The Hockey PDOcast - Kane on the Red Wings, Streamlining Offside Reviews, and Gaming Expected Goals

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to talk about how Patrick Kane fits on the Red Wings, ways we can get the most out of the entire offside review process, and the value of expected goals these days.If you'd like to participate 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/a2QGRpJc84The 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.

It's the Hockey P.DOcast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dimitra Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? Not too much. There's a lot's going on. Right.

I'm based in the Detroit area. So it's been busy, but life's been good. So that's the most important part here, right? Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like you are busy. There's a lot going on. And we're going to. Yeah, a lot, a lot going on. I'm not going to get into that here today.

Ending the week in style with my bud talking about the top story involving a team that you don't technically cover, but I think you ostensibly cover them, right? They're one of the two teams you focus on, certainly with a lot of your coverage, along with all the other national stuff you do at your ring side. And so we're going to have some fun with that. And then we're going to take some listener questions from a Discord mailbag, where the listeners have really brought into our horizons. and brought forth some thoughtful stuff that we're going to get into about game theory and stuff like that.

So looking forward to it. But let's start with Patrick Cain going to the Red Wings. Here's where I'll start with it. I'm thankful because finally our long national nightmare of having every insider seemingly staked outside of his house reporting on what direction he's leaning on based on what he's having for breakfast on a given day is over. he's picked a team and that's resolved. Now, obviously, we have a lot of the talk about in terms of how that's going to fit and what that's going to look like. And I'm sure his story is far from over. But at least for now, we don't have to hear the same speculation regurgitated every other day,

which is what's been happening for what it feels like the past four or five months at least. Yep. It's every past, since the season started, since this is gone, I mean, this has been an effective masterclass in name and name circulation and rumor mongering and everything just from all the way down to what three, four weeks ago we get a video circulated by his agent of him skating to to drum things up and everything. It's been it's, who did we talk? We talked last week when you and I were on, we talked, I think we talked about Dushain and how this kind of, was able to fly under the radar because it happened so quick.

This was the polar opposite of it got the extra maturation time to just go above and beyond anything, especially with, especially with the nature of who the player is, the surgery, all that stuff. Yeah, name brand value is a hell of a drug because in reality we're probably talking about a, at least in terms of production, like a middle six winger here. and that's, I think, a best case scenario based on his health actually holding up and him being able to move properly out there once he starts playing. But yeah, his agency, CA did a phenomenal job here. I think they're the big winners drumming up a market, right?

How much did we hear about, oh, this long list of suitors who were lining up who are interested in his services? Oh, they're weighing multiple multi-year deals. It's like, okay. I'm sure there were teams that did their due diligence in terms. terms of like making the call and potentially have a meeting and kicking the tires, right? But at the same time, I think that part of it was probably wildly overblown, just based on what we heard in terms of how like the further involved with teams involved in these sweepstakes,

it feels like it was probably down to a couple logically. And imagine most of them were like, yeah, we'll take a one-year flyer here. But just the idea that there was a longer term market it just seems very far-fetched it. And one thing that was kind of out there, and I guess someone could have looked this up, and I'm one of those people who could have, and I didn't. But I was, many people kind of were reporting it, and there was all this coverage of like, oh, well, he could really fit anywhere because he's 35 plus, and he could sign an incentive-lated deal, and you could make it fit.

And that wasn't the case. I actually asked Steve Iserman that yesterday, and Eisenman's like, no, from my understanding his birthday's too late, and his birthday was too late, and so he wasn't even eligible for a 35-plus-year deal. And that was kind of one of those other things that kept circulating that I think kept every team in the conversation in the rumor-mongering because, well, you could find a way to sign a real low-level deal, some bonuses on that could, in theory, roll over the future and everything. And really, in the end, it's, it came down to there's probably only two or three teams that actually could afford him. and so we shouldn't really be surprised that he went to one of those two or three teams. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's one year at $2.75 million. One of my big aches from when the news broke was, and obviously we've got a resolution since then, but it was to see whether Daniel Sprung would relent his number 80. And now obviously he did. And I'm sure he got a nice little reward for that. But I just love the idea of him potentially just waving him off, right? because there's no bigger irrational confidence guy in this league than Daniel Sprung, and I love him for that.

But if there were anyone capable of being like, no, I got here first, sorry, binders keepers, I would have thought it might be him. Yes. Unfortunately, that wasn't a reality, but still fun to joke about. So, Kane is 35, as you mentioned, even though he wasn't eligible for the 35 plus. He's coming off this hip resurfacing surgery. I think Ed Rowland by now listening to this is familiar with the list of players who have undergone it and tried to but failed to come back and play meaningful hockey at the NHL level after

that now medicine's getting better certainly right everyone responds differently i think there's a reasonable argument to be made that the last time we saw patrickane playing he was already so hampered physically by his inability to move properly and it's not like he's working from a place where he was healthy the last time we saw him and then now that's up for that that's even riskier and more precarious, right? Like, I think it's reasonable to believe that at least out of the gate, he could actually have improved mobility and that could help him. So I'm willing to take a glass half full of you there. Let's take that then. What's the, what's the fit like here in terms of landing spot, in terms of need, in terms of how they're going to use them, what this is going

to look like? I think we can, we can expand on that a bit beyond sort of the obvious narrative. Oh, he's had success with Alex to break up before. Everyone gets that. Let's talk about actually a bit deeper beyond what that's going to look like on the ice as a fit. Yeah, I mean, it's, it is the, it is the reality that I think at some point we will see Brinkett and Kane. It's the question really becomes, and right now obviously it's kind of interesting talking about this because Dylan Larkin didn't play last night. And we saw how much Detroit missed Dylan Larkin last night against the Rangers. and likely tonight against and likely against Chicago too.

But it's kind of, it's going to be interesting to see who, which pairing of that, of those three, right? Will they keep, will it be, because right now it's been Larkin and Raymond together, early in the season,

De Brinkett and Lark had, kind of the feeling you get from all this is they're going to try to set something up where it's going to be a pairing of, it could be, it could be, it could be, it could be, in theory,

the second line, they build off of it. That's where you all of a sudden have an Andrew cop or your J.T. Comfer centering that line. And then, or it could be maybe Larkin ends up fitting with, maybe ends up being Kane and Larkin that fit together once they tried. Or it could be Raymond and Kane. I think you're basically going to get to this point where Detroit eventually gets to the spot where, okay, we have two top two lines where we build our offense through this tandem, this duo.

And I think that's kind of where it goes in the long run. Um, it's, it's easy to, it's easy to, because of the past success to talk about De Brinkett Kane and Eisenman even talked about it yesterday. Um, and, but I could easily see, law, I could easily see it being Raymond Kane or it could be, so it's, it's going to shake out one of those two ways. Um, and, and I know, I know we like, we don't want to overly play the De Brinket thing, but it is going to be something that the team is going to lean into to start at least. So are you viewing it through the lens of like airings then in terms of duos as opposed to the conventional trio like line configuration? Because I was thinking, all right, after playing

him with Lockman to Brinket on a top line, well, then all of a sudden, that totally changes things for a Lucas Raymond. And I know that you wrote about how like, you know, his attention to detail and play off of the puck this season and how he's still, like when I did a Larkin Deep dive with Dail Bell for a couple weeks ago, we had a little section in there, a few nuggets on Raymond, and we were talking about how for a young player who's used to being the centerpiece and the person everything flows through when you come into the league here, and all of a sudden that's not a good reality for you, there's an adjustment period of like figuring out how to contribute, how to get puck touches, how to make that all work, right? And while the Brinket and Larkin

in particular are so puck dominant in terms of carrying the puck and having play flow through them, at least with them on the ice, you actually are going to have the puck, right? Like you're going to be playing in advantageous offensive situations. All of a sudden, if you bump further down the lineup and you're playing with other players, they might not be as puck dominant, but also you just might have more time where you're spending chasing the puck and you're not actually playing with it and getting to do skill stuff. And so all of a sudden for a young player like Lucas Raymond, that like the trickle-down effect of this is almost as interesting to me as the actual, like,

the cane piece itself. It's like what happens sort of to everyone else down the line. Yeah. And it's like I wrote about him the other day, as you mentioned. And Raymond is been kind of building off his defensive end more this year. And he's been doing a really, he's been doing a really nice job with it too. And I, it's kind of one of those where it's the,

don't get overly infatuated with Patrick Kane's history. And that's kind of the spot where there's two kind of things where I look at this potential downfalls of this cane internally, right? Not saying a locker room like, guys angry at each other, just the role thing. Where you can't let Patrick Kane come in and become more important, quote unquote, than Lucas Raymond. You need to continue building Lucas. Raymond. You need to continue to let him to that spot. To me, Raymond should still be that quote-unquote

top line guy. I really like him with Larkin. Personally, I would kind of stick with that. The other one is the guy who we talked about who gave his dubber up is Daniel Sprung, because at some point, somebody is going to have to come out of this lineup, and somebody is going to lose a spot on the power play, and without a power play role, all of a sudden, you have another guy who, like, I had a scout the other day mentioned to me, like, he was a little worried about. about Daniel Sprong's mental approach towards this when he all of a sudden becomes the odd man out. But to answer your question, and I'm not really answering it, so I'm sorry. There's a lot of filibustering.

There's a lot of filibustering. I like the idea, I think, in Detroit. I know Dirk Lal just talked about it before, of kind of building off pairs. And that's kind of where my idea comes from that. Or I don't think this big, I think they look at their team as kind of one that's a little bit more interchangeable in many ways. and with how often this team likes to play 11-7, it kind of became a little bit of a natural thing that's happened with this,

where centers kind of became a little bit more like cop and GTCOM for an injured cop, basically they've kind of built where they can kind of slot them into any spot and whether it's for right or wrong. And then they've kind of done, when Larkin's healthy, they've played or tried to do that with Valeno here and there. So that's where my ideology on, okay, you're building these pairs and then who the other guy is. Not that it doesn't matter,

but it's more so the consistency is with those two. And that's kind of the way I get the feeling I get from where Lelon's going with this. Well, there's Raymond, there's Sprong. I think there's even a further down the depth chart situation brewing where, and I imagine part, like this has been a bit of the frustration over the past couple years with this team's approach where like on the one hand, you had so much draft capital, right? And you're accumulated. all of these lottery tickets and young players that you're trying to develop as you're rebuilding, and then you're going out and signing players to long-term deals. Obviously, Kane here is just a one-year deal for the rest of this year, so it doesn't

necessarily apply in that sense. But just for this season in particular, you're adding a bunch of veterans who are taking up valuable reps and lineup spots, especially higher up in the lineup in scoring situations, right? And so take a guy like Jonathan Bergen, for example, who we saw enter the line up. lineup most recently, like he's going to be 24 this summer. You know what I mean? Like he hasn't been in North America for that long, but when he has, we've seen him, he's like a pointing game player in the HL. He's reaching peak physical years. I like his game. I want to see him play

and see if there's something more there. And that's not going to happen by having him play in his HL through his mid-20s, the way this organization used to during their heyday, right, like during that playoff streak when you'd have guys like Nyquist and Tatar playing in Grand Rapids into their mid-20s, it's one thing when your team is that good, and it's like, all right, this is just the reality of situation. This is a spa where you think, all right, this is the perfect opportunity for us to play some of these guys. And now you look at the depth chart and you look at the number of names involved in players who have to get dressed and play. It's really tough to find spots for those guys. And that can be a little frustrating, I'm sure,

both for the players, but also for fans. Yeah, and I do wonder with the Kane thing. It's definitely, I mean, the biggest one is on defense right now. We've talked about the Red Wings defense before, how Simon Edvinson is blocked from being able to play in the NHL right now because of Detroit's depth in air quotes, as you and I have talked about before on this show. The thing I think about this cane move that will be interesting to me is,

I wonder if it eventually becomes a spot where we'll see. He's coming off this major. hip surgery, we don't know how he's going to respond, all that stuff. You also have a guy in Robbie Fabry who can't stay healthy. And I wonder how much as the season progresses with what Fabri does versus what Kane does, I just wonder how much of those two almost become, if it becomes whether by design or or it naturally happens, they almost become like the outfield, the hockey's equivalent of the outfield platoon, where it's like, yeah, yeah, like I just wonder if you have something

like that, but it's like, Bergeron should be playing in the NHL right now. You, the fact, and by signing Kane, Detroit also made it very difficult to, like, there are teams who have overloaded on veterans before, but have kept the waiver exempt guys available or whatever to make it happen. Detroit doesn't have that. The only guys on their roster who are eligible to go down without waivers are, are Lucas Raymond and Mo Cider. Clearly those two aren't going down.

So it's not even like you could make, it's not even Detroit, and I asked Eisenman about it the other day, because right now, Detroit's carrying the three goalies. They got 23 right now. So you in theory could find a way to do this if you weren't carrying three goalies.

If you just had 20, if you had two goalies, you'd be like, okay, we can make this work and we could call burger up and down and make it work. With the three goalies, you basically, every move now has to be a 24-hour, a 24-hour only injury-based decision. And the Red Wings boxed themselves into this with how they went and signed veteran guys,

older guys, and essentially decided that, okay, we're going to, for better or worse, let this future core that's going to be behind Raymond and Sider and everything like that. We're going to bet that they figured out in the AHL this year and just hope that they all arrive perfectly ready when that's risky. because I'd like to see it of the NHL. Yeah, the Red Rooms are an interesting team sort of to talk about statistically and stylistically so far this season, right? Because on the one end,

they've had a lot of these blow-up spots where especially earlier in the year, they're scoring a ton of goals, right? And so you look and I think they're fifth in the league in scoring, their third and five-on-five scoring, their top ten on the power play. And so you look at it and it's like, all right, on paper, that's not a weakness for this team.

like they're scoring plenty. It's weird to add a player who's so offense only in this case as a one-dimensional player at LeCain. At the same time, though, the power play, which started really hot, is down to like 24th or something in the month of November, right? It's really regressed since that early, uh, Boone. And at 515, a lot of it seems to be shooting percentage driven, right? Where I think they do lead the league in 515 shooting percentage as a team.

They're not actually generating a ton of high volume, high danger chances to, to, to, to along with that. And so if that dries up, I actually do think that they could use more juice in terms of creativity and offensive playmaking on this team despite how many goals they've scored so far, right? So I like this on that perspective where it seems weird because you pull up all the leaderboards for sorting by teams. And it's like, this team's fine offensively, but you take out, you kind of peel back a few layers and they probably actually could use more of that particular skill set. And even at this stage of his career, if he's struggling to move around just because of his vision and his passing and his ability to stretch out the offensive zone with that, like, that will be a handy skill set depending on how they use them. So I kind of wanted to make that point and highlight that because I've seen a lot of commentary on it saying, like, oh, this team's already fine offensively.

This isn't the player they need. But like, explore logics. Data actually paints an entirely different picture than a lot of the public metrics, where especially if you sort by like inner-stallel. lot shots and stuff like that. Offensibly, they're really struggling at that. They're 25th in the league. And then defensively, they're actually much better. And the results haven't indicated that, but the underlying process suggests that there's probably is a skill set that you could use more of. They admit it. They readily admit it as both internally and externally. I mean, it's funny, like a week ago, Derek Colon talked about how the team, the Red Wings have to

shoot well. They have to turn defense into offense because in his words, in his words, we don't have the special players that allow us to just have those moments that rescue you later in the game. And it's, the Redwoods know that. That's something that's not, that's not news internally to Detroit. They have where they are, as part of the reason is that they're shooting pretty well, as you said. And they're also, they're making due where, we can talk about what their defenseman depth does, but their forwards actually have been pretty good defensively this year in the way that they've helped cover some of the other things.

And that's kind of what the identity more of Detroit is right now. They're kind of that they're coming along in that we're hard to play. When you get the Larkin line on the ice, there's some excitement. But really the rest of the lineup is really more of, it's territorial war, We're winning kind of the ice time battle and the position over there, but you're not really expecting, what's the power play?

You're not really expecting much from David Perron. You're not really expecting Christian Fisher and Joe Valeno to really do much offensively. It's more of, okay, they're keeping the puck away from Arnett, more so than they're actually dynamically making the other team sweat. That's really what this team is. And you're right, that's what Kane adds. Kane all of a sudden, you're like, okay, this team could score when they're, they have the puck in the offensive zone. I would actually expect it. Like, that's not something you expect with most of Detroit's lines right now. Yes. And also just, that's a good

point you made there about the construction of the forward group and how for whatever your feelings are, the mileage you get out of the defensemen they have. The forwards have really done well in that regard in terms of, and I think that's by design. And that's the way, as we saw than play last year. I think that's what Derek Lawn would prefer as a coach. Yeah. Yes. And so having someone who can kind of create easier opportunities, and if there is some sort of regression, potentially mitigate that by still driving efficiency through that playmaking, like that would be very valuable to this team. I just, I really do think it's this interesting dichotomy where they've profiled as such an offensive team because of the outputs in the

scoring, but then all the other underlying stuff, especially by the private model. just paints an entirely different picture. So I think the most likely outcome here is like assuming health, we get a year where gain score is just enough in a flashy enough manner where he's still going to post like 44% shares at 515 the way he has recently. Like even, you know, there was a lot of talk last year about, all right, well, this is about Black Hawk's team is tanking.

They're terrible. That's what's driving it. And then he goes to the Rangers. and the raw number has improved a little bit, but when you actually account for team quality and context, he was kind of the same player, just in a different environment. So I'm not expecting an improvement there, even on this Red Wings team as they are defensively,

but it's going to be just enough where, regardless of how the rest of the season plays out, it's probably going to fuel another round of the same conversation next off season. So we are just living in time as a flat circle, and we're living in an endless league. Well, and also too, with what this Detroit team is, he doesn't have to be, what was it, was it two years ago? He had like the 92 point season or whatever, right? Like, he doesn't have to score that pace for this to be an offensive success for Detroit.

Like, if he just has the numbers he had last year in Chicago, which were career basically lows as far as efficiency for him, that's still going to improve Detroit offensively. when you look at the counting numbers and things along those lines. And so it's going to keep us in this cycle, as you said, of, okay. I wonder, I also wonder when the thing, and it's, of course, this is the type of thing that everyone will dance around. We hear the stories, oh, he had multi-year deals on the table and multi-year deals on the table. Maybe from Patrick Keynes' long-term perspective, he comes out and he shows he's healthy and plays this year. He's going to make more money in the long run by taking the one-term, the one-year deal this year with the trade. I think that's something that also hasn't been

really covered well enough as far as what can, what's the benefit to Cain of the one year deal of this? Certainly. Somebody will give him, it's a big if, but it's when you, if you have, if you're a professional athlete,

you have an ego and you believe in yourself and that's, it can be a driving force. No, I get it. You know, this cynical side of me in thinking about, this and kind of the fallout of they were talking about Raymond earlier and he is a player who's in a very high leverage point of his career contractually himself right uh his ELC is expiring he's up for a new deal i'm very fascinated to see what that looks like and obviously we know that while

i'm sure the organization values him greatly right and he's clearly part of their long-term plans we know that leverage in terms of contract demands and how much money you can make is still largely driven even as teams get smarter and as we learn more about what matters in hockey by county stats right it's like how many goals how many points you have that's how much you can ask and so even if they take a long-term view for them it's like so just cynically potentially bumping them off the top line and having them play that more defensive role and iron out other parts of his game and chip in in ways that don't get you made as much is like is it is not the worst thing now since he's such a long-term part of their

line, I highly, I'm, you know, it's kind of facetious. Like, it's not, they're not actually being like, all right, we're going to, we're going to risk this long-term relationship to make it work this year and potentially save a few dollars. Like, obviously, I think they would love it if, if Lucas Raymond scores a goal every night and produces at a sky high rate and then gets paid accordingly. Um, but it will be interesting to see sort of what impact that has on whatever his next contract looks like. No, yeah, it will. Because there, there are, whether it's, happens directly or not, King will take opportunities from Raymond at some point. That's going to happen.

It's the reality. Okay. Any other nuggets or tidbits or things that you're hearing from being on scene or talking to people that you think is relevant to the conversation before we go to break? Yeah. It's interesting. The one thing that will be kind of interesting to see how this all plays out and talking to people around Detroit and everything is where does,

like mentality-wise and Kane, quote-unquote, wants to win and all that stuff, he's staying all the right things. Like, where this team we've talked about, and we kind of mentioned this already, but I just want to focus on this little more. We talked so much about how Derek Lal has kind of intentionally built a forward group where they all work hard.

They all turn defense into offense to use the coach's cliche and everything like that. And Lalonde is willing to give a little bit of leash to de Bricket. He's willing to give a little bit of leash to Lucas Raymond. Obviously, you're going to have to give Kane some leash as well. When you move, as it trickles down into the lineup, I'm interested to see kind of how this impacts the mentality across the group, where on the fourth line is all of a sudden,

if you have Daniel Sprung on the fourth line, And we talked about a guy who is very proud of his work and everything like that. Daniel Strong is signed his whole wings playing on the first line. I don't care about your inconvenient facts, like ice time and deployment and all that. If Daniel Sprong is on the ice, that is the first. Yeah. But it's, yes. So as far as the Red Wings, and I'm not, I don't think this is like one of those,

oh, this blows it up. It's a blocker of cancer. I don't think it's that. But it is going to affect the dichotomy of how the forward group plays in whole. because as you start taking, it's the line from, uh, from the movie, uh, the great philosopher, uh, in the movie The Incredibles,

the bad guy in the movie The Incredibles when everyone's special, no one is. And so if all of a sudden you start giving everyone and you start making it, it's not just one or two guys that get the longer lesion, everyone has, that all of a sudden you start to lose that structure and it just becomes, just becomes Andrew Copp and J.T. Comper, frustratingly covering for everybody. Like, I'm interested to see how this all plays out just schematically in watching once Kane comes into the line. All right.

Syndrome. Syndrome was the bad guy from Incredible. That's right. What a reference. Yesterday we had, or a couple days ago, we had a Dragon Ball's E-reference with Kevin Woodley. And now we've got the Incredibles. All right. Sean, let's take our break here.

And then when we come back, we'll pick the conversation back up. We'll go through some of those listener questions that I alluded to. And plenty more fun stuff. you're listening to the Hockey P.D.O. guest streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. We're back here on the Hockey P.D.O. cast with Sean Shapiro. We did the Red Wings off the top and the fallout from them signing Patrick Hain. Let's have some fun here to end the week. We got a couple of listener questions, some kind of outside the box ideas that you would expect from listeners of this show.

So looking forward to kind of parsing through it with you. So we got a bunch, actually, multiple people. asked kind of the same question, which is funny because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a point, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and a one that I think you're uniquely, uh, it's positioned, uh, would there be a way to sort of, quote-unquote, free roll this, and cheat by sending a player or two out of the D-Zone to cherry pick if and when the entry is confirmed offside by whoever is in charge of monitoring all these entries for the team live. Or is hockey just too fast and chaotic to implement some system video team signaling to the coaches

and the coaches signaling to the players on the ice that any pending goal against will not count because the injury was offside, so they should take some chances. Now, personally, as someone who sits on my couch every Sunday and spends the full day watching football and training for my fantasy teams, I love when the quarterback gets the other team to jump and earns them a free play and then just stands back there and throws it 60 yards down field and either it's a touchdown on a long play or it's intercepted and it doesn't matter because they get the five yards and it doesn't count anyways. So that is essentially the equivalent of this. Now this happens much more quickly certainly and there's many more factors

and variables involved. But one thing the listener is dead on about here is we have gotten to a point where I remember the first couple years, it wasn't necessarily 50-50, but felt like it was much more upward debate. Now, that's still the case with goalie interference reviews where I'm sure teams are getting better at it, but honestly watching it live, it seems like a coin flip to me. I still don't know what goalie interference is or what they're going to count or not on a given night. In this case, though, you're seeing it more often where a goal happens. You see the camera pans to the coach. They're looking down at that screen that they have, I'll blow them on the bench. And they call the, uh,

official over and you know all right this is this goal is not going to count because they're challenging for offside and we're getting to like 99.8% accuracy in terms of if they've identified something it will have been offside so how do you feel about this the validity of it the possibility of it and sort of whether this is something that could eventually come into play um as we get even more confident with the with them getting it right here so it's it's it's possible because so I actually so I I wrote about a couple years back

would have been the year of uh it would have been the last it would have been right before the year the 2019 no sorry 2018 19 season I actually sat in the Stars video room for for a game with their video coach Kelly Forbes and Kelly was actually

the Stars video coach for 14 years and left the stars after this past season to basically step into being more of a moving away from the hockey lifestyle so he could be more of a dad and everything like that. And I've talked to Kelly quite a bit about video reviews. There's times where, which was the, remember the Colorado one in the playoffs?

Where was the- The Cal-McCarr against Edmonton where he was off the time. The Cal-Moker, yeah, yeah. They ruled illegal because he had possession or whatever. Exactly, yeah. And so, having seen, been inside an actual video room myself and having talked to a video coach about this, this is possible because basically, and this is how the starters did, and I don't know how every team did it, but from my experiences, you wouldn't, there will be no other way not to do this. Basically, in Dallas, there's a zone entry. In every single zone, off every single zone entry, the video room is reviewing it right away in the moment. and they are then on the headset to the assistant coach,

to one of the assistant coach who's got the other earpiece basically saying, hey, that's good or that's not. So they have that information probably within five, six seconds of a zone entry. So you in theory could do this. Now, the problem is kind of the application of it. So you take that five to six seconds of getting it in there. And then this is kind of one of those where you're probably already getting per hockey to, now you have to, how do you signal this to?

This is, I guess, the same thing we could figure out right here on the ear. How do you signal this to the, yeah. This is the game within the game because here's what happened. Yeah, yeah. You don't disguise your intention. So the first time you do it, it could be something very obvious. Another team will probably be like, why is the coach just yelling right now? Like, this is weird.

But your team knows what happens. and then after you pull it off, after the game, the opposing team and other teams around the league are going to be like, all right, that was weird. So this is their signal apparently for when they're doing this. Then next time, on a close one, maybe you're not even sure that it's offside. But you just do it anyway.

You still don't. All of a sudden. Now, if you're the other team, every action, you know, has a reaction, right? Like all of a sudden players are just lying the zone from no reason while the puck's up against the boards. You're probably, I think, it's human nature. you're probably going to compensate for that by being less aggressive offensively yourself.

I don't know if you're necessarily going to have players leaving the zone to go track players in the neutral zone while you still have the buck, but you're going to be more aware of it, right? I think you're going to be less focused on what's happening offensively than you would otherwise. I think there's the game within the game here is just, it's unbelievable. And let's let's scatter that a little bit further. So we know both teams have a video guy doing this at the same time. So what teams are getting, it's not like just your team getting the message. And so we assume that these are the best video coaches in the world. It's the best league of good world, yada, yada, yada. So all of a sudden it becomes, what if happens

if you, what about the flip side of it, where you have a team go in off sides and all of a sudden you see the other team flying the zone and all this you're like, okay, hey, quick regroup and you try to sting them back. Like this is the, this is the, this is the game and the game I really want to see now where it's basically your trust, you've got now video coaches having way more power than ever before, but it's I've always wondered why that didn't happen sometimes

before too, where a team would be off-sides and they continued to play and why maybe, why didn't the bench signal, hey, guys, we should probably regroup. Like, this would be the time for one of those three-on-three overtime-style drop passes in regroup.

It wouldn't be bad right now. because once you exit the zone, that prior entry no longer matters. You're sending me down quite the wormhole now. This is a great question. It was a big question. This is why I wanted to use it and pitch you on it. I think there was probably a time where the accuracy was lower. So you're like, all right, well, it was 75% chance this gets called off, but there's a 25% is not.

So I just go for it. Now we're probably giving teams too much credit. I think in reality, they're just freewheeling it. not actually giving this that much thought and not considering any of this stuff, right? We're probably getting too in the weeds here. But I love it. Anything that involves sort of that chest match element of tactics and, all right, you do something different. So all of a sudden, it's going to force your opponent to do something. And then that opens a counter of your own and you go back and forth in that regard. Like, this is exactly what we're talking about. I think, though, there is something

to just this entire conversation of reviews, right? I'm watching Ducks Oilers on Sunday night, I believe last weekend. And the first period is hilarious. There are just so many goals back and forth, both teams. It's very open-ended and sloppy. And it feels like neither goal they can see the puck. And it's like, all right, this is for the last game of the week, Sunday night, I just watched football all day and I'm watching this.

I'm loving this. Like, I want to see more of this. And then there's a review to see whether the puck crossed the goal line. And they just stopped the play for like 12 minutes in real time. Well, I don't know how long it was, but it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. raw and out process. And then you're just seeing replays over and over again.

The broadcast teams having a filibuster and fill time. They keep showing what TSA Kholm's sitting on the bench, stroking his beard. It's like, can we just play the game? Like if it takes you longer than a minute to figure this out, then you know what? We just have to keep going. I get that you want to get all the calls, right?

Especially in important games. You don't want someone to, you know, lose because they got a short end of stick here, but the reality of it is this is an entertainment product. The best part of hockey is how fast an action-packed and free-flowing it is. So stopping it to dissect tape and Zapruder-style film, like on an iPad looking at this greeny footage and going back and forth and then trying to piece together angles because you don't have a clear one because all of them were blocked by something or a goalie's pads. Like, we need to iron this out particularly with, I know, There was a lot of pushback to the puck's feeling different with the chips and all of them and stuff before.

But like the goal line technology of trying to figure out with parallax whether the puck actually was over the line and trying to piece together different composite images and all this stuff. Like it's just so ridiculous. Like we're approaching 2024 here. I feel like there has to be a better way. Oh, there has to be a better way. It's called goal. And it's called goal line technology. Yes, it's called goal line technology.

And the other thing we want to just be careful of, and it comes down to playing with off-sides and everything like that. Now, we have video replay in soccer, and too many times you talk about playing the game and everything like that, and teams will off-side trap in soccer. And I don't want that equivalent in hockey where all of a sudden we've got guys basically, instead of playing the game, are trying to, play to a rule and raising their arm to try to get the officials attention or something like that. Like there's a, there's a path where we've seen it in another sport that I really don't want to go down on this. And it's like the 12 minute, like you mentioned that Docs Oilers game, right? That 12 minute review or whatever it was. That was just that sucked. You're like, all right, well, I'm going to. What am I going to go do now? It goes against everything that makes

hockey a fun product. Like, it's like we need to steer away from that. I guess so you're, okay, so you made the point of for all these offside reviews, right? Within seconds of the zone entry, both teams already know what happened, right? Because they have someone watching or it marking it, then quickly checking it out and then making the decision on it. Yes. So why is there a review process? Like, why are we, I understand the, you're not going to catch everything in real time and there's going to be a challenge. But if we're so invested in making sure we get the call right, shouldn't this be something that is just phoned down from the league immediately? It should be.

Like if they have someone watching it like the teams do, then we know within seconds whether it was offside or not. So the play should, if it was offside, the play should be blown dead. Because we're all wasting time here and someone could get hurt on a play that didn't actually even officially happen by the record books if it winds up right being called back.

And so what are we all doing here? Like I feel like there should be a more sort of Like the chain of command or line of communication here should be more crystal clear so that we're expediting this process and not wasting time doing what we're doing right now. I mean, instant replay has basically, it's gone from a, let's fix the sport to let's slow down something that really shouldn't be slowed down. And this isn't just hockey. This is, this is, this is, this is, I have this view of multiple sports. Sports are supposed to be fast and exciting. That's that's what it's supposed to be. And the fact that with technology now,

we can learn more by freeze framing and things like that. It also makes, it also takes away from what's happening in the game in real time. Like it's one of the funny things where, it's funny we're talking about Lucas Raymond before. And I was talking to, I was talking to Lucas Raymond last week about when he was dealing with injury last year. watching the game from up top. And he's like, and he said to me, he's like, I get it. I get why you guys sometimes say, we should have done this or we'd done that because like, I would sit up in the press box. He's like, when I was sitting in the press box of injury, I'd be like, oh, that guy's wide open over there. Why is no one passing to him? And he's like, he's like, it's

really easy to watch from up top and freeze frame it. And we kind of take away from how impressive everything's happening when all of a sudden we're like, ah, let's freeze this. We know, we now know because everyone's moving 22 miles an hour or whatever it is because of NHL Edge or whatever. We now know that like let's slow this down. It's, it, we've hit a rant button for me for this. No, but I just know like the whole point of this is yeah eliminating human error as much as possible, right, making sure you get the call right. But we have technology to do it in a quicker, more efficient fashion than we do right now. And we're like, we might have gotten this wrong, but we're not going to revisit it unless there's a goal.

and unless the other team challenges, and if they don't challenge or if they're out of challenges, well, tough luck for them. And it's like, I thought the whole point of this was to, was to make sure you got the call right. You only want to do it selectively?

Like, I just don't really understand why it's the case. If the point was, if the point was only to get the call right, there would not be a punishment for the team getting it wrong. Like, truthfully, if, if,

it's just to stop people from like wasting time, right, and be like, no, no, no, no, no. But that's where I'm going. If we could, if we were just having things ruled correctly, we would not even be at a spot where I can get my guys a breathing.

It would just be, okay, well, hey, red light green light. It was off sides on side. That's it. That's all you would need. It wouldn't be. Here's a six minute review to, to, like I get, when we have the six minute review, fine. Okay, yes, penalize the team that put us in that position by getting it wrong because they should have gotten it right. No, but when a guy shoots the puck and it's so fast that it like hits.

the back bar and comes out and the official might have missed it and thought it just hit the crossbar or the post, the play goes on for another, whatever, 10, 15, 30 seconds, sometimes a minute, depending on it. And then they stop the play, right? Like the goal horn goes off, they blow the plate tank. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, that feels like that should be the case for off sides then. Like, if you have someone watching it in real time and you want to get it right, I don't know. that's anyways it's a great it's a great idea until the first time

there's a team that takes it until there's an offside on one end because there's an offside on one end then it goes right down to the other team scores on a break all of a sudden it becomes the team's like well we were off sides there so it should have been below dead on us so we never would have committed that turnover that led

the other way oh man okay I got a couple questions here that are sort of like game theory based regarding player impacts and expected goals. And I think this is a topic that I'm really interested right now. I had Kevin Woodley on, as I mentioned earlier this week, and we were talking about how, you know, so much focus has been placed on the offensive side of things through that lens of like teams are trying to create certain types of shots and get into high danger areas. And it feels like one of the first conversations we actually had about this, you and I,

was back when you were still cut running to Dallas Stars during that run to Stanley Cup final right in the bubble where this became a big point of conversation for people where it's like

oh if you look at their shot attempt share and everything it's not that good but then you look at how they're dominating high danger they're clearly of a purpose here

and they're one of the teams that really sort of executed that game plan right so then I was talking with Woodley about how from a goalie's perspective that totally changes your workload right? In theory, you're getting fewer shots. They're going to be more concentrated in

dangerous areas. It's going to be much more difficult. And so there's this cat and mouse game in that regard. So the question here was from Cookies, who asks, with expected goal rates rising faster than actual goals, people have been theorizing the teams might be shifting towards prioritizing shots, which have high expected goal values, which we just mentioned, possibly gaming the system. Assuming this is true, are high expected goal shots the best way to generate an offense? Distance is the main factor, and expectant expected goals. And I think it's probably safe to assume the closer the shot, the better. But as the pendulum swung too far, and is there now too much importance being placed on expected goals?

I don't think there's too much importance being placed on expected goals. I think expected goals is kind of a weird thing because I think a lot of people who discuss it and talk about don't actually know what it goes into it. Like, I think just too often in the media coverage of it, it becomes people talk about expected goals and everything like that. And too often the person discussing it or writing about it isn't actually sure of the proper application of it. And I think that's one of the other, one of the issues where expected goals are not well defined by the people covering it. Not that they're not well defined by the metrics. The other thing that is like to answer to look at Cookie's question here and I'm trying to make sure I get this right is,

there's too often I think sometimes it leads to it can if you think about only we only want high XG shots high XG shots you sometimes all of a sudden that's that's all a team

sometimes sometimes have to take what's given to you like the Carolina hurricanes still take what's given to you right there's a lot of and Carolina hurricanes are still pretty damn good hockey team sometimes are

it could be better maybe but they could be better yes they could be better But like, but I still, I think it does go to kind of that philosophy of if you're given the, if you're given a quote, unquote, low danger shot, but it's from an elite player, you should still take that shot. Like, that's, I can still go into that. I mean, I think for the most part, I'm sure there's still, uh, some stragglers in hockey at various levels that are stuck in the old ways and just are like, oh, this is just, you know, this is. all mumbo jumbo. I think most coaches right now, despite what they'll say publicly, are aware and agree intuitively with the idea that to create offense, you want to get to a few specific

places and that's getting sustainable, right? I don't think the hurricanes, how we could do, oh, we'll show on this, but like, are there just the volume and the repetition and all that? But like, if they had the talent to sustainably get into these high danger areas beyond, like, a few of their top players, they probably would. But those players are very expensive generally and tough to get. So what they've done is a very cost effective approach in this market efficiency at getting players who can play this other way, which is a lot cheaper, right? And it ties back to that Lucas Raymond conversation we had of what gets paid in today's game.

So I think most teams want to do it. So they are all aware of the answer. just some of them don't have the solutions. And so I do think this is an interesting thought exercise from the perspective of like defensively, every team has a game plan as well and they know where you want to go. And so if they're sort of sitting on that or overplaying it, that should theoretically to attack. Now everything is so centralized with like the one target of the goal and there's a goalie in front of the net. Right. So it's a bit easier to kind of defend in that case or to keep people on the outside.

But for the most part, I would think that, yeah, the logical conclusion would be, all right, if the other team is aggressively playing you for one thing, which is where they think they want to go, then there should be another way that might be more efficient, even though it runs a big counter to what our initial expectations are. So, I don't know. It's interesting. But, yeah, I mean, this is like the cadmouse game of offense versus defense, right?

Yeah, and so many expected goals models look at Warsaw, look at location and everything like that. And just it's whether if I could give you a shot, if I could give you a shot six feet and if you can give me a shot six feet from the net. I'm just picking a random number out. But it's a guy coming in clean stationary. I will take that over the cross ice pass to a guy from 35. five feet just because an NHL goalie should stop that shot. That is just the reality. And I think that's kind of, I think that's another kind of thing defensive. This is just me having watched a couple of games last night and watching games. I see sometimes now too where teams kind of defend

that. This would be a great question for Belfrey next time you have them on or next time I talk to ex-a-coach about it seems from my amateur eye on this teams seem are more committed to taking away that slot pass right now and so okay that's going to give more guys who may be average shooters okay you can take the shot from six feet that's a higher expected goal because they're not because they're closer but they're not making that they're not attempting that pass across because they're basically be given that shot it's i don't know that's that's just an observation that i'm pulling out of my head right now just thinking and I'd actually like to talk to someone a little more at depth about it. And now, of course, I'm saying it's on air and again, probably going to sound stupid, but fine.

Well, I don't think this is happening on a team level on the inside because I think everyone is still so results oriented in the NHL that that's all that really matters. It's like what your most recent outcome was. I think as fans may be, though, in terms of the conversation, like part of why we care about expected goals is because of the predictive nature of the process, right? where it's like we know the bounces will come and go over the course of a season, all things being equal, we think things will converge to a certain point in terms of percentages. And so if you're consistently generating good looks, unless you just have

horrific finishing talent or just have a year from hell where you just keep being unlucky, you will start to score goals. Whereas like if you're scoring, like we talked about the Red Wings, a ton of goals and your whole thing is, well, we're shooting really well. That's not really a thing. Like, there's very, very few shooters who can consistently beat the averages. And so that's why we care about it. Now, as fans, I think we're too, like, programmed to care about this stuff from the lens of if a team, like, Nikita Kutraov the other day against Carolina was on the ice for, what, eight goals that the lighting scored on 10 shots. Yeah. There's no, like, wow.

he was so lucky what a high odd-eye shooting percentage like that should never be a thing it should be this is even seeing that this guy was on the ice for eight goals this is remarkably efficient this is a this is reflective of his offensive talent and so that like that and how sometimes we call teams like power play because they generate so much on power play as if it's a bad thing it's like every team in this league would die to be a power play merchant because that is a very easy way to score offense and that's the best way to punish other teams for being undiscipline. Yeah, well, and it's, it's, there's things that we sometimes say, well, the yeah, but, right? And it's, um, like I wrote about this in Datton for, a piece for down in Dallas today,

about just kind of their team where the stars are just, they just get out scored in the first period. Every single year, it seems like this year, it's happening again this year. They're like plus 22 or something like that in the second period. Like, it's one of those things where obviously you don't want to be. someone someone says like oh yeah like i brought up the you don't want to be bad in the first period but you also don't it's not like like well we'll take me an average like no you still want to be good in the second period too like it's like it's not like okay well we'll move to media we'll move from bad to mediocre and good to mediocre so we just go to mediocre on both ends like no you're just

trying to get rid of the bad and still keep the other thing good yeah i think we should all strive that we get at everything um okay sean this is a blast we've got to get out of here we're we're way out of time. Everyone go follow Shaw and Shawshadiro, read his work at Substack and Eapy Ringside. You can help us out by smashing that five-star button. Go check out the YouTube page for the show where we post some of the film clubs we do, Hockey P.D.O. guests on YouTube and join the Discord as we talked about. If you want to get in great questions for future mailbags, like that one that we spent 50 minutes agonizing over about off-side reviews, Discord is your way to do it. So just smash the link in the show notes. And that's it for another week of shows here. We'll be back next week with plenty

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