The Hockey PDOcast - Konecny, Tippett, and How Philadelphia is Flying off the Rush

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Darryl Belfry to talk about what the Flyers are doing tactically to generate so many rush chances this season, and how players like Travis Konecny and Owen Tippett have benefitted from it. 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.

2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name's Dimitri Filippovich, and joining me as my good buddy, Daryl, Belfrey, Daryl, what's going on, man? Ready to go again, Philadelphia. Let's go. Let's do it. We're going to do this Flyers team that I've been talking about quite a bit. I wrote an article on E.P. Ringsside about them this week as well. It is a team that approaching the 50-game mark is sitting in a playoff spot, but I think far more interesting for our purposes and the reason we wanted to highlight them today is because of how

they're doing it. We're going to talk about two players in particular that I think encapsulate that best in Travis Kineckney and Owen Tippett. This is a team that score logic has at 7.7 rush chances per game this season. The only teams ahead of them in that stat are the devils, the Oilers, and the Leafs, three teams that I think if you're making a list of teams with the most offensive firepower, especially atop their lineups, they'd be right up there near the top of that list. The flyers certainly would not be, especially heading into the season, yet here they are. And I think what they're doing tactically with a lot of these players is allowing them to play that way and is very interesting. And so I think that's why we are

going to do them today. What sticks out to you? I sent you a real treasure chest of clips, probably over an hour reward. We're getting to the point now, you know, early in the season, I'll send you five, ten games worth of clips. Now we're getting near 50 games. We're approaching full feature film length for some of these. What stuck out to you in watching them play, whether it's on a team level or whether you just want to dive into the two players we're going to highlight today in particular?

Well, first off, the more video, the better. I love watching it because the more video you can see, the more trends that really pop out. And, you know, I'll start, I think, with just the flyers in general, their rush chances and some of the things that I see that they do exceptionally well. I think, and I've said this before,

whenever you're looking at any given situation in hockey, my practice is always to try to look at what happens in the play that is immediately before. So when you look at the rush, to me there's two types of rushes. There's like a traditional rush that comes from the defensive zone and it goes through the neutral zone and in the offensive zone. And then you have a reentry rush, which we're already in the offensive zone. The puck comes out and now you're coming right back in. So in the in the in the traditional rush that starts the conditions for the rush originate from the defensive zone.

And a lot of the success patterns that you're going to see as to why. the rush is successful as it enters the offensive zone is because of work that was done in the defensive zone. So what really stands out for me is how good their defensemen have been at being able to get pucks in good spots so people can make plays. And, you know, we talked a lot about wingers and how hard it is for wingers to make plays in this league. It's very difficult, but it's a, if you can't make plays, you can't play in this league

as a winger. And so all that to say, what really strikes me with this Flyers rush team is, one, they get numbers very consistently in the rush. They have a D that are hanging around. They're not necessarily leading the rush, but they're within striking distance. And if they see an opportunity to get involved, they'll get involved. That's good. And then their ability to use the full width of the rank. I think that that, that, is another hallmark of teams that excel off the rush. When I was like, we mentioned the Leafs, for example,

like one of the things that always stood out for me as it relates to studying Rush and trying to find out who is really good and why. The teams that change sides in neutral zone are the teams that I think have the most success. And that originates with a good, you can't change sides in the deal. defensive in the offensive or in the neutral zone on an entry unless you've made some good

inroads in the defensive zone to get there like that that can't be a tough pass and the guys got to make like a tremendous play you're just not going to have success with that the defense have to be able to make plays to forwards that give them a chance to make the next play think that's what stands out for me as the number one thing and then there's several more things we can get to. Well, it's interesting how they're creating that. And I think you sort of touched on that. I really want to press down on that, then really unpack it fully is what they're doing tactically to manufacture these opportunities to get the numbers, right? Where I think they're allowing or encouraging their wingers like a Kine or a Tippett to play very aggressively high in a

defensive zone, right? And so what that means is they're competing and they're challenging pucks up high near the blue line when defensemen get them or in other high leverage points on the ice where turnovers or changes of possessions are not only more likely but also can be more impactful. And so what that's allowing them to do then is if you're connecting and you're challenging up high near the point and you either get your stick on the puck or you block a shot or you disrupt the other team's opportunity enough where all of a sudden now someone behind you as a teammate can recover a loose puck or get a rebound, you're already in an advantage of a way. just starting position, right, where if you're anticipating it right and you read what's happening

and he's got those instincts clearly, he's got a leg up on whoever the defender he was just challenging was and he's in a spot where he can now leak out, get behind the defense and all of a sudden you're cooking assuming that whoever your teammate is against the puck is able to get it to you, right? And that's, I think, how they keep getting behind the other teams D. We always hear about this battle of staying above the puck, right, or trying to defensively make sure that you're positionally sound that. way, they're able to sort of disrupt that by playing this way. Now, we're going to talk a lot about connecting and Tippett and what they've done from production perspective. But I think you hit

the nail in the head there where not only their defensemen, like Travis Sandheim, was playing a ton of minutes this year, or even Cam York, Jamie Drysiel, they're hired Sean Walker, who is having a phenomenal season. These guys are getting very involved in these plays. But also, we got a shout out Sean Couturee as well, right? Coming back in his 30s now, nearly missing two years worth of action with multiple back surgeries and essentially just picking up where he left off and being such a dominant sort of one-man wrecking your defensively has allowed a guy like Kinecti to play this way because if your wingers are going to be that high, all of a sudden now your center has so much more room to cover defensively. There's

such bigger gaps that they have to fill in. And fortunately for them, I think the reason they're able to get away with it with that top line is because Kuturie is very uniquely suited to doing just that. Yeah, and I think all of this, like there's no accidents in all this. Like this is, this is a very connected type of thing. There's not just one thing. It's several things. And what you mentioned about their winger playing high on the D, the effect of that is that it often forces the defenseman to send the puck down to the corner more often. Because there's no clear lines, he's a little nervous about turning a puck there, over there. They have guys who are very good and quick. Like the two guys we're going to talk about are extremely fast in getting out

and they are a problem if they win a puck and or put you in a foot race. That's a problem. And so what happens is the puck comes up to the point. If you're not high on them and you're just trying to get into a shot lane and you're not really threatening them or you're not pressuring them. Well, then they have time to assess they might be able to use their partner. They might be able to skate the puck a little bit, maybe skate it to the middle themselves. They might be able to use like an interior pass. Like they don't have to shoot it. They can do a lot of different things in the offense to extend the offensive zone, even though they're not necessarily threatening the net, but they're not feeding your transition game. When you get up on a up,

up, right up on a D in the in the offensive zone, many of the, will have to move it quickly. And so by moving it quickly, you reduce the amount of time that the other teams forwards can get to the net. So now the box out's way easier. You are going to force more sifter type blocks, which are not that hard in terms of like velocity. So now your block shots are also easier for forwards to control and be able to lead forwards

and defensemen who are in the second layer blocking. That's easier for them to not only block the shot, but also. also turn the block shot into transition. And then more to what I was speaking about earlier is now the puck gets sent down. When it gets sent down, when you know it's going to get sent down, your D and your center can play much more aggressive at winning that puck. So now the poor guy in the corner, he's now getting jumped. So now he gets jumped, you get jump with numbers,

and now it's a quicker transition, exit, and then bang, they're gone. So the way in which they're playing in the defensive zone to, force these problems and and then and then you know invariably there's going to be situations where there's a bubble at the point the puck bounces there's uh the defenseman doesn't handle it cleanly or overhandles at the wrong time or tries to do too much and the next thing you know tip it's tip in the puck and he's gone and and that's what's happening and so a lot of this stuff like I said there's no accidents with this if the team is this good this long There's a reason why.

And what I see is that defensive zone and the way they're playing in the defensive zone is allowing a lot of this other stuff to happen. So the last point I'll give to you on this is when you play the point that high on the strong side and you force the puck down to the bottom, when the puck turns over, who is the easiest outlet pass? Well, it's going to be your weak side defenseman. So you've stopped it in the strong side. So now your weak side D gets it.

So that puck's now in the middle of the ice. So now people start getting moving. So now you can use both sides of the rate. So it just feeds into adding another layer of player into the zone because that guy's not under pressure. He makes a play. He continues on. He's within striking distance of getting involved.

Now they make an entry. Next thing you know, they go dot wide to that D who's on that weak side, again because he was able to stay in and do things. So whenever I see like a situation like this, where we really want to focus in on the entries to me, and there's a lot to talk about, I still have quite a few things I'd like to get into on the rush of what they're doing.

But it all starts in that defensive zone. If you're not doing well in the defensive zone, you will not have a good rush game. Well, it's great that you brought up how that the weak side defender is going to all of a sudden become much more involved that way. And I think, you know, a guy like Sean Walker, the reason why I brought him up is because he's been very trendy. If you look at his underlying metrics, they're all off the charts. And I think especially as a right shot D, he's someone who they essentially got as a throw in as taken on his cap space in that deal.

They made this offseason with the Kings and the blue jackets. And I think he's going to be very popular at the traded line if they decide to move him and contenders should be interested in him. But his ability to sort of play that way where he's turning these two on twos into a three on two or a three on three into a four on three. into a four on three by filling that role is a really important part of this and how it all ties together. I think the reason why I'm so intrigued by this and why I wanted to talk it out with you was it reminds me a lot of what the conversation we had about the Panthers a couple weeks ago when we did the Barkoff piece. But in highlighting a guy like Keney here, it's almost the other side of the coin,

right? When we were talking about how the Panthers play so aggressively all over the ice, but in highlighting Barkoff, we were talking about how he fills this more defensive role of fill in that space the way Kuturiate is doing, whereas the byproduct of that is that allows the winger then to be very aggressive and capitalizing on that open space that's created, how Kine is doing. You look at the stats, those two have posted together. I mean, if I want five, they played 400 minutes, shots are 250 to 160 for the Flyers. High danger chances, 90 to 59. They're absolutely dominating. And I really, I like this conceptually, right,

because there's been a lot of talk about how the Flyers are still at the start of the rebuild. how there's not that much high-end talent on this team offensively yet, right? And they're sort of trying to plan ahead for when they do get that infusion of talent. But often we see these younger, less skilled teams at this part of their organizational cycle go the opposite extreme, right? They try to slow it down, make fewer mistakes, kind of grind out games and avoid getting into track meets with more skilled teams, whereas this Flyers team has done the exact opposite, right? They've sped it up. They've sort of artificially, I guess, created this environment where all of a sudden they're just letting their players get out and run and try to make up for whatever talent deficit they have by giving them higher scoring opportunities in terms of these rush chances.

So I find that very fascinating. Well, how much easier is it to sell work ethic by preaching like, let's get aggressive off the rush? Because you're sprinting the rank. Then you've got to get, you know, one of the things I love about this. Flyers team and when you really watched all the rush clips, one of the things I think that really stands out is they go through the middle of the ice like nobody's business. They are come, they have somebody coming through the middle of the ice who is aggressive, who's going to land at the net. And they are coming to attack the net. It's very much a funnel going to the net with

these guys. And, you know, when you're going to be that aggressive and you're going to get out in transition and you're going to sprint, it's a lot easier to then talk about them sprinting back and getting back above. And, you know, then you can talk about connecting the rush to the offensive zone, connecting the rush to the offensive zone to then reentry. And then now you're talking about like, we want to control play. We want to control play, which all, it sounds like a great idea, but it takes so much what's what. It's a lot of work. Like that's a lot of work. So, you know, Torz is famous for bringing his guys in early and he has all these tests and he wants them, you know, his primary things, I need you physically fit. And so the guy's like, okay, well,

yeah, everybody's physically fit. What are you talking about? Like, no, like the way we want to play, you need an extra layer of fitness because we want to go for 82 games. Plus, we want to be in the playoffs and we want to be sprinting the rink. You need to be ready to go. So it's a lot easier, I think, to sell, I want you to work. I need you to work hard. And yeah, we might not have the quote unquote top end talent, which is a little bit debatable. I think at this point, I think there are some guys there that do have a lot of real top end talent and some great upside. But it's even more to the fact of like culturally they're playing fast.

They're playing a fun brand of hockey that players, all players want to play that type of brand. It doesn't matter what type of player you are. You want to play fast like that. It's way more fun. and that I think that the players can get behind the ideas of playing like an honest effort game, 200 feet, which is really 400 feet because he's asking them to go up and down, up and down. But they're landing at the net. They play really hard.

And they get in behind you. And they're always a threat. It doesn't matter. You know, you've had the puck in their zone for a while. Doesn't matter. They're a threat. And I think that that's a. huge aspect of what they do. So not just what they're doing in the defensive zone,

not just do it, not just what their work ethic is and how much easier it is to sell work ethic when you are trying to build a rush oriented team and you kind of let the horse out of the barn. Then you force them to come through the middle of the ice like they're charging through a line and landing at the net. Those elements. And then you have the side change, which also gives opportunity for numerical advantage. Actually, one last point on that before one of the things I really liked

about their D joining is their fourth guy is not reckless. And what I mean by that is oftentimes and early on when there was such a rage of trying to get the D involved in the rush, what would happen is you just leave yourself so

wide open because the D would be so committed to going on the rush that by the time the rush landed at the net. You had all four guys below the tops of the circles and then now the buck doesn't go in and now you're defending a two or three on one going the other way and you're actually giving up a better chance than you tried to create with your numerical advantage. And try to get in trying to get a numerical advantage, you give up a better one. And then that that shies coaches away from wanting to encourage defensements to get involved in the rush. What I like about the flyers is he,

that fourth guy is involved and he he makes a decision and then he falls back. So on the entry, what you'll see is he's there. You can scout four people in the rush and he's involved if they want to go dot-wide. He's there. But as soon as the plate crosses center and it's clear he's not going to get the puck, he just folds back. And so they're not giving up those, as many of those counter-cham. that you would expect with the young team

because they're figuring out the decision-making rules on their entries, and they obviously have clear rules about rules of engagement. When these are the conditions, then you're free to engage, and this is how we're going to do it responsibly. So we're not giving in trying to create a chance, we're not giving up a better one.

I think that's a really important point with them. Can you tell that we have a lot to stay on this? I feel like every time we start at one point we wind up going down four other rabbit holes. I apologize. No, no, I love that. This is the beauty of the show.

Have you worked directly with any torts guys over the years? Yeah, I've had guys who played four torts at different times, but they've never been, like, they've never had a dog house. No, I've never been in a guy. I've never been with a guy, had a guy who was directly playing with him at that time.

Yeah, because we're going to do Connect Me and Tippett here today. And I think the one other uniting thing between them is they're very straight line for better or for worse and a lot of their attack, right? Whereas I was very interested in potentially even doing a Morgan Frost, and there's been a lot made this year of how he got in towards his dog, especially early in the career, early in the year, right? And they were wondering whether he was going to be one of these players who's going to be around for a long term.

And I think he's really turned it on here of late, but he's much more of an east-west guy, I'm opinion. He's got the pace to play north-south, but he wants to make sort of high-scale plays, which I think can be viewed as a bit more high-risk in that regard. And you see it. I mean, he's flashed so much skill when I watch him play, and he makes such beautiful setups for others. But I can sort of also see why a guy like Tippett and Kinekney are in such good graces, whereas a guy like Frost might get in a bit more trouble in that capacity. Yeah, I mean, when you watch the flyer team, it's clear that the goal is to get through the neutral zone in a flash.

And then after entry, they want to really have excellent net drive to be able to try to find a way to get the puck to arrive at the net. And so between their own blue line through the neutral zone to the net, they want that to happen as fast as possible. And there's very little margin in terms of guys like trying to pull up or do all kinds of funny things. Like they just don't really want to do that. And one of the reasons why, and this is where players like a guy like Frost could run into trouble, is reason why is because when you get a guy who slows things down,

they end up getting too many guys too deep in the zone. So you have, you've said, we're sprinting. Everybody's flying. When we're in the neutral zone, we are flying. Then you have the rules of engagement like I was talking about. Now you get a guy who gets in the zone, he kind of slows down, pulls up. Well, now it's affecting the speed of the rush. And so if that guy doesn't deliver the puck at the right time, like he can slow down,

but he can't slow down the rush. and if there's an effect that he's slowing down the rush and not delivering the puck when it needs to get delivered, he's going to run into trouble because that's what's going to create risk. And whether he turns the puck over or not, he's still creating unnecessary risk. And so that's where like guys like Patrick Kade or Panarin or, you know, the real true artistic pull-up guys, the reason that they're so successful at pull-up is, and when you look at Colorado, with McKinnon, who's one of the best pull-up guys in the world, they don't slow down the rush. They make plays to keep the, they, they slow down, but they don't slow down the play.

That's key distinction. Yeah, I'm fascinated by it's kind of the concept of movement fast versus playing fast, right, and sort of making those decisions quickly so you don't get others in trouble. What I mentioned just a tie bonus and then we're actually going to get into Connect Me, What I said less talent than others. I like a lot of individual pieces here. What I meant was it's so like their profile right now statistically is so extreme in so many directions. And part of it is just a byproduct, the way they're playing to, I think, cover for some of those flaws and then accentuate their strengths.

Where I mentioned the Russ Chan stat. They're sort of middle of the pack at 515 in scoring, but they're 30th on the power play. They're 29th in shooting percentage. And I think that's where you see the manifestations of maybe less. finishing ability, but then they're amongst the best, they brought the best on the penalty kill at turning these rush opportunities when the other team turns the puck over into odd man breaks, the result in scoring opportunities. I think a great example of this was that game, they played against Colorado last weekend

where I thought watching that, they were the better team, they controlled the pace, they got more opportunities, they badly outshot them, they got more chances, but the other team had Nathan McKinnon and Miko Ranton and they don't. And so their opportunities were easily converted into goals, whereas they had to sort of scratch and claw and stack together so many plays just to get their opportunity. Let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll really get into the two players we want to focus on here today and what they're doing that's really caught our eye this season. You're listening to the Hockey Pee-Docast streaming on the SportsNay Radio Network. Okay, we're back here in the HockeyPediocast, joined by Daryl Belfrey as we do our weekly deep dive, Daryl.

We spend the first half of the show outlining the tactical approach of the flyers and what they're doing. doing strategically to put some of these players in a position to see the way they have. Now, let's really dig into the specifics of how those players are executing and what they're doing out there themselves to capitalize on the opportunities they're creating. Let's get into Knecne. He's got 22 goals now, which is tied for 14th most with Drysaito point Foresberg, hints. Since the start of last year, he's scoring at about a 40 goal pace. He only really had that one drop off in 21, 22, where he just scored 16 goals in 79 games,

but a lot of that appears to be shooting percentage driven where he was out like 7%. And this year he's around 14. That's where he's been for the entirety of his career. It seems like that's who he is. And despite all this, he's just got the two Powerblade goals, right? He's got five on the PK, but he's been so lethal, both short-handed and also at five-on-five. And I think there's so many interesting qualities to his game that I think we can expand on here when watching his film. So what stands out to you when watching Travis Kineckney play, especially, um,

looping in everything we've talked about this fire system they're using this season. Well, what's fascinated me about Kinecti is that he's, when I studied him two years ago really intently because I thought he was one of the best guys in the National Hockey League around the net in the offensive zone. He is very good around the net. He excels in body position. He's extremely good on a back wall. His walkouts and rap type stuff, his ability to fall off the heels of the goalie. He's tough his nails. He lands at the net. He gets great body positions. And he's he does. And he's got great hands around the net. So I was studying him for the purpose of like, try to figure out what he was doing around the net that was really interesting. And,

and so that's kind of what where my impression was of him. But then when we were talking about doing this and of course, seeing him be able to excel so well in the rush game here, with the with the flyers one of the things it stands out for me is that he does have uh he does have a magic shooting window uh he has a favorite place in which he wants to shoot the puck from if he's a little bit outside of that area he's that he's for sure you know there's there's areas of the ice and situations of the ice that are more favorable for him offence like off the rush and he tends to stick to those when he gets beyond that it becomes problematic which is where I think you see some of the, some of the drop off or that he needs more chances,

because he's not always going to be able to manufacture those. But if you can get a guy like him driving the net, which he does extremely well, he's much faster than I had given him credit for. Like he can really get up and skate when he wants to. And he is an excellent passer, particularly a board to board. But what really stands out for me for him is when you watch him off the rush, he's often the first, he's often the guy in the D's that makes the first play. So when I say first play, I don't really mean the first play. I mean like the first play for him. So he's a winger. He gets a puck from the D some way somehow. He's on an exit. He makes a play. Usually it's some type of a play to the middle or even better

play to the far side. But some way somehow he is still involved in this rush and he gets the puck back a awful lot of times. And that I think is a big secret to his particular rush. success. I think one of the more underrated quality of this game because he's scored more goals and then that assists both last year and this year is his playmaking chops because you sort of highlighted a few of the areas that he sort of likes to gravitate towards there. But if you look at all these opportunities, I mean, he is setting the table in many of these instances for his teammates and he's just not really getting the benefit of those pucks going in. Like he's only got five secondary assists so far pretty much if he's getting assist. It's a great A one that he almost

single-handedly set up for its teammate. So I think he's very underrated in that regard. But yeah, I mean, his ability to play fast this way really, really sticks out to me. And I think in watching him, you know, he's only listed at like 5, 10, 170 pounds or something. I think right now he plays so strong on the puck. And I think his technique in sort of 50-50 loose pucks and one-on-one battles against bigger defenders is really important to study for a lot of players that are built. like him because if you watch him approach it, he's so good at initiating contact upon approaching

to the park and then getting that inside position and leverage and then being able to come out and wrap it around or step out and make a play, right? You highlighted there. He so constantly wins these battles against defenders that, you know, have 25, 30 pounds on him at least and he makes it look very easy. And I think a lot of it is sort of the timing and the technique he uses to get that leverage on them. Well, one of the things I think he does exceptionally well is he wins the battle before it's a battle. Like he he is able to get a pre-touch contact that allows him to win a lot, win the better line to the puck and allows him to escape with the puck. And I think that's one of the things I feel like he does best.

And he's he's very strong. And more than that, I think he's explosive in his contacts. When he hits you, he's going through you. And he's really trying to knock you off balance. He's not just trying to slide in front of you. He tries to knock you and jar your balance. And I think that that's a big key to not only his success, but like you say, he's a guy to study for that.

Like he is in contact and his ability to win those loose pucks and secondary pucks. And then when you really want to see him, Excel, take a look at him doing those things around. the net, it's even more impressive. Like he's like a, it's like a badger in front of the net in the way in which he approaches the net front body position. It's quite impressive. I mean, his, the motor on him just never turns on. Right. And I imagine, you know, that's part of the quality. I think Torres probably appreciates most about it. But it also, I think, very perfectly captures sort of why this Flyers team has been so cautious this year in so many ways, like his ability to

sort of just keep going and keep creating some of these opportunities. I really love his game, and I think, you know, he's in a very featured role on this team. Like he plays on the top line with Gutriere. He gets a lot of the looks on the power play. And I think maybe he's a bit miscast in that way where I think he would just absolutely take off if he got to play with like a true superstar playmaker who did a lot of the offensive heavy lifting and allowed him to just focus on a lot of this stuff. But that's not his fate right now. And so instead he has to kind of make do with what he's got. And he's been very productive doing so. But I just sort of bring that up because he's got one more year in his contract after this one.

And I think the idea of whether they keep him long term or whether they trade him at some point between now and then is going to become a big story eventually. And man, if I was a contender that already had those stars in place, I would be moving heaven and earth to try to get him because he's just absolutely phenomenal for a lot of these things he does so well. Well, it's not like the miscast part of it is awesome for player development because he now has to find different ways to manufacture. He's got to, you know, maybe leverage this rush game all of a sudden this year because this is where the team's going. And he normally likes to just hang around on the back wall and at the net and work off the forecheck. Now he's doing so much work on the on the power or on the on the on the shorthanded off. the rush. These are aspects his playmaking. I did not think he could move the puck quite as well as he does. He finds people. But the real telltale sign of a guy who is really developing his ability

off the rush is what I call a shrinking ice. So he's moving quickly in the offensive zone off the rush. And from the blue line to the goal line, every step you take, the ice in front of you is shrinking. and the ice behind you is expanding. So the most amount of ice, most amount of ice and the biggest threats are behind you. But you're flying. You're going as fast as you can. You're at top speed. So what's your ability to process when the ice is shrinking?

The ability to be able to find people behind you. That to me is an important skill. And when you see a guy like connecting you, like I said, I didn't think he was as good off the rush what jumps out at me is he's excellent in shrinking ice situations. As the ice is shrinking, he makes a lot of plays to people who are directly behind. Yeah, really fun player. I imagine a very fun player to play with as well. Do you have any other notes on Connectney or do you want to move on to Tippett now here

because I've got a bunch of stuff on him as well? Yeah, no, those are all the things I have. I have a lot more on Tippett because he's, I think a lot of people are more familiar with a player like Connectney, but this Tippett, I think is a guy that I think we should dig into. Absolutely. I think one of the more fun players to watch this season, especially over the past couple weeks,

it feels like he's really coming to his own and figure it out how to leverage a lot of the clear physical tools he has into like functional stuff on a more consistent basis. And it's a shame he got banged up recently and he's missed the past couple games. Hopefully after the All-Star break, he's able to come back and be, you know, physically unimpeded because before that he was playing at such a high level. He scored the 27 goals

last year, but I think the way he's played this year has been really eye-opening for me. And his ability to make a lot of these plays off the rush has tied into what the flyers are trying to do. But man, he, when he gets going, his ability to accelerate and turn a slight opening into just fully blowing door wide open and then making a high level play where he's on the move, stacking together a bunch of different high-level skills with the puck on a stick into a scoring opportunity has just been a treat to watch, honestly. Well, what he has that I think is really good that has jumped out to me is he has long speed. And what I mean by long speed is he covers a lot of ground.

He gets a real, he's a big guy and he gets extremely low. and his strides are exceptionally long. He's like Eichel that way. Eichol is as long speed. This guy's got long speed. So when he takes a stride, the guy beside him probably has to take one and a half to stay with him. And that's fascinating.

So he has great between the blue line separation skills are exceptional. If he gets a step, he's gone. You're not catching him. He's just that. He's got so much power. And he's a true, like, power skater in all sense of the work. When he takes a stride, he is covering ground. And I think that that's interesting.

And the other thing, too, is his crossover at top speed changes speeds. Like, he can be skating a specific speed as he comes out of the zone. And then he drops a crossover and you see his speed elevate. That is, it sounds like a great idea and everyone should do it. but it's really difficult to do when you can skate as fast as he does. And it's usually reserved for those really high-end skaters that those guys are able to do it. And most everyone else has to kind of skate at like 80% and then they leave a little bit. So then when they're able to change speeds.

This guy can play at full speed and then his crossover will take him to another gear. He has the same number of five-on-five goals as David Pasternak this season. on a permanent basis, he's second in shots per minute, third in shot attempts. His volume has been really jaw-dropping. And I think that's kind of what I'm talking about in terms of him doing it on a more regular, consistent basis with increasing frequency. I think players like this are always so interesting, not only for me, but for I think fans in general, right, because he's a former top 10 pick. That was a while ago now. He obviously never really got an extended opportunity in Florida. He had like a few kind of shortened seasons and never really was able to stick

in that top scoring role or deliver on what you think of from a top 10 pick. And now he's going to be 25 in a couple weeks. And since last season, essentially, he's been putting it all together and finally capturing a lot of that magic that made him that 10th overall pick. I'm curious for your take sort of on like that development process, I guess, especially for guys like this where you mentioned that long stride, like you watch him play. and at that size and with that speed and then the touch as well that he's demonstrated. It's such a mouthwatering package of power forward skills, but it feels like sometimes it takes a while for these guys for whatever reason

to figure out how to do that more consistently at this level. So he is a player development trap. And that's what you're describing. Here's why. He has every skill. He's big. He's really fast. he's long.

He can really shoot it too. He has an absolute rocket. So picture this. He's 18, 19 years old. Comes up into the NHL. He's shooting everything. He believes in his shot. He's trying to establish himself in the NHL.

So he sprints out. He gets the puck and he shoots it. Sprints out, gets the puck, and he shoots it. The problem is this league's really tough to score. It doesn't matter how hard you can shoot it. It's really hard to score this league, especially when you're an on-stick shooter. So he does this at a high volume,

and he needs a lot of volume to score a lot of goals. So he comes up, he's only playing whatever 10, 12 minutes a night when he first comes up. He's not playing with high-end players offensively to start. And he's just, every time he gets it, he's going and shooting. He doesn't look like he has tremendous hockey sense when you do that, right? In his mind, he's thinking,

I got to stick to my strengths. What's my best strengths? Well, my best strengths are skiing and shooting. So those are the two things he's trying to do. The problem is it doesn't fit well because he needs the volume, but he's only getting on for 10 minutes a night, 12 minutes a night. So the volume isn't there. So he's not able to do it at a rate that it would make some sense.

So he does. He's not making any plays. It doesn't look like he really has the hockey sense at this level. And so he becomes a player development trap. The real truth of it is he needs confidence to stop shooting. He needs more ice time, not because he needs more ice time. He needs more ice time so he'll stop shooting and make more plays because he knows that there's going to be another play coming up.

The less he plays, the more he's going to feel like he just needs to skate and shoot. And these guys, there's a lot of guys like that who never get out of that. And they never find their way. He was lucky he was able to get traded and moved out. And he gets into a situation where they are in a spot where they're like, yeah, we can give this guy some ice. We can give him 14, 15 minutes of ice. And now he starts to settle down. And in my mind, he's making way more, way better decisions.

And it's not because he's all of a sudden become a lot smarter and he's got way better hockey sense. It's because he feels more secure in his position. that he doesn't need to shoot every shot. He doesn't need to establish himself, doesn't need to leverage his so-called leverage his strengths. He's able just to play. And when a guy like that is able to just play, he'll start to read the ice a little differently.

They'll start to make the plays that need to be made. And all of a sudden you see him start to come unglued. So the reason he's taking off, because now his ice time matches the shot volume that he needs, but also he's not just shooting everything. he's making a lot of plays because he's on the ice enough that the frequency of event gives him more capacity to be able to do the multiplicity of skills without feeling like, oh my God, like I got to establish myself in the lineup.

I better stick to my strings. That is real. That's a real thing. And there's a lot of kids that are like him that never get out of that because, you know, they never get that second look or they get traded somewhere that doesn't have this. They also don't have the capacity to be able to put him in. And that's what's happened to him. Well, and ironically, a player who in this current form we're seeing from this season

would be absolutely perfect for the Panthers with the way they play right now. But unfortunately, because of the climbing, that never came together. And everything we were talking about at the start of the show about what the wires are asking their wingers to do and how they're asking them to play, all of a sudden, that is playing into his strengths quite a bit as well, right? Where he's getting so many more opportunities to actually sprint from blue line to blue line, and make plays. And now he's also getting higher usage up the lineup play with better players

and getting to do it more frequently on top of that. And I think that's why it's all coming together. What are the next steps for a guy like this? Because I think what he's done this season, he's already done at a level that rivals pretty much any player in the league, right? Like the clips you're seeing in the things he's doing are pop off the page. And it's like, all right, he's doing this remarkably well. This is obviously very good.

but sort of as a 25-year-old, what are the next few wrinkles you can add to your game that give you more substance when a game slows down or if you get on a team that isn't asking you or allowing you to just sprint up and down the ice every single time you're out there? So my mind immediately goes to what's his takeaway rate in the offensive zone? So that would be number one. So how often are you able to use your speed? And the takeaway rate, the reason why that's important is because that would tell me how fast he's skating after entry.

So after entry, shots taken, what happens to his speed then? A lot of players like this, what happens is that after entry, they built so much speed. He does such a great job of getting behind the D early in the entry. So that's what makes them really dangerous. Once the play lands at the net, if it doesn't go in, now, a player like that can decelerate to the point where they just become at the same level of speed as everyone else. So one of the next steps in his development is to continue to play at a relatively high speed or learn how to toggle on and off to play at higher rates of speed at different times in the

offensive zone to be able to take advantage of middle ice to accelerate off the boards in the offensive zone become better half court player. But then that translates that. speed translates into more takeaways, second chance opportunities, track kills, second F2 takeaways, like those types of things all of a sudden become big. And now he's extending the offense of his own time of his team miss. So that'd be to me, that's an obvious number one. Improve your speed in the half court game to be able to not necessarily to be better offensively necessarily, but to be better in being able to win more pucks back,

to keep the half-court game. The other thing, too, that you don't see enough with him is his re-entry game, in my mind, which should be a point of emphasis because he could be so good in the track, and it's related to his tracking, be better in tracks, so now you win the puck back and turn it.

And a guy who's a great example of this is Nathan McKinnon. Nathan McKinnon's re-entry game might be the best in the National Hockey League. He's re-entry game is ridiculous. And the reason why it's so good, one, he's outstanding as F3. He's in that position a lot. And his tracking game is off the charts. He wins a lot of bucks back through the track.

He bumps it to the D. He finds his route. He gets the punt back and he is gone. He's coming back at you faster than he came back, came at you at the beginning. That's a model of success of a guy who wasn't like that all the time. Nathan McKinnon had to learn to do that, learn how to, learn how to, apply his speed in different ways. That's the next step for a player like TIPPIT.

How can you use your speed in different ways to become more effective in different aspects of the game that allow you to then control the game much more effectively? And then the last piece with him is his shot is so good. I think it could be a lot better if he would discuss. when he's going to pass or shoot differently. He is very intentional. When he's going to pass, he passes. And it's clear.

Everyone in the building can see that he's going to pass. When he's going to shoot, it's clear. What I want to see is much more of hide his shot inside of a pass motion, hide the pass inside of a shot motion. I think that those two things would really help him take his shot much more effectively. My two things I had for him are related to exactly what you said, and you can tell that we've been doing these every week for a season now. One is use the threat of the shot and the scoring ability to start making plays for others and kind of setting the table a little bit more,

and part of that is that disguise and intention. I think that'll kind of go hand in hand. And the other is more movement in the offensive zone off those half court sets. And I think that ties in what you're saying with, I think sometimes you can get very stationary when the play says, settles down and the rush doesn't work or it's off a face off. And in being stationary, all of a sudden then when he has to accelerate, he accelerates very quickly, but he's doing so from a negative position, whereas if he had been moving more and he's been more involved that way off the puck, all of a sudden, he's obviously open for more set plays as a shooter, but also then once they lose possession of the puck, I think he's been a better spot to utilize that speed, to win

Pucks back to loop back and then re-enter the way you said. And so I think all that ties together. But I think what we've seen from so far this year is obviously very tantalizing and really fun to watch. And I'm curious to see if he starts to incorporate that and continues his development. Darrell, we've got to get out of here. We're out of time today. I'm going to let you go and get some rest and recover. This was your flu game. But you performed admirably well. And we play through pain and any of the show goes on. And so I'm sure the listeners appreciate it. I know I certainly do myself. You and I are going to get back together early next week and we're going to do the Matt Barzal episode we promised the listeners last week. I wanted to do Kinnikny and Tippett

here today while they refresh on my mind after I got into the weeds with their video and unpacking all that. But we haven't forgotten about Barzal. He's had some big changes to his game this season from where he's played to how he's playing to now his coach more recently. So there should be plenty for us to dive into then. In the meantime, the listeners can check you out at Belfrey Hockey Online. and they can watch us do these episodes together every week on YouTube where I also post all of the clips we're referencing throughout our chats. It's a lot of fun stuff in there.

It's clips that you won't see on any other highlight reels gone through all their shifts this season and highlighted some of these traits we're talking about, some of these plays that might not even result in goals and you won't see them elsewhere, but kind of illustrate the points we're trying to make and I think are going to help sort of cement these ideas in your mind. You can also join the PDOCAST Discord server where there's always good conversation going on and where there's a channel for you to specifically post questions or topics you'd like for us to cover in future episodes.

So thank you for listening and we'll be back soon with plenty more of the HockeyPediocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.