The Hockey PDOcast - How The Wild, Ducks, and Flyers Won In Round 1 and What To Expect From Their Round 2 Matchups

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Mike Kelly to discuss how the Wild, Ducks, and Flyers won in Round 1 while looking ahead to their upcoming Round 2 matchups. 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 2015. It's the Hockey PDOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey-PedioCast. My name's Dimitri Fulipovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Mike. What's going on? And not much. Just getting here to the end of the first round, which is always crazy, but fun. How are you doing? I'm doing well. It's, uh, we're recording this on a Friday morning. We are coming off a pair of close-out games on Thursday night. And so I wanted to have you on to do some autopsies on those round one matchups, how they played out, how they finished, and then kind of look ahead a little bit, at least preliminarily, to what we can learn from them heading into round two.

Let's start with Stars Wild. The Wild put the Stars away in Game 6 at home. They wind up winning three straight after going down 2-1 earlier in the series, make the second round for the first time since 2015. I think a lot of people are going to focus on the 5-on-5 splits specifically with the Wild outscoring the stars 14 to 4 at 5 on 5 in this series. I think that's fair because especially as you watch these games play out and I think game 6 was pretty representative of it.

I think the gap in terms of team speed between the two or maybe the way they play and the pace they play at was very evident. And then the Wilde's ability to move the puck at just a much more efficient clip than the stars were able to. I thought those were two of the biggest drivers for why that gap was so massive between the two sides. Yeah. I mean, the five-on-five stuff was like a massive disparity, like you said.

Dallas, they obviously got their goals on the power play, and that was humming for them. But five-on-five, when you get outscored that badly, like I would almost want to give credit on both sides to Wollstead, first of all, who was great, obviously, a rookie goalie. And people didn't even really know, like, if you just looked on performance, you'd say coming into the playoffs, yeah, he's probably the guy.

But Gustafson, there were a lot of people in Minnesota thinking they'd lean that way. And they'd go with Walsh, and he was brilliant. And like for Dallas, I look at, okay, they got four goals of five on five. We had their expected goals at just over 11. So what was that difference for them? And like, I chalk some of it up to the fact that they missed the net on half their scoring chances. Like, these are looks from the slot. Only Ottawa was worse at putting those on net.

So you're getting a lot of blocks and missed shots that are going to contribute to XG but aren't testing the goalie. And then they only scored on just under 8% of their shots from the slot. And there were only one or two teams worse than that. So that's Walsett and making good saves, difficult saves, who was terrific also. So that obviously, like when a series ends in six games like that and you've got 10 goal differential at 5 on 5, that's to your point where you should be looking. Yeah, Kevin Woodley talks about this a lot with Walshstead about how he's obviously big as most goalies are in today's game, but he probably presents as even bigger because of just the way he comes out in challenges.

And so maybe that speaks to some of the difficulties star shooters had in terms of trying to cut it a bit too close and missing that on some of those looks. I thought something else Walsett did really well. And you could see that in game six was whenever the stars would kind of dump it in, he would never freeze the puck. he would always just keep him moving to a wild defender. And I think that certainly played to their advantage of not slowing the game down and just keeping it in open play. I do wonder whether part of the lack of efficiency for the stars at 5-on-5

is because of how they were forced to create a lot of their offense too. And this was certainly ramped up even further with Rupa Hintz not being available in the series. And then Niels Lundquist, who had been phenomenal through the first three and a half games, getting hurt in game four. But they weren't really able to move the puck. up the ice the way they had in previous seasons when they were such a ruthless rush team at times especially if you think back to how they beat the abs as a counter-punching

team in round one last year and they wound up having to create a lot of their offensive 5-1-5 by like trying to kind of old school get the puck low and then work from below the goal line and grind out possessions and send it up to their defensemen and then shoot from there and you know they utilize high tips a lot but I think it was a much more predictable maybe for the wild in terms of what they needed to look for and what they needed to defend. And I think they ultimately just didn't have the puck movers in this series

to really challenge the wild and get out with speed and attack the way they would have otherwise. Yeah, that's a good point. They had the worst exit success rate at five on five of any team in the playoffs, Dallas. So there is obviously truth in that for sure. And then how does that translate to your rush game?

They were the second. worst team at producing chances off the rush. The only team worse than them was Minnesota. So, like, there wasn't a lot there either way in the series. You know, zone time in the ozone cycle, like you said, they're good at that, good enough at it. But when you struggle to get the puck out of your end like Dallas did and you're not producing off the rush, it just takes dimensions away, right?

Like, I've, you dig into this stuff a lot, too, but, like, I've always thought, no matter how good you can kind of be at something offensively if you don't have multiple dimensions in the playoffs more often than not a team will at least saw you off on that strength like you got to be able to do things in different ways and yeah

hints was a big loss like if you looked at that series coming into it I think you'd look at like where do you want to try to get the best in Minnesota you'd look at center depth and the ping pong effect of like hey there's no hints what does that do to Wyatt Johnson what does that do to do Shane what does that

that due to your depth. It just puts a lot of pieces out of place. And then like, Ranting and Johnson, they have one goal at five on five between the two of them. And I don't think they were on together for a goal at five on five. So it's, it just kind of trickled down for sure.

Yeah, their defensemen really slow down just the speed at which they were trying to attack with. And, and, you know, before you see their forwards, trying to kind of either, you know, selectively cheat,

cheat by flying the zone or getting a head start. and then their defenseman will hit them with a quick breakout pass, and they just weren't really capable of pulling that off. And without hints, none of those guys, even as talented as Johnson and Randon and are, they don't necessarily, you know, threaten you with their foot speed. And so I think the wild were much more comfortable defensively in terms of getting back and getting set up and forcing them to weave through them with defenders in place and the stars weren't able to do so.

And you compare that to what Minnesota did, particularly when that Hughes favor pair is out there and they play pretty much half the game, which certainly makes things easier. But that first goal they scored was a thing of beauty off this kind of breakout set play where they go D-to-D, get it to an anchor for it in the neutral zone. And then all of a sudden you create this runway for Hughes to start moving downhill. He gets a great scoring opportunity off of it and converts. And there was just such an ease to which they were able to get into a lot of their preferred sets and create.

And I think that was a big difference between these two teams. I just think about Minnesota's kind of motion offense, right? Like in the offensive zone particularly, snapping the puck around, those interchanges up high, really forcing a lot of miscommunications. And you have Hughes, Caprizo and Boldie, who are three of the what, like top 10 players in terms of offensive zone possession time.

And so generally when your best players have the puck on their stick that often, good things are going to eventually materialize for you. Yeah. Like for Quinn to be leading ozone possession per game as a defenseman is crazy. I got him Lane Hudson, like you can pick a couple guys that are the anomalies for defensemen.

It's usually forwards that lead in that for obvious reasons, but he's a unicorn, right? And like Minnesota, you talk about like the moving to puck up the ice and, you know, doing well in that sense versus Dallas. Like I saw, I saw on Twitter,

you know, tweet talking about Quinn Hughes and all these stretch passes that he's had. I was like, okay, well, it's interesting. It also completely lacks, necessary context of like a ton of those are just, not just, but they're chip plays, right? You hit the guy of the red line and chips it in.

Minnesota did that a ton. And now Dallas has to go back on pucks and like you say, you're trying to work something in your advantage there where you can try to hem them in. And man, the way that those skill players, like you talk about move the puck around in the offensive zone, it's unbelievable. Quinn is amazing out of like Boldie.

He is just so good at so many different things. he can play offensively like any way you want. He's good defensively, right? He's watching guys like him and Hegel and others of a certain kind of like archetype thrive in the playoffs. It's not surprising, but it's fun to watch. I mean, think about the second and third goals, The Wilde scored in that close-out game six, and they're both end result of just like either inexplicable decisions or execution by the stars in terms of breakout. to plague them in game five as well with the Myers turnover, but just kind of giving it away

to wild forwards and then all of a sudden quickly leading to goals against. Whereas I thought the stars, other than Maverick Bork maybe, just didn't really have any sort of forechecking threat. I was looking at this, Quinn Hughes, as you'd expect, played more five on five minutes than any other player in the league in round one. And he was a corner natural statute at least outside the top hundred in terms of hits taken. And there's other ways to create for check pressure beyond you know, going in and traditionally taking the body and laying a hit on him. But he was able to very often just go back and play a puck very comfortably and then essentially assess what was in front of them and make a playoff of that,

even if it was a chip into the zone that followed. And the stars, partly because of that lack of foot speed up run, just weren't ever really able to get in there and sustain any offensive zone time, but really even make the wild defenders think about what they were going to do next. Yeah. Yeah, like that third goal, the, was it, Mero Hayskin, I think, who'd make the outlet pass from behind his net. Yeah, like, and it reminds me of the Buffalo Boston game before.

Like, Buffalo scored two goals off of failed controlled breakouts. Like, that should never happen. When you have a controlled breakout, to not get the puck out of your end is insane to me. And so for that to happen, like, you're halfway through the third period in the tie game. My goodness. it's crazy. And like the other thing I think about with that series

and it was, you know, Glenn Gellison got asked about it. It became a bit of a talking point, probably as it should be, was in game three of that series that went to double overtime, like for Minnesota not to have an interslot shot in that game in 92 minutes is crazy. And

you know, they almost, they almost won the game obviously, but then you go to the next three games and they outshot Dallas from there 24 to 14. And to me that's significant. Dallas was the best team in the league at shutting that down in the regular season.

Obviously did it in game three completely. And Minnesota was able to get like around the net a little bit more and make life tough on Ottinger and obviously help sway a series. I thought some of the stuff the stars were doing offensively was baffling. And, you know, the wild in terms of been zone coverage, deserve a lot of credit for it. But I was tracking scoring chances in that game six. And I had the stars with 10 total scoring chances in,

a must-win game with their season on the line. And some of the decisions along the way were baffling, too, like Jamie Ben was being used as the extra attacker with the goalie pulled laid, and he winds up turning it over as opposed to, you know, giving an opportunity to a younger player like Maverick Bork, who I thought was probably one of their standout players in that game. And really, this series, you know,

you could trace it back to the gap in trade deadline acquisitions between these two teams, where on the one hand, you get Tyler Myers, who got played out of this series, and made a ton of mistakes. And then Michael Bunting, who, you know, as you'd expect, gets finally tossed into the series in game six, makes an impact in terms of baiting. Jakup Trennan into taking a penalty, and the stars convert on that.

Probably could have used that earlier in the series, whereas the Wild had certainly Hughes earlier, but even the contributions from McCarr and Brink as he was used. And so there was just much more depth there. But ultimately, I think the reason the Wild won the series is their best players just outperformed the best players of the stars, right? I know we like to lie on eyes the depth contributions and the goals from Marcus Folino and McCarron along the way were certainly huge in a series this close. But the stats for Caprizo, Boldy, Hughes, Faber, they're all pretty staggering in terms of

their impact, not only their production, but how handily they're winning their minutes. And so I think that's a big testament to them. And that sets up a very fascinating round two match up against the start, against the afts, where there's going to be a lot of those head-to-head battles, I imagine, between the top players. And they're going to need to do it. all over again, I think, to have a chance in that series. Yeah, for sure. And, like, that was maybe the knock on Minnesota in years past, right?

Is, like, who's your alpha? Who's the star that's going to take over? Like, Boldie's emerged and grown year over year and become that guy. Capricisov's always been that guy, but you add Quinn Hughes into the mix. It's franchise changing. And I give a lot of credit to Bill Guerin, right? He assembles a team USA roster that we all, you know, nitpick ahead of time and whatever and scoring this and that.

And they won a gold medal. And he goes out and gets Quinn Hughes and there's no extension attached to it. And franchise changing stuff. And yeah, now they get Colorado. Like that's going to be a battle. The abs to me are still the template. They're such a wagon. And like you focus on offensively what they do a lot.

But defensively, like they never cheat the game. And their star players defend. and that's going to be a good battle. It'll be a fun one. But yeah, to get outscored 14 to 4 at 5 on 5 in a series and have top guys, again, Johnston, Ranton, and et cetera, no hints. Heiskenen's not 100%. That's pretty tough to overcome.

Yeah, Hayskin and Guy outscored 6-0. 5-on-5. Johnson, I think, scored the one goal, but really wasn't that good factor 5-1-5. And then you mentioned this earlier, but just to hammer at home, Ranton gets outscored 5-0, 5-1-5, including down 4-0 in 40 minutes head-to-head against Caprizov, and the stars had a 25% expected goal sharing that time. And so pretty rough to go along with all the penalties, and you saw him, you know, fittingly between the two take a retaliatory penalty in the third period.

That was really rough timing for the stars as well. I thought it was very fitting that Boldie put the final nail in the coffin with the empty netter because he was so good in this series. And once again, kind of wins a battle out of the Zazer. own and then brings it home. And is there anything better in just in general, but like in terms of electricity, then a home team closing out a playoff series like that in front of their home crowd with everyone going nuts as the clock winds down.

I thought like the final five minutes of that game were absolute cinema because the fans were just going absolutely ballistic and they could kind of like smell blood in the water. And it's so cool. I know there's, you'll ask players and some find it very satisfying to close out a team in their own building because you kind of like silence everyone. And that can be sweet as well. but I feel like winning it at home the way the while did here is especially cool.

Yeah, I agree. And they haven't won a playoff series in a while. So I worked a good amount of Minnesota broadcast this year. I was down there in the playoffs a little bit last year against Vegas. And that's a great building, obviously, great fans and everything. But there's a whole different attitude around that team, honestly, because of Quinn Euse coming there and what he's meant to them, like turning them from before he got there into the,

least dangerous transition team in the league into a legitimately dangerous one for the most part. It's been cool to see, so I'm with you. You pop that empty netter home to kind of seal it at home in front of your fans, especially with like the drought of playoff success they've had there, is awesome. And for Boldie, like to be a guy to do it, just defensively breaking out plays, get into loose pox. A lot of the things kind of outside of just, you know, creating great chances and scoring and whatever. fitting like you said too yeah

I don't know if you've had time to think about this because it's obviously a quick turnaround in terms of going from the stars matchup to the abs in round two but it's certainly going to be a wildly different no pun intended test for Minnesota partly because a lot of what we said that Dallas lacked in terms of

that pace and foot speed and ability to exit and then threaten in transition off the rush the abs are going to thrive there but also in general the stars were so passive in their zone in terms of kind of just sitting back and trying to protect the house. And early in the series of worked, it kind of faded later on. But allowing for that offensive zone possession time for Hughes to kind of probe around

the perimeter and try to look for lanes that open some of those seam plays between Caprizov and Zuccarello and Boldie and Erick, the abs are going to be much more aggressive at contesting that. They don't spend a lot of time in their zone. They generally are top the league in terms of doing the opposite and really leaning on you with offensive zone time and their own cycle plays. how do you kind of see that shaking out in terms of which team's going to be able to get the upper hand there and a lot of what Minnesota did offensively against Dallas?

I'm curious to see if they're going to be able to replicate it against a Colorado team that's just going to defend them much differently. Yeah, well, you're right about that and how they defend. And I haven't done a deep dive into this one. Like I'm covering Montreal, Tampa, which by the time this comes out, could be over or off to game seven, but that's where my focus has been the last couple days. but yeah like Colorado one of the best teams at tracking with their forwards in the neutral zone to kind of kill entries and not allow teams to have that zone time like you talk about and a different challenge overall for sure so that'll be a fun one to dig into in the next day or two and kind of you know see if anything pops out just in terms of the real intricate stuff of like the certain transition plays work better against them if you're Minnesota that are a strength of the wild or not. or, you know, dump plays, whatever it's going to be.

But that's going to be a heavyweight tilt. And, you know, I'm interested to see kind of how it matches up once we get started. It's such a polar opposite too, right? Because we're coming out of this series where Dallas was, I mean, their power play was just absolutely diabolically good. But they weren't able to generate anything 5-15. And especially from a depth perspective, like their bottom six really posed no threat. Created some looks. But, you know, those guys aren't probably going to turn those into goal.

whereas what we saw from Colorado in a round one matchup where they were clearly overmatched or the Kings were overmatched against them, but contributions down the lineup, even from guys like Parker Kelly throughout the season and then Nick Waugh, what he did in that series. Like I think the abs are going to have many more resources and options to throw at them. So I'm looking forward to that one quite a bit. Let's get into that power play just real quick. I'm I still think that power play in Colorado will kind of be fine. Like I know they struggled kind of all year.

and weren't great in the first round either. You know, underlying numbers since Cadre jumped on it after the trade deadline have been better. And I don't know. I'm a believer. I don't think we're going to be talking at the end of that series or even the playoffs is like Colorado's power play sunk them. We'll see. Yeah.

I'm with you. There's too much firepower for it to keep doing this. But I've been saying that through 10 games, through 20 games, and so we're nearly approaching 90 games now and we're still having the same conversations. Ducks Oilers. The Ducks close out, Edmonton, on Thursday night. I don't know if you felt this way. I was at the point where, despite the Ullers being down 3-1 earlier in the series,

I kind of needed to see it to believe it. I know they ultimately fell short in the Stanley Cup Final in the past two years against the Panthers, but particularly on their way through the West, there were times where they were kind of pushed on the brink either by the Canucks a couple of years ago or even in series against the stars where it looked like they might go down 3-1. and when they locked in and kind of stopped making some of the boneheaded plays that they typically make throughout the regular season and really simplified things, but also just their top guys dominated the way they did, I felt like it was a different animal. And so I almost needed to see it to believe it in terms of the Oilers losing a fourth time in a series. And the Ducks not only did so, but I thought they did so pretty decisively, particularly in that second period.

they enter it up 3-1, expecting an Oilers push, and really for a large majority of a bit, the Ducks were just kind of piling it on with scoring chances. Eventually, Hyman gets that disallowed goal, but then the Ducks get a fourth one to even extend a lead heading into the third, and I thought it was a very impressive close-out performance, also scored the first goal for the first time this season and the first time in seemingly forever,

and I think it helped playing from ahead for them, as well as opposed to having to keep chasing the game the way they have all year. but what did you think about not only how that game six played out but just that series in general and were you surprised to see the way the final result we ultimately got? Like a little. Our model going into it had Edmonton in 7.53%, I think. So like it thought it would be close. I thought it would be close too, but I did think Edmonton would win.

Like if you want to look at the last couple of cup finals and just take Florida, like Florida flipped a switch going into the playoffs last. and it was like, what are they going to be? And I kind of thought Edmonton still had a switch to flip and not sure they really did. Like McDavid being hurt in game to, you know, dry settle coming back from injury, Dickinson, like down the middle, they suffered some losses there, right, that are going to affect things. But yeah, I was not impressed with the Oilers. And like to me, the Ducks came as advertised.

Offensive team, they're going to give up looks. They're going to score goals. And I wasn't that really shocked by. anything they did. I was surprised at Edmonton, like too many men penalty in game six, just kind of sloppy this and that. And like goaltending, man.

Like it just, it comes back to it again. You've got a starting goalie and then Jari comes in. Then Ingram's back in. Like an Ingram Jari tandem, not going to cut it. So I know like it's easy to say, okay, fine, like you need better goaltending.

At the same time, like you watch. look at other teams in the playoffs like Colorado with Wedgwood and Blackwood. They flipped those guys in a couple of weeks when it wasn't working. Lidar in Philly this year. Alex Lyon and Buffalo. Like these guys were around. And the Oilers can't seem to figure that part of it out.

So yeah, I think you listen to like McDavid after the game saying that they were an average team all year. And you listen to Drysiddle just kind of flat out like they were better. The other team was better. they have no illusions that they were some great team that a few bounces didn't go their way. Like this version of this team isn't close to what it was a couple years ago. No, I think that's very, very clear after these six games. The crazy thing to me is, you know, it didn't even require a particularly good showing from Lucas Dostaller the other side of the net. Like for all to talk about goaltending.

He made a couple big saves on McDavid rushes late in regulation in game four that ultimately allowed them to win that one in overtime. And so it made a difference, but I thought he was pretty shaky throughout the series. I mean, he gets pulled early in game five, eight, 74, say percentage, some really sloppy rebounds. He spit out along the way, but it just didn't really matter because what the ducks were creating at the other end just kind of overwhelmed the Oilers and ultimately won out. And I had a bit of skepticism, not only because I shared the sentiment that I thought the Oilers would look better than it in the regular season once the playoff started,

but also just in general about the duck's defensive profile. with how many chances and expected goals they were bleeding and goals against outright. And it didn't really matter in this series. I think there are offense certainly won the day. And it helps a lot that McDavid and Dreis Eidel weren't 100%. Particularly McDavid as this series progressed. And we can talk about Jackson Lecombe and the jaw of him and Leo Carlson and even the Ducks fourth line did on Conner, David. But yeah, I thought it was overall an impressive performance in a Ducks.

and, you know, we're recording this before game six of Utah, Vegas by the time our radio listeners listen, we'll probably know or we could know who they're playing if there is in a game seven. But I think both those teams are not only deeper, but more structured, I think, specifically than Edmonton is at this point. And I'm very curious to see how that lines up against the ducks in round two. Because I think at times they've struggled against those teams that kind of are more diligent defensively and will sit back and be patient and force you into mistakes and knowing that you're going to get some against them no matter what happens. So it'll be fascinating to see how round you goes. But, you know, a smash success for them so far turning this exciting regular season

into a playoff series win for the first time and forever. Yeah, that's huge. And if it ends in the second round for Anaheim, it's like, you made great progress. There's nothing to be ashamed of, right? I think you pretty comfortably take that at the start of the year if you're a fan or if you're the Ducks. And yeah, if it is Vegas, they're a totally different animal. Like defensively, they're very capable of at least limiting an offensive team like the Ducks

in a way that Edmonton wasn't. So that'll be different. Even Utah, like you said, those are two very different teams from what Edmonton showed. the Carlson was like his game was super impressive eight points and a lot of matchups against McDavid his I don't know if you did a redraft of that draft like I think a lot of people probably had Fantilli maybe going too like we had Carlson too

but man and this is not the final version of this player either it's super impressive so big fan of him and Jackson Lacone like you mentioned and it's like the funny time of year, right? We're like, you dig into all 32 teams. I cover 32 and what I do too, but there's a lot of fans and even people in media that are hyper-focused on one or two teams.

So he's like becoming a star now, right? But he's been this for a little while. Obviously, you know, jumped onto USA's team and everything. Like, he is such a good defenseman. Skating allows him to do so much. Like he's, and McDavid wasn't 100%, but even not 100% McDavid against a lot of guys. He's going to get the better of them. And Lecombe was a stud.

Yeah, McDavid wasn't 100%. There were some still scintillating rushes or rush attempts that look like they were building up for him. And even in this game six, I jotted down on my notes, I think it was 2-1 at the time for the ducks. And they were on the power play. And McDavid gets a full head of steam in the neutral zone and he's one-on-one against Lecombe. And Lecombe kind of just like effortlessly nudges him to the outside. eventually knocks him off the puck. McDavid just pulls the shoot on the play and

skates back defensively and then they wind up getting the cutter-goche goal after that and there are a lot of those types of plays from him throughout this series and doing it at the volume he did too, right, where he plays 27 minutes per game, especially as the series went along. He was ramping up to 28, 29 was playing a heavy majority

of those 5-15 minutes matched up against McDavid and the Ducks dominated those assignments, especially when him and Leo Carlson were out there together. So I think that's a amazing look for him and a remarkable performance. Yeah. Well, to your point, second among D per game and zone denials,

18th in denial rate. And you're doing that against a very good team in terms of getting the offensive blue line with guys like McDavid and dry settle, et cetera. So, man, yeah, he was awesome. It'll be fun to see him in the second round, whether it's Utah or Vegas, because there's a lot of weapons over there. but a good time to just give the ducks their flowers for a fun. They're a fun team to watch.

And like, Quenville's talked about it. They know, like they're not a perfect team. They got their warts, probably fatal ones as you go along in the playoffs into a second or even a third round. But pretty darn exciting.

And that's like they're, you know, they're going to be a team of the future. Like it's Montreal is an interesting parallel for me too of, of, you know, similar kind of archetypes of star players that are young and a team that's going in the right direction and the ducks

through that in the West too and, you know, good on them for doing it. Yeah, a couple of stats to tie a bow on this. Lecombe nine points on the ice for 17 of the 26 goals the duck scored. Matched up for 66 of McDavid's 105, 5-1-5 minutes. And during that time, it was 6-2 goals for the ducks, 42 to 19 shots with the ducks in nearly 70% expected goals. And then Leo Carlson, I think he was at some point. I don't know if he still is after this game after it's been updated,

but was leading the postseason and rush chances. And amongst the league leaders and slot passes as well, some of the nifty little slip passes he particularly does in transition are so fun. And I've been talking throughout this year about how early on in his career the first couple seasons, I thought his shot was a weapon, but he wasn't really using it that much. And he winds up finishing with like 28 shots on goal and six games in this series. And so he was an absolute beast.

We should also give some love to that, remarkably that VL Washi Moore line the fourth line for the ducks using the defender essentially as the third forward

they were pretty comfortable playing them against McDavid I think they went 25 minutes head to head in the series broke even one-on-one you're going to take that every single day of the week and I think that freed up

some of their scoring lines as well to get some easier matchups where they could focus on trying to create offensively as opposed to entirely basing their game plan around how we're going to try to slow down McDavid at 5-15.

Yeah. for sure. And for breaking like most people's reports because more as a defenseman and only two four would show up in certain things. So that's that's inside baseball. But it's been fun like pulling line data and stuff when you're just like, why isn't this guy showing up? Oh yeah, he's listed as a defense one. But yeah, 100%. Like to your point about Carlson, yeah, still leads and rush chances, top five in slot shots and passes. So you're generating both ways from obviously where goals are coming from in general. So he's a stud.

And like Drysidal and Kaepinin and Puckin' Puckold's and six nothing goals for that line. And it just doesn't matter, right? That's also hard to fathom if you had just said that's what it was going to be after six games. And Edmond's going to be out. Well, there were times in game six where, you know, their backs against the wall, they're out of desperation.

They've put McDavid and Drysidal together with Kaepinin. And they just weren't able to get out of the zone. There were a couple shifts in that second period where you could see McDavid was just trying to build up speed and fly through the neutral zone. And then the pass from our defenseman would get cut off either inside the zone or in the neutral zone. And then the ducks would be just coming back downhill the other way. And they kept doing that time and time to great success. The only other note that I had on this is, you know, we talked about power plays earlier and comparing regular season to the postseason. This duck's power play finished 23rd in the league, I believe, in goals per 60 in the regular season.

and that's surprising given the firepower they have. And then you watch them in this series and it makes even less sense. They scored on pretty much like 50% of their opportunities, lead the league, and in goals on a permanent basis, I think eight of them in just 22 minutes of man advantage time. And I could just watch a endless loop of Cutter Gochay's release throughout the entire day. I think what him and Gunther are doing right now in terms of some of these releases. They do it differently. I think Gunther is kind of like is a bit more prolonged in terms of.

of like looking for that one timer and really kind of cocking it back, whereas Cutter Goce's release is like he could do it in a phone booth regardless of who's in front of him. He can get it off with max velocity in the blink of an eye and he scored a bunch of goals. They got goals pretty much from everyone. Yeah. Like whether it's Leo Carlson, Terry, Coulorne, uh, Goce, Paling, even guys like VL and Granlin, like everyone chipped in with multiple goal efforts and it really was a team effort, I thought, for the ducks. Yeah, that power play success was, uh, was, I don't know, not anticipated maybe by me at least, like goals per two minutes first, shot attempts first, shots first, slot shots first.

Obviously, I've been since penalty kill factors into some of that. So when you can kind of like hang with that power play and then, you know, you get the depth that you're talking about as well. It's a good recipe. So again, don't want to like downplay or try to pick apart Anheim too much because is like a day to celebrate them, rightfully so. But this Edmonton team was just the injuries and everything else was just off. And next round is going to be a new challenge for sure.

Yeah, we'll see how a couple of these series that are going to game six play out, but at least on the surface right now, is Vegas, Utah if Vegas holds on potentially the only series where like the faster team didn't wind up winning in round one? I feel like, you know, we talk a lot about heaviness and physicality and, and there's certainly value in that and being able to score in different ways and challenge your opponent physically. But I feel like this has been a great start to the postseason for like not only youth and we're seeing young teams have success, but teams who attack off the rush and create opportunities that way and kind of bucking the trend of, all right, well, the playoffs are an entirely different game in the regular season because things get bottled up and the neutral zone is a no-fly zone and you have to be able to dump it in and create off of that. I think we're seeing teams fly around maybe a bit more freely. And maybe it'll change the postseason goes along.

But at least in round one, it feels like speed is kind of winning or mattering more than anything. Yeah, I definitely agree with you when you talk about like team speed and the pace of play. Like not even necessarily just straight line skate fast, but just the ability to play fast for sure. I mean, Carolina, Ottawa example of that, Philly Pittsburgh example of that. Utah's got it.

You're right. but Vegas to me has gotten kind of stronger and been the better team for most of that series. They've run into goal-tending issues a bit again, but they're still in position to win as we tape this, and maybe they will have when it runs. But that is interesting. Like the rush stuff is always fascinating. I was looking today at just, and this doesn't factor in quality, and you can go deeper with this, but just even strength rush chances are down 10% from the first round last year.

And as rounds go on, typically those chances are harder to come by as you go deeper into the playoffs as well. But to your point about team speed, I mean, that goes way past just are you getting looks off the rush or quick strike offense? Like, are you getting to pucks quicker? Are you able to get back on pucks quicker? It affects the game in so many ways. And you're right. So far, leg up to teams that seem to have more of it. Well, that's a pretty good segue for us.

I wanted to close out with Flyers Penguins. And the Flyers earlier this week wind up winning at home, game six and overtime to finish the job. I did think it was you kind of split this series into two, in my opinion. Like I think coming out of the first three games, it was clear that the Flyers had a great defensive game plan. And they blitz the Penguins and the Penguins were either surprised or kind of just like dumbfounded because a lot of the stuff they did to create success in the regular season wasn't working. particularly through the neutral zone, and they just weren't really problem solving or executing beyond that, and the Flyers jump out to that 3-0 lead.

And then as a series went along, I did think the Penguins found their footing a little bit, like they started creating more opportunities. They're getting a bit more creative in zone, in particular, probably played their best game in the series, honestly, in that game six loss, particularly in that overtime, where they had a lot of looks,

but just weren't able to convert and wind up losing. What are your, what are your takes on on that series and kind of how it played out because as you tweeted out like the penguins won the offense zone possession time shots slot shots scoring chances expected goals were all pretty even in the aggregate um but the story to me just was the difference in in rush chances in particular and the way the flyers were able to create particularly early in the series where you know it seemed like they turned every single pittsburgh mistake into either an odd man rush against or a goal yeah yeah for sure like they're they're a good counter attack team and they've got guys that can fly, obviously, tip it and connect me and others. Like going into that series, I was kind of fascinated by the neutral zone because of what you talked about.

Like Philly from the Olympics on at the best rush chance differential of any team in the league, best rush goal differential of any team in the league, whatever they did, whatever Rick Tocke may have learned over there, they executed it as well as anybody. And then you got Pittsburgh,

who can create offense in different ways, and this is where I was a bit surprised, because they're a great rush team. They were second in the league in rush goals this year. They obviously had that taken away by the neutral zone play of the Flyers. I thought there'd be more dimensions to Pittsburgh's game at 5 on 5, and that really kind of didn't seem to be in the beginning.

So that was advantage Philly, forced a lot of blue line turnovers at both blue lines, really jammed them up and frustrated them. And you're right, like Pittsburgh played a couple of good games. They won a couple of games. looks like they're getting some things figured out. And then, you know, ultimately in the end, they can't find the goal to make a difference in game six.

Like, Shilops was unbelievable, but overall for the series, you know, again, you get Skinner who gets chased. The goaltending advantage went to Philly. And two teams are somewhat relatively evenly matched. Like, that's going to be a huge differentiator. That was the series, too, where, like, stylistically, was the biggest gap in terms of just efficiency. And you're basically taking Philly needs no time to create a quality chance.

And Pittsburgh may create about the same, but they need a lot more time to do it. And so they may get more. But, you know, if it all is relatively even in the end, is there a difference? I kind of still think there is. like the mental fatigue for Pittsburgh to have to spend so much time trying to get a good look or five good looks versus Philly kind of counterattacking and being better off the rush. You know, that's that to me gave them an advantage. It just, you Pittsburgh, I always equate zone time to like it's, if you're not doing

something with it, it's empty calories. It's, you're eating a bag of chips. and it's obviously good in the sense that you're not going to get scored on if the puck's in the other team's end, but it doesn't guarantee offense either. So there is just a super, super big contrast in terms of offensive zone efficiency between the two teams. And I think in the end, kind of the way that Philly plays obviously won out a little bit.

Like if every team's trying to execute their game plan, Philly obviously did a better job of it in that series. And it was also interesting because the Flyers game plan of like, I mean, certainly with Sanheim, but even Couturee, like Rick Tocke was pretty diligent and aggressive about getting those guys out as a preferred matchup against Crosby. And they helped them in check for the most part. I think goals were zero zero in the head to head between Crosby and Coturier. And heading into the series, I would have said, that's fine from Pittsburgh's perspective because they had all these contributors throughout the regular season, like the season Manta had and Chinacob and go on down the line. And they had different weapons to attack you with.

And Manta and Chinikov in particular were two of the most efficient 5-1-5 goal producers in the league. And in Mantah in this series, he had some moments in game four, forcing that turnover behind the net and setting up Soder Blom's goal, or game five, I should say. But he was so careless with the puck in this series and some baffling decisions. And I know Chinikov's going to catch a lot of flack. I was so excited about him down the stretch. He leaves this series with zero points in six games and people are going to point to these rush-based players that just don't translate to the playoffs. Honestly, I thought he was their most dangerous player in game six, and he rings one off the bar, sets up a couple other good looks, probably would have scored into an empty net if Christian Doburak doesn't tie up a stick on one of those plays. But I did think it was interesting that, you know, I was watching this throughout and it felt like on a lot of these rush opportunities.

I don't know if it was because he was being sped up by the flyers or the opportunities were so few and far between that he wasn't able to get into his regular flow and rhythm. But he was missing the net a ton. and sure enough, he only got eight of his 36 shot attempts on net, which is more than cutting his regular season average in half in terms of how often he's actually testing the goalie with it. And so I did think that was kind of a difference because there just wasn't a lot of layers to the Penguins attack once you remove those two guys as scoring threads.

Yeah, yeah, we had them at two for 16 in his last three games, which is obviously super low. And yeah, like Mantha, for everything he'd do, did in the regular season wasn't a factor at all. So that's, you know, that's, again, Pittsburgh's not a team I thought was going to be anywhere close to the playoffs. And I guess good for them for doing it. But you also wonder, too, with the way that they built that team,

which what an impossible job for Kyle Dubus to try to, okay, we've got to still go for it because we've got these three Hall of Famers here, but we also, you know, need to look. about the future because they're going to be gone soon. The fact that he made some of the moves that he did to get the team into the playoffs and have the success in the regular season, very commendable. Like I think that's an outstanding job. But then you also look at what this team is as a playoff team.

And I think there's some things you could point to that historically, they're far from a finished product, you know. They've built a great pipeline and added picks and all the rest of it. So he's put them in a good place, but, you know, far from a perfect team today. or this version of it anyways. And then, yeah, for Philly, like Philly, Carolina is going to be interesting. Like, I was pretty wrong about Ottawa

and what I thought they could do against Carolina in the end. And I wonder if, like, Philly's a little bit more of that team or the version of Ottawa I thought we'd see than Ottawa ended up being. Well, let's end with that because this series kicks off Saturday night. That means I'm not going to be able to do a proper preview of it before it starts because we're going to do our next show on Monday. I wanted to get into a couple of things to watch for, and I think that's a great starting point

because the hurricanes over the years, but especially this season, adding Nikolai Ehlers, and I think kind of viewing their past postseason failures is a reason to change their approach a little bit, have kind of increased their risk profile along the way I've thought, in terms of like some of the carrying the puck

more in more often and looking to be a bit more creative, as opposed to just firing the puck as deep into the zone as you can and kind of attacking from there and just leaning on point shots. And I think it's been a massive net positive clearly. They had a great regular season swept round one. But one of the drawbacks, as you'd expect, has been some of the chances they give up on counter opportunities because of those turnovers or just how deep they have guys at time with how aggressive they are on the forecheck. And so that's going to be a fascinating head to head in this series, I think,

because it speaks exactly what we said about what Philly's done since the Olympic break, but particularly in round one against Pittsburgh where they've been so good at efficiently turning those 50-50 plays or turnovers near the blue line into two-on-one's breakaways and ultimately goals and it's been a primary source of their offense and I'm fascinated to see how that plays out against this Hurricanes team that's more vulnerable there than they have been in the past but might just ultimately have too much depth and blunt force

for it to ultimately matter in the series. Yeah, I'm right there with you on that one. And like I never thought I'd live to see the day that this kind of iteration of the Carolina Hurricanes would be one of the highest attacking rush teams in the league. And that's what they were this year. They led the league and goals off the rush. They also allowed the second most and had a bunch of breakaways and gave up a bunch. Not to say that they still don't have the element of pressure in your face, chip and chase, forecheck, all the rest of it, because obviously they do. But that was always my knock on.

them before was like they had one way of playing it was the hardest team to play against but if you could saw it off or beat it they didn't have a counter punch and i think as they went along in the playoffs they would run into teams that could do that and then that was that was it for them so this is the first year where there's been a real noticeable shift in okay well they've got this way too but you're right it does it does open things up more and add to that risk profile and now you've got the Flyers, we just talked about, a great counterpunch team, a fast team, good off the rush, good at forcing neutral zone and blue line turnovers and quick striking you. And I'm kind of with you where I think like ultimately Carolina might be too deep. And they don't have a, there's not really much there in terms of weak lengths in their forward lines or on their blue line.

the Aho line was the weak link in the first round. Like that can't keep happening. I mean, that line's unbelievable. So they played 47 minutes in the first round at five on five, didn't score and got outshot from the inner slot nine nothing. There's no way that's happening again. The Eelers line that you talked about, just in terms of what they can do in like a shutdown capacity,

but Martin Nook and the value that he can add in kind of that quote-unquote playoff hockey, Eelers with his puck moving, they didn't have that dimension before. Like it was probably Taylor Hall, which at this point in his career is, you know, for Eilers to come in and be able to move the puck

the way he does, they outchanced Ottawa 11 to 2 off the rush, that line with Stalin Martinuk in the first round. Stan Coburn was great and all the rest of it. But yeah, this is again going to be like somewhere where Carolina can be susceptible is a great strength of the flyers, but Carolina also doesn't have

to lean into that way of playing if they don't want to. Especially if they're able to get out to early leads and they did that so well against Ottawa, I thought. And this Flyers team has not scored in the first period yet this postseason. It didn't wind up mattering against the penguins because they weren't giving up much themselves and so still a neutral game script and they didn't have to chase it. But if they give up early goals, I think it could be quite a uphill climb, especially because I'm with you on the versatility and the hurricanes don't necessarily need to be

this one and done prolific rush team. and you watch, like they didn't get goals for it, but I thought that Penguin's fourth line had a lot of success in terms of like being very simple through the neutral zone and kind of getting it deep and then leaning on them below the goal line and creating cycle looks off of that. And the hurricanes are certainly going to be capable of that

with more of their lines than just the fourth line. I do think though, like I'm curious to see what the conversation about goaltending is coming out of this because, you know, Blidarr winds up, like in your 940, say percentage. in round one, two shutouts was obviously fantastic, although I do think the Flyers defensively made life easier for them than maybe those numbers would indicate in previous postseason.

I would have said he's the exact type of goalie that we leave this series being like, man, the Hurricanes just faced a 960 goalie because this guy just went nuts and he saw 42 or 44 shots he faced every single night. I think the Hurricanes, based on what we've seen so far, have a chance of bucking that trend better than that. than they have in the past because they're not just going to be throwing low percentage shots from weird angles that Voladar with his big frame is going to be able to soak up. So I'm very curious to see if they're going to be able to test them more with some of that east-west stuff and north-south

stuff as well. Yeah. Well, man, that Stan Kovlin line was brilliant of that in the first round. Yeah, that's a good point. And Anderson, like, I don't know. I didn't see Anderson playing as well as he did for the great as Allmark was. Anderson was even better. So hats off to Freddie. how good he was. And like, if Carolina goes on a run here, you know, gets to the conference final or even a cup final, I still think we're going to end up seeing Bussie at some point. Not to say that Freddie can't do it all, but if you're going to go that deep, and that's, I just point that out because it's not a weakness for Carolina either. Like Bussie's a good goalie, too. So that the goal to end of matchup, be interesting, kind of lasting for me and like not for

nothing, but the flyers, as good as their counterattack and rush game is, etc. They did have the highest dump-in rate of any team in the first round and the worst recovery rate. Now you're going to be dumping Pucks in against Carolina and that D-Corps, there's no weak links back there, right, either. So you wonder if any of that will feed into Carolina's transition attack a little bit. I'm a little skeptical always about things like that because round-round teams are different and how you want to attack them are very different.

But just kind of the thing to keep an eye on as it starts anyways. Well, you mentioned Stankov and the success his line had where they really carried the hurricane's offense against the senators, and it was massive because a whole Jarvis line really didn't create anything at even strength. I'm curious if Rick Tocke views that and uses his preferred defensive assignments of Sandheim, who was pretty much out there every time Crossby was. in round one and Enkuturier as well

on top of that against that line as an acknowledgement of how good they are or he still or if he still views Aho Jarvis and Svenikov as Carolina's biggest threat despite those relatively quiet four games from them. Great question. I think I'd put them against Stan Coben personally.

I don't know what you think you'd do, but... Well, they were their most dangerous line in the regular season even. I know they don't get power play points or anything, but at even strength like night to night when they got put together, they were their most dangerous threatening line pretty much every time out. And Carolina at home too, like that building just is voodoo for so many teams, right? Those fans are nuts.

And the way the Carolina plays and having a last change in games like that, man, that makes, that's going to make it hard on anybody. But yeah, the line matching will be pretty interesting when that series starts. It always is. But, yeah, Stan Cove, in line to me, that's the most dangerous. because you bring up a good point about the sample size of it too. The thing I wonder about Stan Coven, too, and like there's a lot of people kind of admitting the wrong

or giving flowers if they were right about, does Carolina need to go out and get a second-line center for the playoffs? You can argue Sancoven was their best player in the first round. So check that box. Fantastic in the role all season checks that box. The reason I wouldn't seal the envelope and say like slam dunk yet is what does it look like in, the third round.

What does it look like if you're going up against, you know, Colorado when a cup final? We'll see. But that guy's such a battler and a warrior. And for him as a smaller guy to be able to take over games, playoff games, like just,

I watched a couple of them in person in that first round series. Like it's, it's unbelievably impressive how good he is, how quick he is, how hard he is on puck's great player. Yeah, I was noting, like he was challenging Clevin,

who probably has, like two feet in height on him. When he jumped in that series, like he was challenging him every single time one-on-one and does a lot of his damage either around the net or in the inner slot despite his size. So he's an awesome player. All right, Mike, well, this is awesome. I'm glad we finally got to have you on. I believe this is your first P.D.O. Gas appearance and hopefully first of many,

I'll let you promote some stuff on the way out because I know you've certainly been very busy throughout the postseason and we'll continue to be so moving forward. So let the listeners know about where they can check you out and kind of what you're working on. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it. It was good running to you in Denver at the, the conference a little while ago. And thanks for having me on.

I'm on X at Mike Kelly NHL and covering some of the HAB stuff right now because I live somewhat close to Montreal. So NHL network and see where things go as the playoffs continue. All right, buddy. We'll keep up the great work. Looking forward to your work moving forward and having you back on. If you enjoyed today's show, give us a five-star review wherever you listen. And that is all for this week.

be back Monday morning to talk round two once we get into those series. Thank you for listening to the Hockey PEOCast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.