The Hockey PDOcast - Lessons To Take From The Canes, Talent Retention Moving Forward, and Trade Protection Domino Effect

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Steve Werier to discuss some of the biggest dynamics that'll influence the way NHL teams operate this offseason. We get into the lessons to take from the success the Hurricanes have had, the impact that the cap going up will have on talent retention moving forward, long-term extensions and trade protection that comes with it, and the pre-draft preparation process.  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.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey Piedocast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey Pediocast. My name's Dimitri Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Steve Warrior. Steve, what's going on, man? Hey, Dimitri, how are you? I'm doing well.

I just finished my finally belatedly, my Stanley Cup final content did a big breakdown of the Hurricanes Golden Night series and the Patreon newsletter. And I'm finally done with the postseason can fully invest all of my attention and resources into the off season and I'm excited for it. There's going to be a lot to break down.

We've already had a couple of trades. But the reason why I wanted to have you on to kick off the off season here in the PDO guest is first we got it. We got to catch up because it's been too long. But also I wanted to pick your brain on some of the stuff I've been thinking about in the lead up to this. In particular with some of the changing dynamics in the NHL, some of the most important considerations for us to think about that will define an

influence the decision-making process for teams this summer. And so I've got a rundown of a couple topics I wanted to get through with you today. And I feel like we should just start by talking about the hurricanes a little bit because they just won the Stanley Cup. We always talk about how it's a copycat league. I imagine there's a lot of owners around the league right now talking to their GMs or their staff and being like, what can we take from this? Why can't we be as efficient as the hurricanes have been here?

and obviously you're very familiar with Eric Telsky and a number of members of their staff that they've assembled there in Carolina. And so let's start off by talking a little bit about them and kind of some of the lessons from the success they had this year finally breaking through in the playoffs and being this year's Stanley Cup champions. Yeah, listen, there's so many places to begin, right? Like we can talk about Telsky all day, but everyone talks about Telski all day. So maybe let's start with some other stuff. I think it's neat that he did something that might be unexpected, which is he came in as this consummate outsider, right? Like didn't play the game,

had the chemistry background, working in Silicon Valley, but not a hockey guy. And unlike many, he over-indexed on that. He surrounded himself with a lot of people in that front office who had backgrounds like him, as opposed to saying, hey, I need sort of the armor of some old hockey man. He did the opposite. And that's, you know, pausing for a second,

on, you know, the giant caveat, which is Carolina success is a, you know, a huge partnership between Eric and Rod, who has, you know, an incredible background as a player as a coach and everything that. And without, you know, without Rod, I don't think any of this happens. But in terms of the actual front office, I'm talking about, like, how do we emulate that? How do we copy that? Which is a lot, or at least a little bit, I think, easier than, like, how do we find the next Rod Brindamore, who's really a unicorn? I think that part is neat. and you know, he's, you know, Eric's group has a few guys I worked with who I brought in. I was writing the Panthers a number of years ago.

One interesting hire who I know you're familiar with is a guy named Reese Jessup, who again, you know, outsider non-hockey guy did a lot of writing, sort of best known for writing a paper that got him noticed by us in Florida that had this thesis that essentially was, if teams just drafted the player with the best point totals, would they have done better historically? Would they have outkick their draft coverage? And the answer that Rees came up with was like an astounding yes. You know, guys like that, he brought in his amateur scout.

You know, people who are familiar with how Eric recruits people to be scouts and analysts, he does it in a way that's totally foreign to most other teams, which is he does a blind test. Like, if you want to be a scout for the hurricanes, they send you a bunch of video to watch. They send it to a few other candidates too. You write a report on what you saw. they anonymize it. So they don't know who, you know, what Steve wrote, what Dimitri wrote.

They just blindly evaluate who has the best skill set based on their output, based on what they wrote. And then they sort of, you know, pull it back and say, oh, let's see who it was. And then they hire whoever, you know, did the best. And, you know, that's not to say that's why they won the cup. Those are sort of peripheral pieces. But it's that type of thinking. I think that type of thinking, those anecdotes are significant and they signify other things that led to their success and we can talk all day about, you know, being proactive, being fearless, signing players before everyone knows how good they are. There's a long list that, right? You know, like the Stancovin, Jackson Blake, even Brendan Bussie before the playoffs. Those are

deals that will have massive surplus value where if those players were on the market today, especially the Stankovs and the Blakes, you know, you'd be talking about them being close to $10 million players for the next seven, eight years. And instead, Eric's got them, you know, what, in the mid to high fives or sevens or whatever. And that sets them up to something I'm sure you'll want to talk about soon, which is like, where do you go next? You know, in a rising cap environment, when you have a good team, when you have high-end players,

like that top line and that second line, where do you go from here? And it's tempting. And again, to differentiate, a lot of teams will say, well, we have a few more cap dollars. We can keep the band together. Or we can fill out our roster with, you know, that third line checking center we needed, or that extra defenseman or, you know,

look at Edmonton, they have some extra cash base because they gave a contract, you know, they went and gave it to Christian Najari. and Jake Wallen, which is well and good. But, you know, I think the way Eric thinks and the way he'll go, they'll look at it and say, wow, we have extra money. Let's add a new first line, which I started with adding Nick Eilers. And we talked about this more down the line. Like, I think they will swing bigger and think in a way that continues to be different

and that continues to differentiate to them. And that will continue likely to lead to more success. Not only am I familiar with the work of Rees Jessup and that article you're referring to, but I actually edited it because Reese and I were colleagues at Canucks Army at the time. And that was a great piece of draft work. And I think that also speaks to some of the bread and butter here for the hurricanes as well in terms of their volume-based approach. I remember I think last time I had you on,

we talked about this in relation to Kyle Dubus and the Penguins, but this idea that a lot of organizations around the league become very, attach their players. And I think from a GM perspective or even, let's say, a head of pro scouting or whoever within your organization, once you kind of stake your claim and reputation to a player, whether you vouch for them or you acquire them, you're kind of personally invested in them succeeding and seeing it through. And that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is kind of take a bit of a step back and view them as assets. And ultimately, we saw that with the rant and trade as well, the way it turned out where I think everyone at the time liked it from the perspective of the hurricanes

clearly needed to add more efficient offensive players and guys who could turn shots into goals and they brought him in. It wasn't a stylistic fit. He didn't want to stay. And I think a lot of other teams would have probably made the mistake of kind of burying their head in the sand and just trying to plow ahead and then him leaving and then having nothing to show for it and probably losing early in the playoffs. And instead they pivot on the fly. They take their lumps, but they ultimately come out ahead where they add stankov and they of course added hall as well as part of that line previously in the initial natures trade and then the two firsts one of which they used to acquire kianjadri miller who becomes their number one defenseman by usage in these playoffs and a couple

extra thirds that i'm sure they're going to wind up trading down from and accumulating extra fourths fifths and sixth along the way as well and so that's kind of the lesson i take from it the most here the kind of analytical part of their process, which everyone certainly fixates on, but I think is a bit of a misconception because people get bogged down by the semantics of spreadsheets and, you know, analytics versus true hockey guys. And in reality, I think it's a mix of those two, but just the idea that you use your decision-making process accordingly to assign values to players and assets and then budget appropriately and what they've done as a result of that is not only accumulate all these assets,

but maintain that flexibility you're talking about that's going to allow them to keep scaling up as soon as this off season. Yeah, I think that's all right. And let me use that as a jumping off point to talk about someone else in that front office. Like we often hear people talk about analytics and just like, oh, what guys drive shot differential or this or that and whether or not that's, you know, the be all and end all. And it clearly isn't, but it's clearly also super helpful. Carolina uses it also for tactics,

for like strict on-ice tactics, which are, you know, you need a real good, hockey background to think about these kind of things. And what I'm talking about is like, you know, a guy who I know well is Tyler Dello, who's the assistant GM there, who's sort of like, you know,

one of the original analytics writers, I mean, tell you a funny story about him that ties back into something in a second. But, you know, Tyler back in the day, when he was writing publicly, after we went to law school together before, actually, He was looking at things like what, you know, how to position players for faceoffs or, you know, how do certain players perform within certain, you know, how many seconds left in a shift or, you know, you're looking at other sports and talking about like, you know, why you basketball teams score more points when they're defending on the side of the court that their coaches on, you know, things like that, which aren't just, you know, sort of classic, you know, analytics as this category of that, but actually like tactics, which if you merge with a. super confident, open-minded, inquisitive coaching staff like they have, like they have with

raw. I think that's a massive, you know, positive factor for them as well. And, you know, some of the old, you know, the old stories and the old works of, you know, guys like Tyler in that front office sort of surfaced again. And, you know, I remember in Florida when we were, you know, Eric Joyce and I, Eric's, you know, an advisor in Carolina as well. But, you know, our first you're together in Florida. You know, RGM at the time had signed Dave Boland, who's had this amazing career, right? You know, won the Stanley Cup, you know, hardworking, tough, tough player, incredible career. But at that time, you know, he was, I think, you know, other side of 30,

and then sort of had played a huge number of games, huge number of playoff games and a rugged style. And RGM was looking at signing him to like a $5, $6 million a year for $6 million a year. and we actually, to argue against that, and we didn't win the argument, but one of the big pieces we used to build the case against that signing that over time, unfortunately didn't age well for our team, was the ratings of Tyler Delo.

And Tyler did all this work at Mick 79 hockey, his world's site, where he was like, let's do a deep breakdown of what happens when the Blackhawks play against the Sadiens. You know, what actually happens on the ice? And it turns out, you know, Henrik and Daniel drove, you know, huge shot differential and tons of. the scoring chances. And they actually ended up, okay, you know, let's look at how veteran players age over time, especially players who, you know, hit more and play a certain style. And we use

those writing because it's part of sort of our saying, hey, there's some red flags in this type of deal. Maybe we need to look for like, you know, the next day bowling guys, a little bit younger or whatever. But anyway, that type of thinking, which at its time was really outsidery and there's sort of some seminal radio hits where L.A. I'm sorry, where Tyler went at it with Steve Simmons arguing is that and other signings. Like people like that who are willing to not only have beliefs like that, but to stand up and defend them against some pretty loud voices, but also to be strategic enough to then say like,

how do we craft you like that? How do we go and get in the right players? How do we stand up in the room when we need to and argue against really popular signings that our coach and our GM and whoever else might not want? People like that are rare in front office. physicians who are willing to sort of put their reputation on the line and speak up when it's unpopular. But like Tyler's a guy like that. Eric Joyce is a guy like that. Aaron Schwartz, who's not in that front office anymore, but was on the legal negotiation side, was like that. And then, you know,

the last shout out I'll give because again, I think Teltsky would get its flowers, but the others aren't as well known is, you know, we see GMs all the time hire as their senior advisors or whatever. some washed up former GM from decades ago who sort of gets it as a honorarium or whatever to come to the room a couple times a year. Eric did the opposite at Tulsi. He went out and hired a guy named Earl Schwartz who was writing about the salary cap

for Toronto website. I forget where. But even though he already has, you know, Tyler Delo and others handling, you know, the cap negotiations and all that, he added another voice, which not a lot of teams do on that cap negotiation side. but he added Earl, he was a blogger who comes in, and what does Earl Schwartz do?

Roe Schwartz devotes like 100% of his time over weeks, if not months, to the esoteric issue of how to get Alexander DeKheesion over from Russia as quickly as possible in their lineup. And he does it well. And that's the thing a lot of people probably couldn't do, diving into those details and succeeding in navigating immigration law and everything else, you know, with others, but still. And like, you know, hires like that were seem small at the time when they, when they, when leads to bringing on a top four player and assimilating improperly and quickly and comfortably, you know, that only helps and, you know, is one of the many reasons, I think, why they ended up

where they are. Well, and you could see the dividends of what you were speaking about with Dell there in terms of taking, I guess, theoretical concepts with your analysis and then, you know, leveraging them into actionable stuff on the ice tactically, um, with regards to the Stanley Cup final specifically, right? Where a lot of the stuff they've been doing in pre- previous seasons, kind of cycling the puck, shooting from their perimeter, trying to jam away at rebounds, would have probably not worked against this year's Golden Knight's team with how good they were defensively in the zone, but partly because of the, you know, integration and development of guys like Jarvis and Jackson Blake, certainly, but then the acquisition of

Nikola Eilers, they were able to attack more off the rush and really kind of execute on broken plays, and that's how they created the majority of their offense to go along with the power play. And so that was a big reason for why they broke through this year. I love Jackson Blake, because I've talked about a lot on the show. And he sort of ties into this concept when I mentioned the volume-based drafting as well, because I was looking back at it. And he was in the hundreds, I think, the fourth round of the 2021 draft. And in that draft, they had 13 picks.

And eight of them were in the top 150, and he was just one of them. And you're certainly not going to hit on every one of those picks. and a lot of the ones in the later rounds are going to wind up either being HL Fauder or just staying overseas for their careers, but all it takes is one of those to be a massive player of consequence for you. The way Blake was here,

and then the way they proactively locked up both Stankovin and Blake before these breakouts while they were still, you know, extension eligible guys on their ELCs, I think that's a great point you make about what they'd be worth now if you were entering those negotiations and how that would limit their ability

to improve elsewhere moving forward. Instead, they have both guys at these cut rate deals now, essentially for all of their 20s moving forward over the next eight years. And that's a big piece of this. Because I don't think it guarantees anything. Like I think sometimes we can get a little bit carried away in projecting into the future where a team wins and you go, oh, this is going to be the start of a dynasty.

They're going to go back to back and, you know, win three cups in five years. And it's going to be sustained. And a lot of crazy stuff happens. There's injuries. there's random developments and none of it is kind of taken for granted but I do think compared to

previous cup winners this hurricane team is pretty well positioned to sustain the success regardless of cups or not just because of not only having all these guys under contract but then because of that flexibility right I mean they have four firsts over the next three years their HL team made the cup

or the Calder Cup finals this year and a couple of guys are either going to be on their team next year on ELCs or be trade chips for them. And they have a ton of cap space. I think if they buy out Cockney Emmy or dump his salary, it's up to $16, $17 million in cap space. And that's pretty rare territory for a team that just won the Cup

because I think we associate Stanley Cup success with the tax that comes with it down the line, right? Where guys price themselves out, you need to either chop salary or just lose players in free agency. And that's not going to happen here. They're essentially going to have the same team, probably with another impact player or two on top of it. Yeah, I think that's all right.

And then just getting back to your one comment about the volume-based approach, and when you say that, you mean like, you know, they draft for skill and speed, and they'll draft 15, 5-foot-6 fins if they think they can all, you know, fit that attribute. To take that volume-based approach, it's so unique because it requires two things at the same time. It requires you to both be supremely confident, but supremely humble. And when I say that, I mean, you need to be supremely confident because you're saying, I'm going to continue down this path. I'm going to continue optimizing for these kind of players,

even if we aren't winning the cup, even if it sort of exposes me as a manager who is very clearly committed to certain archetypes, which if I'm wrong, will so clearly show that I have failed. So it requires that confidence, but it also requires that level of humility to say and to know even though I've drafted or even though I've acquired five or six,

undersized potential high scoring forwards or speedy defensemen or whatever. I know I could be wrong, but I know the method and the idea I have is right, but I could still not be hitting on that exact right player. And that isn't often. And I remember, you know, I've been in front office. I remember being in Florida. We, you know, there was one year we drafted two, you know, high-end defensemen. One was really, you know, one was Mike Matheson who went on to have a great career,

who was, you know, fast, offensive. great shape, all these other things. And the other was sort of a big, tough defensive defenseman type. And we have some voices in the room who said, all right, we have our, you know, Duncan Keith, Mike Madison and our Brent Seabrook, the other prospect. We can now go and draft for these other positions. And I remember thinking and, you know, some folks in the room said, well, like, we don't know that. Like, we think we have that and we might be right. But drafting is notoriously hard. So maybe we need to go out and draft, you know, more defensemen and acquire in free agency, high-end defensive defensemen, even though we think we have these two guys coming,

because we never really know even though we think we do. And those arguments get had, and they pan out different ways. But the way they've gone in Carolina is they've said, listen, we know there are certain types of players that we think we can find value in, that the market is undervaluing, that will work well, that Rod will trust. But we know we're not going to find that exact player every single time. So let's just keep throwing eggs in the basket and make sure. sure, you know, let's grab 12 picks to make sure we get three of those guys as opposed to

using, you know, three or four picks on those types of players and potentially striking out no matter how smart we think we are. So that's a neat way of thinking. I think Carolina's done it well. And yeah, I think you're right in terms of, you know, they haven't sort of mortgage the future with, you know, eight-year deals to 32-year-old veterans in order to fit them in for the next two in that window. They've really done some incredible cap maneuvering and that will allow them to pursue guys like, you know, Miller and Elythers who are, you know, top line, top pairing guys as opposed to rounding out the roster. They've got the picks. I wouldn't be surprised to see them be a team having locked up their core, who's very aggressive with Offershees this

summer. It's an interesting summer for that. But yeah, they're in a fantastically advantageous spot going ahead. Well, let's talk about that then as it relates to the rest the league because I think the most fascinating part of this upcoming off season is this changing landscape we're seeing, right, with the cap going up to 104, there being a stunning lack of talent available on the open market in unrestricted for agency, especially guys who are on the right side of 30. Everyone has cap space. Like just going through the lists, there's really, pretty much every team has double digits, but approaching 20 million. In room to add now, a lot of these teams probably won't actually be cap ceiling teams.

I was talking about this with Eric Schumacher about the Blue Jackets yesterday when we deep-dilled them a little bit where, you know, they're probably an example of that. Don Waddell's been pretty open talking about some of those restrictions in all of his public media hits, but also you could see it in action where the deal they signed with Charlie Coil, for example, they gave a 34-year-old $6 million and he was great last year for them. And they clearly want to retain him because they value him quite a bit. But it probably would have been a situation where if you were going to be spending all that money, you could probably pay more upfront to limit some of the risk down the road for a player at that age. But instead, despite having 35 plus million in caps base, even after that signing, they chose to kind of split it out more evenly, keep that number down, keep the costs upfront a little bit lower.

So that's an important consideration here. But the market itself is just so uncertain, I think, right now, because salaries are going up so much because of that supply and demand. We'll see that especially so this summer. And I don't know if you agree with this. I feel like there is an interesting opportunity for some of these more aggressive organizations or early adopters who acknowledge that risk, but then know how to navigate it more in a more timely manner to leverage that to their own advantage

because a lot of teams, I think, are going to be somewhat paralyzed sort of trying to navigate this and figuring out what it's going to look like. and not wanting to over commit to it. Yeah, I think that's right. You have 32 teams and 32 spots, and it's not as simple as you think they have gas base and they'll use it. And I think we've sort of heard insinuations in places like Vancouver

and Columbus, as you mentioned, of teams who, you know, might have internal caps or budgetary considerations and stuff like that. But I also think good managers will be judicious and hold on to some of that dry powder because there will be great players available that will require big commitments who won't necessarily be the 34-year-old Charlie Coil types,

but more along the lines of a, you know, Dylan Larkin on the market, but also, again, we say all the time it's a copycat league. You know, you look at Carolina, you look at Keandre Miller. Keondry Miller, for all intents and purposes, it required the offer sheet or at least a threat of one, right? And so now they have a top-paring, you know, dominant young defensemen who fits in that team in that market perfectly and is happy they're assigned for the maximum number of years at a reasonable number. And that is a transformational acquisition.

And so I think, you know, smart clubs out there rather than, you know, saying, hey, we have more money. We can hold on to that, you know, whatever. middle of the lineup or middle-aged player for a little more than we would have. They're going to say, hey, what's some huge swing we can take to add a first-line player out there? And, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to throw an offer sheet out of Connor Bedard because it's not going to win. And it may or may not mean you're going to throw an offer sheet at even a, you know, there's something like players on Columbus and elsewhere who are probably, you know,

going to be kept on like Adam Trinilly. But maybe there's a class of players and, you know, guys like Cole Perfetti or Senni Gritsiuk, who are young, who were in the early mid-20s, who, you know, if you can lock up now, it might cost you a pick down the line for a decently sized number. You're adding, you know, really high-end players to your lineup. You're fitting them in.

And again, I think that's the lesson of Carolina, right? They won by adding elite skill on top of elite skill. And if you can do that, that's how you change things overnight. And I'd certainly be more excited to see more moves of that nature than necessarily saying, hey, the cap went up 15%. So every 27-year-old at the UFA is getting a bump accordingly. Well, this might be a strange time to illustrate this point, considering we're coming out of a postseason where we saw a lot of fresh blood having success, right?

Obviously, the hurricanes had been to the conference final for many years, but finally broke through it and won the cup. The Canadians made the East Final, the Sabres and the Ducks, finally kind of got out of their rebuilds and won a playoff round and got meaningful reps along the way. But I do still feel like beyond how wonky this postseason was that there might be an increasing ability for some of these top teams to stay on top,

either because they're going to be better equipped to retain their own players or get themselves out of financial jams more easily, right, for so many years with the fall. black cap. We saw teams have to pay significant prices to shed a bad contract that they couldn't afford to make room elsewhere to improve their team. And we saw this already last offseason with the Mason Marchman deal from Dallas and a number of others. But even to kick off this off season, you look at the abs and they were in a pretty tough financial position where they had like $3 million in cap space despite the fact that Jack Jury is up for a new pay raise, only four

defenseman currently signed and everyone clearly knew they had to get off of a couple of contracts and they still wind up getting a pretty positive return in terms of two-thirds for for Ross Colton with the Predators and there's the connection with Chris McFarland there obviously that they played a role in that but it will feel like I think unless some of these players just start to eventually age out and that will happen over the next five years that for a lot of these top teams I feel their ability to retain their status and still be competitive will probably be, I think, easier to navigate under the cap. Yeah, I think that's right.

And I think, you know, those smarter teams have seen around corners as well. And that's why they've extended a lot of their players to longer-term deals ahead of this rising cap and Carolina and others come to mind. And, you know, I think until we, you know, if we see a massively shifting landscape, where, you know, teams sort of collude to really hold the feet to be fire of a team like Colorado who's in a potential cap crunch and not give them an off ramp of a trade like that trade that Nashville made, which doesn't mean it didn't make sense for Nashville. Yeah, you're going to sort of see those teams find an ability to get themselves,

those get out of jail free cards. And again, like, you know, we always talk about, you know, being up against the cap doesn't mean you have a cap problem if you have decent players signed to decent contracts. It's easy to maneuver around that. You're only in cap trouble if you have, you know, bad contracts, especially bad contracts for bad players. But otherwise, there's

usually a little bit of maneuverability. You know, and we'll see how that plays out. Like, I think Dallas with Jason Robertson could be an interesting situation talking about those top teams staying at the top. And that'll depend on a few factors, probably including what happens with Tyler Sagan and his future.

Yeah, you know, you look at the Florida, Tampa, Colorado, Vegas, well, maybe not Vegas, but Carol Isle, you know, you don't see too much tightness on the horizon. They have some high-end players and some young players, and they're all locked in for a decent time. You know, Vegas might be an interesting one,

although they've found a way sort of wiggle out the last few years, and I guess it will depend on what they want to do with, you know, do they actually go after extending Rassam-Sanderson and at what number? We've struggled a bit at the end there for them. You know, do they maybe, again, and get a big ghetto jail free card if they do anything with, you know, somebody like Mark Stone or someone else we don't see coming.

And, you know, how can they keep you guy like the Rofi, I've given his sort of, you would think big jump as an RFA having a huge season where cops probably land pretty close to the $10 million range. But yeah, we'll have to wait and see. We got a question in the Discord about the draft process and whether, you know, this changing landscape we're describing here with just fewer players available on the open. market and team's ability to retain the guys they like and that are valuable a lot easier and

doable moving forward, whether that makes the draft even more valuable for some of these ascending teams that are trying to get into this, into this mix with the top teams where you almost kind of need to get your own guys before anyone else does. And then you're going to be able to retain them moving forward. Do you kind of view it that way or do you think that's a bit overblown and hasn't necessarily changed that much? I don't think it's overblown. I don't think it's overblown. if you read it in the context of what we're seeing right now, conspiracy theories or otherwise with all of these, you know, Olympian players, you know,

sort of talking about or actually forcing their way out or voicing their displeasure, whether that's Dylan Larkin, whether it's, you know, as speculated, maybe a Connor Hullabuck, and what that trend means, even if it doesn't escalate to sort of the NBA level, you know, constant mobility, constant super team phase where we won't get to, probably given the, you know, lack of no trade clauses in that league.

But I do think it's sort of always been on the mind for some teams, right? Like I think a team like Winnipeg has always had the mindset of, you know, if we're talking about superstars, we need to draft and develop that talent because it may be a little tougher to acquire them otherwise than in some, you know, other markets. But, you know, on the other hand, that becomes a bit of a conundrum too. If you're a team like Winnipeg right now and you have the eighth overall pick and you're saying, hey, if we want to get the next, you know, number one defenseman

or whatever, or top center to add to our team, how do we realistically do that if not everyone wants to come here? You know, first order of thinking is that's through the draft, but the next level of thinking is we have all these cornstone players who have some of whom have voiced their unhappiness, who want to win right now. And how do we win right now? How do we sell them on winning right now with an eighth overall pick

who's probably not ready for two or three years, when we can turn around and probably trade that eighth overall pick for a top six, top four player who can help us right now? So short answer there is, yeah, easier said than done. And then I guess the last maybe factor that comes into play there is just seeing some of these teams that have succeeded the last year trading away their picks, you know, whether that's Vegas or that's Florida, whether that's the New York Knicks trading way out of all their picks in basketball. Do teams think, you know, we can accelerate our trajectory without relying on the draft?

I'm a little skeptical of that, but I think all those factors come into play. And we'll see how that plays out of the draft. Well, I'm glad you brought up Lark in there because that's a natural segue. to what I want to talk about next and in particular with relation to no move clauses because I remember the last time I had you on this was a big topic of discussion for us as it relates to you know with the cap going up everyone has more money available theoretically teams will be able to offer more money on the front end on some of these long term extensions to maybe compensate for at least looser trade restriction uh moving.

forward yet you kind of seem to disagree with that because the cat's out of the bag a little bit in terms of so many of them were handed out over the past 10 years that everyone's going to want one now essentially and assuming there's going to be someone out there that is willing to give it to them that's kind of the going to the going to need to match that to keep your guy and you know it's an interesting component of this because we've certainly seen it influenced a number of trades over the past year or two and now it's seems like Larkin's going to be the most recent one after he expressed his desire to be traded.

And then the, you know, the report that came out that he gave Steve Eiserman a list of three teams. And I'm sure it's not necessarily restricted to that. And he'd be accommodating to a number of others. But regardless, the point stands that it kind of complicates matters from a leverage perspective in terms of what you can get back and sort of how big the pool of, you know, interested parties you're dealing with. And that's going to influence where this goes for Detroit. and forward certainly so i don't know do you have any thoughts on on kind of that um in terms of the negotiation process moving forward and you know it's been a slower trickle compared to the NBA for

example but it does seem like we are pushing in that direction where whether it's players just wanting to play with their friends or guys they've had success with previously or go to spots where you know it's kind of coalescing to just a couple select destinations for a variety of reasons and kind of what impact that's going to have on some of these future deals we see for top of the line players. So we heard this morning that Vincent Trocheck just switched agencies and I'm going to use that as a probably jumping off point you don't expect to answer this question, which is what's clearly happening is like more work, more, you know, high level issues are being

created as more and more marquee players or at least considering asking a, irrespective of their contract terms and the remaining obligations. And that sets off these complex situations like you just alluded to of, you know, an agent going to the GM for the player saying, my guy signed for this number of years, he wants to leave now, he wants to go to one of these places, and he wants to be moved there by this date of time. What I wonder about in that scenario is how do other players navigate that?

And what does that mean more broadly for like how players manage their careers and their destiny in a right way against these seeming, sailing winds is like agency consolidation and players moving to a few big shops because, you know, you look at Larkin situation and Larkin is represented by the same agency that represents both Lucas Raymond and Simon Edmond. So Edvinson is up for a second contract, which, you know, based on how he performed and, you know, he played the side or a bunch, but, you know, a lot of people argue he's in line for a big ticket second deal, which has not yet been signed.

And Raymond's under contract, but Raymond has one more year left before his no trade tax spin. And so, you know, it becomes a harder balancing act, I think, for all those players to each sort of drive their careers the way they want, given all these changes where, you know, their own agencies might be representing another player who, A, might force his way out and alter the competitive balance. And B, it might be a trade that brings back a different player who might compete with them. You know, imagine they bring in a, you know, young defenseman back for Larkin, who's the same side shot and this sort of the same career trajectory as Edmondson. how is that impact Edmondson's next deal? And, you know, it doesn't become trickier with all these players wanting to move earlier. We're wanting to pair up with their friends or their relatives or their old teammates or whatever. It just becomes a complexifier.

And I don't know the answer to that. I just think there's going to be some interesting side effects from that type of league set up where you're going to have more of these high-stakes situations where it doesn't just impact, you know, the Dylan Larkin, but it impacts his teammates. and others in the room and how those players go about sort of protecting themselves and managing their own futures in a way that makes everyone happy because I think that will be a very tricky thing to do. Well, the trickle down effect of that is fascinating.

I mean, for the reasons you mentioned with Edmondson, but I'd even extend it to someone like Alex de Brinkett, for example, who is entering the final year of his deal. It'll be 29 in December. This coming up will be, you know, realistically, his last shot to cash and get a big long-term contract, and he's extension eligible this summer. He's got a ton of leverage, having scored 80 goals combined over the last two years. And I imagine that complicates things even further in terms of that domino effect for the rest of your roster,

where it's not just limited to Alarkin as good and valuable of a player as he is for the Red Wings organization. But then the accompanying moves in terms of handling some of these other decisions and what happens with the next contracts. And I think that applies to a DeBrenkette as well, where I imagine previously it would have been like, all right, well, you know, we'll handle the admins and extension, and then we'll get on to Brinket now.

And then all of a sudden, you're having to juggle all these other things. And I imagine for the player as well, a lot of that uncertainty is going to cause a ton of hesitation in terms of what you want to commit to for the last most productive seasons of your career. Yeah, I think that's right. It impacts a lot of things that even, you know,

taking a step back to what you mentioned earlier, it will affect other clubs who are going to see this type of player movement and say, again, let's keep that dry powder because, you know, so-and-so might be signed somewhere for six more years, but that doesn't matter. We just need one phone call saying he wants to come here and play with, you know, whoever, and all of a sudden we're in business. So it will, you know, maybe have that positive impact of making teams be more hesitant

to sign, you know, those non-cornstone players to big money, big term, big trade protection when they know that any day now they might get that phone call that says, hey, you know, so-and-so is available and we want to know if you guys have a bid. Do you have any thoughts on how a lot of this stuff impacts, especially like the discussion of on a second deal, let's say, for one of these young promising players, the risk-vers-reward of going with a shorter, let's say, two to three year bridge deal and then still retaining them as an RFA beyond that, but maybe having less leverage because, you know, their arbitration eligible. They've been more productive in the meantime. The cap's going up. And so all of a sudden,

they have more earning power on those next negotiations versus locking them in long term, because we've spoken a lot on the show about how almost on all occasions. I mean, maybe there's a couple examples where you just get the player evaluation wrong and you wind up giving eight years to an unproven player who's not necessarily worth it although assuming they're under 25

I think getting out of it is a lot easier but kind of how that all plays in here both from the player and team perspective in terms of that kind of push and pull in those second contract negotiations yeah I think this by case like we often forget how you know how personal this all is

but you know, you're talking about in most cases second contract, potentially at, you know, 21 to 24 year old who's looking at, you know, in some cases, generational wealth, right? Like life altering financial guarantees for signing a contract. And so it's easy to, you know, sit back wherever and say, oh, you should, you know, bet on himself and sign for two years for two or three million instead of signing for 50 right now. But easier said than done when that money is sitting on the table. So I think, you know, as much as strategically, if you're optimizing for maximum career earnings in many cases, going short than going long, is absolutely the right move. It takes some fortitude to do that.

And I don't think anyone can really fault a player who just wants to, you know, sign that contract and take off the risk of subsequent injury or regression or whatever. But, yeah, you know, nothing new to say, you know, helpful for a young, young player with strong upside. to, from a financial standpoint, to the battle on himself, but to your point, to what we've been talking about, I think it is very important for players to think more about, you know, do I want to make that commitment to, you know, not just this, this location, but this management team. And we've seen that in Detroit, right, where Dylan Larkin, you know, grew up in Michigan, drafted by the Red Wings, franchise icon as a GM. And so he, he, you know, very quickly signed for a law term deal and probably didn't foresee that, you know, they'd miss the

playoff seven years straight. There would probably be some, you know, maybe deficiencies in managerial decisions that he totally agree with. And then he's sitting there saying, listen, I'm a superstar. I'm in my late 20s. 31 teams would want me in a second, and I'm stuck here. And so maybe that will be a teachful moment for some players to maybe go shorter term like we see in some other sports, but see less probably in the NHL right now than we might.

I do think I was thinking about this getting a great illustration I guess of the way this dynamic shifted is I feel like for so long we're a kind of conditioned to view burning the first year of an ELC on a player

to be something you wanted to kind of try to reserve and sort of kick the can down the road so that you had them on their ELC and cheaper for the next couple of years to accommodate everything else and now that everyone has just so much more real estate to work with, I almost view it as getting to the second contract or the ability to negotiate it

and assign it ahead of time as soon as they become eligible to be that much more valuable for organizations. And the Sabres are a great example, right, where I still saw a lot of talk about a guy like Consta Heleneus, for example, because he was stuck at nine games and it was like, oh, do we want to burn this first year of his ELC and what impact is that going to have? And if anything, I view it as a positive now for teams just getting to that process more quickly because chances are they haven't had as much time the young player to be productive to increase their leverage and so just getting back to that table as quickly as you can assuming the

player is actually that good and i do think hell onus is is probably a massive net positive for teams and so if anything like he was obviously very valuable for them in the playoffs and that in that had series but i feel like it's just going to it's probably going to save that money down the road because they're going to be able to to lock him in longer term assuming they can work it out sooner than they might have otherwise. Yeah, and that's nothing new. We talked about that in Florida as well. Years ago you want to put players in a position to

ideally, you as management know what that player is going to be before anyone else and to bet on them as early as possible. And if that means, you know, burning a year and putting them like you've said in a position where maybe they don't have the box card stats and everything else in the body of work that they would be with another year pro-experience impacting their negotiation leverage. you know, that absolutely helps. And, you know, the difference between that one extra year is transformative.

You know, going back to Vince and Trochuk. I remember when I was trying to sign Vince to his second contract negotiating with the late great Steve Rich, his agent at the time. And, you know, we missed that window by a few months where if we had signed Vince coming off sort of his first semi-pro season where he split time in the minors but showed some flashes, we would have probably got him in the, you know, $2 million a year AV range. And instead we, you know, Steve rightly, with great wisdom, dragged that process out as long as he could, as he had the right to do,

and just kept waiting and said, you know what, I believe in Vince, we believe in Vince. Let's see what he does. And it went from starting off talking about Vince in the mid-2s to saying, well, you know, maybe in the low threes to us all sort of agreeing verbally, well, we know the ceiling is, you know, the Johnson Coucher of Plot, second. and deals in Tampa. He's not one of those guys. To by the end of the year, Steve being like, well, no, maybe he is. And we ended up signing Vince for a, I think it was six years, just shade under $5 million,

which still ended up being a great deal for both team and player. But, you know, that's the difference between a $25 million contract. And if we had moved maybe five months earlier, that contract would have probably been three years, five and a half million. So you can't understate your point. And times have changed since then. It's not like you'll get a guy like Calenius. for two or three million dollars a year on a deal with term anymore.

But certainly if you can move quicker. And again, like we've seen in Carolina and maybe Bussie is the best example of sort of the triumvirate of young guys they just signed. That's where you save millions of dollars on a great young player. And any way you can set yourself up to do it, you know, that's how you build a great team. All right. On the way out here, because we only got a couple minutes left and then we got to go, I'll give you your pick of the litter because we got questions in the Discord about draft lists, especially, you know, that this year's draft is about a week away in terms of finalizing them

and how much change there is this close to the process. I'm curious about, you know, actionable items from this window between now, let's say from July 1st and September 15th, until some of the changes in the new CBA kick in for contract structuring. We got a question about negotiating with unrestricted free agents and kind of how that touchpoint process comes in terms of expressing interest and then getting the wheels in motion. And I'm also interested in teams that you think are in kind of high leverage spots this summer that, you know, regardless of where they are in their organizational arc, can benefit most from what's going on around them right now.

So which of those is the most interesting to you that you want to close out today with? Number one. So the question is how much do things change on a list between, you know, mid-June and late June? Yeah. Yeah. Like, let's say, especially after the combine, you kind of have gone through your information gathering process, you've met with the players, you have all of their biometrics, you have everything in place for the most part. You're certainly still having conversations between now and then,

but just in general, kind of in the lead up to the event itself and ultimately going up there to make the pick, like how much change or discussion really goes on internally. For fireworks, it depends on the team. It depends on the voices in the room and how how much of a well-oiled machine that group of scouts managers are and how they're aligned ownership, but I'll tell you a story about a time where it wasn't set in stone between, you know, mid and late June. And, you know, that was, we had a draft back in 2015 or 2016, where we had a bunch of wide-ranging voices between scouts and analysts and new folks who had come in the room and a newer ownership group that was sort of trying to shift a mindset.

And our list massively changed in the last couple weeks. We had, you know, one night where we had a scout who had come in recently who stood up and said this kid Adam Fox we need to take him as early as possible if we can get in the top 10 or whatever let's move him way up our list

and we had another scout stand up on the table and yell and scream saying you know what the analytics on this kid are wrong he is only putting up numbers because he plays on the national development team he plays alongside other good players and then other voices stood up and said

well he plays with good players because he's a great player and it went back and forth, and Fox moved all over our list. We had another scout who came in at the time from Sweden, who had a couple players, who he was pounding the table for, who hadn't even been on our top 200 and 300 before. And so the list moved, you know, up and down

and, you know, it shifted mightily sort of just for argument's sake. I don't think that happens too often, especially anymore. And in most sort of, you know, well-established draft rooms, I think, you know, in a high functioning team now, you probably have the guys you delegate that work to who spend all your, you know, either traveling or analyzing players and you sort of let them do the work and the list stays final.

So I don't expect there's a ton of movement nowadays, but there's certainly lots of stories. I think there's one of more recent times with like Eric, you know, Eric Crawford in Montreal pounding the table for Lane Hudson and maybe bumping up a little bit. So, yeah, there's always a, there's always, always room for drama and fireworks. And that's why the draft should probably be in one central location where we can see all

those tables at once rather than remote. All right. Well, good stuff, buddy. It was great to catch up in the early stages of this off season. Hopefully, I know we say this every year in terms of the fireworks and player movement and all that stuff. But just because of all the stuff we've described today with the cap going up and the unrestricted free agent market and teams desire to improve, hopefully we will see that.

And if we do so, we'll check back in with you. later this summer and kind of talk about some of the trends and some of the most actionable items from a contract perspective moving forward. You got anything to promote here on the way out? I know you don't have a podcast or an article. All good. Thanks for having me on. All right, buddy. We'll have you on again soon. Enjoy the offseason. If you enjoy

today's show, give us a five-star review. Wherever you listen, especially appreciated heading into the summer as we enter the final stages of this season. Subscribe to the Pideokest Patreon as well. We're running a off-season blueprint series there. As I said earlier. We had a blue jacket steep dive already. We've got the abs coming up on Thursday and then a bunch more next week as we get into this summer. That is all for today. But don't worry

because we're coming back tomorrow with Kevin Woodley, which should be a banger. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.