The Hockey PDOcast - How Nathan Mackinnon and the Avs Got Their Game to This Level

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Darryl Belfry to talk about Nathan MacKinnon's process for adding to his game over the years, how he's learned to best utilize his physical tools, and the ways the Avalanche as a team have helped put it all together over the past five years.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. 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.

Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Philipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Daryl, Belfry, Daryl. What's going on, man? How could it today not be a great day when we're going to go digging into the dog? I just don't know how it can get much better than this. It really can. We're going to do Nathan McKinnett today, a player that I have been eyeing for us all year and I wanted to save it till we got later into the season because I just wanted the sample

size to build up for this year for the tape we could dive into but also I thought it was kind of almost cheating because you have such inside knowledge and such a wealth on this player in particular that I wanted to test you with some guys that we had to work on a little harder on first before we got into the fun stuff here with McKinnon and he's a player who you know he's having a season for the ages right now and I get into all that but I think just as interesting for me as the year he's actually having and what we're seeing from today is sort of the journey he's been on to get to this point, the work that's been put in, the refinement of the game, everything he's added in terms of tools throughout his career so far. And so hopefully you're going to get into all that.

And I think as people who listen to this tell me sometimes, like they can tell that I have a particular sort of like sparkle in my eye or kind of a tone to my voice when we do these shows because they can tell that I'm just giddy talking to you about this stuff, nerding out, picking your brain, getting into what makes these players. special. I think this one's going to be particularly so because of that sort of inside knowledge you have into this process and kind of hopefully we're going to be able to get into all that. So where do you want to start with Nate? And what do you think is sort of the central focus of today's show that we really need to hit on first? Well, I don't know if this is the central

focus, but it's definitely, for me, one of the most important things to talk about when you talk about Nathan McKinnon. And that is this is a. this is a development process if you've ever been able to witness one. Like it's one of those processes when you watch when he first drafted, he first came into the league, the challenges that he ran into when he first came into the league. Then he evolved to add these various pieces. And it seems like every year he's added a piece that has significantly improved

his effectiveness and ultimately has led us to this point. But I guess if I was to pick a place to start, it would be the plays that he had, the plays that he that led us here, which is the year they won the Stanley Cup. To me, that's the precursor to this year. I think his game, the year that Colorado won the Stanley Cup, was the blueprint for a number one center and the requirements of a number one center in today's NHL to win a Stanley Cup. And it was then modeled by Eichol, and he's really set the standard in that way. And a lot of it is his ability to create off of his forced turnovers and his ability to control

the middle of the ice like nobody's business. And so I think there's, you know, it's not really a clean answer. know as to where we should start. But those two pieces, his evolution, as we've, as you just saw all the pieces kind of come together over the course of his career is one kind of train of thought. And then the other train of thought is just his performance in that playoff was, I think, position defining and is now, in my mind, a model of what needs to be if you want to win. And I think that those two pieces are pretty good places to start, if any. Well, certainly.

And I think his energy expenditure that you watch this season in particular, he's playing like nearly 23 minutes tonight. I believe he's averaging 22, 53 per game. And only his line made Miko Ranton in amongst all forwards is playing more. And with all due respect to Miko, who's a player, you and I are both fond of, who we did a deep dive of similarly at the start of the year, I think the effort or I guess intensity of those minutes between the two is a bit different. And I think that's a great point to start here because just that sort of energy expenditure

and what goes into it and how difficult it is and almost how maybe we take it for granted a little bit because he makes it look so easy because he does it every single night is so impressive to me where you look at NHL Edge's tracking data. And I've mentioned this on the show before, but I really wanted to do it here because it illustrates this. his 20 plus mile per hour burst this season in terms of just like max speed. He's at 629 of them. Next best in the league is Connor McDavid with 416. And then Braden Point is down at 388.

22 mile per hour bursts. He's got 106 of them. McDavid 57. Marty Nature is 46 is the only other guy over 40. And he's just going so hard on all of these shifts, but he's doing it in such high volume as well. And I think that's what kind of really sticks out to me as impressive. here. It's not just a matter of a guy going out occasionally sort of picking his spots

craftily and doing the bare minimum to get by. Just the totality and sheer volume of everything he's doing this season is truly remarkable. It is. And so what you're talking about, I think, is also another, I think, important place to spend some time. And that is his obvious skating and what goes into his skating. He is truly a violent skater. Like, When he is crossing his feet, both feet come off the ice. He's literally like galloping. And I tried to describe this using this analogy. And it's like when you're riding a bike and you're sitting on the bike and you ride the bike and you're pedaling it, that's one energy.

But then you like, you know, you see like you have to go up a hill or you're with your friend and you want to go faster. What you do is you lift your butt off the bike and that gives you more down force to push down on the pedals. So it makes you not only is it more efficient to do it that way, but you're generating more downforce. And it's the down force that whips up the other foot that gives that one much more downforce. That is Nathan McKinnon skating. So as much as it looks like it's hard minutes and hard skating, because he doesn't, it doesn't look like it's easy to skate that way because he has so much power where he's coming both feet off the ground and he hits the next stride and then that one drives and propels both feet again off the ice. And so you're constantly getting this like a really aggressive, violent downforce into the ice that propels him.

But in a way, it also makes it much more efficient for him. can cover a lot more ground in shorter steps with less with less steps and obviously you have to have a lot of power to be able to do that like he's a freak in terms of his physical physique and he's been building that since he was a kid and all to support this skating style which is so unique to him in the sense of how how aggressive he uses that skating so to play that many minutes using this particular skating style, you would think that would cause the body to completely just break down, like to just have that much violence into the ice.

The other guy that was like this in some ways was Marion Gabrick. And Marion Gabrick, he ended up blowing up his entire body. Like his body just could not support the violence that he was. was able to generate in his skating style. And McKinnon has his body and the way in which it built supports not only this skating style, but then the skating style because of the way it, where it creates a level of efficiency where it's almost easier for him to skate this way. But it's not really all that replicable.

That's what's so fascinating because it is, when I say a freak, I mean, it's not really replicable. You need to, you have to have a certain type of bodies type. You have to have a certain training that has gone into it. And then you have to have this, you know, this attitude through this gallop skating. So I think there's a lot of people that are trying to, you know, get the effect and me included with players that I work with to try to get them to get both feet up off the ice, to get the bicycle effect where you're getting up off the bicycle to generate more downforce. But to do it to the degree and the frequency that this guy is doing, it just speaks to how absurd an athlete he truly is.

So what you're saying is maybe we shouldn't frame it as he's on the ice for 23 minutes as much as the ice is under him for 23 minutes and has to withstand the punishment that he is inflicting upon it with each of those strides he takes. You know, this pursuit of efficiency for him is so, such an interesting concept for me. We're going to get into it a lot when we talk about his shooting and the shooting percentage and kind of the development that's gone on throughout his career. But I've also noticed that, you know, when he comes into the league as an 18-year-old, it's just this ball of energy where everything is so raw, right?

And he's just still kind of going off of those physical gifts that are, that are pure and innate to him that he was able to kind of just dominate in Major Junior and at every level previously. And he had to take some lumps along the way. But I think as he's gone along, and this isn't necessarily unique to him, I think this happens to a lot of sort of brilliant skaters in that sense, is like you have to learn a kind of not pace yourself necessarily, but strategically mix in speeds and sometimes slow yourself down. And I still think sometimes like he, you can see he's, he's so wired that sometimes in big games he can almost go a bit too hard because he's kind of like skating himself into trouble sometimes and he's still able to skate himself into trouble and then skate himself back out of trouble with these cutbacks and spin moves and spinning off of checks and all that stuff but at times when he kind of takes a little bit off and sort of defers a little bit and then picks his spots and chooses when to accelerate in the sort of bursts that I described earlier I think that's sort of when he's at his best and I imagine. And that's kind of a process that had to come along with just more experience and reps.

And obviously sort of the maturation as he got into his mid-20s. Yeah. Like when he first came in the league, he was genuinely a burner. Like he's literally trying to take the corner on every D. And there were so many situations where he could. But then he'd run out of room when he got to the goalie. And then that's what really drove his shooting percentage so far down. It just took the NHL defenseman.

they just understand how to take a guy that you can see coming and it doesn't necessarily matter how fast you are when they can see you coming from that distance they're going to be able to adjust a gap and if they know that you don't have anything a threat in front of them like a shot that you could shoot through them or any other plays that would be threatening then they're just going to run you out of room which was happening to Nate early on in his early on in his career and the adjustment becomes a couple of things. Number one is you still maintain that threat, but you do it in situations where you have a clear differential.

So in other words, you come out and there's times where you can kind of come out of nowhere and then you don't really know you're in trouble until he's by you. Like it just happens so fast where you can't see it coming a zone away. All of a sudden it just happens. So that's one. and working off of these differentials and and then all of a sudden the acceleration is just so fast you cannot adjust. So that's one. Plus, you're doing it in a stage of the ice where you can preserve the space behind the defenseman to which now you can then have opportunity to attack,

which is a major area of Nathan's, Nathan's maturation, I think is that he now has space to shoot and in space to change the angle and and do different. things. The other thing that really changed his game, I think, is the deceleration started with his maturation of his delay game, which he still utilizes at a high frequency, which is very difficult to do in today's NHL. You used to be, you couldn't be a top 10 score in the NHL if you didn't have an elite delay game. And now you don't see that quite as much. It's harder to have that. Nathan is able to do it because of the threat to get in behind. He gets to full speed. He realizes that the space just isn't there.

He pulls up on you. And now he can kill you with the space in front of you, which makes him so difficult. So not only is he a threat behind you, but now he's this threat in front of you. So you'll see him he uses what I call an inside cut. So he'll come down the wall. It looks like he's going to take the corner. All of a sudden he delays, but the delay is cutting inside. So it's not, when we think of a delay, at least when I do,

I always think of like that Gretzky curl kind of turning your back and going towards the boards. While he will do that, oftentimes his best movements is he will cut directly in front of you. So he'll use that space in front of you. And he makes plays like dot to dot to other people, like Rantaninan who shoots the puck so well off the pass he will do that but then he also will when he uses that delay he can cut in front of you and now he can shoot it through you and he can be dangerous in front of you which he did not have those one the mindset and then two the skills to support this new area that was going to become necessary

and then now he has the skill set to be able to support that movement which and again like i think the inside cut is so fascinating rather than a regular delay because it does it's a little harder to defend with the way people want to track a person in delay a lot of times in a delay they when the player turns they're going to run into that forward which the the first forward back is it is in that cutoff of that player which is what's basically eliminated delay as becoming a major, like being such a major point producing mechanism. But McKinnon's been able to maintain it, one, because of his threat to be able to get behind you, but two, because he uses the inside cut, which is a very effective way of

being able to elude that tracker who's coming down, whose job is to kind of cut off the top. So that evolution has, I think, really contributed to one of his first problems when he first came in the league, which was high volume rush situations where you would run out of room and take low percentage shots. Well, and also, I think part, like, it's all come together in terms of, you know, the quality of the team around him has certainly improved as well. The partnerships he's established with guys like Brandon and McCarra now where he utilizes them so much more effectively as well.

And sort of like leveraging that threat of obviously it's in the back of every defender's mind. As Alex Petrangelo miced up one said, like, oh, boy, once he sees McKinnon coming, that you're naturally going to sag back and sort of give yourself a bit more space to protect yourself against his speed and in doing so he often creates all of these fun sort of one-two-punch opportunities with him and Ranton

where he pushes the defense back creates that little layer all of a sudden a window for Rantanin to skate into and either drops it off to him or passes it off to him and now Rantanin as a dual threat player which we've described before is able to all of a sudden now either hit the trailer who's coming along with him for the ride

or get it back to McKinn, and he's going downhill with full speed. And it's created all of these different wrinkles, I guess. And the layering of that rush attack is such an important distinction, right? Because you're right. Like the game has become so much more sophisticated in that sense, where it's not as simple as, all right, you're the best skater. You can just beat everyone by yourself anymore. You have to layer it.

You have to give them different looks. And you have to sort of attack in those waves with the one-two punch with those two guys, then the trailer, the fourth guy into the zone, all that stuff that we've talked about in previous shows, and they utilize that so much. Obviously, he's going to have the sort of flashes of just individual brilliance where he goes coast to coast and goes through the defense. But those are the sort of the rare highlights in the grand scheme of things. All the other more subtle ones where he incorporates the teammates are what has sort of optimized that efficiency we're talking about. Yeah. The big hallmark of a superstar player is,

is when they can take a particular asset that they have and turn it into whatever you do is wrong. So this is like in my experience of working with some of these guys, this has become the major focus in moving from like star to superstar or like superstar to like this level is whatever you do is wrong. So what we were just describing and he has several of these aspects, which we'll get into, but this is the first one. It's a very easy one to describe.

So if you decide that the space that's in front of you, in front of you is most important to defend, well, then he will, and he has the capacity to use his skating in such a way that will make that decision wrong because you're going to expose too much space behind you, and he will be able to blow right by you and then take advantage of that space. if you're then concerned where you're like, you know what,

like I don't think I can afford to give up that space behind me. He's way too dangerous and that speed is too much. I am going to, I'm going to, you know, sag back in a gap, afford that space where I'm like, you're not getting in behind me. You're going to have to do something in front of me. And then now that you afford him that space and then he takes advantage of that space and he's able to be equally as dangerous in that space as, as he was in the other.

So whatever you decide to do is wrong. And that is a major aspect of being able to dictate the offensive conditions. And that's a hallmark of every superstar player is they can take an asset or a situation that's recurring and make whatever you do wrong. And that's what I love about when you watch what. what Nathan is doing. He's not reacting. Sorry. Yes. Yeah. No, well, that was going to be my next question for you because when we did the Kuturov episode and these two guys are obviously going to be linked because of their point production. They're both in both the Art Ross and the heart conversation.

They obviously slice you up in wildly different ways, particularly physically, right, in terms of their approach. But when we were talking about Kutcheron, we were talking about sort of the processing speed, what he's seeing out there. And you were making the point of when you're operating on that plane, everything is just so much slower for you, right? And he's able to sort of, he works as a puppet master on the half wall on the power play, but even in 515 situations at full speed, he's able to essentially input all these different variables. And depending on who's where or where you're leaning, he's able to then beat you that way. Right? It's like a pick your poison situation. With McKinnon, he's operating at such a frantic speed. And oftentimes he's, you know, he's working like six or seven

different stick handles within one move and trying to set you up that way. Is it a matter of him sort of more so than dictating exactly where he wants you and how he wants to beat you? Or is he similarly just in a different way visibly, but similarly tactically kind of trying to figure out what you're giving to him and then going that route? Like kind of what's when he's watching a video, when he's prepping, when he's thinking about this stuff or when he's like going back and processing what happened, how do you think he's sort of perceiving that and trying to.

terms of like how it played out and what he should have done and what he's seeing out there when he's just flying up the ice. Nathan McKinnon, he works off of a decision tree that has specific priorities. So you mentioned at the outset the incredible number of accelerations and the difference in his accelerations versus the rest of the league. That is reflective of a priority decision tree. what that means is that his number one priority is to beat you with speed. He wants to threaten you with speed, overwhelm you,

and he wants to take the corner every time he can. However, that decision tree is based on spacing where these things happen on the ice. So if that once he gets to a certain spot on the ice, that is going to in that creates a decision so do you now have a differential of speed which would afford you the opportunity to get in behind this defenseman if yes go if not then now we're going to do the space in front so now he has he goes into then the next set of decisions which is which way am i going to turn so is there room to cut in front of guy or do I have to turn, do I have to do a two foot stop? Is it a stop cut, back cut? What am I going to do?

So he, he based on the conditions of that play, he moves into the next then priority. And then now he's deciding, you know, is it is it ranting in with a one T on the dot? Is it McCar coming late? Is it him attacking himself and coming through? Those are the reeds. And they become off the decision tree. But he has a specific set of priorities that is totally accentuating his greatest strength. He's always working under the conditions of his greatest strength. And then the decisions then come off of that decision tree, which is based on the geography of the ice. At a certain stage of the rank, he knows that there's a decision that has to be made. So in the lead up to that space, all his awareness is heightened because he's going to, he's about to make a decision.

So what are the numbers? What's the speed that I have? What's the space? What's the score of the game? All these things are factors that weigh into then making a decision as to whether he should continue on or not. And that I find is much more prevalent in today's athlete in terms of their decision making, especially when you talk about players who are speed-oriented guys. It's a little different with guys who are trying to manipulate the speed of the game by legitimately like slowing it down as a priority. Nathan is never trying to slow it down as an initial priority. He may slow it down at a time to set you up to speed it up.

So you'll see him, he'll accelerate. kind of put you on your heels, he'll slow down to see if you'll slow down and then he'll speed up. It's a tactic to manipulate you and put you and preserve the space behind. If he just goes fast the whole time, it's easier for you to just get on your bike and see if you can work the math out to see if you can deny him the post. If he slows you down before he speeds you up, that's just a whole different thing where another guy like a Kucherov, he doesn't, uses speed, which he has considerable speed, but he doesn't use that as the number one part of his priority tree. His number one part of the priority tree is to slow the game down and to kind of get all the pieces in place before he starts moving all the pieces on the board. It's just two

totally different approaches, but the same idea, but it's based on their best assets, if that makes sense. That's what it is. So if he, If you're asking him afterwards, you say, hey, you had six rushes, and you only scored on one of the rushes, like what happened on the other five? He's going through a mental, when he's watching it, he's going through a decision tree of the spacing, the geography, the speed he had, the environment that was surrounding it as to whether that decision was the best decision. And then the score, the period, the time, all those factors way into it. But that's what's going on. Well, what's interesting about him and this Avs team, and you touched on it there, so I want to build on that point is this idea of sort of leveraging your best assets and kind of playing to that, right?

And I think that's what this Aves team has done so masterfully for the past five years or whatever under this management group and during this run of success. And we even saw it at this deadline with the types of players, they went out, identified, targeted, and acquired. it's they're always like trying to strengthen a strength, right? And that sounds sort of obvious, but then you look at other teams around the league and how they put together their lineups. And generally, teams, I think,

kind of make the mistake of having a superstar player like this and knowing what they're good at and then trying to fill out the rest of the team with guys who sort of theoretically complement them with skills that they might not as visibly have. So like you have a really fast player, you're trying to get big players, who can sort of grind and work down low and just be in front of the net

and be more sort of traditional players in that sense. And that's sort of what I think the Edmonton Oilers, that's where they've kind of made mistakes building around McDavid over the years. What the Avalanche have done is surrounded him with players who can play at that pace or something at least close to it to keep up and not slow him down and then further reinforce that. And that's where this concept of kind of that neutral zone regroup we always sort of talk about really comes into play here

where they have players, particularly on the blue line now with guys like McCar and Taves, and you watch Sean Walker and his first 10 or so games with his team, where they can leverage that to really make you pay as an opponent, right? So it's not just the initial rush where McKinnon and Randon might come into a zone, get a scoring chance. You are lucky enough to not give up a goal against. You get it out of your zone, and you're thinking, all right,

the coast is clear. We might have a time for change or we might just be able to sort of exhale for a second, and they're coming right back in. And that's sort of fueled by not just, those guys, but the players they've surrounded a guy like McKinnon with. And I think that is a really important sort of piece to this puzzle when describing his player what makes him so lethal right now. It's that they've enabled this environment to sort of actually utilize and play to that strength as opposed to doing kind of the opposite, which I think other teams have tried to do and failed at.

It's such a good point. I think the one big challenge with playing with Nathan, which I don't think Nathan is very, is an easy player to play with. and I don't think any player at that level of play is an easy player to play with. You just can't find just anybody to play with them. There are specific people that have certain assets that are going to be able to highlight not only his strength, but also be able to maybe pull out some of their best attributes. But the number one thing with Nathan, with a player who skates so aggressively and so fast, is he needs to get the puck when he needs to get the puck.

You can't just give him the puck at any time. Like he needs to get it when he needs it. Sometimes he wants to accelerate off the puck and build speed. And then he wants to get it at a certain time. And the best people to surround him with are people who have an ability to understand when that timing is to be able to take advantage of it. Because if you give it to him too early, then he hasn't gotten to the acceleration pieces that he wants. and the defense has an easier time being able to somewhat adjust.

If you give it to him too late, then now he's probably going to have to slow down or break stride to be able to get the puck. So he definitely needs it when he needs it. And you will see times because he is a guy also who, you know, he wears it when he's not happy and he wears it. You know, he has, he'll show it with body language or you can see that he's getting frustrated.

He plays with a high, high level of intensity. And you can tell when the timing just isn't quite on, you'll see him having to make some adjustments to make sure that that's the case, that the timing settles in, or the players around him have to start adjusting. But, you know, you just can't, you can't say, well, you know, we have Nathan McKinnon who's really fast and, you know, he plays with a high level of, high level of energy,

and he's going to attack the net. So maybe we should get somebody who can, you know, who can check. and put that on his line or someone who's just going to land at the net and, you know, muck it up at the net. That's what we need for a guy like that. And it's a little more complicated than that. No, it certainly is. And I want to get into that team concept then because we hinted at it with the neutral zone regroups.

And we can talk more about that if you want, if you think there's an interesting component of that, although I think people who have been listening to this show generally get the concept of it where, like, if you try to dump the puck out against them or dump it into their zone, you're writing your own, your own like death. Like it's over. They're going to beat you.

It's dangerous. There's that. I think they utilize the boards better than any team, whether it's like self passes where McKinnon's sort of getting it to himself into space or a guy like Taves sort of almost like, like pinballing it off to get it as a breakout pass. Like they do these indirect passes off the boards and utilize that to perfection.

And then there's the five-man attack in the offensive zone, which I think is also an interesting piece of this. And McKinnon ties into that greatly in their ability to empower their defensemen to engage and move down low and provide themselves as shooting threats, but also extend possessions while also manufacturing additional puck touches for him high in the zone where it's easier for him to get it and then get shots off or distribute. That's, I think, another strength that there is. but there's a few kind of organizational philosophies

or sort of like unique team traits that they utilize better than any other team that are almost like they're made within the image of what he already excels at as a player and then the two have gone hand in hand to get the most out of each other and I think that's a really cool thing that's happened during this run of Avalanche dominance.

Yeah, I think one of the major distinctions that happened as from a team perspective is they became really effective in puck recovery. So obviously, you know, Nate's shooting percentage, let's say it's, I don't know what it is, but let's say it's like 12% or 15% or whatever. But off the rush, you know, you still have a high percentage of pucks that are not going in. And early in his career, he ran into trouble where he was really facilitating because of his play and his speed and the lack of people that were able to play around him,

that he was facilitating one and dunce. So he would come sprinting down the rank, he would generate a low percentage shot, the puck would get saved, there would be no recovery really possible. The other team would just quickly exit and off they go. So they never were able to really sustain it. Where I think it turned for the avalanche,

and it turned for Nathan in general, is his ability, his own personal ability to stay on puck. So shoot it, accepting the fact that a high percentage of those are probably not going to go in. So let's track that puck. When it shoots, make sure you're not turning away. Make sure you go with the puck and you continue your skating speed and your same level of intensity that you came to come up the ice with. Let's break to make sure you don't go flying through the end boards,

break and then re-accelerate to get back control of the puck and keep it in the offensive zone. I think that when you looked at guys like Rantanin and then Landisog for the longest time and then any number of the different types of players that they've used in on this line to... Yeah, Natchiechkin and Likinen for sure. Yeah, these guys are outstanding in along the boards, rimmed pucks, missed shots.

They are outstanding in their feel for when to go where, the ability to corral or take the puck off the boards or field it off the wall and cleanly and be able to sustain the offensive zone time because that was a major part of the problem early on in the lack of production from Nathan was the high number of one and duns that are now not the case.

first Nathan and the group is coming up with some ridiculously ridiculous speed attack. You happen to survive that. Then they recover the puck. Now they get into their offensive zone set. And that's perhaps even more dangerous than the initial rush. Because they're going to throw 25 passes with 14 different shots off the pass from all different areas. And all of a sudden, your defensive zone is a complete shooting gallery. that's what happens right and that's the shift and that goes along with the team philosophy

the gifts of Nathan the ability to surround him with complementary players who can play with him and support him and actually thrive when playing with him so it's one I think that's the biggest thing too is like you have a superstar player like Nathan who's in the growth phase of his of his career you want to have people who can grow with him like that they're game is also going to get better. So you could argue that like Rantanin had a lot of Kuturoff in him. He was not, he was a very like not a, he didn't play with a ton of pace. Matter of fact, you could really question his pace between the blue lines early in his

career. He was very much like a back wall, puck protection, walk off the wall, you know, be able to like spin off of you and then his passing and in tight shooting was outstanding. Now he shoots the puck off the pass. play with quite a bit of pace through the neutral zone. But he was able to grow with Nathan. And I think that that is a major part of being able to sustain the development of your superstar athlete, which I think Colorado may have done as well as anybody if thought better.

They've been able to sustain his development by having people who would grow with him, rather than say, well, we need this guy to, you know, do this for him. And we need this guy to do this for him to mask some, you know, some deficiencies or some ineffectiveness in his game. Rather, they put him with players who can think on a level that can make plays with him and give him the puck when he needs it. He then learns how to use their best assets. And then he, the group just grows.

So it didn't take ranting and long to realize when Nathan stopped. only trying to take the corner and then he added this delay game and he was cutting into the middle. It didn't take him long to go, you know what, if I go on this offside dot here and he passes me the puck, like that's a one tee. And then all of a sudden there's a hundred goals like that over the last few years where it just seems like it's one after the other. But that's a guy that's growing with the athlete. and I think for a guy like Nathan to be in the position that he's in, like regularly considered one of, if not the best player in the world,

you have to have that. You have to have these other players that are growing with you. And I think that's one of the best things that Colorado has done. And I think it's in other situations that you can think of when you think under that perspective, it wouldn't take long to come up with a few athletes that you would be like, you know what, this guy might have had potential to get into that type of conversation, but in the situation that they were in, those players did not grow with him,

and that in effect stunted their growth. Yeah, no, I think they'd correctly identified those demands you alluded to earlier of playing with him, right, where it's going to take a certain type of player to fit in and thrive and then have that mutually beneficial relationship. And that requires you to push the pace. it requires you have a certain motor or certain activity level and then the ability to sustain these extended shifts, whereas there's the initial rush. And then all of a sudden you have another 50 seconds in the offensive zone where you're moving around,

passing the puck around, sort of stacking, scoring chances on top of another. And there's something kind of genius about it as well, right? Because I don't think it's an accident that they feel particularly scary at home playing in that altitude when they kind of bury down you on that, like build that momentum. and it really feels very daunting once they get going. It kind of reminds me of like what a baseball team has certain quirks or intricacies to their home ballpark. And then like maybe they have like a short field or something. And then all of a sudden they're putting together all these home run hitters who can take advantage of it and exploit it.

They've sort of similarly done so here, right, where they have all these guys who can just keep that ball moving and keep stacking and keep growing. And then all of a sudden it becomes a nightmare to try to keep up with it over the course of a 60 minute game and particularly a seven game series. So I think that stuff's really interesting. Do you want to talk a little bit about his shooting now? I know we've sort of, we've teased it and we've talked about it. And I think you made the point, like when we did the Eichol episode and you referenced it again here, where part of it is sort of being deliberate in when you make the decision to shoot and maintaining the space so that you actually leave yourself room to shoot and you're not getting in too tight.

And then all of a sudden jamming a low percentage shot into the goalies pads or into their glove. So I think there's part of that, but you can't tell this sort of Nathan McKinn's story in terms of developmental arc and how he got to this point without sort of talking about this concept of he came into the league. He was a very inefficient finisher in that way for his first three or four seasons. And then since then he's never going to be Leon Dreisidal in terms of shooting percentage, but he's gotten from 7% or whatever he was to 12 now. and when you're shooting about what 300 or so shots on goal per season that's another 12 to 15 goals for you right there and that's how you go from being like a good player to a great player and then all of a sudden being in the 40s and goals and the hundreds and points and getting to the level he's at today yeah like the the shot there's there's several aspects of the shot unsurprisingly the first aspect of it is what to do on the rush and how to create create a shot in traffic because you have, you know, it's a, you're, you're trying to shoot the puck, like before he was trying to get in the crease, like beat the goal, beat the defenseman, cut across and get in the crease and try to, try to stuff something in or it was like a really

short play. But the goalies are just too good, too big. It's just very low percentage. So now you have to shoot it from, you know, from distance. It's going to be from 18 feet, from 20 feet. So now, you know, you're in stride. You're under duress. So now you have to like manipulate the puck. So you might have to move it from like quickly from backhand to forehand under the defenseman's extended stick. And that's how you create how you create your shot. So there's a lot of like shot creation inside of his asset base inside of a certain spacing that give him.

him the maximum opportunity to be able to get a puck on net that actually has a chance to go in. So that's like your first, that's your first part. So at Mach 3 when he's flying, can he then also handle the puck and change the angle and maybe like put the puck into your triangle and shoot it? Or, you know, all of a sudden cut underneath you. Mach 3 all of a sudden he cuts on your heels and the puck is gone instantly. like it's just a quick cut and it's gone. So these like little manipulations of both his footwork, the way in which he utilizes his hands.

What came from that was he found that it was much more effective when he was really handling the puck. So oftentimes you will see him in full flight really handling the puck, which is a little bit counterintuitive to what you would think. A lot of times you're trying to at that speed or at any time, you try to prep the puck. puck into a good shooting position, kind of leave it, quiet everything down, and then find your release. He was actually better the opposite way, which was to speed up his hands and come up with his shot from there. So figuring out his assets, what's comfortable, make sure you're adhering to the spacing

of it all and giving yourself a chance by both manipulating the goalie, catching goalies while they're in transitions and moving. Those are all key parts to that shooting. So that's one. The other part is he had to find an offensive zone shot. So one where he was either coming off the wall. You would see him like over the not this year and the year before, but the two years previous where he basically reinvented the high F3,

where he would position himself between the 2D. And he would catch that puck and you would see him like sifting pucks to the net, which he'd score like 15 goals a year on. So finding a way to get pucks through in the offensive zone, be able to kind of navigate through traffic, improve his release, do it while his feet are moving or do it when he's quiet, but it's a puck on his stick, but very different than what we talk about with Matthews. It was done from, you know, a little bit further distances. So that was another evolution of his shot.

Then the last iteration of his shot that's noteworthy here is that the ability to shoot off the pass. So first reared its ugly head on the power play. So you're on the power play. You're in the flank position on that right side. There is an expectation that you're going to be a threat there. So you have to develop an off-wing shot. And his ability to really develop that shot, it's a true weapon. And it's one of the better one-timer shots in the league now.

And he does it now. And it evolved from just being really a power play threat to now he does it even strength. And he will use that one-timer in a lot of different situations from a puck that comes from all different, all different spots. The other really challenging part about the one-timer, which if you're not like, I don't know, Like if it's not a real strength of yours growing up and coming through, then trying to learn it in the NHL is particularly difficult. But the guy who tends to give him the puck the most for a one-timer is McCar, who is at the top.

So the challenge with that is that the most difficult one-timer to hit is when the puck is coming down to you. The easiest one-timer to hit is when the puck is coming. up to you. And then the one that kind of settles in the middle is like a dot to dot pass. And every player would have like a different preference per se, but the hardest one is always going to be the one coming up to you. So you got McCar, who's a magician, moving in all different ways up at the top, but the pass is still coming from the top down to you. So now you have the timing of rotating your upper body, your lower body, all the footwork that goes with all that. That just takes a lot of time to get that down. And it's only been in the last couple of years

where I've really felt like that's become a situation where timing has become a lot better. And when you see it with other guys who've really tried to develop a one-timer after they've come into the NHL to be a threat. So, you know, you see it like, it's not like a Stamcoast or Ovechkin who brought that skill with them and it was a major part of their skill set when they got there. This is a guy who's, you know, I would argue like a Matthews, for example,

this is another kind of thing with him having to learn to shoot a one-timer to become an elite because you're going to be in this spot. You're going to get these pucks. You have to develop this skill. And then now, not only do you have to develop the skill, but the puck is coming to you from the hardest position to get it from.

So learning to hit that puck is not easy. And he's managed to learn to do it. At now, he's one of the better ones in the league. Well, not only that, but then turning the threat of that shot into also, you know, hitting, rant and into the back post where he tightens up on his stick and hitting him with those passes as well, utilizing that and incorporating everyone. And yeah, it all ties together. No, I think it's incredibly fascinating.

It's such a big part of this story, right? Because I'm looking at it now. like in years he comes in he scores the 24 goals as a rookie as an 18 year old right and is shooting about 10% of that season all of a sudden next three years scores like an 18 goal pace shooting 7.5 and since then he's been in that 12ish range as a percent finisher and scoring 40ish goals per season and that's a massive difference right and I think that sort of speaks to a lot of the stuff you illustrated there so now that's really cool I think it's also really important in terms of incorporating that and evolving and adapting as he gets like he's still firmly certainly in

his prime when you watch him play right now but he is also you know he's 29 years old in September I'm very curious to see what years 32 to 35 look like for him where being able to assert yourself physically particularly in terms of speed will be tougher to do at that point of your career and we've seen him already be able to evolve make adjustments and he certainly as determined and as hardworking an athlete as you're going to see. And so I don't think any of that is by accident or coincidence, but I'm very curious to see what those kind of next steps of that progression are like for him.

Well, I think you don't have to look far because what you're seeing out of Sidney Crosby and his evolution over the last few years is really fascinating. And it's no secret, obviously, that Nathan and Sydney are incredibly close. They spend a ton of time together. They have. They share a lot of off-ice supports. So their trainer, their people that they talk to about hockey are similar. So it wouldn't take long to draw that relationship.

Well, Darrell, I'm going to let you go here. We're unfortunately out of time because I feel like I still left so much meat on the bone here. We could have done a lot more, but the 50-minute time restrictions are as they are. So we're going to have to pick this up again soon. I'm going to be off next week. Fittingly actually going to Denver to see Nate and the Aves live and what's shaping up to be one of the regular season games of the year against Nashville. It's for my bachelor party next weekend.

I'm getting to see him and Yolk. That's cool. So that's going to be a pretty great time. Assuming I survive and actually make it back, we'll return to our regular schedule programming late next week. So I think you and I are going to take a week off here from doing our deep dives. And then the following week, we'll pick back up. We'll pick another player.

We'll deep dive them as we get closer to the postseason. So looking forward to that. Daryl, thank you for coming on. Thank you to the listeners for listening to us. In the meantime, if you're looking for more content, go on the HockeyPedioCast YouTube channel and you can watch our full archives and all of our accompanying mixtapes there and join the Discord where there's great conversations every night. And we'll be back soon next week after a few days off with more of the Hockeyedio cast.

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