The Hockey PDOcast - Lack of Cohesion in Detroit, and the Elephant in the Room in Dallas

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to talk about Detroit's recent struggles without Dylan Larkin, and the lack of cohesion between the Red Wings NHL lineup and drafting under Yzerman. Then they talk about Jake Oettinger's troubles, how Dallas can fix it, and why they need to do so before it's too late. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitry Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich and joining me on this lovely Fridays, my good buddy, Sean Shapiro, Sean. What's going on, man? Not too much, man. It's feeling pretty good. It's actually a good day. And this isn't the BS answer, as we talked about when we came on the year last week. I'm actually feeling pretty good right now. That's awesome to hear. Yes, we are back together. Reunited. after last Friday's rollicking to our post-trade deadline show that we did with our pal John Mattis. I think that was, I told you this off the air, but in my nine years now of doing this podcast

and saying nine years of doing this really makes me feel old and nostalgic, but it's the most I've ever laughed. And I think it was the perfect combination of like being so happy that the deadline and everything that entails and all the work that comes with it for the couple weeks leading up until it was over. and also at the same time being so tired that I couldn't really restrain myself or keep myself in check.

So we were just letting them fly. I was feeling sassy. I was making fun of people in the newspaper industry. I was doing all sorts of crazy stuff. And people really enjoyed it. I actually had a few people, including people who work for teams in the league that reached out to me and were like,

wow, the three of you were in real fine form on that Friday evening. So hopefully the people that listened enjoyed it and got to have some fun coming along for the ride with us. It's going to be less. jam-pack of a show here today, certainly, but we've still got some fun topics on the docket to discuss. And I want to start off with the Red Wings,

a team you and I speak about quite often, considering that you live there, and you get to really be around the team a lot and immerse yourself in it. And obviously, they've had a very roller coaster ride of a year so far where, you know, they were on that massive high kind of leading up to the trade deadline

where they kept winning games in exciting fashion and everyone was sort of jumping on the bandwagon. and it's come crashing back down Earth a little bit here. They've lost seven in a row by a combined score of 36 to 12. The last five of those have come since Dylan Larkin's injury, where they've mustered just nine goals as a team in the five games without them, including two, which I thought were particularly backbreaking and sort of soul-crushing defeats to Arizona,

a team that hasn't really been able to beat anyone other than the Red Wings over the past month and a half. And now we're getting to this point where I think the law, Of Larkin is certainly one thing and we can discuss it, but also it's kind of raised a bigger conversation in my opinion of exposing some of the existing flaws in the roster construction in the lack of problem solvers, this personnel group has and kind of has brought us back to, in my opinion, sort of square one where we were at with this Red Wings team before that run they were on previously. So I think there's a lot to unpack here, but I think it's a very interesting

situation going on in Detroit right now. Yeah, it's really interesting. Last night, last night's one of those games too where you never want to lose 4-1 to the coyotes but it's also the type of weird game where that loss feels so much more because of everything else that led into it right when it when it when it's if you lose that game to the coyotes and you've won two of your last three or whatever it's you move on but when you've lost when it makes it a seven game losing streak it starts to feel like so much more um it's also the spot where like Derek Lond brought this up yesterday. Yeah, it was yesterday, where the whole concept of,

at the beginning of the year, he always downplayed expectations. Like, are we a playoff team? No, we're trying to be playing competitive games in March. And so from the silver lining coach spin on this right now is, well, the Red Wings are exactly where they're supposed to be. This is they were supposed to be right in middle of this hunt and everything like that. Well, that obviously ignores the fact that a mere seven. games ago they had a 10 point cushion over over over the islanders and and now i mean they play buffalo tomorrow and geez that feels like uh that's a huge game because sabers win that one and all

a sudden we're having interesting fascinating sabers conversations um this this team is it's kind of funny to see how it gets it gets painted that way right now where it's the sky is effectively falling right like that's what it feels like this team has gone from you think they're there. They didn't sell at the deadline. They kind of felt like this is the spot where Steve Eisenman can act like this team is going to be a playoff team. And now you see this and you see basically essentially one piece taken away in Dylan Larkin. And good teams and good coaches aren't supposed to have the entire, all of the wheels fall off when you lose one player. It's okay to lose a game or two or whatever to account to that. But when you look at how the entire team is not respond

to Larkin being out, it's a pretty bad, it's a pretty bad sign just for the entire roster. And honestly, it's the first kind of, for me, it's the first time we can really actually have questions about Lelon as a coach. First year, you're like, I, we don't know. We're still learning it. This year you come in and this is the spot work your coach is supposed to coach through this. And it's, the Larkin injury has really exposed them.

And if it's, it's not good. Well, I think you, like, listen, you could have reasoned. I've been argued that they were due for some regression regardless prior to this, right? And I think people certainly did. You looked at the team shooting percentage, right? And kind of the comparison to that and the underlying metrics, which we know are a bit more predictive for future success. And they stuck out as an outlier in that regard. Now we've talked on this show a bunch in terms of the depth scores, the one-shot talent they had a sprinkle throughout the lineup up front, a variety of reasons that I think they could have exceeded whatever that baseline expectation was by a little.

and maybe not as much as they were, but certainly enough to keep winning games. This feels like it's kind of been like a, you mentioned sort of removing that one piece. It kind of feels like this like doomed jenga game, right? Where I think they probably would have come back down to earth regardless, but pulling out that one foundational piece, just sort of expedited that process. And then everything just immediately crumbled, right? And that's why just watching them play right now, that most recent game against the coyotes in particular, it sort of showed and highlighted all of those nasty, truths and issues with this team right now and kind of painted them in a light where it just looks wildly different than the team we saw sort of globe trotting against the capitals a couple

weeks ago and they put eight goals or whatever on them. You mentioned the Steve Eisenman sort of not selling at the deadline and how that marked kind of a departure from where they'd been previously, especially compared to last year at this time. It's also interesting to me though that if you can looking at it through the other sort of perspective, this was a team that I thought would make some buying moves at the deadline, considering where they're out of the time, right? And we talked about how like a Jake Gensel would have made a lot of sense on that second line playing with Raymond and Comfer,

Wichnovich, any sort of scoring winger that could then bump Rasmussen down and give this team more depth would have made a lot of sense, not just to sort of reward this group for what they've done this season, but also build on it and potentially even have a longer term piece in place for beyond this season. They obviously didn't do that, and Eisenman sort of noted that they felt that, through like internal improvement and guys potentially coming up from Grand Rapids in particular

that they could get those upgrades over time without paying the price to do so. And that seems like a great idea in theory, but then when you sort of apply a bit of scrutiny to it and try to look at it in practice, it doesn't really hold up, right? And the reason why I say that is last night I was sort of pointing your attention to this, but whoever's listening to the show and enjoys listening to the PDOCast but isn't in the Discord server, you're missing out because essentially a lot of these sort of longer form thoughtful conversations are happening there every single night. So get in there if you enjoy this stuff. But some of the listeners were sort of pointing out the track record right now.

I remember was hired in April 2019, the volume of picks they've made in that time, particularly in the higher range of the draft, and how little contribution they've gotten from those players. Those are the players they're referencing in Grand Rapids, yet we haven't actually. actually seen them come up and produce at this level. And so that's sort of this mismatchen theory versus reality that's going on with this Red Wings team. Well, and even the player who has, the Red Wings say all the right things about Jonathan Bergeren.

Let's use Jonathan Bergeren as an example. And Bergrin was not a Eiserman pick. He was a second rounder in 2018. So he was not a Eiserman pick. they say all the right things about Bergran, but they don't say the things that show they actually like him. It's kind of that weird space where it's like you say, oh, we've got these guys who can work our way up and everything like that.

But based on the read of usage, body language, everything that you ever see, every data point I get as a reporter, trying to read how Derek Colon thinks about Jonathan Bergern, I don't really think he likes him as part of the long-term plan. He just doesn't see him as part of the thing. And that's obviously we heard all the rumblings this year of Berger and being frustrated that he was in Grand Rapids. And at some point, he might be on the block and get moved and something like that. And I honestly, he's the type of guy.

I wouldn't be surprised if he gets moved because I feel both Eisman and Leland are probably in that. They talk about these guys coming up to be who can help make the team better from Grand Rapids. Okay, Simon Edvinson, I think would make this team better right now. That's on the defense event. That's fine. I think we can all agree upon that. but the rest are kind of a mix of guys who I don't see how they make the team better or are a couple years away from being able to do so.

Like they brought up, like Austin Zarnik comes into the lineup last night from Grand Rapids and take nothing away from what Austin Zarnik has done to kind of build an NHL career. But if Steve Iserman was talking about looking at Grand Rapids and Austin Zarnik was the reason that he's going to do it, then you have a problem in how you're, manager is is managing his assets there. So I like I get the philosophy. Oh, we have the pieces we're going to have to spend, but those pieces aren't going, weren't going to help Detroit make the playoffs this year. Unless you were going to all of a sudden have a huge push away from, well, we're no longer, we're going to, we're going to stop trusting veteran defensemen.

And we know coaches will trust veteran defensemen until the day they die. So unless you were going to have a pivot away from that, I don't see how it's going to happen. I mean, and you brought up the, I think it was one of the readers, one of the users in the Discord brought up how they haven't had a second round pick play in the Eisenman era. Like, I wrote about Trey Augustine today for a story over at E.P. Rinkside, we're at a spot where Trey Augustine may be the first second round pick to actually play an NHL game for Steve Eisenman. Like, that is actually a possibility of how this, this franchise's second rounders could go. Well, let me lay out the stats for you. So, Eisenman took over in April 2019. And since then, the Red Wings have made seven first

round picks, 12 second round picks, five third round picks, eight fourth round picks. They made 27 draft selections in the top 100 in that time. Now, Mo Cider, sixth overall, Lucas Raymond, fourth overall, Simon Edmondson, six overall are the three picks they've made that have actually made appearances in the NHL, Marco Casper, who they picked the eighth overall played one game, right? The only pick outside of the top 10 they've made in that time to appear in a single NHL game for the Red Wings, is Elmer Soderblum, who they took in the sixth round in 2019, and he played 21 games for them last year. Now, there's a couple obvious caveats there. One, I think people will point to sort of this general organizational philosophy that the Red Wings have had for years in terms of letting their prospects marinate in the minors and sort of develop there before they call them up as opposed to developing in real time up at the NHL level.

They've been bad this entire time. And so sometimes, like if you're a good team, I think you feel more of a rush to promote and incorporate whatever young players you have that are succeeding because you need that production for cheap on ELCs, whereas the Red Wings haven't really had to deal with cap issues or trying to find cheap production during this time. And also, we're not going to necessarily hold it against picks who were made last year, right? Like you mentioned, like a trade Augustine or other players they've taken recently. It makes sense that they haven't played the NHL yet. So we're not going to hold that against them. But still now, we're going back to 2019, and you're just, despite this massive volume, and we all agree that this is the way that you should be conducting a business as a rebuilding team, taking as many lottery tickets as you can, for whatever reason, none of these guys have made meaningful contributions yet. And I think part of that can be traced back to the philosophy they've had from a roster building perspective with their NHL club, where the past couple years, they've gone out in pre-agency and spend a bunch of money on veterans who have been blocking them.

a lot of these spots, right? And it's not just that they're spending salary on those players, it's that they're giving them term as well, right? And these are players who, let's take like a David Perron, for example, right? I like David Perron. He's a good player. The issue is, though, is like he's good enough that he's going to block a young forward from playing because they're probably not going to be better or more trusted by the coach than him right away. But also, he's not good enough where it's going to make a big difference for the team moving forward, right? So, you're get into this awkward spot that like a team like the Seattle Cracken has been in as well where you just have a bunch of good NHL players, but you're not actually having a lot of difference

makers. And so how does a young player play over those guys so that he can potentially have a longer runaway to provide that difference, right? And so they've sort of forced themselves into an awkward spot there. And we'll talk about the blue line as well. I think that's where the biggest issues have been. But it's sort of a lot of self-inflicted errors in my opinion. And it's not an accident, whatever your mileage is on whether they're not taking the right players or they're not developing them, I think the fact that they just haven't had an opportunity to actually get the show us anything. I think they've also, the other thing they've done to it is it goes deeper.

And it's, I think the Red Wings also overreacted to how poorly the Griffins were the past couple years. And so I'm a big proponent of, I want teams to win games in the AHA. I'm a big proponent of, I think winning begets winning. But at the same time, the AHA playoff. format now, you just have to not be bottom two in your division to get in. The playoff format is now like it's, I think it's 24 teams now get into some sort of playing at least. So to me, like there's players and I think these guys are fine if you're a

building team that is, but right now, so Jonathan Bergren's up, Austin Zarnik's called up. Before, in theory, right? In theory, before Marco Casper or, uh, Carter Mazur who dealt with injury this year, before they, in theory, get the chance to play in Detroit this year, you have Zach Aston Reese, you have Tim Gettinger and Matt Luff, all playing in Grand Rapids, who you look at the depth chart,

you look at how they play, they are taking those top roles in Grand Rapids, and they are also going to be the first guys to get called up for Detroit. And I'm not saying you don't need guys like that, but you don't need four of them. You don't need, like, it's kind of you take what Detroit did when you add these.

NHL players that block things. And then you then sign similar players. And to me, the more I look at it, it's an overreaction to it. The Griffins were bad. We don't want our NHL team to be that bad, so we've got to bring these guys in. Like, Tim Gettener's a 25-year-old who has been kind of called up here and there every once in a while. I wasn't actually played a game with them, but still is a, like, that's an experience where how often do we hear other NHL teams be like, oh, we're going to call up this guy just

because it's the experience, even he doesn't play. Like, there's these other little moments that the Red Wing seem to. to not be giving to young players that the only reason some of them got them is like Marco Casper got a game last year because they were out of the playoffs. They gave it to them because they were out of the playoffs. And it's just not a good juggling right now of finding a way to give, to actually develop this quote unquote Eiser plan for how we're going to win a cup in four years from now.

Like that's that. I'm not seeing that at the same time. You're buying your lottery tickets. then you're just hoping that they, that they pan out without out actually putting some work into them. Yeah, I, yeah,

they're essentially just like planting seeds and then not actually watering it or, or give or like leaving room for the plant to grow. Yeah, that's, that's a much better example than lottery tickets because it's not like you can change a lottery ticket once you buy. Yeah, or there's a bought,

bought a plant and then close the blinds and like, aren't watering and it's like, all right, I wonder why this isn't thriving in this environment. Yeah. I think the most damning thing is clearly the state of the line, right? Where this year they're spending a roughly 11.5, an actual salary on Ben Chirot, Jeff Petrie, and Justin Hull. And now, Hull, anyone that watched him last postseason or

listening this podcast could tell that he was already looking pretty cooked at that point and wasn't the player he had been previously when he thought he was underrated and very useful. And now he already can't crack the lineup. They're trying to trade him at the deadline. He still owed pretty significant money at $3.4 million for each of the next two seasons. The Ben Chirot and Jeff Petrie pairing is unusable, in my opinion, yet they're the second pair, and I don't really know what they're trying to do with them at this point beyond just having two veterans out there. And the biggest issue, it's twofold. One is, you mentioned Simon Edvinson.

He should be playing on this team, but the path is kind of blocked because of these players they have. But also, it's sort of forced them into our conversation that you and I had about Mo Cider a couple weeks ago, where they're essentially problem dumping everything at his feet, right? Where it's like, well, we don't have better options. So you're just going to have to have this horrific usage where you've got like sub 40% offensive zone draws this season at 5-1-5. You're playing against the other team's best players every time. And we know you're drowning. And that sucks because you're a 22-year-old defender who's still at an important developmental stage in your career.

And we're stunting your growth as an offensive player in particular because you never get to have offensive zone shifts. But it's in the best interest of this team right now because of the personnel we have. And that is unacceptable, in my opinion, when you're devoting that much money, it'd be one thing if you just had a group of Simon Edvinson's that you had drafted or young players who you were trying to incorporate on the fly. And then you're like, well, mostiders are best option because he's the most developed at this point. And that's what we're going to do.

But instead, you brought all these guys with a specific purpose of providing insulation. And none of them are actually doing the accomplished feat. And so who's to blame for that? it's like taking a it's like you you have a mo cider was the beverage right and you you bought all these coolers and then all of a sudden instead of actually putting the drink in the cooler you just let the cooler sit there and then you wondered why the drink got warm in the sun that's there you go that's that's a good metaphor yeah i so here's where they're at with him i'm just trying to look at the numbers right now yeah okay 4008 defensive zone draws

for Sider this year of 515, 264 offensive zone draws. And I get the idea that, like, if you're going to be a number one defender for a team, you have to round out your game, right? And we know that defensive part of it, like, is going to take time and all that. It's all well and good. And we've spoken about how he prides himself on improving the ship conditions for his teammates, right, trying to get them in better spots territorially that might not necessarily show up in terms of events, but can help their other guys.

I get all that and that's noble. The issue is, though, as a 22-year-old defender, this is the time where he should be experimenting, testing the limits of his game, right? Embracing whatever offensive instincts he has and trying stuff with a puck and really ironing that stuff out moving forward to be a number one defender, and he's just not getting the opportunities really to do that

because of the needs of this team. And that's, I think, frustrating for me because whatever happens the rest of this year, this is a much bigger conversation moving forward, right? Like, they've attached so much to this player, I assume they're going to spend a lot of money on him this offseason on his next deal. And he essentially needs to hit in that role

if this is going to become something more than it is now for the Detroit Red Wings, right? Like the amount on his plate right now in terms of how this organization, is going to look five years from now is massive. And they're not really investing in that enough, in my opinion, based on the way he's being used right now. And it's tough to justify when you're losing seven games the way they have most recently.

It's a bit easier to swallow when you're winning and you're going to make the playoffs of the first time in almost a decade. Yeah. And I've had almost a whole cider show, I think, a couple weeks back, you and I've heard quite a bit about them. It's one of those things where I look at it. And obviously the other team I pay super close attention to is Dallas. It's funny to look at how the Stars better insulate Miro Heskinin

than the Red Wings insulate Mo Sider. Like, it's hilarious to me. Like, one of the things that Stars fans are angry about right now is how that Yanni Hacampah and Esseland Della are playing on the penalty kill. And one of the reasons, Mirro Hachkinin, is like fifth or sixth on the stars when it comes to short-handed time for Dallas, where Sider, I just plucked it up right now. he's got a full 25 minutes of additional short-handed time over any other defender in Detroit. Like, even if you just want to use the simple special team's element of it.

Like, if one of the players who people like to throw into the Norris conversation and Hachkinin can be sheltered away from penalty kill time and you can look at it that way, why are the Red Wings not doing the same thing? When in theory, all you have on your, on your defensive is veteran players. who are good at taking up space and killing penalties in theory. Like, it is, it is, it's a malpractice of the usage. Yeah, yes, I know that. Like, I think we know what that's going to look like. This team is trying to win games. That's the problem.

And I think it's an eliminating, I think that's an important distinction you made there between Dallas. Like, I just did a show with Del Felfrey on Logan's Dankoven. And he was making the point of how the reason why the stars are able to keep sort of drafting these guys and then just dropping them into their NHL team and immediately having them succeed and becoming sort of this model franchise for doing so is because they've already got this infrastructure in place

of players who can bring them along and sort of mentor them and show them the ropes of how it's done as they're doing in a real time. And the distinction there is those are players who are still really good. Like the reason why Joe Pavelsky can help Jason Robertson the past couple years is because Joe Pavelsky is still really good.

It's one thing for him to put his arm around him on the bench or between games on off days and sort of watch video with him and tell him what to do. It's another for him to actually do stuff on the ice that practically helps him succeed. Similarly with Jamie Ben, he's obviously not worth the salary he has right now. He's not the player he once was, but he's still a very useful player in terms of these little things he does that help get Stankov and Johnston into space so that they can attack more often. and the Red Wings don't really have that. Like I like some of the players they brought in like comp and comp for good players. Peron has been very useful for them the past couple of years. But in particular with these blue liners, you keep bumping into this issue of you're just

bringing in all these guys who are theoretically good mentors because they've been in the NHL for a long time. But they're not actually good enough to help Mo Cider in reality by actually taking away some of this tough usage so that he can thrive. And so what are they ultimately accomplishing? like how is how is jeff petrie helping mo cider right now i don't think there's beyond i guess maybe giving them some good tips on where to eat when they travel to different cities i don't i don't know like is that the extent of of how he's helping him because i certainly can't track anything on the

ice as as a reason for for what he's done to help him so far you're right like there's not there's not much more to add to you look the the red wings blue line and defense corps it's built this way. It was they, they doubled down and they went all in on this and maybe like in their heart of hearts at the end they all thought hey

one of these guys will surprise us or they're lying to themselves on all four of them and they were proven that they were actually lying to themselves on all four or five of them like that's just the reality of this. It's I don't really have much more. No, no I think I mean I'm the Petrie comparison I think we've got it.

I think people understand it, but it is also something that is worth pointing out because I do see a lot of like slat, like most Ider is taking a lot of flak right now. And I think certainly if you're going to be viewed as in that upper echelon of defenders, like you still need to overcome your circumstances, right? Like great players turn bad situations into good ones and still produce. And so that's an important step for him to take. But I think accounting for the context of like the unfit. very situation he's sort of been forced into because of mistakes other people have made

is worth pointing out here and sort of can't be understated in terms of its impact on a season. So I think that's an important part of this. And the other other thing with cider, like the question about this, and this is something that you and I will look back on five to 10 years from now and figure this out is there is the, are they hurting what he could actually become by not letting him like, are we missing you? I've listened to you and Belfrey talk a lot about how players, one of the things that's always popped in my mind is when you guys did the Mintikov episode and talked about how Pavel Mintikov is getting that chance of Anaheim to learn how to be himself in the NHL. And it's something where 10 years from now,

Pavel Mintikov will be a better player because the ducks didn't force him to be something else at 19 years old, right? I wonder with the Red Wings insider, I wonder five years from now, 10 years from now, we'll look back and be like, you know what? He's a great player because of this, or will we look back and be like, this was a guy who had a chance to be much more, but because he was forced into this role, he was forced to this play style, he never developed this other part, or he never did this. In the long run, what are you missing right now?

And I think that's something where that's where coaching and GMing become very fascinating because Derek Hollande's job right now is to win games. And if you're going to tell me in a very simple sense, get into the playoffs, Derek Hollande has to play Mo Cider in this role. That's his job. but Steve Eisenman's job is the one to say like, okay, I, I failed my future number one defender

by not putting him in a spot where he could be an even better number one defender when he's 26, 27. Yeah, I mean, there's a long list of players who similarly had a lot of promise and their development was just stunted and they never really got a fair shake of to become the player that could have been if they had been put in a different situation, whether it's on a different team or use differently, right? And so there's also something kind of tragic about this idea of like, I'm sure the Red Wings mean well, but also they're clearly viewing it as like, this is our best option right now and we are trying to win games to get back into the playoffs. And that's how you get

into the spot where you're giving them these minutes, right? But in reality, I think it's much more realistic that they will be better off in the long run as a team if they invested this season as an opportunity to make sure that Mo Cider was the best version of himself. Even if it meant not being quite as good of a team this year, they would clearly be better offered in the long run because him turning into a superstar defender is going to move the needle for them as an organization much more than whatever he can sort of accomplish with his defensive zone heavy, number one assignment usage that he's eating this year. So I think that's something worth considering, but also something that I'm sure we're going

have plenty of time to revisit and talk about moving forward. Sean, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll pick it right back up with you. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right, we are back here on the hockey pedo cast on by Sean Shapiro. Sean, while we're on the Red Wings, which we spoke about before we went to break, we're going to move on and talk about other stuff around the league as well. But while we're on that, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Daniel Sprong because

he's obviously a player who's very near and dear to our hearts and certainly gets a lot of love here on the podcast over the years, but also you kind of got to speak, not necessarily with him, but kind of with people around him about his particular, his shot and sort of the efficiency of it and him as a player and why he's so interesting. And I think a big part of it is this sort of almost like legendary confidence at this point where I truly, in everything I've learned about him, I fully believe that he thinks that he's the best player on the ice. And he should because that's how that type of confidence is how you get to the point he's been in. And it provided a lot of laughs over the years.

But it also, you can sort of see it in the way he shoots and the sort of reckless abandon. He does it with. And so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that and the piece you wrote on him because I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. Yeah, he's a guy who constantly is like he's the guy you would play like NBA jam with in college and would take the heat check shot every single time once they crossed half court and was convinced every single time it was going in. Daniel Sprung as a shooter in the NHL and it's like I just just went to look up the most recent number

like it's it's it's it's hilarious you look at the wings shots this year like the Brinket leads the team with 182 Larkin's got 166 Sprong's got 147 he's got 25 more than Raymond he's got 32

geez I hate when you make me do math on this show he's got 32 more than David Perron and he's got And he's, so he's third on the team in shots. And like when it comes to time on ice, the only, the only people that have averaged less ice time than him are since departed,

Klim Kostin, call-ups like Austin Zardick and Bergerid, like, and I guess Christian Fisher is the only other player. So you got the guy who's the only regular, the lowest ice time of the regular players, and he's third on the team in shots. And one of the things about Sprong that's fascinating being around him

is he exudes that confidence. He feels like he, like he feels like every single shot's going in. And the confidence, it's interesting having watched in practice this year, because it's the first time I've covered a team where I've been close to enough to watch in practice on a regular basis.

And he scores in practice on goals that most NHL players aren't supposed to score on. Like it's, and that's not a joke about Red Wings goaltending right now. That's actually just a, that's just a reality of, he has the type of shot where he will score from below the circles from a bad angle.

He will score from a foot into the zone in practice. And it happens all the time. And I've talked to all the Red Wings goalies about it, about how Sprong just has a shot that they put right up there with Posternak and Matthews and Bedard's shot. And it's wild to kind of think about a guy who plays in this fourth-line role. It has that confidence. It has one of the most elite tools that we talk about,

and hard tools to find in the world. and is scratched last night for ironically enough in that game against Arizona Yeah and I think he was like a minus four or something in the game before and typically when you're a four-fine player who has that type of game You don't have a lot of wiggle room right Especially when a team's trying to make changes unfortunately

It's a team who as I mentioned has scored like nine goals in the past five games And he would theoretically be a player who could help with that So it's a bit ironic in that regard But yeah, I mean, 43rd this year in 515 points per 60. Last year he was fourth. And as you mentioned, he's 11th on the Red Wings in 515 usage amongst forwards. This year he was 13th on the Cracken. And putting together one of the more fascinating individual careers, in my opinion right now, he's 27, right?

And so I think there's still a long road here ahead or a few more chapters for him to write. But the fact that he's already on his fifth team, the fact that he was so productive last year, you had the crack in along with him and Morgan Geeky essentially. We're like, yeah, you know what? You've got this $800,000 qualifying offer, but we're just going to let you go. And then he signs a one-year deal with the Red Wings and is back on the UFA market again this summer. And I just, I can't get enough of all Daniels Braun content. But also I want to, I want to front row seat to following where this journey goes because he is one of the only players I can ever really recall that had that confidence to look off Alex Ovechkin on a two-od-one score.

and laugh in his face. And that's something that is a very rare quality that he is one uniquely equipped to pull off. Right. So yeah, just a fascinating character. And I love Daniel Sprong. And I'll leave the rest of Jeff Merrick because I'm sure on his show, you will talk more about him in the coming days and weeks. But I wanted to loop him in here to the Red Wing stuff while we were on that subject. Okay.

Let's talk about the stars. Your other team, a team that we also talk about a lot on the show. And, you know, we've spoken so glowingly of them recently. here because they've gotten so much better, right? They bring Matt Dushaed in in the offseason. He totally ignites that line with Sagan and Marchman. They acquire Chris Tanev for an incredibly reasonable price. They promote Thomas Harley to top pair.

They promote Logan Stankovin from the HL. We've covered all this stuff, right? And I think it's very easy to like what they're doing. They've become a model franchise for drafting, developing, and sort of trying to cover two timelines here where they're competing for Stanley Cup again this year, but also are well equipped to continue doing so for years down the line because of the ages of these players and their contract statuses. Now, the elephant in the room here is that everything they've done, all the praise they received and all the expectations

we've put in front of them in terms of that Stanley Cup contender status has sort of been done under the premise that the goaltending was not only not an issue, but an existing strength for them moving forward, right? It's like, all right, they've got this guy who's in his mid-20s, who had a rock star 2022 series against the flames, who was awesome last year in the regular season, who kind of wilted as the postseason went on last year. But it was very easy to chalk that up to way too much usage, you know, very tough conditions in terms of like the heat that he's playing in, that late into the season. We all talked about like how much weight you're losing. as a goalie when you're doing so and just all the physical complications they can come with that.

And it's a very difficult circumstance. It's very easy to be like, listen, that's not a reflection of who he is. We're still very confident in this guy. Now, we come into this year, and I think everyone keeps waiting for him to turn it on and bounce back and be the goalie that I think is routinely regarded as a top 10 goalie in the league. Yet there's really been no indications since, like, the first five games of the season, essentially, that he's actually been that guy for any prolonged period this season. And now we're getting into a point where we're about a month away from the playoffs,

and the clock is ticking for him to finally regain that form. And obviously, this is coming off the heels of a really, another bad start last night. And it's not the, like, I like looking at, I like looking at Rob Volman's really bad start metric sometimes to see just kind of how many times a goalie is quote unquote losing his team. a game and I was look and he had another one last night so but ottinger's a guy who started a little bit last season but there was always the spot where he never had the first three years of his career he was pretty much the guy he was solid enough where you didn't ever have to really worry about him losing you a game it was the high floor higher ceiling type thing this season so far so he's got in his

43 40 in his 42 starts he has 10 quote unquote really bad start statistically. And for those who don't know, a really bad start is 85%, 85% state percentage lower in a game. And that's, I believe, when Rob did the math on it, it was if a goalie gives you that type of start, you have a less than 10% chance of winning. So, 25% of the time, Jake Ottinger is giving his team starts where his team has less than a 10% chance of winning with him and goal. And that is, that is horrible. That is, and that is the type of thing where you look at who you look at

who the stars might get in the first round or whatever right? If you like, okay, I've, say Dallas Winnipeg or hypothetically maybe even they get Vegas in the first round. Vegas is still in that wild card spot or something like that. And it's like this is a guy who two years ago

was the only reason Dallas was in the series against Calgary to now you're wondering, can he be consistent enough to even not have two duds in the first four games and put our team into a hole? And there are obviously factors that people will try to apply to it and look like he dealt with injury this year and that's fine lots of goalies deal with injury he um you look I went through and looked

at at a piece earlier this week over at the over my my site shapshots looking at one of the fact of the matter is he's just getting completely exposed high blocker this year just complete teams are just finding that hole and from if I can find it looking at film you know the other You know, an NHL pre-scout is finding it. And it's very weird to look at this stars team and think, well, are they going to get the goal tending when that's the one thing we thought they had? It's, it's even last year. Like I looked at the playoff run last year.

Like, I was just overusage. This year, it's not overusage. It's just, he's not good right now. Well, I think the issue is teams are beating them high blocker. They're also beating him glove side. They're beating them low. They're beating them five hole. they're beating him everywhere, unfortunately.

That's been a bit of an issue where, like, he started off really well this year. If you look, the first 10 games or so, he only really had one sort of not great game in there. The rest was really, really good. Since then, in about 35 games, he's got an 8.85, say, percentage. Sport logic has about minus 10 goals he will well expected this season. And this is a stars team that I don't think is necessarily as stingy defensively as they've been in the past. And part of that is just because they play much more aggressively, offensively, up the ice, right? And for a team that creates so much in transition, you're going to naturally give

some stuff back. But there's still fifth and expected goals against. Their sixth infuist inner slot shots allowed. Like, I still think it's a very advantageous defensive environment. And he simply hasn't been good enough. And I think considering he's 25, and we've seen him do it before, there's plenty of reason to still feel confident that it's in there and that he could easily do so in the playoffs where he just turns it around, strings together a bunch of good games and the stars go on a run. But for them to do so, like, I think a lot of everything that we've sort of bestowed upon them has hinged on that fact, right? It's like everyone's just sort of taking it for granted almost in a sense where it's like,

well, they have Jake Odinger and he's really good. And so they got that figured out. And now that everything else is coming into place, this is why this team is right up there with all the top teams in the league as a Stanley Cup contender. And I'm not sure just based on what we've seen this season, that there's evidence to suggest that like that's something that we should just be taking as fact without like further exploration or concern, I guess, right? And listen, it's goaltending. There's other contenders who either haven't invested in the position and have big unknowns or have players who certainly

aren't, you know, playing at a high level themselves. Like, I don't think we talk about the avalanche and we're like, oh, they have Alexandria. They're fine. Like, these teams have issues, certainly. But it's just, it's not the way we frame the Star's conversation for the past two years. And that's changing a little bit when you watch a game like they played against the devils where he cost them that game really, right? And so that's kind of tough. It's one of those. And I even wrote a piece about this before the season started.

The stars are a team with after Ottinger's usage last season. And with the state of their, they were a team that needed a, who knows how they would have made it cap wise work. But they are a team that would have benefited from a three goalie system right now. Not playing like they were the team that last year, one of the reasons Ottinger was overworked was because Scott Wedgwood wasn't healthy enough to be there all the time

and so they called up in the other Matt Murray there's two Matt Murray. One's not technically in the NHL right now, but neither of them in the NHLH right now, but the other Matt Murray, the Dallas Stars Matt Murray, Pete DeBore didn't trust enough to play games. And so when Wedgwood was hurt, Ottinger had to play more games than he should have. When Ottinger was hurt, Wedgwood had to play more

games than he should have. So both goalies got overly used. Same thing happened this season where they overused Wedgwood when Ottinger was hurt, and now they're trying to make up for it and cram Ottinger in. And this is just a perfect example of the stars from a management perspective either needed to, A, get a goalie they trusted to play NHL games, or B, just realize that maybe you can actually play Matt Murray, who actually, in his only start, has a shutout against Minnesota of all pieces. To me, it goes back to a lot of this is mismanagement more on, and it goes to both coaching and management because goalie decisions are one of the few things I think

where GMs and coaches actually work together on decisions. I think that's one of the few spots. And this is one where the stars from the beginning of the season didn't do them, didn't make the simple insurance purchase of another goalie that would have allowed to fix and have insurance the highest position. The whole Ranger's situation, like everyone was like, yes, it created a hoopla of, oh, who's number one? like what it really was was Jonathan Quick

gave them the insurance for for Shasturkin to get life back together and everything like that. The stars don't have, I mean, maybe the stars don't have that with Jake Ottinger. They couldn't go, they're not going to trust Scott Wedgwood to play

four or five games. And I'm not saying that about Scott Wedgwood's play. I'm just telling you about how I know the stars feel about their goaltending depth. This is, goes back to Jim Nell and Pete DeBore, not before the season realizing we either, A, need to upgrade our backup to a guy

we actually trust to play or B, bring in someone else that we actually trust to play in HL games because we have two guys who got hurt last year. It's, this is, we talked a lot earlier in the podcast about Iserman and everything like that. Coaching management decisions, these are some things that you have to look at them when you're, when you're talking about this stuff. Certainly. And I think that collaboration between like within the organization when it comes to goalies is such an interesting one.

I speak about it with Kevin Woodley quite a bit just in terms of, I think all this. stuff generally falls at the feet of the coach, right? Like I think like any, I've seen a reference like, oh, Pete DeBor has this history with, with, with,

with, with, with, with, with, with, the way he uses them and, and he's not the only coach that,

that's sort of talked about that way where it's like, oh, um, you're either overusing your number one guy or, or, or you're not putting him in a position to succeed by sort of like snarky comments in the media about their play and not necessarily talking them up and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, sort of all of that stuff. it's not a,

simple as that, right? Like, ultimately, the coach does decide who plays and who doesn't, but particularly with goaltending, and especially with, like, mapping out starts and advance, I know that a lot of teams have a very collaborative process between the goalie coach or the goalie department for some teams that they have built out, the GM, the coach, where you're not really allowing the whims of the coach in terms of, because every coach is going to want to try to win every single game that's in front of them, right? That's the way they're judge that they go in a losing streak, they're all sudden on the hot seat, they have a very short-term view of what their own goals are and it's winning the next game in front of them.

And so you never want to give it up, give all of that exclusive power to a coach to say, well, you decide which games the goal is going to start because most coaches are probably just going to want to play their number one guy, 72 times the way we used to see with with Mika Kiprasov back in the day, for example, right? And so now organizations are sort of taken a different stance on that and sort of mapping it out in advance of like, all right, for the next month, these are the games. Our starter is going to play. There's the games the backers going to play, and we'll go from there.

And so I'd be very curious to know what that sort of process has been like for the stars here and whether Ondren performing the way he has, particularly recently, causes you to kind of change that, especially now that you're a month out from the playoffs and you need to sort of tweak stuff and optimize stuff to make sure that you have the best team possible for game one of the playoffs. obviously they care right now because they still want to win the central right and make sure they have an easier round one matchups so they're not playing the apps for example in round one which would be very difficult but ultimately they're going to be judged based on what happens in the postseason and all that really matters is making sure that onger plays the way we know he's capable of at the start of the post season as opposed to what he's been for really the past like three or four months and the other issue with fixing quote unquote fixing goal tending is it's it's not as simple as as telling a shooter on the power play, hey, I want you, I want you a little bit closer to the boards or I want you closer to the slot. It's not as simple as that because obviously goaltending is so reactive.

So if you start, if you're, if you're the star's goalie coach Jeffries and you go to Jake Ottinger, hey, I think you're, you're going to be high blocker too much or whatever, right? Like, and this is hypothetical conversation they have. And it's like, okay, well, now all of a sudden you've put that in, do you, do you start to create a different cheating habit within your goalie? Like, that's, that's the one of the difficult things about goal tending when it comes to, quote, unquote, fixing things. And a lot of the times we see a goalie fixed stuff, what has to happen first? They have to basically be shelved or benched for a bit. Like, the whole Sergei Babarovsky story last year, right? He was unplayable, completely unplayable.

Alex Lyon was the only reason Florida was one of the only reasons Florida made the playoffs down the stretch. He, if eventually, though, after sitting for, with how bad he was, and he comes back and they trust. him and look, he fixed everything by just time away. I don't know, like, if you're the stars, like, if you're saying like, okay, well, what fixed Chesterkin? What fixed Bobrovsky last year? It was time away. And we read the stuff about how the Oilers wonder if they should have done that with Jack Campbell, right? Like, they wonder if they rush to play Jack Campbell too early with Bakersfield when they should have maybe let him just take some time away. We saw it with Toronto with, uh, um, uh, Samsonov, right? When they put him up. Yeah, with when they left, like, for the stars, you're,

coming to crunch time here, you don't have time to let Jake Ottinger step away and take a retreat and all of that stuff. And I don't know what the solution is. And I'm starting to get more worried about it than I would have been two, three weeks ago. Well, you know what complicates that for the stars? And we can't really be sort of hypocritical or speaking out of both sides of our mouth here because I'm pretty sure you and I did a show last year. I don't know if it was around this time or the start of the playoffs, right, when he was playing really well against Minnesota, where we were praising how Uber competitive Jake Gondner is and like how like his mentality right like there was that video that comes out where he's like talking about like all this stuff and like what fuels him

and like just like how driven he is and all this stuff what a force of personality he is and so he's obviously going to be someone who is going to want to like very actively play a role in this turnaround in terms of like I just want to be out there and work on this stuff and eventually I believe in myself and I'm going to figure it out and also he's a big party organization moving forward and you don't want to placate, you know, to those demands or those whims, but you also like need to handle it carefully where you can't just be like, listen, you have no say in this, like, we're going to take control here. But at the same time, we know that sometimes players need to like, you need to look out in

their best interest. And sometimes that might seem like a negative thing if you ask them at the time. But in reality, like you're doing it with a long view for fixing it. And so for the stars, it's kind of like a tricky thing where they, sort of have to do this juggling act where they need to make sure like he's cool with the approach, but also they need to, I think, take a more direct approach here in terms of like maybe reeling it back a little bit so that they can get the best out of him moving forward. So I don't know. It's a fascinating one to follow. Golly coaching is the closest thing in the world of parenting.

That's really what it is. It's like it's the closest thing of the world to parenting. It's figuring out a way to a, get the person to buy it and be, make them think it's their own idea sometimes. Yeah, well, they need to tell him, Jake, if you don't take a day off, you're, you're, you're not going to get dessert tonight. So if you want some ice cream, you're going to have to go not even sit on the bench. I want you to stay in the hotel room, take a night off, play some video games, and then maybe you'll get dessert.

Otherwise, ice creams canceled tonight. Okay. Sean, I'll let you plug some stuff on the way out here. Let the listeners know what you got going on because we referenced a couple pieces you wrote on your substack, which is a great place to go and read about all this stuff. And yeah, let the listeners know about that. And also what if you've got anything in the works right now or what you're kind of cooking up moving forward. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I got the, as you mentioned, the substack. I've got a couple of things going on there this week. I will probably actually, this weekend, I, for the first time, but a long time, I actually bought a ticket to a hockey game for this weekend. I'm going to take my daughter to the PWHL game here in Detroit. So I figure from a perspective there, I'll probably, write something about that just because I think it's important that we cover we start talking a little bit at that stuff and

quote unquote traditional hockey media whatever that is now after we ripped on newspapers last week the obviously over elite prospects and EP rings that we got some good stuff going we have a have something this weekend there in my weekly column looking at a lot of the kind of the relocation expansion type stuff that's come out and making some calls on that and then from a non from a non from a non reading perspective. I got to plug the movie I was in. It's

it's an easy, I got to bring that up the late game. It's now in the United States. It's streaming on Prime Video. We're working on distribution in Canada. It's a beer league hockey movie and if you want to watch it and talk about goaltending, that's a game where the goaltender doesn't play poorly and that's because it's me.

And that's why you also get to have dessert after the show. Yes, I get dessert. I get dessert after the show too. Awesome, buddy. Well, I highly recommend everyone checks that out as well. And you mentioned the expansion stuff. I wanted to get into some of that talk with you and also like just random stuff that I've been thinking about with broadcasts and teams tweeting out paper transactions and everything that comes from that and all sorts of like random little stuff. But I'm going to keep that on my list here. And the next time I have you

back on, we'll get into all of that. Thanks for coming on, Sean. My only plug here is since I'm sure there's stars fans listening because we just talked about Jake Onger. That was a bit of a bleak look at things. If you want a more uplifting one, though, I had a Logan Stan Cove and breakdown with Darrell Belfrey this week. It's up on the YouTube channel. You can go watch that and I'm sure that'll boost your spirits moving forward as we head into this weekend. Sean,

thank you for coming on. We're going to let you go here. And then we'll come back for one more show to close out the week. You're listening to the Hockey PEO guest streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.