The Hockey PDOcast - Leo Carlsson's Rookie Year, Goalies Playing the Puck, and Player Gravity

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to talk about his visit with the Ducks, the benefits of how they're handling Leo Carlsson's rookie season, and how much John Gibson has left in the tank. Then they take listener questions about the value of goalies playing the puck, the Blues firing Craig Berube, and the concept of 'player gravity'. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

It's the Hockey PDOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey Pee-Ocast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich and joining me is my good buddy, Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? Too much, man. It's not actually a lot. It's busy week here. I think we're doing this in the morning, basically, because I've got so much going on today.

So you were willing to get up early in the Pacific time zone to make this all happen. So you're the real MVP today. So I'll kudos to you to make it happen. Well, there we go. listen, if the hardest thing I have to do today is getting up and doing a Friday show with you, pal, I'm living a pretty good life. So I will certainly not complain. The plan here for today, as we do on Fridays here on the show, we're going to take some listener mailback questions from the Discord channel, so we're going to get into that. But I thought a good place for us to

start before we do some of that, and we're going to kind of organically try to mix questions in here during our chat is your trip to Denver, which you had recently. Last time I had you on, we teased it, you wrote up a bunch of stuff for the site we both work at at EP Ringsside. The things that obviously I think I found most interesting and I'm sure our listeners will as well was the Leo Carlson piece you wrote, right? And sort of looking at how they're managing them this season, the pros and cons of it, I guess, are the benefits they're trying to accomplish from sort of mixing in this load management angle and schedule days off, which we haven't really seen much of or at all.

from from NHL teams and top prospects in in the past and I'm sure it will become more of a thing in the future but I think there's so much time packed there so let's just let's just get into that conversation about kind of being around him being around the ducks your time there what you saw what you heard kind of everything that that went on during your trip yeah my favorite part about this Leo carlson story is it's it's one of those plans right that is it's not unknown obviously it's been it's been well spoken about and everything like that but it's it's kind of this uniqueness with who he is we're not seeing for example right like the easiest the best example i think this season is when they played columbus earlier in the year leo carlson was a scratch the game that like

marketing wise oh it's supposed to be fantilly versus versus carlson leo was a scratch because according to the plan that was that was that was part the day off while finility has obviously been playing through every game with columbus and i'm sure you and i will talk about cool, some Columbus-related other things later in the show. But from the beginning, because when I was planning this trip out, I reached out, obviously, to the docs to try to make sure that I could, A, justify spending our pal J.D. Burk's money to make this all happen. The first question I got back was like, hey, we'll definitely set you up with Leo.

Are you good talking with him even if he doesn't play that night? Like, that is the perfect kind of encapsulation of what type of season this guy is having as a number two pick and how unique it is. And for my view of this, sometimes we hear, we always so often hear a plan is from management and you can see when a prospect or young player is saying the right things, but is just doing that because they know that's what their boss, that's the plan their boss as prescribed. Right, they haven't bought in themselves. Yes, exactly. And Leo with Carlson, kind of the feeling I get from speaking with him, and it's, and it's not that he's either that or he's a great liar, and I don't think that's the case.

Like talking to him and hearing him kind of talk about the plan, it sounds like from the beginning, he's been on board with this. And it's something from a player perspective, he's witnessed the merits of it. he's bought into it. He's accepted the fact that, hey, there are the positives to this. And I don't think this plan works if the player's not on board like that. Because it's not as simple as it's easy to be like, oh, he's a healthy scratch. He's not playing. The days, and I laid it out in the story, like a typical day for Leo Carlson on the games he doesn't play,

he's putting in extra ice time before, typically putting some extra ice time after, puts in a pretty hard, grueling workout. that day and then still, and then depending on which day it is as part of the plan, might do something during either right before the game or during the first period. He's putting just as much physical work into his body and more so on a game he's not on a day he's not playing. And it's, and he spoke about kind of seeing the kind of progression of being allowed to the day after. I don't think I actually even got this line to the story. Probably should have, But one of the things that Carlson spoke a lot about was he could do the workout and recover the next day and not worry about it impacting him in a game that night.

And that's something that I think goes a long way where he's, they're trying to get this kid up another 20, 30 pounds of muscle over the next two years. He wants to do that. You can only do, you can beef up if you want in the summer, but he's trying to add that in season, trying to do that. And if you go and lift weights and run a ton and do all of that stuff on a Tuesday or on Wednesday and you're expected to play Thursday night, all of a sudden it's a balance that you're kind of losing. And he's getting that balance here that is paying off. And when he's playing, as you and I have talked about before, he's not being sheltered. When he's playing, he's playing a big role.

When he's in, he's in. It's kind of like a, it's, he goes from most healthy scratches go from healthy scratch to 11th, 12th, 4th. and then like he's so he's top six top line guy or he's out it's it i think it's the way the ducks are handling it obviously everyone's kind of watching to see what happens so far carlson has been the example of you know what this can work and because it goes back to the beginning as we said the kid bought in from the beginning on it and i believe him when talking to him about it yeah so he's played 20 games so far as we're chatting here the ducks have played 28 games themselves i think the, he missed the first couple with that preseason injury.

Yeah. So he's got, he's got six, six healthy scratches, right? So he's been healthy for 26 of them. And it was the plan originally, the plan is actually ramping up right now. It's kind of wearing that ramp up in December. He went from first basically through November, end of November. It was no more than two games per week. Two games per week.

Very, let's put a European guy on a college hockey schedule. now that he's in December, it's more of, he's probably, the plan is three games a week. He can do three games a week. Now, there's some caveats here and there. But like, even hearing him lay it out when we were speaking, like, okay, the ducks have, I believe it's next week. They have a stretch that they go through New York or in the Northeast. And it's, they play four games. He's like, okay, I know I'm going to play three of those four. I'm not going to play one of those. So he's going to get closer to, I think he's going to get closer to 65, 70 games than people will realize because it's going to, it's one of those where he's not going to admit, it's not like he's going to play 50 games. He's going to get closer to the people realize it's just in the buildup and building up to it. And he himself doesn't know whether at some point, hey, there's a full green light or will be, or three games a week will be the max. That's something that I still think is, or he even said is still kind of the parameters to be figured out of how his body kind of grows with this season. Yeah. I think it makes a lot of sense

just in the ramping up angle, right, coming from the European schedule where you're just playing fewer games than you would even if you were playing Major Junior here this past season, like a lot of his other top prospects were. And so I get that. I think the key distinction and an important point to hit is something you mentioned there where when he's playing, like they're playing up. There's no training wheels on, right? He leads all ducks forwards in five-one five-by-ice-time per game playing 1347. He's just behind Troy Terry in terms of power play usage. And he's playing 1808 overall, which is just a few seconds behind Terry for the team lead amongst forwards. You compare that to someone like Fantilli, who is averaging, what, 15, 17 per game, but

is dip below 15 in seven of his past nine games. There's been some games mixed in there where you're like, you look up and play 10, 11, 12, 13 minutes. And I much prefer that where like you might play fewer games, but when you do play, it's going to be full systems go and we're going to legitimately use you as our top line center and we're going to expose you to the NHL that way and then we're going to give you more time to recover after that and then we're going to go back to that well again as opposed to this sort of spoon feeding of like here's 12 minutes and then oh if we get into a high leverage situation or we're defending a lead well we don't trust you in this spot so you're going to ride the bench in the third period like i don't think that does

the player any good and it's weird how we view that as a right of passage in hockey in terms of like young players being integrated as opposed to this being like, whoa, this is, this is just way too exotic for, for what we're used to. Well, like a perfect example. Like I just pulled it up right now while we're looking at it. So the Carlson ranks 15th in the league right now for rookies in average time on ice at even strength. The first 13 are all defensemen naturally, right? Like defensemen average more time on ice. The only forward, rookie forward playing more average time on ice at five on five than him is Bedard. And that's at 15. Baddard's at 1538 a game. He's at 1521. There's no other rookie

forward above 15 minutes per game at even strength. That right there is showing me like, okay, he's being treated the way Bedard is treated in Chicago when he plays. And that's, that's great. If it takes some time to build up, the ducks are willing to embrace this plan, this path forward for them? I think it's great. It's, um, like, if you go, if, if, if you're from a, obviously, because this is a business and it's a sport and you want people to sell tickets, if you get the game that Leo Carlson is out of the lineup, it's frustrating. But at the same time, if you get the game he's playing, you're seeing full Leo Carlson. As opposed to, hypothetically in Columbus, Adam Fantilli might be in the line if you'll see him in warmups, but he might be scratched for the last

15 minutes of the third period as we saw a couple weeks ago. Yeah. And I, I, I lived that for his obviously didn't buy a ticket necessarily, but when the ducks came to town here a couple weeks ago, I was excited to go watch and see him get an in-person viewing. And then I show up to the rink and I'm like, oh, tonight's a night off, actually, for Leo. So that kind of sucks. But obviously the show goes on and there's other players to watch and be interested in. But yeah, I'm very curious about this sort of like, you know, part of it, I think, is the physical component, which you mentioned in terms of the workouts and putting on more muscle and like getting physical. ready for the grind of an NHL season, which is part of this. And the other part is also the

not off-ice stuff, but more so like the learning of the game in terms of you're coming from a different ice surface, right, in terms of the size of the rink. You're all of a sudden totally different product. You have to learn that as well. And I think you kind of mentioned how like these scheduled nights off have given them a chance to sort of like focus on how that all fits on the smaller ice, right? How to find that spacing. I think you mentioned, like, reading the defensive coverage and stuff. I think what's actually been really interesting seeing him the past couple of times he's played is how he's sort of figuring out in real time how to sniff out these gaps in the offensive zone and then like settle into those soft spots and make

himself available and then shooting the puck because he was, you know, I clearly, I just don't have time during the season to be putting in the viewings that our colleagues and at E.P. Ringsside do where that's their full-time job where they're just grinding tape and sometimes it's very sketchy Zapruder film like footage from all of these different leagues, but they're still grinding because we rely on them and then they put together the great draft guide for us every year. And a lot of the stuff I read about Carlson and everything that I became, as I familiarized myself with his game leading up to the draft process was he was sort of profiled as this big playmaking center, right? Like I think in the guide, we had

shades of Anzegopatar and Joe Thornton and obviously those are historically great players, but you can sort of get the mental image of what this guy's going to look like in terms of how he wants to play in an ideal world. And that hasn't really been what I've seen from him this year. Like he's certainly a very smart player obviously has that size, but I just didn't expect him to be using his shot the way he has so far. He's already got the eight goals in those 20 games. He's hit the bar a couple times.

Like he's legitimately just stepping into these shots. and immediately challenging and threatening NHO goalies and making it look like a real weapon. And I think that's been one of the most pleasant surprises for you because that's not something that I expected to be part of the package heading into the season. Well, and the thing that I kind of has been interesting to me and having watched him in person,

and the ducks actually come through Detroit on Monday, so I'm hoping it's not a Leo Walf day because I want to watch him again in person on this, is it ties directly to your point about the show. shot. I've been surprised about how well he finds the soft areas away from the puck as well. Like it's one of those things that when we talk about the cliched movie, you know, from different size ice surfaces and everything like that. And maybe this is a credit to, this may be a good follow-up question for when they come through Detroit of it like,

is there a, is there more to when he's watching, he's seeing those windows from watching the game of seeing where those windows are because and that could have been that could be kind of just taking some of that playmaking mentality and just putting it on the receiving end but that to me has been one of the bigger things where the way a guy this big with this shot just kind of moves into the soft areas finds that spot this quickly um and it's that that you kind of it was kind of fun when i when i was in colorado and i'm watching the game and you're you kind of focus on him directly obviously because i'm writing about him the amount of times you're like wow he's he's always there Even if the puck isn't getting there, he's finding those windows and he's not having to.

And I really want to ask that follow up now that we're talking about on the show of, is it something that he's seeing those windows more because, hey, he gets the chance to step back and program what those windows are by watching a game and thinking about it and looking at a video and seeing it live from up top, things like that. Yeah, I mean, and I've noticed that he's developing a nice little chemistry here playing with Troy Terry who's looking for him. in those windows, Alex Clorin, what do they got back? Like, those three have been pretty good together since being united. And so, yeah, I think it's been a massive net positive.

And I say this with the sort of backdrop of we all got excited about the ducks heading into the start of the season, right? They were playing fun games. Last year it was just such a miserable grind. And then all of a sudden, you're seeing these young players featured. They're having these comeback wins. It's like, all right, this is very exciting again. And then, sure enough, they're mired in this like one,

and 1-12 stretch or something like that. I think their last game, but they won outside of a shootout was over a month ago now. It's been a big step back. At the same time, though, just how encouraging the progression of these young players is and the fact that I think eight of those 12 losses have been like one goal games too,

so it's not like they're just getting obliterated the way they were last year. I do think it's different. I'm not trying to make excuses for a scene that's gone one and 12 in the past month. But it clearly has a different, for and feel, right? I still think if you're a fan, you want to see team win and that's why you go to these games and you're cheering. But if you're just taking a bigger picture of you, which the

ducks clearly are this season and they're afforded the luxury of doing so. You may mention this in your piece as well, right? And I think it's a great point to hit. They have a first year head coach. Their GM is in his second full season with the team, right? Like it's, they have about as clear of a runway, assuming you get that ownership by it and willingness to do. this to like experiment with stuff like this and take that bigger picture of you as opposed to just immediately trying to you know force feed everything and be like and try to speed it up just because the past couple years have been so bad yeah it's i mean this is a perfect time for you to go plug people to your you and belfrey did on mintykov like too like he's another guy who you look at

where that team is going and you're like this is a team that it has real and whatever we call it now since it's not NHL TV. Well, it has like real like, hey, this is, as they grow forward, this is the team. We're like, hey, I'm looking for a game to watch and I want to see what the ducks are doing. Even if they're, even when they're losing games right now, they are so intriguing. And I think that's one of the best parts about for a fan base. This is the type of rebuild you want to be it, right? Like, you want things to be intriguing.

Obviously, you want to win. But when I can, you can watch a game and you can see progress in front of you, that's, some of these other rebuilds we've seen in the NHL, we've been told that's what we're seeing, but we actually haven't. Like, if you took a full, if you put the, injected the truth serum on it,

like the ducks are doing this right. And, like, I watch more ducks games than I thought I would this year. That's just the reality of it, even what I'm not writing about. Yeah. While you were there, you know,

as we closed this conversation on the ducks and move on a different topic. Yes. You had a, a tidbit in your in your EP ring side piece um not on not on Carlson but um the league wide book where you're talking to scouts i guess about john Gibson i want to talk about Gibson with you a little bit here because despite that team record we just we just talked about his performance this year compared to the past couple and how he started strong in previous seasons as well and then as the year went along reality kind of set in his performance faded and a lot of the concerns that we have now

because of that, we're formed, where it's like, you look at the end of the day and we think of him as still this elite goalie that he was a couple years ago, but now he's three years running

on pretty pedestrian, if not, like outright bad numbers. And so how do we evaluate that? How do we evaluate him as a goalie? How much he has left in the tank? Because he's still only 30 years old. It's not like,

this is someone who's in their late 30s, and you're like, all right, well, he just doesn't have it anymore. It would be weird that he just lost it overnight like that. And this year, Sporologic has him at plus four.

goals of above expected in his 20 games, 9068 percentage, which in today's game is good, especially playing behind a young team that is better defensively this year, but still obviously wouldn't be considered even an above average one. And I'm curious for your take on sort of how much mileage is left there, like how if you were a contending team or if you were a team, and there's many of them right now who have Stanley Cup aspirations, but are in need of a goalie, your current setup and net,

hasn't been good enough. There's a lot of concern about it. How interested you'd be in Gibson, what you think is left there, like kind of just that entire sort of angle of it, because that's something that I just keep coming back to. And we've been having this conversation for years now, but with him playing better, it's sort of being resurfaced. I mean, I think there's, I think there's still something there for Gibson. Gibson, to me, has always been the interesting case of, because obviously I spent years covering the stars. And the iconic vision of John Gibson in my head has been there's like 10 minutes

left of the third period. The stars are out shooting the ducks, something like 43 to 17. The score is like 3-2 and the third goal finally goes in where like deflects off like a defenseman's skate and then pops to like a little like a little

crummy goal. And then he just does and sits and then he kind of looks up and does like that 200 foot stare down the ice of like, what am I doing? Like I mean the perfect example actually because it once again it happened to Dallas was the one remember the one game where the ducks used the e-bug the British kid who was in the third period

where they basically just claimed like well both of our goalies are unavailable for the third period so so to see and I looked this up to right before like of since in the last four seasons right he's led the league in three of the last four seasons he led the league in losses

the one other season he led the one season he didn't lead the league in losses he led the season of the league in overtime losses. So you're talking about a goalie that's done actually more losing than anyone else in the league. And I would love to see what he would like. It's the easy of the video game thing. I would love to see what he would look like behind a good team. I would love to see that. And is he a guy who you're like, okay, he's my top choice for if I could pick any. one in the world? Probably not. But there are certainly teams out there where you look at how things

have gone with some of those quote-unquote contending teams. You know, hey, John Gibson, I would do that. And it's also funny to the Gibson saga is really funny too because it's the, we had the whole like insider versus agent beef at the start of the year about like he's played his last game and the agent obviously vehemently denies it and then people clash heads. So the whole the whole Gibson Saga is, I'm sure in Anaheim this year, it's nice that it's only coming up as like the third part of this conversation and only brought up because it was a random note as opposed to it being the main subjective discourse in Anaheim. Yeah, I don't know.

I find myself unable to be rational on this one. I get how it sounds because this is usually the sort of eye test, scout. hockey guy tropes that this show was sort of formed on, right, in terms of like pushing back against them and trying to peel back a couple layers and look like quantitatively at the numbers and sort of take a motion out of it and just purely think about this logically. And there's no real statistical argument to make for this. But I just like you watch him, it wasn't the Avs game you were at where they're on the road. It was the one right before it, which is the only game they've won in this past month that I referenced.

And like you watch him as that game went on and just like the degree of difficulty of saves he was making and how much he was frustrating the abs top shooters. And then in the overtime, makes a couple just like outrageous glove saves and is flipping the puck out with like the swag and flare that we've become accustomed to seeing from him. And this is just the hell I'm going to die on. Like I just, you put this guy in a competitive environment behind even a slight. be better defensive team. It doesn't have to be one of the best teams in the league, but just one that can score goals where a mistake here or there isn't going to mean that they have no chance

of winning and he's playing in meaningful games down the stretch where it matters. I just think it would be an entirely different story. Now, listen, he's paid $6.4 million for three more years after this one. That's a lot. In today's world, we have all these conversations about what Vegas did with their goalies and and sort of how you can't really afford to invest that many assets or that much financial capital in such a volatile position. If you improve your defense, you can make it work otherwise with a cheaper option. I get all that. I just think like a team like, let's say the devils or someone like that, I just think

it would just look so entirely different for him in that type of environment. And I hope we get to see it at some point because he's still only the 30 years old, right? I still think there's years left here of that type of performance, and hopefully it happens before it's too late. So I don't know. I don't have anything bad you to add on this saga, but I think it's interesting. Let's make another New Jersey and I'm trade happen. It feels like there's been quite a few over the years of those two teams

just being willing to trade pieces at times. So let's make that happen again. I'd be up for that. I mean, I get why they wouldn't want to just, like, they have a lot of their core already in place, right? They're going to have a couple of these defensemen. They're going to have to pay in a few years. Same time, though, you look.

can between like Cori Schneider's buyout and the two goalies they have, it pretty much adds up to what John Gibson makes. So I don't think it's that far over departure in terms of investment. And I obviously, I know Lindy rough rather well from covering him in Dallas. And Lindy knows all too well about the potential of what happens when you have one of the best offensive teams in the league and you go into the playoffs with questionable goaltending after the, his, uh, his, Essentially the finished duo of Carri Letton and Antonyemi essentially doomed Lindy Ruff's tenure in Dallas. So I'm sure if management gave Lindy a call and said we'd get you John Gibson, you would definitely have the coach on Borch for that. Yeah. Okay, Sean, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we've got a bunch of mailback questions that we're going to try to get through. So looking forward to that, you're listening to the HockeyPediocast streaming on the SportsNad Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the HockeyPediocast with Sean Shapiro.

Sean, let's close on our segment by doing some mailback questions. So we were talking about John Gibson before I went to break. And so on the theme of goalies, here's a question about the risk versus reward for goalies leaving the net. And the Discord user asks or says, I always struggle to understand, albeit as a nerd who never played, how the small positives of leaving the net could ever accumulate up to enough to outweigh whenever it goes wrong and leaving the goal results in a goal against. Now, this is a question from a couple weeks ago that I've been saving, but I thought it was fitting to dust it off and bring it up on the show after last night where we saw

goalies absolutely lose their minds and mess up multiple times. You have the Billy Luso one, obviously, although it could have bit him a couple more times, and then sort of Gibovsky throwing one of the nicest passes you're going to see to Dakota Joshua, who unfortunately is on the wrong team and just looking back at it. I have absolutely no idea what he was thinking. Now, those are two obviously very extreme examples in terms of when it goes wrong, but I think it's an interesting. Oh, and the Kachikov, too.

Did you see that one? Yeah, I didn't. No, but same game. Like, same game. And in the Detroit Carolina game last, same exact game, too. So, yeah. I love this conversation. I think we've talked, we may have talked about on the show.

One of my, like, dream scenario is to be able to quantify this hand. answer. And this has been, hopefully, just to be able to quantify this properly. And for me, it goes back to when I was covering Dallas and the year they were basically doing a 1A, 1B with Ben Bishop versus Anton Houdobin. And I wanted to be able to quantify how much, like, I could see it with my eyes. The Star's defense played differently. They got out cleaner. The transition was so much better with Ben Bishop and Nett. But I wanted to be able to be able to to quantify how much better it was than the Antonin. And I was never able

to figure out the way to do it just because I was at a job and I was doing lots of things and writing about everything at the same time. But for me, that's side by side, and I know this is just my feel of watching the game, you could see how much smoother a defense

ran and with the little things. And it's not even the like those plays where things kind of where the goalie kind of lost it like with the Huso thing and the and the, and the Bovrofsky play last night, those aren't even the plays that I really care much about.

It's not as much about the goalie making big passes or even trying big passes or whatever. It's the leaving the net and the little pull off the boards, the little pull off the boards and the little handoff of two feet, the little four foot pass. Those to me are not. always get kind of lost in the play because it's a game where we talk about. And now we know everyone's fast.

We have NHL edge. Everyone's fast. Everyone goes 22 miles an hour or whatever it is, right? Everyone's fast. So when we talk about a game of inches and a game of edges and we talk about how much teams build on clean breakouts and everything, I think, from my view, the ability to have a goalie who handles the puck well, leaves the net, does that, sets those things up in the margins, 15, 16, 17 games a game, whatever it is. That, to me, is worth it over the course of the game. You're getting these courses. And then you're going to have the occasional.

And it's funny because the gaffs that go with it actually aren't the ones that are even related to those plays. Very rarely is it the play that do you see the guy, is it the breakout play where the goalie messes up? It's where the goalie tries to go free solo on it, that it's. Well, that's when it comes to the territory, right, because there's certain goleys because they know their limitations just won't really leave the net. and there's obviously downsides of that, but at least they don't really put themselves in those positions where if you're a goalie who is a bit more freewheeling, let's say, in terms of confidence in your ability to do so,

you're probably going to just expose yourself and it comes with that territory, right? So it might not be the examples of those plays, but if you leave your net more often and you're just further away from it, I think the likelihood of something like that happening presumably increases, right? And that's sort of what you see.

Yes. Now, I think, especially in the postseason, I think there's a really important distinction to make here. And I actually do think that a goalie that can reliably play a dump-in in terms of just going back and stopping it behind the net and setting and leaving it for a defenseman to be able to more quickly make the breakout play is incredibly valuable. And you saw that great examples of it all throughout last postseason where, you know, I mentioned Bobrovsky was the one who, who,

messed up in hilarious fashion last night, but generally quite a, quite a slick, you know, puck handler for a goalie. And last year in the season, he was really useful for Florida's defense in terms of when they played, especially all throughout the Eastern Conference run, but like you could see it in that Leaf series, for example, where he was just going back, stopping the puck and then allowing a guy like Gus Forzing to quickly make a pass out of his own, whereas the Leafs goalie just couldn't do that. so, right? And then all of a sudden, Florida's forecheck has more free rein to just go and absolutely tee off on the other team's defensemen because there's no margin or buffer that's

put in place by the goalie helping them out, right? And I think a similar thing happened for Dallas where part of why Miro Hastan started to look so pedestrian as that series went along in the West Final was just the accumulation of both like physical and psychological wear and tear, where he was having to go back and make the first play so often throughout that series and throughout the entire postseason. But just because of how much responsibility he has with that Ryan Suter pair and Jake Andre not really helping him out that much, Vegas was just able to just like continually just go after him and eventually that's going to lead to mistakes, right? And then I think it was a game one or two with Suter messing up behind the net there. And I led to a key goal

that extended the game and it was a big loss for them. Like you see that. stuff, right? I do think that accumulation is very important. I think the highlight plays of like a goalie going back, getting the puck and then bringing the team with a highlight real breakout pass that travels through multiple zones and that sort of stuff is not very important. Like it looks cool when when Igor's Stricken does it. I think in the grand scheme of things, that stuff matters much less than like the subtle little plays where you just stop it and your defenseman can make a pass without being immediately hit. So I had a conversation with someone about this.

So this has come up twice, and I should probably write more about this. But remember back in the spring, I wrote a really big story over at the substack about kind of the pendulum of goaltending coaching, how goaltending coaching was basically so many goleys became robotic. And at the same time, at the exact same time that shooters were literally stealing the goalie techniques of individual. train stations. Everyone's more skilled than ever. And all of a sudden, basically, shooters learn to beat the robots. And now, goaltending from a youth growing up perspective, we're in this kind of trend where goalies are, they're trying to unrobotic goalies. And then I had a similar conversation with a scout when I did something on Adam Guyane, the goalie for the Blackhawks

prospect, who plays for, who will play for Slovakia at World Junior this year. And Guyane is, like, if you watch Guyane in warmups, because I've seen him play live a couple times this year, he does stuff with the puck messing around with the puck that other goalies don't, where he's stick handling, he shoots the puck between his legs during warmups and everything like that. You don't see him make the little, the long stretch passes. All of his game is this. But, and I was kind of asked someone about that, like, what you're watching this kid do

this? Is it just cockiness? And they're like, well, no, it's a perspective of since they put the trapezoid in, and this person kind of used. If we take away the traps, it would actually be great now because so many goalies have grown up not actually knowing how to handle the puck. So we are now, if you wanted to like, if you, like maybe this was the long term plan. I'm kidding. I know this is not.

The NHL doesn't think long term, 20 years like this. But maybe the long term plan was to have an entire generation of goalies, forget how to handle the puck effectively in the corner. So then all of a sudden you make it open season. And then we would have five, six years of just botched mistake. after botched mistake. And using kind of Guyana as the example of this where there's things Guyane does in a game, little passes, little plays

that don't look like, they're not 40, they're not 80 foot stretch passes. They're little six foot passes, but you watch in the USHL, which is chaotic and its junior hockey scores are 8.5, but he'll look a four checker off. I don't see even any Joe

bullies look a forechecker off. And it's not and it's, I mean, maybe maybe that's what Bob was trying to do last night. I don't know. Don't try to put your headstop in that headspace. There's no logic. Where I'm going with all of this is goal tending, puck handling in general,

the level is lower than it used to be. It's basically we've, it goes back to the overall part where goaltending, the same percentages are lower and everything like that. Part of it is shooters are better, yes. The games there have been faster, yes. But we still have this trend that I wrote back in the spring where we have guys coming into the league.

You watch junior hockey right now. It's a bunch of robots getting beaten by creative players. And that's not what he used to be. Like, go find your Hachik real clip. One of my favorite things. I'll probably, if I get the two weeks before bed with my kid, I let her watch one YouTube video each night. If I get a choice, we watch 15 minutes of Hachik highlights.

Like the, so it used to be, goalies had to be the creative ones. And now it's goalies are just robots and who's the best robot. And the league keeps trying as position and needs to change. So I don't know. I'm trying to take Woodley's job right now, whatever. Give me back on track here, man. Yeah. I think those those Hashek videos need to be all prefaced with some sort of like parental guidance warning.

Like do not try this at home. And I say that as someone who loves a good Dominic Haschik mixed tape. Okay, next question. Red Hat asks. So, Brube is now gone. What do the Blues have to change in their game this season to avoid having a dreadful year, or is a rebuild necessary and Armstrong potentially needs to be sent packing as well? Now, they're 14, 14 and 1.

They won their first game since the coaching change last night against the senators. They have a minus 12 goal differential. I guess for me, I don't really have that big of an issue with making the coaching change because time flies so much. Like Craig Brubay, this was year six of him being behind the bench running the blues. And that's wild to think about, right? Because 2019, on the one hand, seems like it was yesterday. On the other hand, it seems like it was 40,000 years ago because of everything that's happened since.

But the list of coaches who have been with their teams for six or four years is John Cooper, Mike Sullivan, Jared Benner, and Rod Brindamore. It's really difficult to have that type of longevity and sustain it in today's game with the turn over-run coaches and how easy it is to have your message worn out and lose the locker room and all that stuff. And so if you just want a new voice and a fresh start, that makes sense for me. I just blaming the coaching here is something that I'm not willing to do because you look at the personnel and everything begins and ends with that.

for me and I just don't know what the goal was I guess heading into the season like if you are Armstrong in the blues brass and you're disappointed with this what was your realistic goal heading into the year because I was under the impression after the deadline they had last year where they made some trades right they move on from Ryan O'Reilly they move Teresenko they accumulate a bunch of picks we heard that they wanted to use those picks of the draft in trade to bring it to quickly retool on the fly and bringing a player. They didn't really accomplish that. They wound up trading for Kevin Hayes at a retained salary, but that was about it. And so I don't know what they thought they were going to get heading into the year and why they'd be disappointed by this result, because

this seems pretty in line for me with what I'd expect from this group. Well, it's, it's not the coaching fault. That's, that's, it's, I just so often, though, it comes down to the gene can't fire himself, right? Like, that's often what it's, that's how I often look at things like this, where the GM can't fire himself and you got to change something. And so by changing the head coach, you've quote unquote done something. And obviously in St. Louis, it was, it gets over, like, like, it's kind of funny, like, Burube is an interesting case, right? Where he's, he's out this way. But at the same time, the Stanley Cup he won, he was the one who benefited from the exact same thing, right? Like, he won a Stanley Cup, rate, and everything, but he came in midseason, someone got

fired, and all of a sudden it was like, oh, look, what we've done under the new coach and everything, and it's, this is kind of the lot in life coaches have. I mean, it's, I'll always remember the con, because I'm here in Detroit, obviously, I'm able to relate a lot of this stuff. Derek Lal said a couple weeks back. He said, like, I know Dylan Larkin will be here much longer than I am. And they were talking about a guy who's in his first year. Like, like, obviously Larkin's a guy with a long-term contract and everything like that. But when that is the reality of a first year head coach, when he can openly say that out loud, that I know one of the guys on this roster will be here longer than I. That's just a lot in life that coaches have. It's also why they

get recycled so easily because no one's ever there for long, no, very, I mean, John Cooper is. but other than that, no one ever really spends forever in one place. It's also, the other reason that it happens, yeah, go for it. Well, the other reason it happens, and I had a, I had someone explained this to me once from a business perspective. In the NBA, owners make enough money on the regular season

to go through teams that suck. coaches, the reason NBA coaches, and I don't know the exact lifetime, but the reason NBA coaches are allowed to typically go through rebuilds longer is because the NBA owner is making money on their bottom line, whether the team makes the playoffs or not. In the NHL, and the economics are changing slightly, but it's still in the NHL. Most NHL teams don't break even without at least one home playoff series. So that's why you have so much. teams content to be in the middle of the pack. It's not the, oh, the LA Kings one is an 80, no, it's the weekend as a businessman or a woman, if I get into the playoffs, I actually make

money this year. And you know what? Who can I, I can't change my roster in the middle season. I can't do that. So to get to that financial goal, I can do so by potentially changing my coach. And that's one of the reasons in the NHL that owners, typically owners, owners not just owners have more of the appetite, okay, we got to change something, we got to do something because we need to be playing on April 17th of this year. It doesn't matter that we have no shot at all of winning four rounds. But if we can change, maybe that gets us in this year. And that's why in the NHL, the trigger goes like that. And in the NBA, owners are making enough money where it's like, I'd like to get in, but I know that the dichotomy of the NBA.

Like last year we saw the, we saw teams tank to not make the playoffs. Like, like they were right there. Like, willingly not making the playoffs. Like, I don't need that playoff gate. I make enough money already. Yeah. Yeah, well, it was similar. You know, you mentioned the life of the coach.

Similar thing happened when, you know, it seemed like the writing was on the wall in Edmonton for Woodcroft and they eventually fire them. They make the coaching change. But before that it happened, there was a lot of, well, for any other, any coach, this is a great job. and obviously two entirely different rosters and the Oilers are much more firmly in their competitive window and coaching Connor McDavid and Leandro's title seems pretty fun, right? At the same time though, like the same thing that Woodcroft benefited from wound up being his ultimate demise, right?

It was like taking over a mid-season, this is a great job for him to take. And then all of a sudden, a couple years later, he's the one and that's on the other side of it, right? And that just, you're that subject to, especially in some of these cases, like at the time of both his hiring and firing in Woodcroft's case, like so subject to big, big PDO swings, right? And depending on how your goal is performing or what the team's shooting percentage is, you're going to look good or bad in one direction. And that's also what, you know, when Craig Ruea was hired in the first place, that that was a team that had pretty good underlying numbers for a while there, but was just getting done in by horrible. percentages and then he takes over and they go on that magical run and the rest is history, right? But yeah, I mean, if you look, they're pretty unlucky offensively this year. They're seventh and expected goals generated 26th and actual goals, 31st in the power play. But the issue for this team is, one, I think their roster is like, for lack of a better for age is the definition of mid.

Like I don't. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of upside there with this group. It's not a good team. And defensively, 26th and expected goals. against 28th and slot shots against, 26th in offensive zone time surrendered. They are bad, and the reason why I bring that up is because you look at this top four they have of

Justin Falk, Tori, Colton Brayne Proeckel, and Nick Letty. All have no move clauses. All are in their mid-30s. All are on the books for at least, I think, three more years. Letty expires summer 2026, the others in 27, and then Preikos on the books until 2030. Once we start getting into the 2030 range, that just seems like it's another lifetime from now. I can't even process that being a real thing. But they're making 23.5 million combined those four this year and 29 million an actual salary shot. Like if you look at this team's cab friendly page and you bring up that ownership thing and the financial dynamics, they're spending $95 million in actual salary on this group of 14 forward seven defensemen and two coales.

And what's the salary cap this season, 83 and a half? Yeah, 95 million in actual salary on this team. And I just said they're the definition of mid and have a bunch of players who are in their 30s on no-move clauses. This brings some of a note for me just randomly think about this. Is there any division, is the central, I feel like the central division has more no-move clauses than any other division because we have St. Louis, Minnesota, and Dallas are all historically like Halloween trick-or-treat type candy with no move clauses. It's like, oh, you want to come play in the Central. No one leaves. It's the Midwest of the NHL. Well, I don't know if you know this,

but the C and NMC stands for Central. So it does. Okay, let's head thing in the CBA no one knows about. Let's end with one fun sort of theoretical question on our way out here. So intelligent dice asks, in a few episodes, you've touched on the concept of player gravity. And I think you and I actually specifically spoke about it when the NHL first released their NHL data and we were talking about what we'd like to see in the future. And the listener goes on where certain players dominate the flow of play and the puck is drawn to them. I've always wondered about the opposite concept, player anti-gravity. I picture someone like a Zadano Charra who influenced large swaths of ice and was able to shut down the opposition's play on his side.

I think it's an interesting concept for measuring individual defensive performance. Does such a stat exist? It seems like public tracking or player in puck tracking could create one. Such a stat does not exist. Park tracking could theoretically create it because they do have that in the NBA. And I would love to see it because it would be incredibly fascinating. and I think would paint an interesting picture. And the example that I'd give to you here is Mark Edward Vlasik in his prime.

I believe that 2016 postseason. Yeah. Posing teams were so worried about trying to enter the zone on his side of the ice that they were actively changing their entire structure and schematics to try to funnel the puck to the other side so they could have a better shot of and poor Justin Braun just took the brunt of it at that time as his partner because it was like, all right, no one even wants to try Blastic right now because he's so good defensively. And so everyone was just going at Justin Braun.

And at that time, he was still at his prime and he did an admirable job holding up. And that pair was awesome for the sharks and they were really good. But that was one of the most extreme examples I can remember of the team. Because we always hear how hockey's too fast, right? You can't design your zone entry scheme. like that, you're just going to go wherever the puck is and try to enter. And in this case, you could actively see it in conversations ahead. I know the teams were actively trying to stay away from Margat-Rabossick at that time. And so that would sort of illustrate this concept that the

listener is alluding to here. Yeah, it's the, it's the equivalency of the NFL corner. The best cornerback in the NFL is not the guy with the most interceptions. It's the guy who no one ever throws at. Right? It's the equivalency of that. I mean, I think there's not a stat for it, but I think you can sometimes see it in a game, and particularly in a playoff series, Vlasic is, Vlasic is the best example. You'll see, and this is the weird thing about kind of the changing parts of hockey, and this is where the speed does come into mind. Is it a team trying to go out a weakness on once? Like, it's hard to be, like, how is a team going at a weakness or avoiding a strength? That's sometimes hard to tell too, because, like, he used to Daniel Chara, for example, like, for Char's partners throughout his career, if you look at Char with his very great defensive partners, where teams trying to avoid Char or is it just like, oh, you know what, it makes sense to go at that the other guy.

Like, I would love to see this. Like, I would love, like, I would love to see how this works. The other thing that I think you can kind of, I would be interested to see, and I don't know, maybe Schnazster's done something with this, I don't know with all of his tracking stuff, I'd be interested to see you could probably try to pull out how many times a team tries to carry in versus dump in around a certain defender and stuff like that. But then again, that might also be, that could also relate back to our earlier conversation about goaltending, where if you have a goalie who is stopping every single dumpin, you're going to try to. to carry in every time no matter what. It's, there's so many moving parts on this, and I would love the stat, and it's a great question. I agree. Really interesting thing to consider. Okay, Sean, I will let you go here on the way out. I'll let you also promote whatever you want, let the listeners know either what you got in the works or where they can check out. Yeah,

two things for my own site over at the substack shapshots. I've got some stuff, I wrote something about Simon Edvinson today and kind of the fact that perhaps the guy who could make the Red Wings defense better right now is right there playing in Grand Rapids but is locked by seven NHL veteran defensemen in Detroit. So that's up there

and then for our site over at EP Ringsside after we hop off this call I'm going to head down to Plymouth to go watch some World Junior camp for Team USA and I'll have some stuff, some stories from camp coming out this weekend on that. So check that out over at E.P. Rickside.

That heralded defensive depth of the Red Wings. Don't ask who the players are, but there's a lot of them. Okay, Sean, this was awesome. I'm glad we got to catch up. Looking forward to getting you back on again. Soon, my only plug is to go join the Discord. We use a bunch of the questions on today's show. We'll continue to do so pretty much every Friday moving forward. So if you want to get involved, the invite link is in the show notes. Pop in there and have some fun with us. The community is growing. It's a blast in there. So looking forward to seeing you in the PDOCAST Discord. All right. We're going to let you go here, Sean, and we'll be back soon with plenty more of the Hockey PDEO cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.