The Hockey PDOcast - Mo Seider's Extreme Usage, and Best Interests of Player vs. Team

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to talk about Mo Seider's extreme usage this season, the divisive opinions it's created about his performance, and balancing best interests long-term of the player vs. the short-term needs of the team. They also take some mailbag questions about how the NHL schedules start times, and players switching agents during the season. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

It's the Hockey PDOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dmitra Filipovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Sean Schiapiro. Sean, what's good on, men? Not too much, man. They're actually in the building, Little Sears Arena. The Red Wings come back from their biweek. I guess technically they practiced yesterday,

but we're doing practice today before they play matinee game with the Canucks tomorrow. I'm down at the rink and what a great time to podcast when I got about an hour before I actually have to do some other work. Yeah, that's going to be a fun game. I'm certainly looking forward to it. And we're very on brand right now. This is obviously a audio format. But for those that are curious, I'm sitting here in the Sports Night Studio wearing my Sports

9-650 polo and you are at the practice rink, as you said, in a swanky lounge awaiting practice. So we're very on brand and it's exactly what you'd expect the scenes looking like here. All right, this is going to be a fun one because we're going to talk a little bit about Mo Cider and the conversation that's been starting to boil, right? And I love it because it feels like this is such a throwback debate, right? It feels like we're almost going back to 2016. This is like a vintage conversation from back in the day about player usage and especially someone with extreme deployment, the way Cider has had this year and how he looks on the ice.

And if you're just watching Red Wings games, and particularly if you're a Red Wings fan, what you're seeing from him and what you're appreciating all the little nuances first, if you're just looking at the kind of more macro view of his results and his end of the day, bottom line and how those two aren't necessarily lining up. And then how we account for a quality of competition and all that sort of stuff. So there's so many layers to this. You contributed to it certainly last week with an excellent piece, both talking to Mo about it, and Coach Derek Llan, but also providing a lot of of that context and kind of those highlighting the most important layers of the conversation. So let's just get into it. What's kind of the most fascinating part of this for you and take it any way you want and that I've got so many thoughts on it myself?

Yeah, for sure. And I'm a big, I'm not a big black and white. You break things down by the numbers. Like I feel like I have done a pretty good job in my hockey journalism writer life, whatever you want to call, kind of trying to find how there is the gray area where this all comes together, right? Where we, the data and the numbers, they, they're tools. We need to use them. And it's something that that's a really important tool. And so I think too often we end up just throwing it away where there becomes a subsector where people will just like, oh, well, that those

numbers, we can't use those. And then I'm also a believer that you have to trust your eyes as well. Like I'm a big believer that you have to kind of find the gray area on this. And for me, we're the whole watching kind of the cider discourse on all of this. And Sometimes I personally don't like trying to weigh in on things like this where I don't see the player every night. Like that's kind of one of those things that I've always been. It's always interesting when you see the debate on like, oh, well, this guy's not great or this and the number say this or that or whatever. And if I'm only watching the guy three to four times a month maybe, just kind of watching on TV, I personally am not going to put my opinion on that. But the cider one kind of pinged my brain, because obviously I'm based here in Detroit.

I probably see about, I'd say about two-thirds of every Detroit game live, two-thirds of all the Detroit home games lives and a couple on the road. I watch every Wings game either live or on replay the next day just based off where I am location-wise. And for me, watching the game, and I feel like I understand it a little bit, I don't see Mo Sider as a, as someone who's holding the Red Wings back. I don't see when the conversation is coming out of, well, most Sider's been terrible. He's been bad. When I watch him play, I see the Red Wings winning those minutes he's on the ice. Now, obviously, part of that comes with, and then you stop, you take a deeper, okay, what am I watching? I'm watching a lot of him starting the defensive zone. I'm watching him go up against McDavid when Edmonton comes to town. I'm watching him go up against the top lines on every team. And for me, it was kind of one of those bases where I read all of this, I see this is like, oh, well, Sider's holding this team back, or you see Red Wings fans are coming to defend their guy.

And kind of how I entered this fracas, and not even fracas, but just how I added my own data point to this whole conversation is I just figured I'd ask the guy directly. And so I went directly to to Moseider last Wednesday before making the drive out to Toronto for All-Star weekend. I just went over to Mo and asked him about how he views hockey analytics. and what's he thinks of his numbers and everything like that. And it was, I think he told me it was the first time anyone has ever asked him about it. So I was, we had a pretty good conversation just and I wrote about it. You can go read it over at the website Shapshotshockey.com. And we talked quite a bit about how he knows what his role is.

He knows where he is. And at the same time, he didn't know, he didn't know about the historical. usage, right? Like we've seen this, like, oh, he plays against top defenders more than anyone else, and he gets more starts in the defensive zone than anyone else with his deputies. He didn't know about that, but he also kind of looked at his roles, like, okay, I feel like I'm doing a good job. And so I've rambled a little bit there, but that's kind of how I entered this, this discourse. It started with me watching Sider play so often thinking he's not nearly as bad as some of these people try to bring up with the numbers. And at the same time, I'm also not going to be a

sloppy just because I'm going to just defend the guy because I see him all the time. I feel like there's a good happy medium here on this. Well, and of course, the raw numbers aren't going to paint him in a poor light, right? And if you look at just the five on five on ice metrics, 47% shot share, 44% expected goals, down to 38% high-dage chances. Obviously, when you're playing, as you mentioned, not only such a high percentage of your shifts starting in a defensive zone, but also literally 100th percentile quality of competition as well, it's going to be difficult to come out ahead in those minutes, right? And I think part of the complication here is that I think a lot of models try to

account for that, right, and sort of weight the fact that not everyone has the same deployment. And so you're accounting for that and you're trying to weigh all those things. I think we still have difficulty properly accounting for it because it's not as simple as you play X, minutes, you played Y minutes, and then we're going to bring those together. There's like this trickle-down effect, particularly in terms of what your circumstances or situation asks you to do, and then how you as a player play in that situation, right? So for Mo Sider, if you look at Corey Schneider's tracking data of him, it's really interesting. I think it paints a light of why maybe the numbers are the way they are. And then also in terms of who he's playing against, where he's very aggressive as a neutral zone

defender, right? And it makes sense. We saw it from day one when he entered in the NHL. He's got immense reach and he's really good at utilizing it. And so he breaks up a lot of entries. When you get by him, teams are creating a lot of scoring chances off of those entries after they get past him. And it makes sense because he's playing against such premium opposing forwards that they're very dangerous. They're going to try to carry it in. And once they do, they're cooking. And then defensively, he's actually pretty good at getting the puck out of the zone. zone, but a lot of it is not with possession. It's kind of just clearing it, getting into a neutral zone and resetting and starting that process all over again. So there's this kind of feedback loop in that regard. And I think putting all of those pieces together and trying to sort of cobble together a painting or a representation of what's happening out there with him is just as interesting to me as the raw numbers. And then that gets into the whole conversation of, is he best suited playing this type of role? And does it make sense for the Red Wings to be asking him to do so? And that's the other great point about all of this.

And it's kind of the moving forward point of this, this conversation where we're having this discourse. And it's the spot where you look at the role he's playing. And I would argue, if he's not playing this role, I would argue the Red Wings aren't as much of a playoff contender as they are right now. And that's the reality of it. Like, it's one of those things where he says, is this the role he should be playing?

He should he be starting the defensive zone all that times? I mean, you and I have talked on this show before about the Red Wings, quote, unquote, depth on the defense, where at the end, is this the ideal role for Mo Sider on a team that's contending? Probably not. But is this the role that is this the ideal role for Mo Sider on this Red Wings team with the way this defense core is built? And that's what happened. And that's kind of the, that's kind of the spot where it all kind of plays. I think we have to keep all of that in mind on this because Sider. is essentially

even though like Derek Lelan likes to talk about how he puts Petrie and Chirot against the other team's top pairs, they don't have nearly the same success against the other team's top pairs. They don't have the there's, you're going from

Cider doesn't have the positional battle, right? The geographical battle of let's spend the other end, let's play in the other end of the ice. You have a better chance of doing that with Cider and Jake Wallman, who's his main defense partner than you do with Petrie and Chirot. And that's kind of the space where I know people sometimes, I can't remember who, but one of the comments on the story that I wrote was like, oh, what is this, is this, is the,

are, should we question the Red Wings for his usage that way? And I think that's a deadline offseason question. That's not a question for Derek Lalonde. I think from a coaching perspective, he's using most side of the way he has to. And I truly believe that. I think from a GM perspective, this is a, spot where Steve Iserman has to ask himself that question of, have I put my coach in a spot where he's using Moritzider the way he needs to be?

Well, that's a really interesting distinction and delineation. And I'm with you, right? I always say that coaches actions speak much louder than words, right? They'll say one thing to the media or, you know, they'll talk about their players a certain way. But you can get a real sort of clear view of where the players stand in their eyes or how they feel about the personnel they have based on how they give you out ice time. And in this case, I'm with you that I think it's from a coaching perspective,

it is the best thing on a day to day to help them have a chance to win games and compete and hang around the playoff spot the way they have through the first 50 games of the season. But that also to me then is a bit of an indictment on whether it's pro scouting or player acquisition from the GM perspective because they clearly feel the need to dump this sort of responsibility or burden on a 22-year-old defender when they're spending $10.5 million on Ben Chirot, Justin Hull, Jeff Petrie, who they all brought in over the past two years and are all sort of, you know, veteran defensemen who you'd think have played these types of minutes previously. And obviously, you know, there are a different stage of their career, certainly Petri.

But then that brings you back to, all right, well, then what was sort of the intention of bringing these guys in? And what was the purpose if you're going to pay this type of money for them and then still have to rely on cider the way they have so far. No, and that's the big thing from the Red Wing's perspective. And you look at how these contracts are built out, right? All of these guys, aside from Shane Gostispera are still, and Chang Gostisperer is not even the one that. Chang Gostisper is brought in to be the power play guy, to work in the offensive

zone, everything like that. So he's, his deployment has actually been as you would have expected with Gostisper. But for all these other guys, you look at it. at kind of the buildup and the long-term build where it's, Eisman signed these contracts and set it up where this is kind of the bed the Red Wings have made for this season and next, depending on making another move. Now, obviously, he's shown a willingness to shake things up and trade guys

that aren't expiring deals. We saw the Ronic trade last year to Vancouver. We've seen his willingness to do that, but it feels like for both the Red Wings and Sider's sake, your long-term spot on this is you're knowing he can handle these tough matchups. And I truly think, like, I know the numbers don't look great and everything like that as people, but I truly think he's handling them pretty well. I think with what could have been, like, if you look at what could have been for Detroit,

if Sider's not out there, I think it could be much worse. And so I think he's handling it as best he can, but I think for the long-term progression, you look at like cider's growth, you look at the Red Wings growth as a team, your defensive build needs to be in a place where he's not being used this way. He can be, in key moments, fine, everything like that, but it can't be 10 minutes into the first period,

well, we have to use cider and Walman on this against this team. Like, you need the, it's a different, there's a different, like people get lost on that, I think. I think there's a difference between trusting big guys in big situations, and there's a difference between them be those big situations having to be the sixth minute of the first period

the eighth minute of the second period I think that's something where the Red Wings are really need someone to take these minutes from Sider because I'm fine with him being their third period late game fine who cares that's fine I'm no not complaining about that but it's the you sign these guys who allegedly were going to help take that burden away and they haven't done it well I thought he was came across as really thoughtful in your piece like I thought he's he's very thoughtful

Yeah, he's very thoughtful actually. There was some stuff. I mean, of course, let's listen. When you come to a player and I get it from the point of like, you want to ask him about it because you want his take on it and then you're putting together this story, right? And so you go and ask a player about analytics. And I think we're all sort of know by now that you're probably going to get some variation of, oh, yeah, I think they're useful.

But obviously, you know, they're not to be all end all. I prefer video, all this and that, right? And players aren't supposed to care, right? I don't want to have a player inundated with all this information. I think there's certainly patterns and trends that are very useful, but it's up to the coaching to sort of present those in a way that they get digest it and synthesize it, right? I think what he said, though, about this concept of winning shifts, and it's something we talk about on the show a lot of improving conditions for your teammates, right?

It can be as micro as within the shift, like you get a puck, whether it's in a neutral zone or along the wall in your zone, and then it's up to you to settle it. and make sure you can make a pass to a teammate who is then in a better position than you inherited it with. Same works on a bigger scale of you start your shift in the defensive zone. You get out of the zone. You get moving in the right direction. You maintain possession. And then maybe, and he even noted this, the end goal isn't to just get out of your zone and get a shot right away and then get credit for, you know, being in the offensive zone.

You want to build something in terms of actually having a sustainable process where you get out of the zone. And then maybe the other line hops on or other pair hops on. And then they can do something with it. Right. And so I think this idea of sort of setting the table for your teammates is very interesting. And it's one that's kind of difficult to quantify because ideally in a lot of those cases, the best outcome for a player like that is nothing happening for the 50 seconds they were on. Right.

Because if you're not going to get a shot or a chance for, then it means that the best case is, all right, you didn't give up anything yourself. And then that's a difficult thing to sort of assign credit to, I guess. it's much easier to find the demerits than the actual positives when you look at when you look at this role like for example um there i think the amount of times and gosterspers had a pretty good year in detroit but there's a lot of times and i don't haven't pulled numbers on this but just from my eyes watching there's a lot of times where gos despair has been able to either start on the fly or in the offensive zone because walman insider have won a prior battle that have put that change in a spot where he jumps, he kind of jumps right on and is able to play.

Like I think that's, play to his strengths. And it's hard to, it's hard to super quantify that. It's easy to find the, the mistakes. It's easy to find the icing because we track all of those.

But, um, it's not the, it's like, oh, well, hey, like I think a perfect example of a, one shift quote unquote, that's hard to qualify. Monify is defensive zone.

Other team wins the draw clean. They have possession. You're spending 15 seconds trying to get the puck back. You run around. You get the puck back. You've spent 15, 20 seconds trying to get the puck back. You get the puck clean into the other end. From a hockey perspective, you're dead.

You're supposed to be gassed at that point. Like a 20 second shift in the NHL is not easy. That's the spot where you get it down there and you get it set up for the next line. You've done your job. Well, all you've done, all you've really done on that, statistically speaking from how you look at is like, okay, well, your team lost a face off. That's a negative. You look at time of possession for the other team. That's a negative. You might get the one clean entry, but that's it. And I think that's kind of, it's so easy to find

things like that where you watch the game and you're like, oh, this is something that, that's what makes it so hard to quantify. And I think you could go and you, I think entries and exits are really useful too, tool. But I think there's also times where so often an icing's not always bad right like there could be times when it icing's the fine place so um i hope that makes sense here no it does and a lot of this is is the reason why i mentioned it as something i've learned a lot over the years in terms of my own tracking you know so following corais is it's you can't view this stuff independently even though we try to assign individual value whether it's good or bad to a player in terms of how they defend

their blue line or or any number of things a lot of it matters is like, all right, who are you playing against in terms of if you're playing a third liner, he's much more likely to just want to cross center ice and dump the puck in and you get credit for forcing to dump in versus a first liner who is going to either turn it over at the blue line or do everything he can to try to carry it and then make a play off of it. Similarly, what type of back pressure you have from your forwards and all this stuff, it all ties together, right? And that's why I think it's so difficult to strip away the individual value.

I, the question of whether this is in the best interest for both the team and the player is such a fascinating one to me. Obviously, complicating matters is the fact that they're coming off this month of January where they went nine, two, and two, right? It was a very successful one by any measure. They're up to 13th in the league in point percentage of the third in the Atlantic. They're battling not only the Leafs who are slightly ahead of them, but also holding off the lightning who I think are one point up on them, but the Red Wings have two games in hand

on them in a pretty good position to beat them out. And so the reason why I frame it that way, though, is it's interesting how teams have really shifted their view of what they want their top players to accomplish. And I think you see a lot of that, right? You mentioned the chart that Prashant put together in terms of how top defenders are being used based on their deployment. And it's obviously no accident that the players who are atop the Norris conversation are ones who are getting very favorable assignments, particularly in terms of

own usage, right? And I think teams have gotten to the point now where, for the most part, they want their top players to drive a lot of their success. And so they're going to put them in a position to do just that. Whereas in this case, you're essentially asking a guy like Mo Cider to jump on their grenade for you essentially, right? It's like, all right, you're going to go and you're going to do all this dirty work for us. And then other players are going to go on and hopefully be able to benefit from a lot of that labor. And the issue for me for that is, not only is he a 22-year-old, and these are very formative years from building offensive habits you hope you'll have in his prime, but also you can make the case that he's their most talented

defender, right? Like Jake Walman's shot is obviously great. Shane Goss is a phenomenal offensive defenseman. But you saw on his rookie season, his ability to work the blue line, QB, certain sets. Like, I think he showed a lot of promise. And so asking him to play this way kind of runs counter to a lot of the stuff that I thought that he would be contributing at this point of his career. It's interesting because it's one of those where I don't know how much anyone here watched or paid any attention to. But it's kind of like, so he was really good last spring. And I probably watched more world championship hockey than I ever have before just because it was really curious to watch cider. Because having covered him in Detroit, I was curious to just.

kind of watch him in a different set, right? And he was really good at world championships last year for Germany. And one of the things that he was essentially doing with Germany was he was doing what he's doing with Detroit right now. But it's like Detroit kind of took that role and kind of lopped off a bunch of the top offensive responsibilities. Like with Germany, he was, and I don't know the stats. I don't know the minutes.

But I would guess it was 26, 27 minutes, whatever it was. He was in defensive zone, offensive zone, everything. And it was all of that. And it's kind of like he came into Detroit. and he still had 75% of that responsibility with Red Wings, but it's all basically from, it's basically in the back three-fourths of the ice almost. And it's part of it is, I mean,

if you're going to bring in Shang Gostisper, that's how you're going to use Shane Gostasper. That's the way he's going to be used. If you're going to, when you're playing with Jake Wallman, Jake Walman's game is better when he is a little bit more of that shooter and the guy who kind of gets the, can be the point of contact, right, offensively.

So part of it is the area, but also part of it is the, and this is kind of one of those things where it falls to me, in my view, sometimes of it's a coaching thing, and it's also a player thing sometimes too, where there's certain guys who, like I covered John Klingberg for years. Let's be honest. If you told John Klingberg, he wasn't the point of contact on offense, he would still be the point of contact on offense.

So there's certain players, who it can be coached out, it can be coached in ways, but there's also certain players who have that mentality. And I think part of it is also just with Siders mentality. He has offensive skill,

he has offensive talent, but I think part of it is, he also has a little bit of that, like, okay, I like being the hard-nosed guy. I like being the guy that is known for shutting things down. I'm okay with Goss to spare

being Power Play 1. I think part of that comes into this as well where we forget that mentality sometimes where not everyone wants to be, guy with the puck on their stick all the time. And that's okay, but it's just a reality that sometimes we always throw this on coaches, and I'm going to put part of this on the coaches, but sometimes it's also on the player to step up and say, I'm the guy, let me have the puck. Well, that's interesting because you bring up Klingberg there and it made me think of this conversation I was having with

Daryl Brophy this week, actually, where we did this episode on Thomas Harley and the conversation of Meryl Hayskin and came up, right, in his development. And obviously he's a phenomenal player. He's a coach's dream, I think turning out the way he has would be a massive, massive win for any young defensemen. But just in terms of this conversation of like the best long-term interest from the player from a development perspective, it's clear that from day one, but I'm sure part of it is that personality you mentioned and maybe he was always going to be that way. But Miro came into a situation where it was a competitive team and he had to play a certain

way because of the other personnel around him. And so he doesn't get this opportunity to, you know, to flex certain muscles in terms of trying out stuff, experimenting, being a bit more freewheeling, learning what works and what does and making those mistakes. He had to play such a not necessarily conservative, but like more traditional defensive game. And so now he's at this point where he's 24, 25 years old. And I keep wanting to see a bit more of dragged out of him in that sense. and I'm hoping that playing with a guy like Thomas Harley will.

But it's also very possible that we will never see that because that's sort of early 20s range for a young defenseman, especially when you're playing big minutes and getting all these valuable reps, is such a formative stage of your career as a player, right? And you essentially determine which direction you're going to go in and how you're going to play. And it's very difficult not having had the chance to do so when you're 21, 22 years old, to then become that player at 25, especially if you've had the type of success, the Miro know, has had, right? And so it's interesting because I'm not sure how you compare a mode of that, but it makes me think of that in terms of young defensemen who get put in a certain position and

kind of get typecast or boxed in, or maybe even in the other extreme, asked to do too much in a certain sense, and then how that might limit them in other ways and what the long-term ramifications are of that. Yeah, you mean, I don't, I mean, Heschkinen is a better defender than Sider. I'm not going to go down that route. But this reminds me of conversation you and I have. And then I think you and Belfrey have had this conversation about Pavel Mintikov, where we've talked about with the ducks or Mintikov, because of where the ducks are and where he is and everything like that,

Mintikov is allowed to take his game that worked so well in the CHL and play his game with the ducks. He's allowed to be that. And it's kind of the weird sliding scale of what type of organization. you enter and where they are. Stars, that was a lottery win. Like everyone, like that draft,

that 2017 draft, like that was one where the stars, the stars jumped all the way from, I think they were going to pick 14th. I think they jumped 10 picks up to be able to pick, to be able to get Miro at 3. They were, or maybe they were going to be at 13.

Either way, they went from, they had a down year. They had the Ken Hitchcock experiment went terribly. Sorry, not the Ken. It was the, sorry, No, it was the end of Lindy Ruff's tenure. It was the end of Lindy Ruff's tenure. Lindy Ruff didn't get the contract extension he wanted. The stars had six injuries right to start the season in training camp. And the team kind of folded on itself that year. And they lucked out and won the lottery. And then they reset and then they reset with an expectation of we have to win. In Anna, Mintykov is able to operate under the spot where the goal is not to win now.

The goal is to turn these guys into these players. We've talked about Leo Carlson. We've talked about the long-term player. Insiders in that spot where year one, year two, the quote-unquote, Eiser plan was still in the spot where it's okay. We can experiment. We can mess around. We can figure this out. Now it's the spot where as much as even with Eiserman is selling at the deadline last year,

like we're at the spot where this is the team and this is the spot where even when you get all the leash in the runway in the world that eiserman has got at some point you have to put a team in the playoffs at some point like i'm sitting here in little sears arena right now this building has never hosted a playoff hockey game that is something like in this building has now been around for a little while like we're not talking like they just knocked the joe down 10 days ago this has been a little while and so cider's in this spot where he's gone from he got that his rookie year in his second in his second season to be able to to live and learn and make mistakes, whatever, Yolo. Now you have to, like, oh, well, we check the playoff standings every day. We talk about it every day. Derek Lalonde, while he tries to hush it down a bit, but he knows his job as a coach is based on winning. Year one, okay, we figured out. But part of it at the long term is like, look how often coaches change, right?

Like, what is it? Like, Marty St. Louis is like the eighth most tenured coach in the NHL right now. So coaches know the deal. Derek Lal knows that at some point he has to get this team. into the playoffs. He's not going to have the same leash as Eiserman. So it's it's the weird spot in the sector that Cider's growth and development had to go through. And is it going to make him the best possible player? I don't know. But it's also the reality that I think often gets forgot in this in a lot of the drive-by discourse on him too.

No, certainly it's been what, seven years since they made the playoffs and over a decade now since they want to playoff round. It's been a wow. And so I get it. Like I'm not trying to diminish the impact of how value. No, no, no. Competitive games and reps is and what it means to individual players, but also the organization and the fan base. Like, that's obviously all part of the puzzle. I just think this conversation of what's in the team's best interest versus what's in the individual's best interest long term is so fascinating, right?

Because I think coaches would like to think that they go hand in hand, that they're looking out for their players. But in reality, coaches are judged, as you said, based on what you've done lately, whether you're winning or not. And if you're not, we're going to find someone else who can try to do so, right? And so I'm sure there's a lot. I mean, ask David Quinn about what happened in New York, right? Like, I mean, David Quincy for the Rangers, right?

He signs, he can't take the coaching job with the Rangers. And he literally, that was literally when the Rangers put out the whole like, oh, we put out, they put out the whole letter to season ticket holders that we're going to rebuild. We're going to take our time. Who eventually took the X for that? It was the coach who was now dealing with the same thing in San Jose right now. Yeah. Well, and listen, I'm sure.

I'm sure Derek Alon cares deeply about Mo'sider and what type of player he's going to be. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm sure he also cares about winning Saturday, Saturday's batonet against the Canucks and what gives him the best chance of doing so, right? And so for a player, I think not that Mo is having a sacrifice necessarily because he's still playing big minutes and he gets an opportunity to play with their top players and special teams and all of that. but encouraging players, especially at this young age, to do certain stuff rather than boxing them in, is, I think, important. Like a player you're going to hear a lot about over the next couple of weeks is Rasmus, Sistralin.

And not that I'm comparing the two by any means, but there was once a time where Salli Annan was a top pick. He came into the league on a rebuilding team. He was a big defender who had skill. And because of his situation, they basically burdened him with having to do too much. And it exposed him. and he learned bad habits and really dumped his game down to an extent and then just went in the opposite direction, right?

And then now you look at him and it's no accident that he's having actually a very successful year and why teams are interested in him because he's playing a much more sort of role compatible with his abilities and he's really just getting to play a simple game with less responsibility and he's becoming more successful in his underlying numbers particularly defensively look much better, right? and you compare that in contrast to where he was at previously, and it just brings up this whole conversation. So I don't know, there's so many layers to it.

I don't think there's a right answer by any means, but just it's, it makes for good fodder. To me, there's the, and the other backdrop on all of this, like to me, when I look about this, I was thinking about this driving back from Toronto, the most important conversation about all of this that's going to be fascinating between two guys who have dig their heels in and have pretty strong opinions and everything like that is Steve Eiserman and Claude Lemieux

are going to have this discussion this summer because while Lumew for everyone doesn't know Claude Lemieux is Moe's agent. Mo is an RFA. That is going to be a fascinating discussion when it comes out to none of us are going to be the fly on the wall. You talk about conversations I would love to be on a fly in the wall is when all of a sudden LeMew and Iserman are going through and discussing Siders usage and how do you actually value that and there's going to be it's that's the other backdrop of all of this where it's it's interesting we talk about what's the best best for the player and everything like that i'm fascinated to see in the long run how this impacts kind of how the wings and how siders camp try to use this summer do you how do you come out of

the rfa like there's there's so many little wrinkles where this all goes and we could talk about this for hours like it's fascinating well you still get paid in this league for offense and he had 50 points as a rookie. He's 42 last year, right? He's on pace for, I think, 42 or 43 again. And I imagine if he got much softer deployment and was just able to just accumulate points the way I'm sure he could in that type of situation, he could probably have more leverage warranting more money.

He's still going to get paid very nicely. I imagine over eight years. Yeah, what you just said right now, I'm sure Claude's going to clip that and literally bring it right to the hearing of like, here, listen to this. This is what Demetri Filipovich think. Clearly, look at the points that Moe could have had. I don't know, I don't know, Claude Lemieux is listening to the show necessarily, but I'm sure they will paint that argument of listen. He was a good team guy.

He sacrificed his own potential individual gains for the team success, particularly if they make the playoffs this year. And that will make a very compelling argument as well. So I don't think you'll necessarily be hard done by, but it is interesting. It's like a very, it's a big high leverage crossroads moment for him contractually, because I imagine that will be an eight-year deal. And so you're setting yourself up for the rest of your 20s, essentially. And so that's a whole fascinating wrinkle to this. But I'm sure we'll have time to talk about that, you know, more in the off season. All right, Sean, let's take our break here.

And then when we come back, we will finish up with a few other topics. You're listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right. We're back here in the HockeyPedio cast with Sean Shapiro. Sean, we did much longer on. on most I'd are in that topic than I thought we would, but it's it's obviously an interesting one with a lot of stuff to it. I think it was a pretty balanced discussion and and you know, people like to take extremes, especially with, with young players like this who have, you know, a discrepancy, I guess,

between eye test and in underlying results. And so, I thought we laid out all the stuff to, that's important to consider. All right, let's, but let's do a couple mailbag questions here. or at least like kind of stuff from from the PDOCs Discord to serve as a launching pad for different topics because it is our Friday show and I try to incorporate them and get our listeners involved. So if you are not in the Discord server, hop in there. We'll do another plug at the end,

but the invite lake is in their show notes and we take stuff from there to talk about on the show. So it's going to be fun. Okay, here's a one that I think comes up quite a bit and it's certainly something that I think a lot of hockey fans are curious about. It's about scheduling. So the question is, why does the league schedule all the games at the same time? Is it because the NHL is still primarily focused on ticket sales?

So they want teams to have their games at the most convenient time for local fans to get the best gate numbers. It is that because the league is and always has been a, it's changing slightly. But the league, this NHL is still a gate league. It's still a gate driven league. And teams believe that, and I'm sure they've done their own. research or whatever to say this. Teams believe that the 7 o'clock local start is the time to start a game. We used to have a good amount of teams that started at 7.30,

but teams like, for example, both teams I know closest, Dallas and Detroit, both of them pivoted from 7.30 to 7 o'clock local starts within the past two seasons. Ed, part of that is the 730 start was starting to, it's only a half hour, but it was pushing later into the evening. It was cutting away. I know from Dallas's perspective, for example, there was some feedback from the family

side of stuff where it's 7 o'clock game was easier to bring the family to the game. And the, and 7 o'clock is an easier, for lack of a better word, an easier time to budget for it. And that's pretty much

what most teams have come to the conclusion of, to get the most people to the game, and not the most people to the game on time. I want to be clear on that because people will be like, oh, well, 7.30, the most people buying a ticket is 7 p.m. Because whether you show up to the game or not, you've bought, and you've bought the ticket, whether you're in the game and not, it doesn't matter about late arrival. It's buying a ticket and seven o'clock is the time. And so we have that that, that's why all these games start at the same time. And this league is, does not have a TV deal. financially speaking that makes up for what the teams do at the gates and the TV companies

while ESPN and Turner have a lot of power in the United States the reason we had that like frozen frenzy day where every game did start that way was ESPN had a bit of that but ESPN doesn't have the power to do that all the time and ESPN's the numbers

the number of people streaming hockey games on ESPN Plus isn't as high where it's making that as much of a demand as we'd like. The other thing at the end of the day is the people like you and I and the person who ask this question who watch a lot of hockey games, who watch a lot of hockey games,

we're the minority. Hockey is such a regional tribalistic sport. So many people only watch the team, only watch their team. And that's just the reality of it. So they don't, the league, when you're when you're catering to 32 different tribes or regions or whatever you want to call it.

And as opposed to Sean Shapiro and Demetri Filipovich, you're just going to do what's best for each individual market. For the Detroit market, it's 7 o'clock. For Columbus, it's 7 o'clock. Okay, those two games start at the same time. It doesn't matter that you and Vancouver want to watch both those games would like to be able to... So, that's kind of the, that's, that is the reason for it.

It is, it's, this league is still gate driven and this league doesn't have, it's if there's not the TV money nor the power to to change that right now. And listen, if you're posting in the PDCast Discord server, you are certainly in that 1% of certified hockey freaks. Oh yeah. Who aren't care about all this stuff, right? But it is very. Yeah.

Can I give a tip to people on what I do sometimes? Because like I like watching multiple games at once. So one thing what I'll often do is being in the Detroit market, I'll start the Detroit game on my TV. And then whatever other game I'm interested, in watching, I'll open it up on ESPN Plus or whatever. Pause it. Pause it. Avoid looking at the score intentionally and everything like that, which is a little bit difficult. And then the minute the Detroit game goes to the first intermission, I can basically watch the

first period of that other game all the way through, jumping through commercials and watching all the way through. That's my work around it where I typically try to pick two games a night to watch. But that's, it's not the easiest thing. Yeah. And there's certainly complications if you're in a community like the PDFS server, you're trying to, you know, talk in real time in terms of what's happening. Also, you get into the issue of, I mean, I would be watching the games regardless of knowing the score. And oftentimes I go back the next day and watch games, even though I do know the result and even I've seen the goals. But you're watching one of those games live. You got another one paused. And the game you're watching live cuts to the game to show a highlight

goal of the one you're pausing. And you're like, oh, well, that, I was kind of hoping to see that in 15 minutes. But yeah, I mean, like last night, for example, right on Thursday night you've got seven games five of them started seven eastern and four of them in particular i thought with all due respect to the panthers capitals game which drawn up actually being one of the more competitive ones of the slate um i really wanted to watch all four and i've got a bunch of screens going but it's just immensely difficult and every time i complained about this there's people that in the comments saying wait till you find out about the NFL and i get it the NFL is just so much more suited to that because it happens all on one day and then you've essentially got the full

full week to go back and if you're if you're doing this especially professionally it's a job to go back and consume with those. NFL is also a completely different sport. Like NFL is a, NFL is a sport where it's a, it's a replay sport. Every single play in the NFL, I think it's something gets average, on average I would, I would bet it's played. Every single play in the NFL gets replayed twice. Like you could go for, you could have four screens on NFL Sundays.

I've done it before. And you, every single thing is replay. so many times. Or you get to watch. Hockey is so fast that you can't do that. That's the other thing where the NFL's problem is the NFL is not, it's not, the NFL is never apples to apples for any other sport in North America. And I, I hate when people bring that up because the NFL is a completely different beast than anything else in North American sports. It certainly is. Okay. Got some questions about players switching agents in season. And I'm curious if you've got any behind the scenes on this Vlad Tarasenko, for example, just to use him as an example,

fourth agent in three years. He took the, he had a very interesting free agent period last year, right? Where he was around for a while. I think everyone thought anybody was reported at the time that he was going to go to the hurricanes, he winds up taking that one-year deal with the Ottawa senators because of their position right now. They will probably trade him and he'll be a 32-year-old free agent next summer. So he is clearly a very high leverage point of his career and he's been unhappy with what he's been able to get. Recently, Brandon Dillon's another one who just switched agents and he's similarly at 32, 33 years old and he'll be a UFA this summer and is looking to cash in.

I always find this interesting, right, because it can be taken any number of ways certainly. And also with how few, I guess, like big agencies there are that are running a lot of stuff. a lot of it comes down to partnerships and relationships and maybe what you think you can get from that. But I'm always fascinated by this particularly when a player in season changes agents and kind of what that means or what that sort of trying to read the tea leaves, I guess, of what it could suggest. I know a couple. And I'm not going to say which players because I don't think it's worth having done my, I don't think it's worth saying it right now to for me personally. But I know a couple of players who have traded it changed agents. And a lot of the

times when a guy changes agents, it comes down to his expectation of what he could get. And maybe whether it was his idea or his agent's idea have not been met. And that's kind of what it comes down to financially speaking or what type of term, what type of deal. And a player will basically be like, well, I had, you said we would get this done. And now we're sitting here and we haven't gotten this done. Clearly you're the problem. And you know what? Teresenko, like, for example, I bet Teresanko is going to have the exact same deal, no matter what agent he has. I think it's just a very, it's the type of thing where you're going to, you kind of get the personal egos getting the way of it. To me, it's always interesting when,

and there are agents who work to, there are some agents who work to try to steal other clients. Like, I'm sure there are, sometimes you'll see the guy in a contract year who has been happy with his agency for six, seven, eight years, whatever it is. And all of a sudden, he changes midseason to someone else where that other guy coming in probably basically said, you know what? Hey, this was a, this, these were, it's like we were talking earlier about most sides. It's easy to point out the demerits as opposed to the positives where a guy comes in and said, oh, this other guy could have done this, this and this for you. and it didn't do it. And they kind of poison the well a little bit. That happens too.

So I don't really think it changes too much for what a player gets at the end of the day. Like agents have power. I want to be clear on that. Like agents do have power. There's that's definitely the case. But it's also a spot where so much of what an agent brings to people and people forget this all the time. It's not just the, what contract did they get?

Sometimes, it's a lot of these, some agents are better suited to take care of younger players. And at some point, a player may outgrow the services of what that person provided. Some players, I know, for example, there's a player I've covered before who signed a big deal and then felt he no longer needed his agent. And that was just the reality of it. He thought he only needed for the contract. So that kind of gets, there's a lot of semantics to all of it and not knowing anything. I believe I truly don't know what happened at all with the Teresanko thing. I just imagine part of it is, well, I was told something maybe someone told me something I could get and maybe I didn't get that.

And maybe this other guy said he could get it. So let's see what happens. I really think that's what happened with the Teresanko thing, not knowing fully the ins and outs. And I want to be clear on that. That's just me musing, not reporting. There's a big difference there. Well, I do think it's interesting when you get into a situation where there's a few key power brokers, let's say, and they represent a key player on a team or various players on a team and then sort of the back and forth that comes in terms of potentially exchanging minor favors to make sure that we maintain a positive relationship for down the road. Like that stuff certainly does happen, but obviously, but maybe not like as as deeply rooted as you'd suspect.

And maybe in like, I hear a lot of this NBA, maybe it happens more there than in an age. I actually can give an example of that, actually, from just from my Dallas ties. And we were talking about Claude Lemieux earlier. And it's funny how this all time, this episode has been amazing. The synergy here has been awesome. Well done. So Claude Lemieux is also Nils Lundquist's agent, right? Nils Lundquist has demanded the trade out of New York.

And he had demanded the trade out of New York and was at a spot where he kind of now hasn't really gotten the minutes in Dallas that we. thought he would get. And you kind of wonder one of the spaces where and why, when will, when a guy has requested to trade out of one place, when will we start to go? Well, last year, the stars at Freddie Olivesson. And I know no one really cares about what Freddie Olfson done. He's a depth player for the avalanche. He was the depth player for the stars. The stars traded Freddie Oliveson to the Colorado avalanche for future considerations on June 15th last year. And the reason the stars did that was because Freddie Olfson had an out, had a, had a, signed a deal with a Swedish team, where if he hadn't signed

and an NHL team by June 15th, he'd have to go back to Sweden. That was the deal he signed. And the Stars didn't have any reason to, they weren't going to bring Oliveson back. They were going to let him just walk in free agency on July 1st. Basically, Lemieux reached out to the Stars and said, hey, we've got this problem. Would you be able to let us work out a deal? And the Stars did Freddie Oliveson and Claude Lemieux a favor on June 15th. They made the trade, got the deal done. Now, does that completely smooth everything that goes over with Nils Lundquist getting healthy scratch the other night again? No, but it at least goes a long way for Jim Nill's relationship with one of his defense and his agents

that, hey, you did a solid for my other guy. This given take, this trade, and this does happen all the time. And it's important to remember that we are talking about a lot of people with a lot of egos and so often being able to massage egos is one of the biggest jobs in this business. Well, good thing called Lemieux is to put a bow on it and bring a full circle. Good thing, Claudeau is entering all conversations with Steve Eisenman of the Detroit Red Wings with a clean slate with no previous history, certainly. No, this was five men. Shaw, this was a blast.

We wanted to do some four nations and Olympics and international events up as well, because I know you were having some good conversations about that at the All-Star break, but we'll save that for the next time we have you on, which would be soon again. I'm sure I'll let you plug some stuff on the way out here because for those that don't know, And I think most people know by now because you've been tweeting about it, but also you mentioned it on a previous PDO cast, but you are an internationally renowned actor now. So I'll let you tell the listeners a little bit more about that on the way out here. I don't know about renowned, but we did show some people the movie in Toronto. So it has now been seen in two countries.

So I guess internet, I guess the movie is technically international. Technically correct. Technically correct. Yeah. The movie's called The Late Game. It's a beer league hockey movie. My good pal from college, Jeff Tyner wrote and directed it. And it's coming out later this month.

Platforms are soon to be announced on that. But if you're a listener to this show and you are going to be in the Northern New Jersey slash New York area next weekend for Stadium Series, we have two screenings showing up in Hoboken, New Jersey, next Friday for people who might want to see the movie. We've got at 3.30 and a 930 showing next Friday and you get to see me play goalie and you can laugh at my technique as as Dom, as Dom did when I showed him the video when we were in, when he saw the video in Toronto. So you can laugh at my technique and everything like that and make fun of me and that's fine. But the movie is, I'm definitely biased. We talk about inherent biases, but I am one who says it's pretty good and

you should see it. So. And are you going to be there? in attendance as well or no? I will, I will, I will be there in attendance. I will be there Friday for the, for the screening. And then I,

on Saturday and Sunday, I will be covering stadium series for, uh, E.P. Rinkside as well. So I have some good stuff coming out of, out of that as, uh,

as well. And been busy with our pals over at Rinkside as well with, this past week. I was at watching a bunch of junior, I don't mean, I guess U18 hockey. I don't even know what we technically called that anymore, but watching U18 Five Nations Hockey.

So back in, before, getting back to an NHL practice today. Awesome, man. We'll keep up the great work. I know we've definitely got a people, a lot of people listening right now who will be at the stadium series. And so I recommend they check that out.

And then they'll be able to say hi to you as well and looking forward to hearing about all those interactions. So make sure to give Sean some love there. Sean, this was a blast while we got to do this. Enjoy the practice. And we'll have you on again soon. Thank you to everyone for listening to us. We're going to let Sean go here.

We'll be back with another episode to close out the week here on the Hockey PEOCast on Sports Night Radio Network.