The Hockey PDOcast - Josh Morrissey, the Jets, and getting more out of your defensemen

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

Jesse Marshall joins the PDOcast with Dimitri discussing Josh Morrissey, the Jets, and getting more out of your defensemen.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Lessing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey P.DEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Dimitri Philipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse, what's going on, man? Good to be here as always. Thanks for having me.

So we're going to, we talked about this last time. We're making this like a regular thing. We're doing like once a month or whatever, although sometimes I might bug you a more frequent basis. And we do like, we're going to coin this like the film club. Yeah. So initially I was going to title it, tape study and then I was like, I think that's going to turn people off. Like it's just the word study. It's going to, you know, bring back bad memories of school. Film club sounds fun. It's us getting

together watching tape, talking about stuff we're seeing, players we love, kind of things that are standing out once we get into the weeds. And so I'm looking forward to doing that with you. You recently wrote about Josh Morrissey and it was a great piece and it kind of got my wheels turning. And then to prep for the show, I spent about two and a half hours rewatching Josh Morrissey. as he shifts from the season. And boy, I'm amped up. I'm ready to do this podcast with you. I wrote the article for McKean's last week where I did some video analysis of like

what's driving this insane turnaround for him because he's broken his personal points marker. You know, just what a little over 30 games into the season. He's already broken his personal best in points. I think he's got to be in the conference. conversation for a Norse trophy in the early part of life. We're talking about right now in this season and what's happened so far. I think it's just crazy to not put his name. He's put his own name into the history books as far as maintaining a point string as a Jets defenseman.

He now owns that as well. I'm not even sure where it's at anymore. I think it was nine is I think where he broke it. But every everything, you look at these games and every night, he's, thoroughly involved in what's happening with the Jets offense. And I think that if you, you know, there's two, there's, we've lived long enough to be trained to see out sort of the, the, I'll call it the phasing out of the big hulking bop you over the head only defenseman, right?

When we were kids and there was a two line pass and the rules were different a little bit that every team had sometimes couple of those right and their their only job was to you know they were slow they couldn't skate they could fight they could you know haul you down move you out of the front of the net fight whatever be physical and that was it that's not a role anymore so i think you have you two kinds of defensemen right now right you have defensemen that really just focus on that they're they're like the brian dumelins of the world and they're out there just to play more of like a one-way game They can handle the puck when needed, right? They don't touch it like a grenade, but they're really focused on the shutdown part.

You can't, I think, at 2022, expect to be in a larger, bigger conversation playing that way. I think it's about being almost a fourth forward these days and anticipating rushes, reading loose puck battles correctly to know when to release and get up ice and, you know, when to drive that center lane and pinch. and that's that savvy is required now to i think be in like a more national larger conversation and if you want to see what that looks like just sit down and watch josh morrisie i mean that's that's the story of what he's doing and from a data perspective you know there was a really low point for him i think he's like you know um you know there's a lot of there's a lot of documented stuff um that's going on you know with him and um you know well it's a Mara Rott Autash, the athletic has written a lot about him playing with his dad being sick and how it affected him.

That's the human element to this, right? Like he's gone through a really difficult time. He's come out the other end of it. He made a dedicated effort to get out and train better and be a more dedicated athlete in the offseason. And all of that stuff, right, all of that mix combined with that confidence that you see has sort of broiled up into this. product that we're looking at on tape. Well, while you were talking about the kind of the evolution of defensemen and the way, you know, the prototype has changed, I guess you could say.

My initial first thought was, I wonder if we're going to eventually see at least some sort of rebound in that regard where if everyone around the league gets smaller, especially up front, there might be actually a bit of an advantage to all of a sudden get, you know, more hulking and bruising and bigger on the back end. But then I realized, well, what's going to happen is that is going to be true, but those players are going to have to be good as well, right? Offensively, you see that with like the Sabers, for example, where Rasmus Daly in 6-3, Matia Samuelson, 6-4, Owen Power is 6-6.

Now those guys are all like freaks, but that, but that's the type of player you're going to have to be. You can't just necessarily be big anymore. You also have to have, you know, good defensive stick, good reach, good positioning. Obviously, offensive skills and offensive zone, being able to play in that team capacity and put all those things together. And those players are going to come, I think, even more valuable because they're going to be able to unlock things where you can all of a sudden beat teams or play teams

in much different ways depending on what their own personnel is in terms of physicality. Yeah, a lot of coaches in this league, Dimitri, like that archetypes style defensive pairing where you have one guy that's a puck mover and one guy that's more of the traditional shutdown role, like, you know, et cetera, et cetera. you can't put yourself in a situation where that other defenseman can be targeted

because coaches started doing that like five, six years ago probably. Mike Sullivan's big on it. It happened to him a lot when he had Jack Johnson, and they didn't really know how to deal with it. But all this is to say is if you have a defenseman that cannot handle the puck and that is sort of just out there to do one thing and one thing only, teams are going to dump the puck on that side of the ice. are going to target their soft dumps over there to force that defenseman to play that puck.

So that balance, it is almost, you said it's a requirement these days. And the thing like you mentioned Owen Power is like somebody we've talked about. He's huge. His wingspan is that of a teradactal. But look at what he does on the breakout. Like this is a guy who is extremely talented. His one-on-one puck handling skills are, you know, I'm watching him, you know, come up ice against forwards where he's,

he's banking the puck off the wall, stepping around them, you know, and breaking out like he's a forward. So you, these skills are, you know, that's, that's the base level requirement. And I think like your Kail McCars, right, your Josh Morrissey's, these players have taken this to like a whole other, a whole other level. And it really is like trying to defend against four forwards, uh, when, when they're effectively executing it. Well, yeah, power might not be like the best example in terms of like being able to

replicate that because he's such a, he's such an anomaly in the sense that like I, when you watch him play, he almost has like the hockey brain of like a five, seven skilled forward. Yeah. And a six foot six defenseman's body like in terms of the way he processes the game and how he acts. And so he's braiden point and like, you know, in a defenseman's body. It really is. It's, it's freaky. But, you know, before we, like, fully dive into more.

I guess it's kind of tangentially related. I'm really interested in this concept of how you put your defense pairs together and kind of trying to find complementary skill sets, especially if you're going to play in a more free flowing motion based offense where that top defenseman is all of a sudden going to be your fourth forward. Right. And on the one hand, you're right. You can't just necessarily go, all right, one offensive guy, one defensive guy, because if either of them is such a liability at one end of the ice, the other team is going to find a way to exploit that. If a guy is so bad offensively and he's on your top. pair, the T will kind of eventually find a way to force you to funnel the puck to them and make them make decisions and they're going to make mistakes and that's going to cost you offensively, same at the other end of the ice. What I saw on the tape, and the numbers bury this out is at the start of the year, you know, I liked in the offensive zone the way Morrissey and Neil Pionk when they were paired, played off of each other.

And there was this play, I sent you the clips of it. I think it was the third game of the season against Vegas where they would run this offensive zone action where Morrissey kind of comes around to the right wall, takes the puck from Adam Lowry, and it basically serves as like a pick and roll almost. And while everyone is focused on the strong side where the puck is, Neil Pionk sneaks down the left flank and gets a wide open tap in basically because Morrissey finds him eventually. And it's beautiful to see them play off of each other that way. But they were really struggling defensively. And I think that game was actually one of like the worst games they played. They've put Morrissey with Dylan DeMello, who's much more of

that modern defensive defenseman where he's not necessarily a big bruising guy, but he's just positionally sound great a shot and goal suppression. And the two of them have done much better together. And if anything, Morris, he's kind of flourished and taken off since they put those two together. And it's interesting, that dynamic of he didn't necessarily work as well with Piaenka compared to what happened when they put him with a totally different player in Dylan DeMello.

Yeah. And so now we get into like this discussion, I think, about hockey. sense in hockey IQ, right? Which is something I talked about on Twitter today. But here's the thing. Watch the tape. You watch what Morris he does. He releases a lot, right? So what I mean by that is like if he anticipates that a puck, like a loose puck is going to squirt out in his advantage, he's going to play his way. He'll jump, right? And he's going to like, I'm going to get myself in a position where when this thing gets to me, I'm ahead of the forecheck. I'm already, I'm already past them, right? And I can get up ice and move.

I think sometimes that more often than not it works, more often than not it works. Sometimes it doesn't, right? Nobody's guess rate on loose puck battles is 100%. And I think this is my guess because I watch the same, I know exactly what game you're talking about, there's so many good things you could clip offensive from that game, but like in between the clips that you're saving to make your offensive points,

you're ignoring all the really horrific stuff is going on at the defensive zone. And this isn't a knock on Neil Pionk, but like, is he the type of defensemen skill set-wise that can burden the extra load when things go south, right? Like from a mobility and like a lateral like cutting technique and like all like, is Dylan DeMello not better suited for that, right? That when all hell breaks loose and you need someone that can, you know, essentially cover two players, right, which is what we're saying because Morrissey's often off on a wild offensive journey. you maybe have a forward back to help whatever that's sometimes more hurtful than it is helpful I think you know I think de Mello maybe is a guy that is a little bit more mobile maybe a little bit more able to handle and burden those situations so I'm gonna go I hate to like constantly bring up the penguins when we do this but I think that they're an excellent case study in this

because you look at them now Demetre Ryan Dumlin was a guy you and I used to talk about all the time right and I remember years ago there was a game of the penguins and oilers played and you and I were both talking about how well Dumlin had done against Connor McDavid. You know, how often do you say that about a defenseman, right? And he didn't come out completely clean that night. Like McDavid got his and he's going to, but you try to limit it, right?

And that was the kind of defenseman that Dumlin was, is that Chris Lutang was off on these, like, magical journeys, spiritual, you know, experiences in the offensive zone. And Brian Dumlin's left to sit there with a broom, right, and clean the mess up. But he could do it because he was mobile. His reverse pivot was really quick. It wasn't, it wasn't, it was a reverse pivot you'd expect from like a Paul coffee,

not a guy that's Brian Dumolin size. Great reach, you know, super aggressive gap. That's like, time has come and gone on him, right? His physical faculties have failed. He's not, he doesn't have that quick pivot anymore. His legs aren't what they used to be. He's had several ankle injuries. That partnership with he and Latang is a total disaster, right?

It's a total disaster. But now you look at Marcus Pedersen. Same kind of guy, better skater, in better shape than Dumlin is now, a little bit more mobile, a little bit more confident with the puck. Whoa, like he's having a feast up there when he gets those, when he gets those minutes. He was playing with Jeff Petrie doing the same thing, you know, let Petre be a little more offensive. Feasting. So I think to your point, like, in a microcosm of the situation that we're talking about, and the Neil Pionk being our Brian Dumlin, it's about recovery.

coverability, right? It's about skill set that allows you to take on situations where most people would lose. And I think now, you know, again, being a defenseman is all about mobility. It's all about skating. It's all about fluidity. And these situations where defense and offense quickly interchange with each other and adjust. There's there's a larger burden, I think, on skating ability and stuff like that in order to be able to be successful in those situations. Well, first off, good work. Sneaking the penguins into this somehow. Yeah.

I also did really. I love the idea of, of defensemen going on spiritual journeys in the offensive zone. Yeah. A little foray. Yeah. Okay, well, so here's the thing. So you look at Morrissey's. Let's go through the stats first.

So 195 on five points amongst defensemen only Eric Carlson and Adam Fox at Moraf 14 of those 19 are primary. 40 points overall in 35 games, as you mentioned, his previous career high was 37 last year. So with 57 games left, every single point he has from here on out is going to be a new career high. That's behind only Eric Carlson's preposterous 48 points amongst the fensman. Now, you look at those totals, right? And it's clearly inflated to some degree.

I don't think anyone is reasonably expecting him to finish with the 94 points he's currently pacing at. The Jets are scoring on nearly 14% of the shots they take with him on the ice. He's scoring on 11% of his own shots. and I think most importantly he's got a point on about 60% of the goals the Jets score with him on the ice in his previous high was 40. So there's certainly some luck involved. I was really curious because I wanted to see whenever you see kind of an outlier like

that statistically, I want to see how he was getting those points and kind of what was happening. And as you'd expect with any defenseman who's as involved as he is and he's on the ice, there's some where it's like either he got a secondary assist where, you know, didn't really factor into the play or he just kind of shot the puck into a crowd and it bounced off someone and it went in and that's going to happen. But I was really like, I was genuinely amazed to see how many of those points came off of just either great set plays or beautiful execution on his part, right? You highlighted the one where he kind of gets the puck off a face off against the crack and head up, sells the shot completely.

Everyone, including the goalie, is playing the shot and he hits the easy tap in for Pierre Lubeu Bar, wherever had their blade down in front of the net. He's done that time and time again. And so you look and it's like, all right, all of a sudden, you know, his even strength, offensive impact has jumped all the way to the 95th percentile this season. That's pretty good. You watch the tape and go, wow, a lot of these goals that they're scoring are genuinely him just making beautiful plays.

And if this is going to continue, then, yeah, I'd expect the, I'd expect the points to keep coming to at least some degree. Yeah. If you're not, here's the thing, if you're not making yourself available as a defenseman to be involved in the offensive flow of the game. You're not pinching. You know, he's a player. One of the clips I posted, to be sure, he hits tunnel vision, right?

Where, like, he gets the puck on his, first of all, he's banging down on the ice, like demanding the puck, right? Like, whacking his blade on the ice, yelling, like, wide open, right? So letting his team really say give me the puck. Like, I love that. And then when he gets it, his other teammates start doing the same thing to him. Right. So now they're clapping back.

like no no no back back back and he's like no like he's looking you can see him pick his head up and survey and do this like bob around and he sees you're covered you have no play i have a lane and it's the decision making process you watch it play out it's like a quarterback going through reeds sitting in the pocket you know he went through his reads there weren't any and he just skated it in between the circles himself and scored yeah and i was like laughing so hard at that because i'm like like I remember playing at the end of my adult you know I don't play hockey at all anymore because I'm lazy I'm old and I'm a dad but like at the end of my adult league career like I switch to D because you could be really lazy man like if you were looking to conserve energy play D right I could be the last guy in the offensive zone I don't really have to try like I can like just distribute the puck to my buddies and I'm coasting bro like I'm I'm on energy save mode for the rest of the night you can play D that way but like you're not going to find the score sheet you're not going to find the score sheet you're not going to find the score sheet you're not going to find the score. sheet if you're just relying on forwards to get you the puck like you've got to be running the breakout you've got to be next to them in support you got to be slamming your stick down on the ice you

got to be driving lanes when they're in the corner and you have a lane to take like he's doing all the things that you need to do to get on the score sheet right and and i i i got to go back to the one you mentioned about the passing uh because goalies are looking at posture right like that is so much of what a goalie does is they're looking at your eyes your body how are you aligned there's tells right like you you've tells like i've always said like i loved watching phil kessel on his prime because he hit his shot better than anyone you know no goalie knew his shot was coming he just boom off to stick it it's in the net but morcy now is is doing that same thing with like no look blind slap passes yeah like every night you're watching

him line his body up like he's just going to rip one at the net his eyes his shoulders his hips even the way he's holding his stick. It all says I'm about to rip this on this goal as hard as I can. But he's using his peripheral vision, his hockey sense, to identify players outside lane and slap pass. So he's fooling the goalie into thinking one thing is coming. And then boom, he sends it off to this high danger scoring area. Golly's got to go side to side.

They have no chance. Most of these are like tapings into an empty net. He's doing it a lot. Some, his teammates have flubbed a few and have not finished a couple, put a couple right into the goalie's chest. But that's been probably the most fun thing to watch with him is this, this fooling, the goalie and sort of like the little magic trick he'll do to send pucks off to hide your areas without letting anyone know that he's going to do it. Well, it's been a perfect marriage of physical skill and kind of like mental processing or I guess the way I'd say it is like what he's trying to accomplish out there. right. There was two distinct plays that I found that both resulted in goals.

One of them was recently against the senators where he gets the puck, kind of in that like coffin corner where he's up against the wall, but also up against the blue line as well. So he's in a really precarious spot where he's got the high forward coming at him. And then all of a sudden he, you know, territorially doesn't really have anywhere to go. Against the senators, he kind of, I think he deeks out Drake Bathurst and he brings it inside.

And then he gets to a better shooting angle where he's closer to their net. and all of a sudden rips on home. And then against the Blackhawks, a few games earlier, instead of going inside, he pinches down, comes down the wall, and then passes it into the slot to Cole Perfetti, I believe, for a goal of his own. And you see that, and it's like, yes, this is exactly the way you need to play there

as opposed to maybe a previous version of Morrissey or even a lot of defensemen in today's game, even the really skilled ones. They get it there, and then all of a sudden they panic, and they're either firing it into shin pads or just kind of, you know, basically playing for a faceoff as a best, case scenario because they're just hoping the goalie's going to, you know, catch it with their,

with their glove and stop play. And that's going to be that. And instead, he's extending the play and making something creative happen. And you love to see that. Like, that's exactly what I want to see from my defenseman. Yeah. And like one thing, because I was talking to Murat about this today, actually is one of the things we were talking about was the green light he's been given to do all this, right? Like, you can't discount the role that coaching plays here. And to have like your staff say, like, look, don't think, right? Just. act like when these scenarios come up and your gut instinct says do you want to do like you want to go you want to pinch you want to take a chance at a puck do it you know we'd rather you do it than have

to think about it and be a second or too late to the scenario right like that that's a huge uh you know you have a player here who it clearly has a really high level of offensive instinct and a high level of hockey sense around when is the right time to make something happen and when is the how how do I involve myself the right way because not you know I posted a couple of clips Dimitri where he's the last guy to touch the puck before he scores you've all this stuff happening for the jets you have him supporting the breakout getting involved you know supporting a forward up ice breaking off from that forward taking a long path right down the center lane you have a boom boom play where a rebound and boot he scored.

Like that that is start to finish a player following their instinct and saying like I'm going I want to now is the right time to do this and like having that runway and and to know that if you make a mistake, which you're going to have happen, right? It's inevitable. The big mistake is going to take place. And he deeks out Drake Batherson up there one night. But at that supreme confidence he has to make that move will ultimately fail against the forward one day.

But guess what? like any sane coach is going to say, give me the 50 good ones, right? Like I'll take the 50 good ones and acknowledge the bad ones going to come. And I'm going to hope that Dylan DeMello, Connor Hellebuck, all these other really good players that I have in spots adjacent to Joss Morrissey are going to do their due diligence to cover him up, right, and bail him out. And I'll take 50 to 1 every time. Yeah, every time. And there's so many coaches who are living in a fear-based world where they're saying, no, no, no, that 50s is not good enough.

I want no risk in my hockey, right? No risk at all. That's a plan straight to losing, in my opinion. But again, it's all on Morrissey, right? He's the player that's making the drive, but having that support system is, I think, definitely worth a shout because, you know, not every, not every talented defenseman is getting that treatment. Oh, well, I would say, I would say being enabled and empowered to do so and to make those

decisions and play that way is, is a big key of this. And I got to be honest with you. I did not expect Rick Bonas to be the one that would get this out of Josh Morrissey, right? Like, by all accounts, he came into this year with, with a deep appreciating. of Morrissey. You see that quote about how, like, whenever he was coaching the stars when they'd play the Jets, they'd have him highlighted as like someone to watch out for because of his game-breaking plays.

And he came into this season with high expectations for him and a clear plan of how to use them. And so, you know, full credit to him because I got to be honest, I did not see that coming. I didn't expect to enter this year going, wow, Josh Morrissey has been fully unleashed and given a green light offensively after years of hoping and praying that they would do that with Miracy. Isaac and in Dallas and just never getting those results. But maybe that's growth, right? Like maybe that's growth exemplified and like somebody learning from from a prior mistake and making the appropriate adjustment. I think like if you are him and you step aside from your job in Dallas and you're watching

that defensive talent as a third party, I think there's definitely an opportunity to be learning there. But I, yeah, and you know, again, it's. I have to go back to the point that, like, you know, you're not just going to, as a defenseman in this day and age in today's game, you know, the score sheets more often than not, not going to find you, you know, you're making a, you know, most breakouts, let's, you know, let's be honest here to be, most set breakouts, controlled breakouts in this league, which, and I'll, and this is like, I'll say this as an aside because we're going to, we're going to focus these conversations on film. if there's anything useful I could ever pass to anyone. If you want to know what system your team is running in either direction, offensively or defensively, get your ESPN plus subscription up, pull a game up and watch the game until you find the first controlled breakout.

And what I mean by controlled breakout is there's probably just been a line change. You have a defenseman standing. behind the net with no pressure from anyone, playing patty cake with himself. You got forwards spinning around like a whirling dervish in the defensive zone, gaining speed, right? And then boom, they go. The camera pans out. Stop right there and watch what's happening. You are going to see your team's system offensively or defensively within the next five to ten seconds of that controlled breakout. you will see in the neutral zone exactly what both teams are doing in either direction. Hockey is an extremely chaotic game, right?

Total chaos all the time. Trying to find a system in the middle of like a neutral zone battle where offense and defense are like, it's a gray area where you're actually at. We're not really sure what's happening right now. We've just got 10 guys involved in a scrum. You're not going to find it there. Like, it's impossible to find it. I'm not going to find it.

No one is. There is no system in that situation. It's just every man for himself. Like, you're in a structure, but it's all hell has broken loose. You've got to find those moments where the teams are like, that is where hockey is that it's most serene where, like, the systems are at their most noticeable. I don't know, I just. Well, while we're on the topic, though, I got to say, I couldn't disagree more with

what I think is such a misnomer when you hear people say this defenseman wasn't noticeable at all so they did a good job. Of course everyone's going to have different responsibilities and assignments and I'm sure for your third pair six defensemen

you'd love him to play 12 to 15 minutes where nothing really happens because he's not out there to drive play or lead on the score sheet. But for most good defensemen I think if you're watching closely and you're looking for the right things you are going to notice them if they're playing well or if they're playing the way that you'd

ideally want them to play. And if they're not, then in my opinion, for the most part, they're not taking the right calculated risks. And that's an entirely different issue. So you always hear people say that. And the more I think about it, the more I disagree with it, I think. It's such a 1990s thing to say it. Yeah. Yeah. I used to say it all the time in the 90s because that was how the game was played. Yeah. But you're right. No, you're 100% right. And those controlled breakouts aren't really kind of defensemen, right? Most of the time the defensemen just sit behind the net, they distribute the puck and then the forwards do all the work. If you just live that way, right? Like, that's just what you're doing. You're, you know, maybe somebody throws you one at the

point. You take a shot. It goes in. Once in a blue moon, you get your three goals a year because they've bounced in off somebody else accidentally. That, you know, that's one way to live, right? But again, like we've all we've all just said here, I think that's an old way to live. I don't think that cuts it anymore. I think players like Josh, Josh Morrissey, you know, exemplify how to, and again, I get to this in the McKean's article too, but like, you see this huge lift most of the time in defensive quality results because you're just not playing defense anymore. You're spending such an egregious amount of time in the opponent's zones, right? Forcing them to react to what you're doing,

that, you know, your defensive numbers get better by proxy of you, simply not having to play defense as much as you used to. That is a huge lift to your forward help, to your goal tending. You know, it all, it all ties together. You know, it's not, it's not necessarily to players gotten better defensively. It's just they'd have to do it less and that benefits everybody most of the time. Oh, man, I've got, I've got a lot of other thoughts that I want to build off on this. But let's take our break here while we still can.

And then when we come back, we're going to, we're going to keep talking about this topic. Morrisian defensemen and all that good stuff. So stick around for that. You're listening to the Hockey PioCast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here in the Hockeypedio cast with Jesse Marshall. We're talking about a defenseman and the way they're used and in the concept of a team system. So here's something that really stuck out to me watching this, Morrissey tape. he leads the league in three-on-three production.

He's got four points in like eight or nine minutes of three-on-three play. He also leads the league in a four-on-four scoring as well, where he's got three points there in like 15 minutes or so. And the reason why I bring that up is because it really ties into this idea of kind of breaking through structure or sort of assigned roles designated to the position you play because you watch how he's gotten those points. And let's take the three-on-three-on-three-four-a-old. example, there's the game winner against the stars in Dallas where he just basically sees an

opening, sprints up the ice, beats Jason Robertson up the ice for a break and scores. He had two goals, I believe, were at least a goal on another assist against the hurricanes earlier in the year where he beats them up the ice and fills that middle lane. And it's interesting that those are teams that are very well structured defensively, generally, right? And this is a way to kind of get around that. And this is how you have to beat these teams offensively. You can't just play your normal way where everyone stands where they need to be.

You move the puck around because they're so good positionally at being where they need to be that they're just going to keep everything to the outside, a low danger, opportunities, and their goalie will stop everything. But all of a sudden, when you get a defenseman like Josh Morrissey, sprinting up the ice, being low, kind of hanging around the goal line, all of a sudden being places where you're not used to them seeing, there's no one really assigned to that player, right? All of a sudden, it's like, oh, who's got that? that guy. There's a blown coverage. Next thing you know, the puck is in the back air net.

And so it's really interesting to see that that's where he's feasted in particular. He's produced at 515 on the power play as well. But in these situations where there's more space where all of a sudden it's trickier to kind of load up defensively, he's really capitalized on that. And I think that's really indicative of the change here in terms of the way he's playing and the way he's opportunistically capitalizing on these situations. Yeah. A lot of people in youth hockey now, Dimitri, are really big advocates of teaching kids at certain ages. Basically, what's referred to as like positionless hockey, right? Because at this point, like, I think what you get to a certain age, the argument, I think,

is that kids have a development, like, a certain development track with skills that is, like, you can ascertain in certain ways through testing, but instincts, maybe not so much. So trying to layer in like how and why and what goes into decision making is perhaps at that point more important than putting them in front of a shooter, tutor, and teaching them how to take a wrist shot. So I think that goes to the core of what you're talking about, though, right? Because like that we consistently go back to these clips where like I lean on there being no hesitation in what you see. I've written articles and I've looked at video and we've all seen defensemen who take a step forward on a loose puck and then like they have what I call the yips, right? But like they've lunged, but they've thought about it. They second guessed it.

And now they're on their back foot. They have no momentum and they have a forward cutting at them with possession. You're dead to rights, right? Not having that honed ability to, you know, go with your. your gut, you know, understand timing, understand loose puck plays, you know, know, know the tell of, of a situation in when you should pinch and when you shouldn't, you know, again, nobody's going to get this perfect 100% of the time. Keal McCar is probably the best at it, right?

He fails from time to time, right? Like sometimes spectacularly, but nobody cares, right? Because the good that he gives you and the benefit that you get out of it is just so strong. So it's, you know, honing that. I talked today on Twitter, ironically enough, because you're thinking about this in advance and going back and watching some tape for some other stuff I'm working on. It was the conversation of hockey sense versus hockey IQ, right? And since being this spidey like I can make a no look, Sydney Crosby like pass,

you know, without ever looking at the player, just peripherally knowing where they're at versus hockey IQ, I'm recognizing danger in the defensive zone and I'm going to go peel off and save. it because my assignment's not as important. These are two totally different things, but I think when you watch Josh Morrissey and you watch what he's doing, like it's the combination of the whole. And I said, I think erroneously on Twitter that I didn't think hockey sense could be taught that I thought that it was like that that maybe wasn't something that that could happen at a past a certain point.

But I like some coaches like challenge me on that in my mentions like respectfully and say like, wait a minute. like I would argue that there are very specific drills and things that you can do in a, you know, coaching environment that actually specifically do build that sense. And maybe sense and IQ are tied together a little bit. And if you elevate somebody's high IQ and their IQ and their knowledge of what they're supposed to be doing, and where they should be and where everyone else should be, and you get serious in tape study with them and you bring this, this knowledge of,

up sense sort of naturally increases with it. Right. And can you have one without the other? Like are these, you know, are these two things so tied together that that's kind of how it works now? So yeah, it's just interesting things to think about, right? And then I think from a coaching perspective, you know, coaches look at this and say, no, like we can make sense better. And there are things we can do to improve it. Well, I think this is something that's going to improve it.

that's going to improve much more over time as young players train at lower levels and are brought up in terms of the way they play and what they're asked to do, which is what you're saying. I don't think we're going to necessarily see that positionless hockey in the NHL because I still think there's a gap to a big gap to bridge there. But the idea of positional interchangeability is huge. And you see those yips when a defenseman does the right thing by filling that open lane and going towards a net and making themselves available for a pass

and if they don't receive the pass or a rebound or like the play isn't concluded in like one second 99% of NHL defensemen you can almost see they're programmed and hardwired to be like oh no I'm out of position

and they just instantly sprint back to the blue line instead of waiting it out and being like all right well I'm already in a scoring position I just wait to see how this play unfolds and I think that is such a huge thing that's going to change over time. And you see Morrissey as well. He's capitalized on a few of those opportunities. But there's this kind of equilibrium. You got to balance it out. Right.

Like if Morrissey is playing low in the offensive zone, that means you need to be, need to have forwards. We're going to come back and support and provide that defensive ability as well. And that is something that we should have expected to see more out of, out of a Rick bonus team. That's something he's gotten really good at throughout his time and down. So getting that buy in from the forwards. And there's this fantastic piece. I think it's from February 4th, 2021. I have it written down. It's by our friend of the podcast, Jack Khan,

it's titled Anger Brewing in Winnipeg. It's on a substack. And it basically highlights this idea of how the Jets were playing under Paul Maurice where their roles were so defined and the environment was so restrictive that the defensemen essentially didn't get to do anything, right? Yeah. They never carried the buck up the ice.

They never sprinted up the ice to fill lanes. They were never asked to do anything in trends. transition. They would basically, in the offensive zone, they would hang around the blue line. And as soon as the other, they got a sniff of the other team getting the puck, they would just retreat back. In the offensive zone, when they'd get a chance to transition, they would just like frantically get it to their forwards. In Kyle Connor, or Niklai Euler's or Mark Shrevely would lug the puck up the ice. And the defense would never join them. So all of a sudden, you're playing out number. The other team has the advantage numerically. And so that forward just has to dump the puck in and basically chase after it. And that just, you can't play successfully for a long period of time. in today's game that way. And so that is something they've totally changed. Let's say let's like this like that's a perfect point. And I would argue, Demetre,

you can't play a deep two. You can't ask your defensemen to have a focus of being a safety net, right? You can't run a deep two system in the national hockey league in 2020. Because you've, you're severing the connection between the two parties, right? Like there is no ambelical cord between your defenseman and your fort. they're too far away from each other all the time to have any discernible impact.

Everything you just said, the dumping the puck in and being in these disadvantageous situations and, like, how different is life for Nikolai Eilers if he's skating the puck up ice and he has a skilled defenseman on his hip in support that he can play off of and he can give and go with that he can carry across the blue line with? Like, it changes everything. And these coaches, like, this idea is, I have to prevent being burned at all times, right? Like, it's the Ken Hitchcock way.

No one's getting behind me, damn it. Like, sure, no one's getting behind you, but you know what else? You're not getting in front of anyone. Like, sure, like, no one's getting, like, all, we're talking, now we're getting, I'm going on a tangent here, but like gap control, right? The idea of how big a space you're leaving as a defenseman between yourself and the person in front of you, right? there are rules in place.

Hockey gods wrote them many years ago up on a mountain in Ottawa. Are there any mountain? I don't know. They're on a tablet somewhere buried in Canada. And the rule is sticks. It's stick lengths, right? So as a forward approaches you, blue line, red line, blue line, they should be a certain number of stick lengths away.

You're closing that gap as they get close to you. And then hopefully at some point you can swipe your stick at them. You could put your arms up and legally interfere with them, body check them into the boards, whatever it is. The gap allows you to maintain that distance. What these coaches do when they play a deep defensive two is they ruin that gap, right? They ruin it. You've removed your defenseman's ability to press a forward at the red line and to give them

some semblance of uncomfortableness all the way up there. You're relying on your forwards to do it on the back check, which is, that's a lot. It's a lot to ask of them. That's a lot of work. It's a lot of skating. It's work they probably don't want to do, right? So I don't know. I mean, it's just, to me, gap control is so important.

And I have to hide. I may piggyback off what you just said because everything you just said is correct. But then there's all these other intended fallouts of that. And there's yet all this evidence, this mountain of evidence that we have, how bad it is, coaches still do it. Wow. Yeah. What a common theme that really distinguishes.

the good teams from the ones that just look like clueless beerly groups. Yep. Is this idea of connectivity between forwards and defensemen, right? And I'm sure part of it is talent-based. If you have good players, they're generally going to be more in sync with each other. They're going to know where they need to be. They're going to be able to play out a faster pace and read each other's minds, and it's going to gel much more smoothly.

But you watch a team, like I just pick any good team, and then you watch like the Columbus Blue Jackets or the Anaheim Ducks this season. And I'm always just blown away by how much open ice that's just completely uncovered as a full gap there is between Blue Jackets, forwards, and defensemen. Like, if you're playing against them, you can just freely, completely unabated, skate around, do whatever you want. There's no one close enough to you to actually meaningfully provide pressure once you get it. And every player has the skill level in the NHL at this point to just feast on you if you're, given that time and space. And so it's on you to close that.

Now, obviously, it's easier said than done. I think everyone, every coach probably harps on that. And when you're, you know, doing practices and running drills and watching film, I'm sure they're identifying that and their players just aren't capable of following through on it. But that's something I keep coming back to you. See just the gap between those forwards and defensemen, how stark of a difference it is between the good and bad teams in today's game. And I think that is like one of the most different, like most important differentiating factors and sort of litmus tests

for how successful you're going to be as a team. Yeah, 100%. And can we also mention here for a second, too. We're talking about this kind of, like, at what, so you mentioned a minute ago, like this hesitance from some coaches, like to let this D be involved, right, and have them want to hold back. And like we talk about the necessity of like in some coaches mind of like keeping these two high guys and not having that connection between the forward and the defense.

And like, I, I, I just wonder if there's a place, Dimitri, that exists in hockey, where you mix positionless play with kind of the current way we live, right, and the current style of hockey that I think that exists in the national hockey league. What I'm getting at is there's something that was invented in Sweden decades ago called the torpedo. Are you familiar with the torpedo? Of course. You'll see it in international hockey. Like, I just, it's the, I, I, I, I, I think there's such a ripe opportunity as we move into like the mid, 2000, like 2020s of where the game is being played, how fast it is, the kind of defensemen that we're seeing. A torpedo system isn't really positionless, right?

But what it does is it does change a defenseman into a forward. You have torpedoes, which sit at the offensive blue line, right? you have half backs, which is a football term, they kind of sit two lines back from the torpedoes, and you have one defenseman. And the one defenseman sits as a distributor, right? And he's got these opportunities to throw these huge, long stretch passes all the way up to the torpedoes,

or he could go to a halfback who goes to a torpedo. And it's like, it really drives, like, I told you on the last show we did together. Pretty much everyone in this league runs a one-two-trap, a neutral zone trap. The torpedo is specifically designed to destroy that. And I just, we've never really seen it done successfully in the National Hockey League. And granted there was like a two line pass that really like prevented that from happening, right?

Like the Chicago Blackhawks tried it in like the 1960s. But, you know, again, like with the red line, you couldn't do it because the whole thing is about stretch passes. But I just wonder like in that torpedo, you know, you remember you only have one defenseman at the back and they're really responsible for the distribution. and the other defenseman becomes a halfback and moves all the way up the ice. How long is it going to be before we see something like this? Can we get to a place where we have like fun, cool systems in the National Hockey League? And somebody comes in and says, you know what? Damn it all to hell.

We're running a torpedo. Like I yearn for those days. Like that's the NHL I want to see before I'm not watching the game anymore. It's just, I just feel like it's not positionless, but it blurs those lines. and it changes what they mean. And I think maybe that's like the first step to maybe opening the door and having those conversations. We just have to find someone that's brave enough to try to do it.

Well, I don't know if we have enough time to fully unpack this question or idea. So maybe it'll be kind of like a parting thought where we think about it. Maybe we can revisit it next time we chat. But do you think that, do you think there's a relationship between the talent level you have in terms of the personnel and how structured you should be in terms of a coaching staff or in terms of like what you're asking them to do. Because you'd think that the more talented the personnel is, the more you'd want them tapping into that by just basically,

you know, embracing that fully and playing as fluidly as possible, whereas maybe you could micromanage them a bit more if you have like a young team that you're learning the ropes or you feel like you're at a talent disadvantage, especially let's say in a playoff series where you're kind of the underdog and you really need to just try to, you know, hold on as much as you can as opposed to getting into a track meet environment. Do you think there is a relationship between that?

Because clearly, like, you know, it's not, everything isn't created equal. Like, there's 32 teams and there's a pretty big disparity between some of these clubs. So you can't just necessarily play a certain way with one group and expect to carry over that success with another entirely different team. Well, I've talked a lot. We talked about this last time we spoke about, like, having the alignment in philosophy, right? And knowing that like top down from the way that you're drafting to the way that you're playing

in the ECHL, you have this sort of like linear approach in mind. But I think I think the problem is modern coaches, some of them marry themselves to a style of play. Right. I'm going to run this system because I like it at every job I have, regardless of the personnel, right? Like, I don't care. And then, like, the culture with those teams is sort of becomes this heavy, like, all the tape we watch is about us, right? I have my system. It's attached to my personality.

I've played this way for 12 years. This is what you get when you buy me as a coach. I don't particularly care what the other team is doing because if we execute my system correctly, no one can beat us. Right. Like that is a real life thing that exists where I think good coaches, coaches that we've seen in iterations and different teams. And I'll call out like Sutter up in Calgary. Like is this a version of him?

The same one that you saw 15 years ago, probably in person. personality, yes. Right. And style of play, no. Yeah. We just talked about how Rick Bonas changed, right? And like having this epiphany about what a good mobile defenseman can do. That's not everybody's experience, Dimitri, right?

Not everybody does that. And not everyone goes to a team and takes this lay of the land approach and says, you know what? We have these strengths in this room. I have players that can execute X really well. We're going to do this. Yeah. This is the way it's going to work. right that doesn't happen it's crazy to say that that doesn't happen all the time what happens sometimes

is square peg round hole or you know whatever it is yeah but come in and say like no damn it like uh i you know i i i again i'm going to make this about the penguins but you remember the mike johnston era in pittsburgh yeah go look at a timeline chart of sidney crosbie and chrisd and krisd and look at this huge weird ass gap that this bottom bell curve that just inexamine's explicably exists for both of them at the same time. Right. And it's like that's what a bad coaching will do. That's what coaching that is ignorant of environment and ignorant of staff.

That's that's the result you beget when you square peg round hole. Right. And and I think that, you know, thankfully we've got a lot of coaches like in this league that are that are doing this stuff and are being flexible and trying new things. And like, you know, I think there's a misconception about Carolina, for instance. right okay no no we'll put a pin in the carolina conversation i can do a full podcast on that but but but my all this is to say right like you you've you're starting to see a shift in the tide to me but don't get me wrong like there are still people are just completely their their their blinders are on right and they're going to play the way they're going to play because that's the way it's always been

okay does that answer your question i don't know well it does a little bit i feel like there's still a lot of meat on the bone and and that's perfect because we're going to have you back on soon and we'll just put a pin in it here and then we'll revisit it down the road jessey this is a be well man we're going to have you back on soon if people have any suggestions for for you know film club topics that they want us to get into we can certainly tackle those as well in the future uh so we'll chat with you soon man all right sounds good thank you all right that's going to be for today's episode of the hockey pediocast we will be back tomorrow with one more show before the calendar flips of 2023 it's going to be a best of 2022 edition where i'm going

to handpick some of my favorite clips from this past calendar year of the show so look forward to that thank you as always for listening to the hockey pduees podcast streaming on a sports night radio network.