The Hockey PDOcast - Making sense of the Preds + early mailbag questions

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Dimitri welcomes Ryan Lambert to the show as they talk about the Nashville Predators. The pair crack open the mailbag as well for your listener questions.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. 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. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filipo. Welcome to the Hockey P.D.O. cast. My name is Demetri, Vylovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Ryan Lambert. Ryan, what's good on, man? Well, I'm hanging in there. What's up with you? Oh, we can do, well, we can improve that.

We can do better than just hanging in there, right? We can get to at least, oh, they're doing pretty good. Fingers crossed. Yes. Well, let's see how, let's see how today's show goes. So we're going to eventually open up the mailbag. and it's something we typically reserve for Friday shows here in the BDOCast, but why not do it on this Thursday?

So you and I are going to have some fun with that, let the listeners guide the conversation. And yeah, and then we're going to do it again tomorrow. So with another guest, so people can keep sending the questions in on Twitter, email, or wherever you prefer. But I really wanted to talk to you before we start the listener questions about the Nashville Predators here today, actually, because you wrote about them recently on EPRing side.

And I was just telling you before we went on, that in my prep for today's show, I went back and rewatched the most recent game they played on Tuesday night against the Seattle Cracken and was absolutely flabbergasted by what I was seeing out there, so I wanted to get into it with you here. So let's just, let's see where this conversation takes us. Let's start talking about the predators and see how far we get.

Sure, yeah. So what, since you did write about them, I'll give you the floor here to start in terms of your thoughts on what we're seeing from them this season, where they start out the season in Prague, I believe, playing against the sharks. They win those two games. They come back since then. The 3, 7, and 1, they've got a negative 10 goal differential.

All their 5-10-goal differential. All their 5-10-on-5 metrics are reasonable enough, but when you watch this team play, it's such an underwhelming group. So where do we go with them in terms of, like, what we're seeing from them this season? Yeah, I mean, I guess you would have said about the same, for a lot of the stuff you just said, for them last year. They weren't like setting the world on fire or anything like that, but they looked like a very competent team. And I think they got into the playoffs by a point or two.

But that was with, you know, an unbelievable season from Yossi Soros and a couple of guys, Matt Dushain being the most obvious, really having just kind of outsized production like way more than you would have expected. Right. And so, yeah, they added Nino Nider Ryder, who I think you and I are both big fans of, right? But other than that, like, I don't feel like they did anything that really made me say, well, you know, they're ready to take a step here. I feel like they kind of just decided to tread water even. And they added Ryan McDonough, too. That's another guy, I feel like is worth mentioning. Well, here's a thing, though.

He did not look good in his most recent case. No. No, he did not. Well, here's the thing. I was actually reasonably optimistic, not necessarily for them taking the next step this season, but they finished last year with 97 points. They add neither-rider-er-righted and Rick Dunnell

without really subtracting anything from the roster, I believe the only sort of regular player that's missing is Luke Cunnan, who they traded to San Jose, and I don't think that's a loss by any means. And so I think it was reasonable to look at this group and say, well, they're not necessarily going to take another step, But I'm expecting them to flirt with potentially 100 points, something in the low to mid-90s at least. And we'll see, there's still a lot of season left, but nothing I've seen so far this year would really inspire confidence that that's going to be the case.

Yeah. Like I said, I mean, you know, they barely made the playoffs last year with as much as I think Yosos is an awesome goalie and he's not going to be 890 or whatever he is forever. It's just a situation where if you're going, oh, we absolutely need to get top-notch goaltending all year and have a couple of guys like, you know, it's not just Dushain. Like they had a big season from Tanner to No last year when it comes to putting the puck in the net. Like he was like 25 goals or something like that. And so you just look at it and you go, oh, they needed like a lot of stuff to come together really well for them to barely make the playoffs. Yeah. Roman Yose, you know, again, I think he's awesome, obviously,

but is he a 96-point player all season? But, like, you know, is driving a lot of their power play success? I, you know, again, kind of unrepeatable to me a little bit. Yeah. Well, here's the key stat. They're 24th in team shooting percentage of the season, 19th and say percentage. And the reason why I mentioned that is because you hit the nail in the head there.

Last year, they were sixth and 12th in those categories. categories. And that's kind of the crux of this, right? From the goal-tending perspective, I expect UC Saros is going to be better. Honestly, you know, the first goal he gave up against the Crackard in that game I was referencing, he just missed the puck and it went through him. Otherwise, it's pretty tough to blame him on anything happening in front of him. They rely on him so much to basically just bail everyone out with his acrobatics and his athleticism. And I think it's possible that last year, he just kind of, he spoiled us into thinking that that was just a regular thing to expect from him, when in reality it was a real Herculean effort from him

and especially with the volume of games they were playing him into the point where he finally broke down at the end of the season and got hurt and missed their playoff series against Colorado he's already started, I believe, 10 of their 13 games this season so far. So there's that, and then offensively, I think you're almost understating what an aberration last year was.

Yeah. They'd never had a 35-goal or 90-point player in franchise history prior to last season. And then Matt Duchyne scores 43 goals. Philip Forsberg scores 42 goals Roman Yose hits 96 points and you look at the shooting percentages of all those players both on ice shooting percentage and individual

and they were through the roof I mean Ryan Johansson 22% Tanner, you know 19.4 Duchyne and Forsberg both just under 19 and I think maybe the thing I mistakenly glossed over in my expectations and I was like all right well they can just repeat what they did last year was kind of expecting that to happen again

because that seems like that was probably a best case scenario for pretty much every one of those players yeah for sure no and and so like i said like just the idea that well you know they can be around the playoffs again it's like no they again they they barely made it and all that stuff went right for them so the idea that you would add um mcdona and needer writer both again both players i like um and go oh they they can maybe even take a step it's like no they can maybe get back to where they were because they added those players. And, you know, obviously it's not happening for them so far.

So he was. Here's the thing. Even beyond this season, they have $56 million in cap commitments for the next two years at least until 2025 to Philip Forsberg, Matt Dushan, Ryan Johanson, Michael Granlin, Colton Sizzins, Roman Yosi, Ryan McDunna, and Matthias Hicolm, and Calteris's buyout. and all of those players are I believe the youngest of the group is philiporsburg who's 2080 turned 29 this summer everyone else is in their 30s already and that that's alarming because these are obviously all players who are established and have had great careers and you know if they're if they were in their peak

form i'd be like wow this is this is a really good team look at all these players and i'm still holding the door open a little bit for them to bounce back a little bit here and they show a level of competency this season but in terms of future outlook, I mean, where would you rank the Predators on like a league scale out of 32 teams of like how optimistic you'd be about the future trajectory of this organization? I mean, it would have to be stunningly low

for a team that was in the playoffs last season. Part of it is definitely, you know, they have U.S.S. Soros, who I think is a guy who can be a consistently top eight or whatever. Yeah, he's a building block, yeah. What's that? I said he's a, a building block.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And other than that, you know, like, they, they re-signed Philip Horgeburg over the summer, and I was like, I get why you would. But it's a little weird to see them do that when, you know, the summer before that, they were like, we got to trade Ryan Ellis, we got a trade Victor Arvinson.

and you say why would you why would you kind of like commit to a soft rebuild and then the second you like fall backwards into the playoffs you're like we're all in again that's the thing I don't understand about this about about this process I guess yeah I mean it's tough for me to fault him for that because he's like he's legitimately the most exciting player

they've ever had in their franchise history for sure and Cito really good Not that I would expect him to have the, you know, as I said, a lot of things went right for him last year in his career season. And it was really well timed from his bankability perspective to earn the contract he did. But yeah, it's tough. And they've really committed themselves as a group. And there's very, very few outs. And it's just not something that inspires much confidence from the players to the coaching staff to the management in place.

Like it's pretty bleak. You don't want to be like, you know, getting too ahead of ourselves, 13. games that a season, but I think the writing seems to be kind of on the wall here, and it's pretty alarming. Yeah, no, like I say, I mean, it's just a situation for me where it feels like, okay, we've decided that this is what we're going to do, and we're going to, they're not one of these teams, I guess, where they're like, no, we're going for it, and by going for it, I mean, like, trying to be seventh in the conference.

and committing the thing the flyers did over the summer, right, where everybody's like, well, surely they're going to like try to blow it up or something. And they were, and they said, no, we're actually going to do the exact opposite. It's kind of the same thing for me with the Predators. Like, I don't know what you see as like the ceiling here, but if you see it as anything other than a team that unless they get insane goaltending, barely scrapes into the playoffs for the next three or four years, we're looking at two very different realities about this team, I guess.

Yeah. If everyone pulls themselves up by the Bruce Chaps, everything goes absolutely perfectly for us. We can get absolutely demolished by the Colorado Avalanche in round one. That's exactly right, yeah. Yeah. It's tough, though, right? Because if you have, like, they're above this threshold

where they were good enough last season and all their players were productive enough, where if they had gone completely hard in the opposite direction and just like, we're like, all right, we're going to let Philip Borsmer walk here, we're going to try to trade everyone that's not completely strapped down and pretty much no one else, no one is other than UC Saros, I guess. It's, that's pretty tough.

Like that's something we, you know, whether it's right or wrong and it probably is wrong. It's just something we like don't really see in NHL. Like things generally have to devolve one or two or even three years past the expiry point for teams to kind of come to their senses and come to that realization. Yeah, for sure. Okay.

Let's get into some of these listening to questions. I've got a first one here from Mitch Trullop. He asks, what's wrong with Jonathan Hubrido, short-term struggle or something bigger at play? I did about 20 minutes on this with Kent Wilson yesterday on yesterday's PDF cast where we deep-dived the Calgary Flames, so I don't necessarily want to rehash everything here, but I'm curious for your take on Hubert O and kind of his questionable start of the season. Yeah, I mean, part of it is definitely. definitely that he super, again, he kind of overperformed what everybody would. This is a good player historically, a guy who does a lot of good stuff for you.

And it seemed on paper to me as though he was the kind of guy who could really thrive in a Darryl Sutter coached system. but I don't know I haven't I guess I haven't been paying super close attention to who his linemates have been in that kind of thing but I have to imagine it's a bit of a downgrade from what he had last year right so that alone can be part of it and you know he's not going to shoot whatever he got one goal so he's not going to shoot five six seven percent whatever he's at all year but with that having been said like I think a lot of people talk themselves into, well, this is a guy who can be a 100-point player. And the people include, I guess that includes Brad Trillifing, right? Where, you know, before that, he was more like, you know, he had, I think, one other 90-point season, but he was more like a 60-70-point player. And that's fine. That's a, you know, that's a good thing to be.

But when you're signing yourself up to have a guy until he's like, whatever, 38 years. old. It's maybe not the best situation for long-term cap. But I think he will, you know, start being a little more productive. I think he's just a little unlucky right.

Yeah, well, it's certainly concerning. He turns 30 of the summer, and that's when his eight-year, $84 million extension kicks in. So, yeah, you're right till 38. I mean, he's got two five-on-five points in 11 games, just six points total on the season. You know, Justin Bourne wrote about this recently. He had some really interesting stats in

they're about the team kind of the stylistic approach that they're playing with so far where they're basically dead last in the league and pass attempts off the rush in east-west passes in the offensive zone and these are all pretty much principles that the panthers use to go Harlem globe Trotters and everyone the past couple years in the regular season and especially hubert oh was a big part a big driving force of that where he fit into that playing style so well and it's the antithesis of what they're doing right now where it's it's everyone's like worst stereotype of darrell sutter hockey where there's just been yellow imagination it's like all right we're going to get in the offensive zone and just kind of fire the buck onto the net and get back and defend and there's

no like creativity or or trying to make stuff happen in the offensive zone that's not really how they played last year certainly the top line didn't play that way so i i have a hard time believing that this is just what they're going to be like. And for him, I mean, I mentioned this yesterday. He just, I do believe there's a certain element of kind of like learning to play with your new teammates, especially for a guy whose game is so predicated on rhythm and timing where a lot of these fancy passes he's throwing are behind the players or in their skates. And it's like just stuff he's not used to from the guys he played with in Florida.

So I'm willing, as alarming as the starts been, I'm willing to give him another at least 15 to 20 games year to see if he can kind of turn it around and start looking more like Jonathan Hubert O from the Florida years. Yeah, I guess that's the best way to think about it, right? Where, you know, the Flames offense felt like it was always going to take a step back just because it lost Kachuk and the drill, right? Like, that's those are two, like, maybe, you know, it's certainly within their power to be like MVP caliber players.

And to lose them is, is, is just a really tough blow, I think, for any, for any offense, for any team. And, yeah, I guess, I don't know, I guess for me, I just look at this and say, you know, this is kind of what you signed up for. The planes had the best summer on planet Earth, and it's like, no, they made the best out of a bad situation. Right. There was always going to, maybe not this many difficulties, but, you know, I think, I

think you, on the balance, should say that, you know, Huerto being a 65, 70 point player by the end of the season, I think everybody, well, yeah, sure, that's within his power. I guess the timing on it is rough, right? It's like you buy a fancy new car, and it's like you take it out for a spin for the first day and it breaks down. And then you're like, oh, it's going to be in the shop for the next couple weeks. And then hopefully, you know, let's revisit this in a month

and see if it gives us the desired effect that we had when we paid for it. and if this had happened mid-season where he has six points in 11 games, it's clearly less of an issue. But just because this is all we've seen from him in Calgary, I think it's easy to kind of talk yourself into like, oh, last year was a total aberration in the grand scheme of things, and this is going to be the new reality, and I wouldn't go that far by any means.

Yeah, no, I agree. It's concerning, but it's not like that concern. Yes, yeah. All right, it's TBD. Next question here from Andra Budik. asks, what's wrong with the avalanche at 5-on-5 the season, and what can they do to improve that besides getting healthy? Did you know that they played 11 games? They have 19, 5-on-5 goals as a team so far?

I didn't know that. I knew that they, you know, just looking at numbers almost every day as I do, that, you know, that they were not playing great. I think the thing about not getting healthy, or not being healthy, like, yeah, that's, is that their main problem? Probably not, but, you know, they're missing, well, they just lost the Larry Nuchuskin the other day, but not having Bowen Byron and not having... Gabriel Lanniscock has been out all season, right?

And so you would definitely want them to get a little more offense. Obviously, you have Cal McCarr, you have Nathan McKinnom. You have potentially game-breaking players on any given shit. gift. But the thing that I guess I took from it is, you know, they're not playing great at five on five, but they're only giving up like one and a half goals per 60. Yep. And so on some level, it's like, as long as that's going well for you, what do you care? You know what I mean? I can't, I can't get too. I can't. I can't get too. I can't. I can't

get too worried about the avalanche if this if this persists into December or even January obviously it's a whole different story well I'll take you a step further yeah they're giving up the fewest five-on-five goals against they're also the number one power play team yeah and so ultimately yes in terms of like in a vacuum if you looked at that type of statistical profile you'd be like all right well without assigning any names or a team to those numbers you'd say this is a bit alarming especially for their future outlook because as we get into later in the season and the playoffs relying just purely on power play scoring if you are going to be this mediocre at five-on-five offense that's probably not going to take you that far but we know the players they have and that they're

going to get back healthy and i think they're kind of like a middle-of-a-pack team in terms of shot share and expected goals at 5-1-5, that is totally irrelevant to me because of the players that you mentioned, like, they're always going to outperform that. So one shot from Nathan McKinnon and Kail McCar creating it while they're on the ice is not equivalent to one shot from insert generic team. So I just, yeah, it's one of those. It's also I do strongly believe, not that there's a Stanley Cup hangover, but there's purely a motivational thing from the perspective of

they're a team that's clearly playing, taking the long view this season. Like they have no reason to be just going out there and completely going for broke in a game in November. They're going to be trying to get ready and get all

their pieces aligned for April, May, June. And so it's kind of, it's a boring answer to say this, but I think there's going to be some pretty generally underwhelming based on our expectations for them, numbers for at least the next little bit here. And then as they get healthy and as we get closer to the playoffs, they're going

to ramp up and you can question whether it's possible to kind of just flip the switch like that. But I have full expectations that come to postseason, this is going to be the scariest team in the league once again. Yeah, I think that's a totally reasonable way to look at it. Like they, much like the Leafs, the regular season kind of doesn't matter for these guys. They're going to win far more often than they lose. Maybe you say that's not like the Leafs. Yeah, two teams with equal recent playoff success, right? Right, no.

But like I'm just saying in terms of, you know, the way that they're going to be looking at regular season success or lack they're off or whatever. like how things go. Like they just need to get into the playoffs and not be like an eighth seat or something like that, which they probably won't be. And they should be fine, especially once they get everybody healthy and that sort of thing. But, you know, this isn't like the Rangers last year

where they needed that power play to be incredible because they were just getting buried when their top line was off the ice a lot of the time, right? The Avalanche don't have those kind of depth problems, and they don't need elite goaltending to be a convincing, you know, Stanley Cup contenders. Well, the thing that's, sorry, I was going to say the thing that's also gone their way is if you look around them in the Western Conference, aside from Vegas, whose grip on this is a bit tenuous

because it relies so much on the continued health of Mark Stone and his back, and hopefully that carries over and he's fine and he plays all season and he plays at this level. If they do have their full lineup, I kind of think they're really the only team. I guess aside from potentially if absolutely everything goes right for the Oilers, just from an offensive perspective, but look around the West, it really feels like who's like a real genuine threat to a completely healthy

and firing on all the cylinders Colorado Avalanche team. Boston, Vegas, Carolina. Yeah, those are the three. Exactly. So Vegas is pretty much the only one in the West, right? Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. So as long as you stay away from seeing them early in the postseason,

it's going to be not a smooth ride. There's going to be some ups and downs and challenges, but the path towards repeating is pretty wide open for them, I'd say. Yeah, we're sure. All right, Ryan. We've got a couple other questions that we're going to get to, but first we're going to take a quick break here. And then when we do come back,

we're going to get into some more of these listener questions. So you are listening to the Hockey Pediocast here on the Sportsnet Radio Network. The Hockey PEOCast here with Dimitra Philopovich, and I am joined by Ryan Lambert today. We are doing your listener Mailbyo questions. Ryan, here's the next one from Stuart Miller. He asks, is Carolina's style of play antiquated?

I guess I don't understand the question. Well, here... They're one of the best teams in the league. Yes. They generate a ton of offense and they don't give up any defense or anything defensively, I should say. Right. So I don't know.

I don't know what we're judging this on. I think stylistically, I've been talking a lot on the show about how it is just, it's not my personal cup of tea watching them play because they play like kind of this puck hunting style, right, where they're just, their offensive game plan is to beat you over the head. with volume, right? So they're, they're just going to throw the puck on net from pretty much everywhere and with no plan other than their plan, that basically being their plan of, we're just shoot the puck from every single place we get it. And then we're going to bank on our ability to be incredibly annoying and relentless and active and get those pucks back. And then we're going to create offense

because we're just going to keep sort of inching our way closer and closer to the net through that volume, but there's no sort of strategy from, all right, we're going to get in the offensive zone and then we're going to pass it around and go east-west and try to create kind of cool actions where all of a sudden we can get into the slot and get a good look here. It's much more of a sort of kind of just relentless approach in terms of that.

So I think that's what he means. You're not necessarily the effectiveness, but just in terms of like the way they choose to play and how different it is than most teams in the league. I see. I don't know. like it's tough for me to judge like I guess there are not any or maybe not none but very few NHL teams I think play with that style in mind um and so I don't know if that makes it antiquated

like so as you probably know Demetri I watch a lot of college hockey right and um in college hockey you you get way more variance in how teams play and so I see plenty of teams over the course of the season that play this kind of style that are just trying to like hunt the puck and shoot from everywhere and that kind of thing. And so to me it doesn't feel antiquated, I guess, because I see plenty of coaches across the country use it.

But in the NHL, I guess, I don't know if we want to say it's like this is a style that is going to falling out of fashion or this is just like a completely unique stuff. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's really tough to replicate because you not only need the personnel to play this way in terms of being able to actually keep up with that pace, but also I think the coach to be just basically cracking the whip and making sure that the players stay as motivated as possible the way Rod Brindamore does.

The reason why it's, listen, the results are, uh, You can't quibble with them in terms of all the metrics you cited, right? Like they take the third most shot attempts and they give up the fewest against. They're an elite offensive volume team and an elite defensive team in terms of stinginess and there's oppression. I do think an interesting question that you and I have talked about in the past in our playoff previews is whether there is a ceiling you bump into playing this way, which we've seen them kind of struggle with in past years, where if you run into an elite goalie or a strong defensive team,

it might not be the most sustainable strategy because it's so much tougher to kind of crack that defensive shell. And so if you're just willingly throwing the puck from the point, the other team will let you do that all day long if they have a great goalie that's not going to ever get beaten by those looks. And so like we saw last year, when you bump into Eugorses-Turken, I understand there's very few Egorcius Terkins out there.

The past few years, they've bumped it to him, Andre Vasilowski, but that's kind of the path you have to take to get out of the east. If you bump into those guys and you're taking such inefficient low percentage shots, it's going to be tough for you to win that four times out of seven. And so that's kind of what they bumped into. And so I don't know if they're having so much success in the regular season playing this way and they win so many games that I don't think you can all of a sudden allow these short-term playoff results to totally change your strategy and your formula.

But I do think it's kind of a lingering question for this team of whether they have. have enough creativity and offensive skill to break through against the truly elite defensive teams. Sure. And I think that's a totally fair way to frame their playoff problems, right? I'm just like, you know, how many times are you going to have to play an elite goalie in the playoffs almost every time, right? But it don't, you know, it's like with the capitals or whatever where it's like it only needs to work once and then it's like well we figured it out it's not a problem anymore

you know and um i don't know i for for me like do i think they're um like the the team that's you know i'm totally convinced that everything's going to go great great for them in the playoffs one day maybe not because i don't think that they have the the high skill threshold um that like as much as they have very good players on their roster like such of Cabanahoe and even Martin H.S. He's having a great start to the season. For me, I kind of, I look at it and say, you know, it's just a tricky situation for Rod Brindamore to be like,

oh, we should be focused on generating high, danger chances all the time and blah, blah, blah, because they don't necessarily have the guys who can do that single-handedly, And so if you're going to go through your whole lineup and say, well, we don't have, like, a lot of a loop town, but we have a bunch of very good players. Like, I think that strategy, like, his strategy kind of makes more sense. You know, like, if they had a Nathan McKinnon,

maybe they wouldn't be playing that way. But they don't, so this is where they're at. You know what I mean? Oh, definitely. And also, yeah, and also they're riding it to great success, right? In the regular season, but... In the regular season, but all you can do as a coach, really. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I, yeah, I don't mean this to come off sounding, like too critical of them because it's a really good team that's objectively getting awesome results out of it but it just i see them talking about as like oh this this fun hurricanes team that plays so fast and and all this stuff and it's like i don't yeah i just personally don't really enjoy watching their games that much it's like it's it's almost it's a point of diminishing returns in terms of it's chaotic nature where i like chaotic games and when things are free flowing and stuff but for them like i like a bit more sort of um

a bit more of an offensive design in terms of when you get an offensive zone, what you're actually trying to accomplish as opposed to kind of just throwing everything up against the wall and seeing what sticks. Sure, yeah. Like I say, like, I see so, like, a truly, like, large amount of this in college hockey that I feel like you don't. Well, why do you think that is? Is it because you're just generally, like, the talent discrepancies between teams is going to be so massive?

That's exactly right, yeah. And so, again, like, to circle back to the, what the actual question is. question was like is this antiquated I think it's to your point about uh talent discrepancies I think the the hurricanes do kind of have a clear talent discrepancy between what they have at the top of their roster and what other elite teams in the east have at the top of their roster and so for for them to say well we're going to we're going to have to play maybe a different way to get the same results over the course of an 82 game season it's clearly working for them. So as much

as it may be like unesthetic to you or other people or whatever, like I don't know that Rob Rindamore has like a ton of other options. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It was so funny in hindsight watching them go up against the Rangers in that series where they were

just sort of such polar opposites in terms of that efficiency and strategy. It's like the Americans can take 10 shots and then the Rangers just come in once and get one supremely high quality chance and have the players to convert it. And if you're the hurricanes, you're just looking at that and being like, oh, man, that's,

that's really annoying. We work just so hard and they just come in and just score that easily. Yeah. Okay. Here's a question from Peter. I was looking for a last name, but it just says Peter on Twitter. What do you think Bill Guerin will do with Matt Dumbo's expiring contract? Now, the last time I had you on, which was about three weeks ago now, we did a big section

on the Minnesota Wild. And at the time, the number of goals they were giving up against was just out of this world. And we expected they're going to start getting better performance. Marconjay Flore. It'll probably reguss a little bit. They'll be fine. That's happened. I'm kind of curious for your take now in terms of where this team's at sort of and how you balance the idea that you have this player who has been with the organization for this long, has been a valuable contributor.

But now is an impending UFA. and at this point of his career and with his reasonable, with what his expected price tag, there's almost no chance that Matt Dunba's on the Minnesota wild next year, right? So how do you just kind of go for it this year and play out the string on the contract and then deal with the consequences in the summer? Do you try to get out ahead of it,

acknowledging that he's a right-shot defenseman and those are pretty premium assets around the league and you could probably get a nice return and maybe even a player who can sort of help you this year while also being on your team at a cost-controlled price next year, what would you do if you were Bill Garan, or what are you expecting to do? I kind of, like, I think Bill Garron is one of the,

the few GMs in the league who's, like, not afraid to do something that is a little out there in terms of what his peers would do, right? Like, he's not afraid to get a little crazy with it and try to make things work that other GMs just kind of wouldn't do. think that does include trading Matt Dumba. I wrote something earlier today, and I was looking at stats about the wild. 21st in goals per 60 in all situation, and 29 at 5 on 5.

So to me, the answer is you trade Matt Dumba for offensive help. Yeah. Because it's just not working for them. Right. Yeah, maybe we underrated the impact of just losing Kevin Fiala and not really replacing him what I have on this team. Yeah. I mean, I think they thought, you know, I think at least I thought that Marco Rossi could be like a kind of, you know, discount store, Kevin Fiala, but it doesn't seem like it's

really worked out that way, even though he's personally like playing okay, but like 25th and five-on-five expected goals for. Like, they're just a team that they don't generate a lot of offense. It really is that simple. they need to they need to tighten it up. Well, I was going to, I think last I saw a stat, they finally kind of broke through and beat the Anaheim Ducks,

although if you're not scoring five goals on Anaheim Ducks these days, you have really big issues. Halfway through that game or at some point in the first period or whatever, they broke like a 160 minute scoreless streak. I was like, what? Like, what is going on here? It's wild because at the start of the year, they were giving up so many goals, but part of my thinking beyond just a natural

regression and it was while they're also scoring a lot of goals and especially on the power play like you've got caprizov and zuccarello flinging the puck around doing cool stuff i think they'll be fine and then the offense just completely dried up over the past week or so yeah i mean obviously that's going to skew things downward but like they're they're scoring under two goals per 60 at five on five yeah that that so that's not just so like granted like it's sample sizes or whatever so maybe getting shut out for two games in a row will hurt you. But like even before that, it wasn't like they were playing unbelievably well offensively, right?

So again, if I'm looking at what Bill Guerin might do and if he isn't afraid to kind of step up and gamble a little bit or whatever, I can totally see him trading Matt Dumbah for a ball. Who can actually put the puck. Yep. Jeff Gaffney asks, what's up with the blues did they just regress to where they should be? I feel like I need to do like a full blues deep dive. I don't know just devote an entire episode to this because like what's going on with them this season is just seems crazy.

I mean, the most recent game they played against the Philadelphia Flyers was just completely embarrassing. And I can't even remember the last time they won a game. I really don't know what to make of this group because you look and objectively like their top players. players are not performing like their top players. And also they've been pretty unlucky. And so they'll start scoring more. But man, I think the bigger issue for me is a more predictable one, which was you look at this blue line and what they're giving up in front of their goalies. And it's just, it's not nearly good enough. Like, they need to be the type of supremely efficient elite offense that they were last year just to get by. And they haven't had that this year. And

so the result is getting smoked 5-1 or whatever by the Philadelphia Flyers. Right. So a couple of things. We talked about this briefly on my podcast yesterday, but this is a team that they had the highest all situations shooting percentage of the team last year. In like, you know, since they started doing advanced stats in 2007-08, no team played a full season and had a higher shooting percentage than last year's police. so that's issue number one right the idea last year i guess was that you know like you said highly efficient they came down the ice they shot the puck it went in the net it was it was really that simple they were scoring a lot on the rush and and they were they had a very effective power and now the puck they're not you know they're actually a little below the league average in terms of team shooting percentage um but also

like you say, like all their defensemen are kind of a little bit worse. And they didn't, I thought they didn't have a particularly good blue line last seat. Like as much as they have a couple of players I like, I didn't look at that and say, oh yeah, this can be a really effective blue line for like a team that can go deep in the playoffs or whatever. Yep. And so I look at that and I look at the stuff that you just said about, like their top players aren't scoring. Like, you know, Pavel Butchenevich has one goal, and Ryan O'Reilly has two points, and Jordan Tyro has four points.

You know, like, these are the guys that you would expect could drive the offense. And I guess the easiest way to put this is Justin Falk leads their team in scoring. And he's a defenseman. And he's not even a particularly good defense. he's fine he's fine he's I said particular right he's fine yeah he shouldn't be leading your team scoring

no no no the other thing obviously is that they have sub 900 team goals yeah but I think part of that is I mean you you their GM had a like a media availability or press comments or whatever right

I feel like and I actually watched it on YouTube it was basically a podcast like he just stood there for 25 minutes and just talked I was like wow this is is he's uh he's stepping on our turf here he's just the arms are just podcasting um but he made this point of like if you look at the goals are giving up a lot of it is just like blown coverage is in the defensive zone it's like easy tap is right and it's very easy to make fun

of jordan bittington and and and his behavior sometimes is very clownish in terms of just like being a baby and trying to start fights and all that so i i get that but you watch it's like man this is a pretty bleak defensive environment in terms of like just what they're giving up. And so, yeah, whenever you have sub 900 goalending, it's going to be tough to overcome. I think there's much bigger issues in terms of the personnel. Offensively, I'm so sad to be seeing this because I really thought last year they had stumbled upon something that like was almost redefining hockey in the modern game where, yeah, like I didn't expect them to have the best shooting percentage ever. but you looked at the way they were passing the puck in the offensive zone, and I was like, it's clear that this isn't just a total fluke, right?

Like, they're seeking out, they're going from good to great shots whenever they can, and they just haven't been able to execute that game plan this year. I think not having David Perraud, who was one of the few guys who would just freely let it rip, especially on the power play, is tough because they still have a lot of good passers, but they're not really finishing. so maybe I think they kind of underestimated the impact of losing him or I underestimated the impact of losing him but yeah you'd have to think that eventually they're going to start scoring more goals

but at this point the season's pretty quickly going off the rails for them I was going to say like at what point do you say the horse is out of the barn when you've lost eight in a row and in that in that division where it seems like you know you can it looks like you can probably pencil and Colorado and Minnesota at the top of that division, and Dallas, obviously. And then, you know, Winnipeg is currently leading that division. I don't think anybody thinks they're like a world-beating team, you know,

in a final analysis or whatever. But, you know, there are 11 points back of Winnipeg right now. And so if Winnipeg ends up being the fourth place team in the central division, that's a huge gap to make up. You know, we're well past the November 1st, three points. out cut off and they're not even close to that. So, you know, it's really tough for them. But, you know, the thing you said about, you know, maybe they were redefining hockey

or whatever, how many teams that had a high shooting percentage did we say that about it over the years? Or did somebody say that about over the years, right? At some point, you know, I think, for me anyway, I sit there and any time I hear like, oh, they've cracked it. They know how to drive shot quality in a way nobody's ever figured out. It's like, yeah, I don't think they have. Well, I think there's a difference between, like, year over year and in season. Not that necessarily teams were, like, going into the lab being, like,

how can we slow down the St. Louis Blues this coming season? But, like, it's pretty clear that last year. I mean, I think it's fair to say they were the team that gave the avalanche the most trouble in the playoffs, right? Sure. Yeah, I thought they were, I thought they'd stumble upon something. I'm disappointed. Now, we've mentioned kind of Matt Dunbine, what you do with a player you're probably not going to retain.

We've got Ryan O'Reilly impending UFA, Vlad Tarasenko impending UFA, Ivan Barbachev. I mean, if the season keeps going this way, I think it's good for us in the content business because speaking of GMs who aren't afraid to kind of pull the plug, like we've seen them in the past when they realized they weren't good, move players and get stuff back for them.

and I'm really curious to see if the season goes down that path, whether they get feisty and whether they kind of just call it for this season and try to get back futures. And I imagine they'd get quite a bit, especially if they're retaining salary on those guys. Yeah, I mean, I'm always in favor of a team pulling the shoot as soon as possible, and I've said it a million times already this season. If there was ever the season to pull the shoot as soon as possible,

this is the one. The top three picks are going to, likely be like franchise defining players, right? And so if you can just get yourself into a position where you're getting a top free pick, then anybody you traded was worth it. And frankly, with this team in particular, I look at this roster and I go, they could use a little bit of a reset here where, you know, like, Kyru and Thomas are like 24 years old and whereas, you know, O'Reilly and Tarasenko

and there are a lot of older guys on this team as well that they would, I think, you know, it wouldn't really hurt them that much to move on from those guys. As much as, you know, emotionally those guys won you with Stanley Cup and blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you know, if you're going to be brave about making transactions, like, now's the time to do it. Yeah. All right, well, we had a bunch of other questions, but we're running out of time here. So I think we're going to pull the plug on today's house. episode and call it here.

Ryan, absolute treat as always to talk to you. Thanks for taking the time from your busy schedule. I know you've got about 57 different podcast recordings this week. No kidding. I appreciate you taking the time. I'll let you plug some stuff. Plug some of those,

plug the show you do and where are you right and all that. Yeah, for sure. Puck Soup is the podcast. You can find that on any podcast platform you want. This week we talked about, well, coaches on the hot seat. That's why we talked about the blues at some lengths yesterday and a bunch of other coaches too. It's been a weird year in the NHL. And then, of course, I write for ET Rankside. That's where you can find all my columns. I have one yesterday. I have one going up either

later tonight or tomorrow. And then I also have another one tomorrow and I have one on Monday. So, like he's a busy week for me. But that's where you can find all my writing. Well, I'm also writing at EP Rings site, a great site features. Is that true? Incredible writers. Let's tell the listeners. So, like, first off, I think I highly recommend everyone signs up for the premium version to get access to all this work.

Because I believe in the writers we have so much. Like, people like Mitch Brown and David St. Louis are so underrated in terms of the content. They're creating. Like, I feel like their type of analysis, the video work they do, especially on young players. We, as NHL fans, don't get to see every day playing at lower levels and all that is remarkable. And everyone should be checking that out. But we also acknowledge that there's a lot of things to sign up for,

and maybe it's not feasible for some people to be paying for the premium account right now, which is why if you also just sign up for a free account, you still get access to a bunch of cool content, right? Yeah, multiple columns I write every week are free if you have an E.Rink sign. just, you know, basically. I love it. Well, my first piece of the season just went up about John Marino, who I've talked about on this podcast a bunch, and I'm going to have something up there every Thursday morning

the rest of the way. So join us there. Thank you for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, go smash that five-star button on the podcast platform you listen to us on. And we'll be back tomorrow with more here on the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the SportsNet Radio Network.