a couple weeks.

Yeah, absolutely. Boston, I think, scored eight times mid to high blocker. And, you know, it's funny because I know Elliot Freeman highlighted on the Hockey Night broadcast and reached out, like asked for some numbers. And yeah, sure enough, in the first round, he had the numbers that eight were the most, any goalie given up in the first round. And eight was high for Bob. And when I started to look back into my historical numbers, like, blockers side is not a problem

for this guys. and anecdotally, if you combine anecdotally with that I test and what I know about the way he prioritized blocker coverage, like a lot of, the thing that makes the difference between a blocker and a glove for a goalie is a blocker's also responsible for the stick. And you have to prioritize one or the other at times. Bob prioritizes his blocker over his stick.

And so Toronto kept going to it. Like remember Matthews early in that series? They kept trying to beat him blocker side. And he just, he was just like punching it out. up like he was all over those shots and everything I had anecdotally said you should be shooting glove again right now there's no weaknesses on Bob but everything I had when a guy's on a heater the last thing you want to do is play to his strengths and I don't know if it was based on the first round numbers or what but they kept going after it well they had a lot of success with it against

Vasilewski in the previous round of course and maybe that's just a con but Bob ain't Vaselowski right like there's it we talk go watch how they hold and how their blocker presented relatively. And the other thing too is like Vasilevsky's number, if you make him move to his blocker side, goals, more goals go in from that side of the ice. Bob's a polar opposite. Like I was looking at some of the splits and some of them were shocking. Like his expected say percentage relative to shock quality if you're shooting from the glove

side of the ice versus the blocker, like mirror points on the ice one side to the other, the numbers are through the roof glove side compared to blocker side. And so that tendency to go after it and attack from his right, you know, hey, listen, sometimes that's just where you're going to get chances. Sometimes that's where the strength of your team is in terms of making plays to that side of the ice and you're not going to go away from your strengths. But man, I felt like they really went after his strengths and he had an answer for all of them. This needs to be a video show.

We should be petitioning to be on TV with a PDO guest when we have you in. There's a lot of motion. Even though I now have my tooth back in and fully replaced and no more giant stupid gap, I've been told I still have a face for radio. I know, but I feel like all the motions you just displayed there. I feel like you did a full warm-up routine for... I got a beer league game tonight. I'm getting more.

You're all limber. All right, Kevin, let's take our break here. Squeeze it in while we can because I got a whole medley of topics that I want to get into with you after that. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Your number one spot for Flames coverage can be found on Flames Talk with me, Pat Steinberg. Exclusive interviews, trusted insiders, and the latest news.

Listen live weekday afternoons in four or stream the Flames Talk podcast on demand. We're back here in the Hockey PEOCast with Kevin Woodley in studio. Kevin, we're talking goalies, of course. I want to discuss something with you here related to what you just talked about before the break about, you know, Bobrovsky's tendencies and maybe preparing for a goalie heading into a matchup and kind of knowing what strengths and weaknesses are, what he forces you to do, right?

We talked about that nature just to Tara Binen play where a great shot would have beaten him, but because it was just in the middle of the net, he was able to get to it. I want to talk to you about the concept of a team's expected goals against in front of a goalie versus the goalie's individual goals save above expected. Okay, actually one quick point. Yeah. Because I want to give Bob credit for that save, too.

And I know already have. Yes, you have. But one of the things that he would have read, and that was, you said it was Teravanagh, right? So left-handed shot coming across. So that would have been part of his read too. Like he knows he has, he can take more ice on the left. side because of that potential play is not to a one-time option.

And a left-handed shot coming across body is more likely to shoot back the other way, so into his coverage, whereas a right-hander is more likely to rip that into the far side and the net. So as much as it's, you know, we're being pretty harsh on Carolina if we're not executing on that shot as a goalie, those are the level of detail that these guys read into. And so they will know that it's a much tougher shot for a left-handed, for a lefty to complete than it would be. you know, a righty, you know, tickle and the twine

ready for a one T and the tendency to pull the puck as you shoot and go into that far side of the net. So like, without even having talked to Bob that that was his read, just all the goalies that I've talked to over the years. Those are the level of details when you're on your game that you are processing in real time. Like I've done these video

sessions with the carry prices of the world and what they pick up in real time, like mushroom clouds went off in my mind the first time. And those are the types of details that as much as it's like, hey, Carolina didn't execute. I guarantee. T, and Bob knew that was a left shot on the other side. Okay, we have to keep moving, Kevin.

Okay, I know, I know. We have so many things to cover. I apologize. So the way we operate right now, right, is Carolina generated a certain number of expected goals. That's how many expected goals against Florida gave up. Bobrovsky gave up six goals in this series. So you subtract the two totals, and that's Bobrovsky's goals they above expected, right? Right.

Now, the reason why we do that and why we include every single shot into that total, which includes a lot of shots that were either blocked, or miss the net is because the theory behind it, and I'm sure you, as a member of the goal union, support this one fully because you get extra credit for it, is a goalie's presence or the way they're playing in net forces the shooter's hand, right? We hear about how, oh, Bobrovsky was in the head

of Carolina shooters in this series. He's playing so well that all of a sudden, now they're trying to get two-cue. They're trying to force certain types of shots, and that's why you're either shooting it into shin pads or missing the net entirely, right? And so that's why a goalie gets credit, even though they didn't necessarily even face a shot for stopping a certain number of expected goals against on that block or miss shot. Okay. So my question for you is that not in clear, just so you know, not in clear.

Okay. Because clear side is only, it has to hit the net, right? Which some people have an issue with, right? That's part of the way they assess it. Should a goalie get credit for it? Yeah. Like, in my mind, yeah, like, not to go against. Like, I'm on the goal union. I need to. Of course. Like if I'm holding my ice and I'm not giving up my position and I'm not, you know, I go back to, you know, the Vegas Golden Knights and Mark Andre Fleury and one of the reasons that their former goalie coach Dave Prior identified him and he wanted goalies that that were able to sort of hold their ground in the face of an attack that didn't retreat, that didn't back up. And if you do that, the net sort of the space a shooter has relative to you and the net,

like it gets smaller the closer they get. And for sure, that intimidation. of man I got to be perfect here or man I don't see anything how many times you heard a shooter talk about coming down the wing and looking up and Vasilevsky's there and there's nothing like just nothing so I do think yeah that shooter should get credit for forcing misses to a certain degree and I think by the end of that series like I don't I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that Bob was in their heads right like you feel like you have to do something different to score goals and scoring goals is really hard if you feel like you got to do something different than you normally would, you're going away from your strengths. Right. Then, yeah, you're at a disadvantage. I would argue that Carolina wasn't trying anything different. I think that was part of the problem.

They were trying to just jam a square peg into a round hole by point shot after point. But we could see, like, on power plays and stuff where they were totally flustered. Right. Right. They just didn't even know. Certainly. And I think there's an element, like, what we're saying, okay, to Henry Kloch's point, you need to shoot high to beat this guy and you need to, like, really place it perfectly.

And on that, on that redirection we highlighted. get rid of it quickly before he can move over and get set. Well, that requires an elevated level of shooting talent. And if you are already at a deficit to begin with, like I feel like a team like the Hurricanes is, then that certainly there is an exaggerated impact and effect on that, right? It's forcing them to do something out of their comfort level. Well, also all those point shots, which are, you know, as you said,

I don't want to say useless, but can be useless without traffic. Do you have a team that, you know, is willing to go take away, the eyes and get into those areas and create scrambles and win battles for pucks in second chances against the Radco Gudis's of the world. You know, not everybody does, right? Like you said, over the course of a season, volume wins, but this isn't a season. This is a seven-game series. And usually by the time you get to the conference final, you're probably facing a goaltender

who's feeling pretty good about his game and isn't going to make as many mistakes. So how do you force him to make mistakes? You make it difficult for him to see Pox. You throw Pucks into traffic that hit bodies and squirt all over the place and win those battles for those. And, you know, again, I don't, whether they tried that, I don't, probably not. There was a little more of it, but I just don't think it's in their DNA. So, like, are you going to change who they are?

Ask them to do things that they haven't done all season. They just didn't have the personnel to do that. Right, exactly. And this gets into a larger team building thing because, you know, Carolina was what they were on the regular season. And they dominant defensively, by the way. And they were even in these, like, Florida didn't generate a whole hell of a lot, scored 10 goals and swept a series.

Like that's crazy when you consider the number of periods played. But, you know, they played to that identity. Does their identity the other end of the rink offensively, is that enough? Florida has an identity that seems well suited to the playoffs, despite the fact they only scored 10 goals in this series. And yet was barely enough to even make it. Right. Like there are two different styles of play here,

between regular season and playoffs in terms of what works and what does it. We even saw Edmonton and by the time they got to the second, like power plays, everybody talks about power plays don't disappear in the first. Well,

they sure as hell start disappearing by the conference finals. Yeah, and we've seen that for Florida as well where they were such a heavily penalized team throughout the regular season. Dude, I'm still trying to figure out

how Lomburg doesn't get called on the hook that leads to the turnover that leads to the three two goal. I know you're contractually obligated to bring that up. But the point I was making was, I do think part of this might be also a team defense stat as opposed to just purely in terms of the public numbers right now, right?

If you're just going total expected goals against, minus goals against, and giving all that credit their goalie, I think part of that is team defense as well. Now, I think we would agree that the game has changed so much over the past handful of years, right? Yeah. Like we've talked about how, especially offensively in terms of approach shot selection, the way teams are kind of actively trying to create certain types of shots, that has changed so much, right?

Part of the issue with the current version of expected goals and the way it's put together is I do think, and this is more so public ones and obviously the ones than the you're referencing, it puts such an emphasis on the location on the ice of where the shot came from and the historical average of what we would expect that shot to be worth. Right.

Right. And I guess the point I'm trying to make or argue here or bring up to you, and I'm curious for your take on it, is I just think because of the way the games changed so much, it doesn't necessarily, the shot itself is almost not irrelevant because a great shot will still beat the goalie on occasion. Yeah, perfect shots are perfect shots. What comes before it, what proceeds at the passing, the type of shot it is matters so much. and I just think purely just judging a shot's value based off where it came from and what that used to be worth doesn't necessarily apply to today's game because of what a different offensive landscape it is. Yeah, I mean, there are just so many other factors that go into it. And I think when you get a massive sample size, a lot of those, you could argue,

and I've seen it argued, that the significance of, and listen, I'm not a math guy, but the significance of those other factors decreases or can become almost negligible over a massive sample size. But we're not talking about a massive sample size in the playoffs or in a series, even with a five overtime game. Like it's still smaller and that's where you see the differences are that we see in the public numbers. That's not extreme. We've been talking about three, four goals in a series in terms of expected between public and these private ones. But that's probably the difference in the series. But then, yeah, it's four-game series, and then we're all by one goal, I guess we are talking about it.

But those other nuances that those other layers that just, and it's not the fault, the models that the people build for the public, these are really incredibly intelligent people building really good. They just don't have the same information, the extra layers of information that matter when it comes to creating goals. To be clear, this is the league's fault, not the, not the creative fault, right? Like, and that's what I'm not critical. Yes. The models and the people to build them are brilliant. No. They just don't have all the information, right?

Like that's, and because it costs money to track that information, significant amounts, because it requires significant work, um, those things stay for the most part behind closed doors because there's a value there that they've established. And that's, that's how they make the business work. So yes, I agree with all those things. Um, you know, I think like, there are times, and Aden Hill is a perfect example of this, where closer to the net, without some of the pre-shot movement, like that's where he's best.

Yeah, he'll leave that out. Like, even me, crappy beer league guy, you throw a puck two feet in front of me and you don't change angle on it, you can bang that thing off my pads all day. I'll be like Christian Leightner pounding my rebound stats. Just bang, bang, bang, bang. It's not going anywhere. There's no way to put that through.

Like it's, there's just no, I fill the net when the puck is that close. I guess the really quick analogy I would make is quite often for goalie coaches, when they look at a goal, it's not, like we all look at the shot that leads to the goal. The mistake on a goalie side, and this is probably why it took a goalie person to sort of dig into the idea of a pre-shot pass going across the ice, but quite often the mistake the goaltender made that led to a goal is two, sometimes three touches before. for that where they've taken a wrong position or left themselves caught or not made an efficient movement and then aren't able to catch up. And so that's kind of, if you look at it from the goalie's eyes, it makes sense then that that same information in terms of what happens in those two or three touches leads to the quality of the final shot.

Yeah. I guess my one final concern or kind of issue with adding up expected goals over a game or over a series and kind of using that as a as a baseline expectation for what should have happened is it's treated as a cumulative stat right so you you have a certain number of shots over the course of a game they're each assigned an expected goal value and then you add that up and that's your total for the game then you add up those games for the series and that's where you got right but i guess that implies that the shots are related and i think that's something that has yet to be proven. I'm not, I'm not sure how you feel. I'm sure as a goal, you feel that

making a bunch of easy saves in the early going improves your likelihood of making a tougher save later on because you're feeling the puck, you're seeing it, you're more comfortable, you're in the zone, whatever, how are you going to describe it? Yeah. But, like, as a thought exercise, would you rather have four shots from the point that are 0.05 expected goals value or one shot from the slot that is 0.2 expected goals value? I think everyone would agree, that the latter is significantly more likely to result in a goal, but at the end of the day, they're technically in the aggregate worth the exact same.

And I just, like, fundamentally, that is untrue. This is the, essentially, the quantity versus quality. I'm taking, give me the four, give me the four point shots every time because. As a goalie. Yeah, 100% because I'm feeling really good about myself. I look up at the score clock psychologically, and I see four shots as opposed to one.

Like, there's just so much there that, you know, from every different level. It's part of why I think Freddie Anderson's job was a little tougher too. Like Carolina is a great defensive team, right? But there's long periods in the playoffs where he doesn't see much. And then all of a sudden there were some moderately difficult saves to be made. I mean, he faced the same number of high danger chances last night, eight, right? Like there were some tough saves in there.

And those tough saves psychologically tend to be for a lot of goaltenders. Some goaltenders really struggle with it. Harder if you haven't seen a shot in five minutes. You haven't had a chance to feel that 99% or from the point. You call them 1%ers. We call them 99%ers because I make a save 99% of the time. I touch the puck. I feel the puck.

I feel good about how I'm seeing the puck. And that all builds in a positive manner. It's kind of the flip side of Bob, right? Like Bob's on a heater. You can attack, there are no weaknesses right now. Right. But if you keep playing to his strengths, you just keep reinforcing the confidence that has contributed to that heater.

So you might as well try and at least historically attack the things that he hasn't been as good. that to see if you can kind of find one crack and build from there on knocking down the confidence he's established over the last two rounds yeah yeah i just think it's such an interesting thing to to kind of consider how this stuff comes together right like who's taking the shot where they're coming from i would recommend highly i understand a lot of people just want to enjoy a game and have a beer and not necessarily do this but if you have the time or you are interested like literally even if it's just roughly by hand counting where the shots are like or like point shot versus rush shot versus whatever and at the end of the game looking at that will give you a much better

picture of what happened and provide more realistic expectations I think because right you take 10 point shots they wind up equaling one expected goal in value throughout the game I would argue you should not expect that to have resulted in a goal that's especially at this point yeah right and so and so that's where I think there's this this gap between them and it's something that happened all season and that's where to go back to the public numbers, like, there is no screen data. There is no data on screens. Right. You know, and that point shot can be 1% or it can be high as 35% depending on the type of screens. And so that's where that information and that context becomes important in a smaller sample. Because

it is different if you can get those pucks on net through a bunch of bodies, especially against the guy like Bob, who doesn't look, I mean, he tries to look up and over screens, but he has a tendency see if you get a bunch of bodies in front of him to go low and try and look around low. And now if you have, and this is where I thought they'd have more success. If they forced him into his low stance with guys like Burns at the point, if you have the talent to sift pucks through that traffic and hit the top quarter of the net, you will score against Sergei Bobrowski, no matter how good he feels about his game right now. But I don't think they ever created the first part in order to take advantage of the ability to maybe execute on the second part.

And again, this is not, I feel like we're just trying to pick apart Bob. Like, Bob is, this isn't even, this is your Kansmythe winner right now. This is, wow. For all you Kachuk people, get out of it. I would make a strong Kachuk argument. Who's scoring one goal a game in key times and who's preventing over? We just talked about it, even on the public, nine goals and four games prevented. I know, but I would say that in this series, like, the difference was.

Gloves are off now. The games were very close. The difference was that Florida had better finishing talent to convert on their. rare opportunities, particularly at the end of games. Now, this idea of clutch or whatever, however much to talk you want to put into it, I don't think that's necessarily the case. I do think there is a massive gap in shooting talent on these teams. I think Freddie Anderson in the games he played was his numbers don't look nearly as good

as Bobrovsky's. There's not the reason this team lost. No. If they had, so if you just flip them and you had Freddie Anderson with Florida's shooting talent, I don't, I'm not saying Carolina would have won for nothing, but I'm saying that I don't think the gap was necessarily as massive. as a raw, say, percentage would indicate, even though what Freddie Anderson

like a 940 or something in the series. Yeah, he was pretty good too. So I just think the theory behind this stuff and how we're coming to it is more interesting than the actual end-of-day numbers to me. Like, I think some of these questions, even if we still don't have the clarity or the answers are part of why you and I get together

and do this show and talk about it. And so hopefully others find that as interesting as we do. For the record, Igor Shastarkin is still the best goal in the playoffs. Let's talk Stars Golden Knights really quick here. I want to talk Jake Onger with you because I don't want it to be perceived as me ducking this topic because I have talked him up quite a bit. When you and I have gotten together, I have placed him in the elite tier. I have raved about his game and my confidence level in him.

I guess shame on me for having confidence in any goalie. But it's okay. It's okay. You know, this topic of whether he has been overworked and overused and whether that is resulting in some of these numbers that he's posted pretty much since, what, game three of the Seattle series, is an interesting conversation, right? Because we've spent so much time talking about how goalie workload throughout the regular season matters and how you don't want to give your goalie too many starts.

And now we're getting to this point where Jake Godinger has an 895% percentage this postseason. Since game three of that Cracken series, it's down at 856. He's been pulled three times, and SporeLogic has his goal save above expected at negative. 11.2 in those eight games. Do you want to talk a bit about his workload, about whether you've seen stuff in the goals he's given up that you could attribute to that? You've discussed also on this show about how,

particularly in that environment playing in Dallas, how physically taxing it can be this time of year. And the reason why I bring that up is because we've seen that photo circulating of how skinny Sergey Babrovsky looks out of his equipment and people worried for his, for his health and physical safety. 2016-17, I did a whole article on it. You look it up at NHL.com, unmasked column that they let me write on goalies. Bob was a conscious effort to, like, he used to be, like,

I remember that season walking into the Columbus ruin and being like, holy crap, where'd Bob go? Like, where's the rest of him? Because he was a physical beast, but he was like too much muscle, I guess. Yeah. What do you say? Like, you look like 10 pounds or something of like water weight over the course of these games? Yeah, I don't know what it is for water weight.

But like he consciously, purposely, purposely lost 17 pounds in one off season to change the way his body was built. Right. Because remember back then there were a lot of talks about him not being able to get through a season and all the groin injuries he had. So he changed the way he trained. He worked with a guy from Finland, Sammy, I can't even, I'm not going to try and pronounce his last name because I'll screw it up.

We actually had an article with him, too, about the focus of their work. And he really changed everything about the way he prepared. And so that sort of physical makeup that we see as much as it looks extreme after a five overtime game or after the amount of he's played, like that's on purpose. Maybe not to that degree, but that's on purpose because it's limited the injuries he's had since. I think like it's a handful in five years since and it was like more like five every year to that point in terms of growing injuries. So there's that.

Listen with Jake Ottinger, I still believe in Jake as as an elite level talent, as a high end level talent. But I've kind of said this for a couple of years now. And I think the first round series he had against Calgary last. year was so incredible that the expectations became really high. But even up until that point, a lot of his raw numbers in Dallas were not him isolated from system. They were a product of system. It was a very goalie-friendly spot. And that's continued. Again, talking about it with Pete DeBoer. The best thing for DeBoer going into Dallas is that defensive DNA remains a part of that team. Yes, he freed the reins, but they know how to take care of their own end. And Jake had a really

high expected say percentage this year. And what's happened to me in the playoffs is a combination of like the expectations and and probably a little bit I talked about playing him in game two everybody ripped on Minnesota right for pulling gustafs and they knew they knew gustavson if they kept riding him was would have been done sooner and you know I really give credit to onger for sort of correcting the ship in game four of that series because I wasn't sure he'd be able to get it back after playing double O T in Dallas top game three you know me talk to jiguerre about Dallas like that's where he had to leave the IV in his arm while playing games because he needed the hydration so bad between periods on that 5 OT game.

It's just like, just like unreal story. We have that one to up in ingolmagg.com. And, um, but that, like, that's a tough environment. Like, and so I don't think this is a Jake Ottinger problem. I think this is a Jake Ottinger. And I haven't looked this up, but I'm willing to bet if somebody does, he's never played this many games in this many days at the national hockey league level. Like, I'm pretty confident in saying that he's never played this much.

It's a big ask under tons of pressure. Um, and so the. performance to me has just gotten a little more inconsistent. It doesn't kill who he is as a goaltender and the talent he has. It's just, it's a lot to ask. And I would suggest that, you know, for a lot of these teams, there were points along the way where you could have made a different decision rather than continuing to watch him go from 90% to 80 to 75 to 70% of his peak. Maybe a decision to start the other eye allows him to reset to 100. And I think some teams are asking that. We saw that with Ranta going in for game two for

Freddie Anderson. I believe that decision was very much about that type of formula. Maybe not those numbers, but that idea and concept. And I think, you know, more teams are going to need to ask that question because more teams have run guys into the ground and then been surprised where they don't have anything left at the end. I'm surprised they're starting them tonight, to be honest with you. Now, because I doubt him

because you need to win four games in this series. And I think if you can steal one with Wedgwood, you might get Jake back to 100% in game five, which is rolling him out there at whatever percentage he is right now. Yeah, I think they're just viewing it as well. He's our guy moving forward and this series is not. Hey, he's our guy.

We got a number one. We're sticking with him. Has started to become problematic for a lot of teams. Here's the thing. Regular season. He was fourth and starts. Eighth in shots faced. He's the only goalie out of the top 15 to make it pass round one.

Now obviously some of that as team effects, of course, and whatnot. The next guy's, Bobrowski, I think, was like 16th in that stat. Now he faced 300 or so if you were regular season shots. You don't really hurt him was Wedgwood got hurt down the stretch late in the season. And they were pushing. They wanted to get the one seed. 100%. And so the inability to sort of back off his workload down the stretch because of an injury to the other guy probably exacerbated what I'm talking about right now. Well, and tonight's going to be his 78th start this season. Since 2017 when he went to college in NCAA, these are his games played by year, 35, 41, 42, 40, 32, and then 65 last year, including the playoffs. And so this is just uncharted territory for him, right? And it makes sense. And I'm not sure how that fatigue or being overworked manifests itself. I would imagine it would be in a,

in a, you know, diminishing effect of, like, sharpness or technique dropping off potentially sometimes. And I think you saw that on the Barbachev goal that you and I talked about off air in game three where similar play, actually, to what we just talked about, Babrovsky being bailed out and making that save in the middle of the net. Audinger goes right left to right, completely loses his net, overshoots it entirely. A shot in the middle of the cage beats him cleanly because he's not even in the picture anymore. And that doesn't, you know, that happens sometimes. But I wonder Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's mental, sometimes it's your reads, all those things go off.

You can start trying too hard. In ideal conditions, he might not make that same decision or play. In ideal conditions, rest of, you know, like we've seen enough of Jake Ottinger to know that Jake Ottinger at his peak that probably hits him in the Star's logo, right? Now, there are other elements of the read that may have been different. That's why we like to talk to the goaltenders at Ingo. Yes, that's why you like.

Because it's real easy to go on the internet and be like, he made this mistake. But there's usually a reason they did it that way. and that's why we love the pro reeds because they explain why they did it. Do you ever get a, listen, man, there was no read. Oh, 100%. I just blanked and I didn't do anything right.

But also on saves. Like we just had one with Thatcher Demko where it was like a, there was a two part sequence. It was really good. Like young goalies go check it out. Really good advice in there from Demko. But one of the parts was, hey, listen, like, I made the wrong read here.

A guy made a pass through a seam that I didn't, it was actually Nick Cousins. made a pass through a scene that I didn't think was a dangerous spot because I didn't think he could make that pass. So I tipped my hat and from there it's pure reactive. I did not make that read. I made a different read and now I'm scrambling and that's part of the game. Kevin, we got to get out of your producer Dom is signaling for us to go.

Everyone follow Kevin at Kevin as Ingole on Twitter and check out his work at Ingo Magazine. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode of the HockeyPedocast as always streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.