The Hockey PDOcast - Nichushkin's Scoring, Guentzel's Future, and Under The Radar Good Seasons

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Ryan Lambert to answer your mailbag questions. Topics include Val Nichushkin's scoring, Jake Guentzel's future, how good Cutter Gauthier is, what's wrong with the Kings, and under the radar players having very good seasons. 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 PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Dimitri Filipovich, and joining me is my good buddy Ryan Lambert. R.L. What's going on, man? Chilling. Not a lot. I love it. That's the vibe we need for this Friday mailbag, first one of 24. It's going to be a good time.

It always is. Looking forward to this one. We've got some good questions in the Discord channel, which we're going to use today. if you want to get involved in future editions of the mailbag, which you do every Friday, pretty much once a month it feels like with RL, where we just take a variety of topics and have some fun with it, join the server.

So the invite link is in the show notes, get in there, have some fun with us, and be involved in future editions. All right, Aral, here's the first question. Let's see how many we can get through today. I feel like we usually do like five or six. Hopefully we can do that, if not more. Reese asks, would love to see what the numbers you like to look at,

say about Val Nchuskin. He was on a monster goal scoring pace in a small sample before a significant injury last season and has really ramped up his scoring of late again. Anything in particular pointing to why he's scoring so much. Yeah, he plays with Nathan McKinnon. Nathan McKinnon is having an insane season. I mean, there is obviously other stuff involved, but like if you look at it, who do he play with a lot last year? Was Comfer and McKinnon, right? And then this year it's McKinnon and Rantan are his most common line mates if I'm remembering my research right and two years before that it was Codry and Rantaninan and I would say Nathan McKinnon

as much as I like Nazam Coddra is a significant upgrade offensively over Nassam Codry and again other factors at play but making one of the most offensively gifted players in the league one of your most regular linemates is going to help you score more. world goals. Yeah, that's generally a pretty good strategy for scoring goals. So as Rees pointed out last year, he started it with seven goals in his first seven games, and then he got hurt, missed six weeks, and he finished with 17 and 53 games. This year, he's already up to 22 in 40 games, and this kind of ties into your point of sharing the ice with Nathan McKinnon and being on the receiving end of that. But I think the biggest difference for him, and part of this offensive glow-up, is

the power play usage, right? Last year, he plays like three and a half minutes per game on the power play, which was nearly double his previous career high. This year, he's up to four power play minutes per game. He's on that top unit, and he plays that net front role in particular, right? And you watch that game against Vegas on T&T the other night, and he scores two of them by basically just standing in front of the net and being on the receiving end of Bricorant, and it's brilliant passes from behind the net. And so it's a pretty good spot for him to be in 10 of his 17 goals when the power play last year, already 13 and 22. And to put that in perspective, only Sam Reinhardt has scored more powerboy goals.

He's one behind St. Louis as a team and two behind Philadelphia and Washington, all by himself. So that rocks. And the thing that I like about this and kind of the reason why I pick this is generally we talk about McCar and McKinnon and Renton and when we talk abs, right? we don't necessarily talk that much about Chushkin, although when they won the cup, we certainly highlighted him as a big reason why.

But I just love this sort of, I don't know if it's a dichotomy or how you want to describe it, but like in the defensive zone and in the neutral zone, he's one of the coolest players because his motor never stops. Like, he's massive and has this crazy reach, but he never stops moving and he chases, pucks down and disrupts and destroys all your plans that you have offensively yourself, right?

he wins all these battles and stuff. And then he gets into the offensive zone and he gets rewarded for it by basically being the ultimate garbage man. Like he just stands in the net and just tap it happens. Yeah. He's living that that holmes from lifestyle, right? And so that rocks because it's like it's kind of being rewarded for it. You know, you see that in the NBA where it's like if your big guy defends and shoplocks

it runs the floor, you want to reward him with some alupes and get him some easy, easy dunks and stuff, right? And that's kind of what they're doing with him. here where it's like you do all this hard work and all this unglamorous stuff that's really important for possession and which we really value and so we're going to reward you by you scoring 40 goals in season and I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. Awesome. I guess my two other notes that I had on this before we get to another question is the usage for these guys is absolutely insane right now. He is, Natushkin is playing 2148 per game, which has him fourth amongst all forward.

first is Ranton, second is McKinnon, and then third is Kucharov. Yeah. But in the past 20 games, those three guys on the abs are playing 24, 27, 2358, and 2354. And that was sort of highlighted most with that game against Boston, where all these guys played essentially 30 minutes, and they just played their five best players, every other shift. And on the one hand, that's really fun to watch right now. On the other hand, a lot of these guys do have extended injury histories and a lot of miles on them already over the past couple seasons.

And so if I were an Aves fan or in that front office or even Jared Bender, I'm sure coaches generally just want to win every single night and that's all they think about. But I would be pretty concerned kind of trying to balance that long term view and enjoying how much this rocks right now, seeing those guys play that much and produce this way with also being like, all right, can we actually win a Stanley Cup again? doing this. Now, when they get Lekinen back and there was positive news about Landisog this week as well, and I'm sure they'll make another trade before the deadline. So there will be reinforcements coming, but getting to that point is going to be a bit of an uphill climb for these guys. Yeah, it's like a few years ago when, I don't know, in the first like month or two with the season, like McDavid and Drysiddle were playing 27 minutes a night for Edmonton. And it's like, yeah, I mean, this can work. You put those guys out in a lot of

whether that's obviously power play time or whatever. But is it a viable long-term solution? I think the oilers kind of found we had to throttle it back, you know? Like that you just can't ask a guy, even, you know, guys as dazzlingly talented. And like you said earlier, like a lot of motor on these guys and a lot of motivation to win, there's only so many minutes you can play in an NHL game is basically what it boils down to, especially if you're a forward who's being asked to play the full 200 feet. Yeah, and all these guys, like the common theme,

I guess maybe rant in a little bit less so much to people's chagrin sometimes, but they all play such a physically demanding style as well. Like if I just think of, right, McKinn and McCar and Natchushkin in particular, like they're just go, go, go all the time with that motor. One thing to keep in mind here is when Lekinen comes back and hopefully that'll be soon, him and Natchewski can have had quite a bit of success playing together at 5-15, and if the abs can go, McKinnon-Ranton in line one, Nichushkin Lickin in line two is kind of like this just defensive buzzsaw.

And then with the way Ross Colton and Logan O'Connor have played as a sort of third line for them, all of a sudden you've got three units there that I'd expect to be in sort of the mid-50s almost in terms of 5-15 shares with that power play, like all of a sudden, that's a different story then and you've got some really nice balance there but um that's kind of assuming I guess that like an income's back and then in the meantime everyone else stays healthy as well under this type of usage is that it on on a chushkin in the abs don't we'll on to the next time yeah I'm good yeah yeah flower for heart says with the signing of willie nielander what do you think will happen with jake gensel and the penguins if the penguins are clearly out of a playoff spot will he be

traded how much return will the penguins get for him and how much is gansel going to get paid next year. So I'll be a lot to unpack here. I think the reason Willie Nealander is brought up here beyond the fact that I think with the Kyle Dewe's connection, maybe if he had gone into an open market, the Penguins would have been a potential suitor is that you look at the UFA class now ahead of next summer and beyond Gensel and I guess Sam Reinhardt, who's obviously having a monster season himself. A number of casual. Very close to resigning, by the way. It was a report I saw yesterday. And I imagine that number is going to shock a lot of people, or maybe not, depending on what you think is coming.

But I think it's going to be a lot lower than you'd probably think based on the fact that he already has 30 goals this season for a variety of reasons. Like, you'll get paid nicely, but I think it'll be less than you might assume. The number of impact guys available in open market is pretty minimal, right? And so, yeah, Jake Gensel is sitting in a nice spot there to really be rewarded and cash in. I'll give you the floor here you can start this from any number of ways you can start it from the penguin side of things in terms of how they approach this

or you can talk about Gensel himself. Yeah, so I guess I do want to talk about the penguins because the thing the question asked her said was like clearly out of the playoffs and I wonder what clearly out of the playoffs would mean to the penguins right?

Because right now I'm looking at it there are two points out with three games in hand, on the lightning. And now they would have to jump, you know, New Jersey and Tampa to do that to make the playoffs. But I just don't see a world where they're going to drop to, say, the Buffalo Sabres level where they're like six or seven or eight points out.

Right. Like just the way the East is this year and the, you know, the lingering quality on their roster, let's say, kind of puts them in a position where I think I think that they would just not sell at all, right? Like that's my initial, my initial thought, especially because, you know, they have Sidney Crosby on the team.

We've got to try to win for Sidney Crosby and all this kind of stuff. He's having a great, Crosby's having a great ear and, you know, the penguins have problems, but they're not going to crash and burn, I don't think. So that's number one. Number two is, I wonder about Gensel just because he, unlike like Nielander, for example, he's a little on the older side than Nielander is, right?

So, and this is the other thing, is I don't know that the lineup of teams that would be interested in Jake Gensel. I don't know how big it is just because we don't really know what he looks like at all away from Sidney Crosby. right like how many games has he played not on sidney crosby's line in the last five years it's got to be pretty low and so i i think that too would would limit his um his bargaining power if you want to put it that way uh i wouldn't be surprised if you know somebody gives him like eight seven and a half eight something like that but i don't know i don't know how how confident you can be i guess that that that he's going to that he's going to like cash in you know well i feel confident that he is a very good player in his own right sure and the reason why i bring that up though is is you're right like we it's he's been so attached to crosbie and i think in particular his skill set is sort of like a force multiplier for crosbie as well because he's so smart and like knows where to go and then has all the timing down and sort of sees the game the same way Crosby does,

and that's why they've been so successful together. So I'm sure he'd be productive with a lesser center. But if he's going somewhere and that drop off is to a player who's like maybe a bit more mock dominant or like trying to do it all himself and is still good and productive, but just plays differently than Crosby, I think maybe his reality would look a lot different and he'd just be less productive because those skill sets wouldn't mesh. So I think I'd be careful about that. The Penguins point is interesting because Dom has them at 81% playoff probability right now,

and I think that's in large part. Like the state of the metro, you sort of hinted at it there, but beyond the Rangers and now the hurricanes who have come on in the 51 points and 41 games, like the teams ahead of them are the Flyers with 48 and 41, and I think they're pretty good, and they've obviously been a good story so far this season, but wouldn't necessarily frighten you. the islanders who have a negative goal differential and have 10 loser points this season.

And then the capitals are ahead of them still. And they have a minus 25 goal differential this season. Right. And so it's like just the way these teams are stacked together and then you've got the penguins and the devils. There's going to be a lot of jockeying there. But in terms of clearly being out of it, it's tough to see that being the case. As long as there's even like a 50% chance, I imagine they would push. maybe not be buyers this deadline, but like, I tried to go for it. And that's kind of what happened

last year, right? Obviously, it was a disaster deciding that their one would now move was adding Michael Granlin instead of pretty much doing anything else. But they were sort of in a similar spot where they were kind of on the fringe and obviously it didn't work out. So there's that. You mentioned with Gensel, he turns 30 before he's going to play his first game next season. And the reason why I thought this question was interesting is because, like, he got a little bit of a later start to his NHL career, right? He played college. He sure did. And then he played in the NHL.

He didn't really debut until he was 22. And it feels like the dynamics of this conversation are changing so much where I think a lot of star players are clearly going to make a concerted effort to push to get to UFA status as early as possible with the way they structure their contracts, right? And so this used to be, I think, more of a regular phenomenon where you would get productive players who were 28, 29, 30, 31 years old, hitting UFA, and then cashing in big time, getting long-term contracts, and then fading and declining, and the teams would be disappointed. And now these players, it feels like, are getting these UFA deals years younger, where you feel a bit safer giving them that term. And so I was trying to think of like comps or recent contracts we've seen that we could use to figure out sort of what Gensel would be worth. And there's been very few players of this caliber at this age who have come up for UFA contracts in the past couple years. Yeah, no, for sure. And the thing that you don't want to do, I would say, if you're a team, even if you're just the penguins trying to redesign him, is to look at his past, you know, three or four years of.

production or whatever and go, well, this guy scores at like a 40 goal per 82 rate. And, you know, he's roughly on pace to do that again, right? Like, it's pretty automatic for him in a lot of ways. But also, you know, now you're asking him to do it at 30 and Crosby's going to be, what, 37, 38? Like, you cannot talk yourself into we're buying a 40 goal score here. or we're retaining a 40 goal score if you're the penguins. You have to kind of temper that a little bit.

And like, of course, Gensel's going to want to cash in as much as he possibly can. I don't remember his cap it off the top of my head, but it's not crazy. Well, it's six million. Six. Yeah. Yeah.

And that makes him the 80 second highest paid forward this year. Right. And he has deserved more than that. I think it's fair to say. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, and again, if you want to do the thing of like,

and he should give. you know, he should be making $7 million, but then giving that extra $1 million to Sidney Crosby for making him a 40 goal score. I'm with you. That's fine, you know. But he's been underpaid for a really long time, so he's going to want to make up the difference, I guess you would say. But I just don't know how many buyers there would be at the, you know, it's the, obviously he's a better player than Elias Lindholm, you know, production wise over, over the last several years. but it's the Elias Lindholm thing where you're like he wants how much and then you look at what he's made the last however many years for being a 40 goal guy and you're like oh I guess it makes sense that he would want to get as much as possible on what is probably going to be his last notable contract right it will be almost certainly and while playing with Sidney Crosby has obviously been very lucrative for him and must be just an awesome experience like it's it's pretty cool for him to when he adds his career, be like, oh, yeah, I got to play for the majority of my prime with Cindy Krosby. That rocked. Like, that's a, that's a story. I'll tell my grandchildren, that was very cool.

It's not like this is one of those situations generally in these sort of conversations where like, well, do you just go to a bad team that'll pay you the maximum amount and cash in? Or do you stay with a contender and try to win a Stanley Cup? Mm-hmm. It's not like that's necessarily what's happening here. Like, if you stays in Pittsburgh, Like, they're obviously, I think, going to be better over the next couple seasons than if he went to a really bad team. They just had a ton of gap space and wanted to just pay them 110 cents on a dollar. But it's not like staying in Pittsburgh necessarily. It's like, all right, I'm going to be competing for a Stanley Cup.

Like, we just talked about how they're on the playoff range and have quite a bit of work to do just to make it this season. So that is one thing. But yeah, you're right. I mean, if I was advising them, I would say explore your options and get paid as much as you can because this is the last time. going to it's going to happen so get as much as you can but it's a well well uh well time situation for him because the market is pretty thin around him and he is eighth in the league in five one five on five goals and sixth in the league and five on five points this season so he's playing very well as well i guess one final thing on this and then we'll move on for the penguins

perspective though like they have jeff carter's money coming off the books this summer right three point one two five there's going to be a four million dollars or so increase on the cap so they'll have some money to work with. But beyond, and Kyle Deuess will certainly, like we've seen him, he's very fluent in pursuing the trade market and trying to improve his team that way. But with Gensel making $6 million now and wherever he makes on his next deal, I have a tough time envisioning a scenario where they're able to, for that money, replace him and be better for it, right?

So if like, totally. We don't want to pay him and we're going to let him go, but you're going to. you still have Sydney Crosby, you're getting Malkin and Chris LaTang and Eric Carlson on your team and you're in win now mode, how do you balance that and how do you still not take a massive step back? Like what's the alternative, I guess, if you're the Penguins? Yeah, I think it would be really finding maybe not an Eric Carlson level trade where it's like, whoa, they went up and got that guy. But, you know, someone that you're very confident is going to be able to get at you maybe not 40 goals, but like 30 plus, and then, you know, you spend the money on another defenseman or something, like a, you know, an undervalued defenseman or whatever you want to say. I don't know, like you say, I think the best course of action for all involved is kind of just re-sign Jake Gensel. You know, if you're, if you're freeing up that money and the caps going up, you don't really have to worry about giving him an extra million and a half dollars or whatever the number is.

And you go, and you, of course, still get to play with your friend Sydney Crosby from before, you know. Yes. And as our pal Greg Woshensky says, his bags are already there. So. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Before we go to break, let's bring back RL's NCAA corner here, which we, which we do every time I have you on. And this seems like a good one from a timing perspective.

So my question for you is how good is. Carter Goji. He is one of the better goal scoring threats that I've seen in college hockey in several years at a minimum. Like he's just a guy where he comes over the boards for his normal shift and you're like, well, sure, really he's going to score on this. You know what I mean? Like he just, he scores about a little less than a goal of game. He's got 13 and 17. right now.

And he's, you know, he's not a, he's not one of these older players. He's 19 years older, whatever. Plus he doesn't get with that line, right? With Smith Pro. Nope. I mean, I mean, they spend some time together on the power play, but not as much as you might think. They're not, I would say BC doesn't do as much loading up the power play as they probably

could and probably will, you know, come playoff time or whatever. But he plays with two guys who. were like, you know, your classic, oh, he's like, he was like a 20 year old freshman and he's pretty good, but he's not like an unbelievable college hockey player or anything like that. And his ability, I mean, I use this analogy kind of a lot, but like when he shoots the puck, it's like he teleports it into the net. Like, it's just gone, you know, and you look in the red lights on and you're like, oh, okay, I guess that happened again. Um, there has been, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, He's a center in college, but obviously there's been some discussion, I guess you would say, about does that translate to the NHL where he's a center?

I, I, that's a thing that I'm not good about knowing that kind of thing with, with scouting or whatever. I can just tell you, I've never, not never, but it's rare that I see a more dangerous, a more dangerous shooter in college hockey. at a bare minimum. Which is obviously a very valuable skill set. It's interesting you brought that up, though, because I think initially there was a lot of belief that he would be a center. And more recently you're hearing a lot of sort of buzz or chatter

in the community that people think he is going to be a winger. And obviously, you know, I don't really want to get into like the speculation of what happened or the reasoning in terms of why the trade happened and all that stuff. Just thinking about it from a non-ice perspective, though. that would have been a bit of an issue for the flyers, I think, because obviously in an ideal world, I think they would have just love to just have Katariguchi on their team in the future and still part of their organization.

Sure. But pretty much all of their mid-20s talent is on the wing and their best prospect in Madame Mideb Mishkov is also a winger. Whereas now going to Anaheim, I think that conversation of what he's going to be doesn't matter at all because they have Leo Carlson and Mason McTabish. So he almost certainly play on the wing regardless. And so I guess for your and I's sake, we don't have to waste time speculating what he's going to be in terms of center of wing because he'll just be on the wing because they have those two guys. And so, um, the ducks are in an interesting spot there. I'm on the note of the ducks, just to kind of tie all this together because we just talked about Jake Ansel. I want to see them get aggressive this summer.

Oh, like yeah, they have to. And here's the thing. So, no, they don't really have anything to do this summer, like they have to figure out Jackson Lecombe's next contract or whatever. They have only $50 million in cap commitments right now for next season. And pretty much they have two years until they have to pay Carlson and Minchikov, right, at Zegris, if he's still on the team. But they'll have Fowler and Gouda's coming off the books. I know we talked about this last summer, and they kind of half-assed it a little bit because they just brought in, you know, Alex Klorid and overpaid him, but they did it for longer term

that I would have liked. Like, I want to see them give Jake Gensel a two-year $24 million contract. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like, just go pay him absolutely nuts. Give them $0.25 in the dollar. Just give them everything you could possibly ask for and be like, oh, in two years, you'll still get another contract. Like, you'll still be 32.

You'll still be productive and bring in a guy who will actually help some of these young players and utilize that. Like, I guess it's a tough sell for your owner to be like, we're just going to pay this guy $12 million. dollars next season or whatever it costs. But if you could get that sign off, I would love to see them be really aggro going that route as opposed to sort of this like, you know, trying to have acid or trying to like get a veteran guy who will help and overpay him to do so, but not actually a guy who makes that big of a difference.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that as you said earlier, there are just so few impact players hitting the free agent market. And obviously the ducks have have the have the have the war chest I guess you would say to to maybe get a little creative in trades but that to I guess my only my only concern is the duck's whole thing the last few years has been oh no we can spend a bunch of money on a guy we think is going to be an impact player and then it's like John clingberg you know what I mean like so I could see you know even beyond the owner not wanting to give one player. or $12 million or whatever.

I can see them being a little gun-shy about that sort of thing just because it's a big ass, like it's a big ask to say, hey, you know, we've gone over basically on our big free agent additions the last few years. But, you know, let's try it again and see what happens. I'm always just so enamored by the possibility of a team like, that has such a defined one or two or three-year window where they don't have any big incoming expenses, but they almost certainly will in two or three years using that window and spending

all that money on a guy who can help in the meantime in a legitimate way, right? And so we rarely see it in the NHL, but it's dare to dream, I guess. My one final note on this while we were talking about Cutter is just watching the world juniors. I'm not the first to say this, but I'm so excited to watch Ryan Leonard in the NHL. Yeah, he's a fun player.

He is going to absolutely annoy the living daylights out of everyone, and it's going to be awesome. The idea of him and Tom Wilson on the same team is pretty hilarious. Yeah. Yeah, no, all three kids on that line are so cool. Yeah.

Yeah. That was a pretty good team. All right, Aral, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we will finish up this week's listener,

a mailbag. You're listening to the Hockey Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the Hockey PEDEOCast, Ryan Lambert, doing our Friday mailbag. Let's do this one next.

So Yuri, who is the moderator on the PDOCs Discord, So I obviously have to take his question because he's doing such a great job. Kings fan asks, what's wrong with the LA Kings? Now, the last time I had you on, I think we did a whole thing about how we thought the Kings were the best team in the league. And since then, things have gone south a little bit, certainly. Now, I'm not really despite the results worried about it, but they are 3 and 4 in their last

seven games. So technically a seven game losing streak, although four points in it does sound a little bit better. What's wrong with the Kings? How worried should we be and sort of what are you seeing from them right now? Well, what's wrong is actually pretty simple to nail down. It's not that hard at all. The offense is just completely dried out. Well, not completely, but you know what I mean. I think if you look at expected goals in all situations, there was only three times. It got north of three in the last seven games. And before that, I think they'd only had like four or five games where it was

south of three the entire season. So, you know, I think if you're looking for what the answer is, that's the answer. Well, 14, so in that seven game stretch, 14 goals scored combined, right? So two per game, that's obviously not very good. Now they're defensive system instructor and all that. is still elite. And so that's going to keep them in a lot of these games and six of these seven losses are by one goal.

So, you know, that's important. Like this stuff, a lot of coin flips that are just not going there away right now. And that's why I say not to worry, but the one thing I did want to note, and it's interesting you bring up the expected goal because I believe natural statrix still has them fourth on the season in terms of most expected goals generated on a permanent basis. Sport logic has them down at 13th for the season. And I guess my one concern about this team that's been true for a while now and still lingers a little bit in the back of my mind.

And this is only purely when you're comparing them to like that truly elite tier of best teams in a league and you have to really nitpick is they made such a concerted effort of bringing in Fiala and Dubois with this sort of eye on having different ways to score, being a bit more dynamic being able to get into the middle of the ice and create that way in the playoffs, right? And I still think there's sort of middle of the pack in terms of like offensive creativity and ability to actually do that. And a lot of these numbers. Absolutely. Bear that out. Like they're 18th in slot shots, 15th and inner slot shots. They're 18th on the power play. Like, that's middle of the pack. Now when you're a top two, three defensive team, that's going to win you

a lot of games in the regular season, but when you get into playoffs and you have to play either Vegas or Edmonton, it's going to be tough to create goals for them. And I think that concern has carried over from the past couple of seasons, and I still haven't necessarily seen enough to truly make me feel like that's just the thing of the past. Yeah, and especially because Dubois had such a kind of miserable season for them, like offensively at least. He was supposed to be much better than this,

and he's certainly getting paid to be much better than this, and it just hasn't worked. And maybe that's, you know, coming to a new team, getting new line mates, all that kind of thing. But it's not like Pierre Lue Duois is unfamiliar with the concept of moving around the NHL,

you know? So to me, I mean, you know, I look at this team and I don't see a lot of like game breaking offensive talent. But I think that a guy like Kevin Fiala could certainly, you know, get hot at the right time and, and so good problems we're talking about.

Well, for sure. But I'm saying I just, I'm looking at it right here. Kevin Fial is shooting 9.7% this year. That feels very low for him. And, you know, if, if they can get one or two guys going that little extra step, a lot of the stuff we're talking. talking about right now, like because of their defensive structure and quality, you know, throughout the lineup, I think that the margins they're losing by six to the last seven by

one goal, as you, as you point out, you know, if they can get one extra guy going, all, all these problems we're talking about go away, or not go away, but certainly are less notable, let's say. No, I agree with that. And I guess what makes it extra frustrating on the while front as you watch the Jets right now and we're not going to talk about them here today, but like Blurdy's establishing himself as one of the best net front guys in the league and he's just always open to finish off plays around the net and it's like, man, I thought that's all we were getting here. This is, that kind of sucks. We had that guy and that's kind of what they need right now. So that is obviously frustrating. Now, the reason why I thought this question was interesting

and why it would be a little bit concerned beyond some of those lingering offensive questions is in the meantime, the Canucks are building this gap between themselves and everyone else in the Pacific, right? They're up to 59 points in 42 games. L.A. is at 48 and 38. Vegas is in 53 and 42. And as this progresses and continues, unless something drastically changes, the likelihood of a round one matchup for L.A. with either Edmonton for the third straight year or Vegas is becoming increasingly likely, and that would concern me. That's like the one thing where they still obviously have a lot of runway here with 40 plus games to figure out their own play and put themselves in a better position. But the idea that you're just going to have to do that all over again

against one of those teams is pretty alarming for someone who has been really high on the Kingses here as the way you and I have, right? That's obviously not an ideal landing spot, I guess, for them to start the playoffs and so that's becoming increasing likely with this kid where at the start of the year it looked like they might be the number one seat in the Pacific and get a potentially easier wildcard matchup but yeah that would be

that would be pretty tough against either those two teams yeah and that that's just the the quirk of the NH GEL's playoff format right where you can say the same thing about Toronto the last however many years where it's like yeah in the first round every year they have to play

Florida Tampa or Boston have a good one out there. You know, like, it's just that it's tough. That's the way it is. But, you know, I think honestly, if things continue down the path they're on right now for the next little while here, L.A. is maybe feeling more like a wild card team than anything because, like, it's funny. Like Edmonton has won, I think, 17 of their last 20 games.

Mm-hmm. And it's like, no, there's still three points back of the Kings. And you're like, oh, surely the Kings have been on a similarly strong streak. And they're like, no, they're two, four and four in their last four. Actually, they've kind of been bad. Yeah. It's just one of those things, you know, where I fully expect, speaking of teams that aren't playing particularly well, Vegas is three and seven in the last 10.

Yep. So, like, I fully expect, like, maybe not this. level of performance from Edmonton where they're getting 85% of their points for the rest of the year. But like, they don't have as much of a gap to make up as you might think, you know, so if I'm the Kings, I'm looking and I'm saying, oh, no, do I have to play like Winnipeg or Vancouver in the first round? You know, like, yeah, okay, I'm avoiding Bayesian and Edmonton, but instead I have to play the two hottest teams in the league, basically. There's no, there's no good answer. Yeah, it's true.

It's going to be a grind. But they've certainly, I guess, decreased their margin for error since the start of the season. Okay. Yager's flow asks, are there any good players having very, very good seasons that are totally under the radar? Now, I guess what your radar is is going to vary by person. But let's try to pick someone who is genuinely not really talked about a lot. Is there anyone? Yeah.

I've got two names that I thought of. Okay, hit me with your first one. Okay. Do you think this is two on the radar, Robert Thomas? You know, I just haven't seen anyone have a St. Louis Blues conversation, I guess, other than their coach being fired this season, and the Jordan Kyrie thing, they follow. Yeah, I mean, so I guess I was just saying this on puck soup the other day. I'm a big Robert Thomas head.

Like, I'm like, oh, that guy's really good. Like he doesn't get talked about enough for how good he is. And so to me, I'm always just like, what's my old buddy Robert Thomas up to? Let's check it out, you know? And like, Hyru, obviously, he scores more goals of the two of them, I think you would say. So he gets a little bit of attention. But like, to your point, Robert Thomas is on my radar pretty much 24-7. He's just one of my guy.

So, yeah. Yeah, and obviously, it's not like, oh, this is out of nowhere, right? Because he's obviously been very productive and he's been on our minds for a while now. I just think that because of the season, the Blues have had and everything, like, they're just not, don't get brought up nearly as much as some of the other teams. But you look up and I think part of it is I mentioned that stat earlier, how Val Natushkin has one less power play goal than the Blues is a team. So I think part of that is the reason why it's suppressing some of this stuff.

But then you look and it's like, all right, he's top 10 and 5-1-5. points. With him on the ice at 5-1-5, the blues are up 31 to 17. When he's off, they're getting just absolutely destroyed, 73 to 47. I think that's one of the biggest splits of anyone in the league. And I'm sure you mentioned that Cairo is the goal score. Well, Robert Thomas has 16 goals already this year, which his previous career high was 20, and he needs 39 shot attempts in his final 42 games to set a nuclear high. And so I feel pretty confident that he's going to get there. So he's kind of added a new wrinkle to his game in terms of actually just looking for a shot and embracing that a bit more. And I guess my one final point on that is like he's in year one of

that mega extension, the matching ones that him and Kairu signed. And so I think this is a massive development for the blues regardless of what happens for them this season because last year was such a disappointment and the play tailed off a little bit in terms of production. You were like, oh man, what's going to happen here with these guys? And all right, well, Robert Thomas is at 24 years old. if he's going to be producing this way, I feel very good about that deal moving forward. And so at least that's kind of something to, to hang on to for Hope moving forward.

Yeah. A guy that I want to say is under the radar. And I, you know, maybe you also had this. But Brandon Hagle is like a kind of sneaky, selfie guy. And I guess I haven't looked at the Lightning's scoring leaders lately, but I feel like he's pretty high up on that list for them as well. Let me pull it up right here.

Yeah, he is fifth on the lightning in points and he's like kind of a sneaky, selky guy to me. And if you go by evolving hockey's war stat, he is currently 15th in the league in defensive war, but that's including all defensemen. So there are only a couple of forwards ahead of him. And he is 11th in the league. overall in terms of war right now. It's really good. That's, you know, another, sorry, go

ahead. No, no, no. Sorry, what were you going to say? Please finish that thought. Just another one of those like sneaky great pickups by the lightning. You know, his cap hits 1.5 million and he's one of the best all-around players in the league, probably, you might say. So, no, he is awesome. Yeah, I'm a big fan. At the start of the year. had him on our guys list. I did a show with Thomas Trance and he'll, he came up with the nickname the philosopher for him after a German philosopher Hakel. And so he is certainly, he's brought it this year. In fact, that game against the Kings to just tie it together. First, the goal to set it to overtime where he just like barrels his way to the net and wins multiple battles to get in.

And then in overtime, just bully balling Pierluke Dubois all over the ice and, keeping possession and eventually getting it over to, I believe it was Perbix for the winner. And it was just like this monster performance where he essentially individually decided like, yeah, we're not losing this game tonight. And so that was awesome. So I'm with you. That's, that's a pretty good quality for any player. Here's the other guy that I had. I didn't have him on my list, but that's a good shout by you. Can I just you know a little Casey Middlestat? Yeah. So I, I guess I follow enough Sabres fans that I'm like, oh, he's having a really good good seed legy. Yeah.

Again, a guy that you just wouldn't think, oh, I should look up to how Casey Middle Stats doing, but everybody that I follow from Buffalo is just like, you would not believe how good this kid has been this year. Well, I think he's been the best Sabres player. And unfortunately, that's kind of undoubtedly, yeah. That says a lot about their season as well, unfortunately, as much as it does about him. Yeah, because I don't think heading into the season, that was the hope. But to his credit, he's been really good. He's similar to Robert Thomas. 27 5-1-5 points tied for 9th post on pace for nearly 70 points.

And the reason why I wanted to highlight him is because Buffalo all of a sudden faces an interesting decision where he's got the one RFA year left, right? And then he'll be, like he's going to be 26 next year. And they have to decide essentially whether he's part of their future and they're going to pay him for this season and keep him long term or whether they're going to try to cash in at this deadline and treat him. and I can already sort of see this dilemma for them and I'm sure that the Sabres have been talking about this internally for a while

and I know that their fans have as well online but it's like it must be so frustrating just seeing time and time again this organization trade these good players who then go on to different situations and thrive right whether it's on a team level and winning a Stanley Cup or whether it is all of a sudden getting more recognition for their play and scoring a bunch and all that and just watching that from afar being like, oh, man, it's happening again, or whether you want to pick up the tab on this and pay him and then deal with that moving forward,

considering all the other future commitments you're going to have as well for this team. So it's going to be a pretty tricky one, I guess, for them to decide as soon as this trade deadline, because I think they're going to want to figure that out before heading into the summer. For sure, yeah. Oh, he's having, he's having a really nice season. I know there's a big push locally to get him into the All-Star game. I think they're announcing the 12 extra guys tomorrow. But yeah, it's just really interesting that he's having such a good year, but like not in a contract year, right?

Like you expect the guy to go nuts in a contract year. It happens all the time. But he's doing it kind of like you said, a year before and out of nowhere almost. Like would you, going into the season, would you have said he's like a top five most important player on on the savers, you know, probably not. Well, he was kind of quietly good as last year went along, but definitely like a sort of post-hype sleeper, right? Yeah, obviously.

Correct. So, yeah. There's a prospect, especially after that World Juniors and then disappointing start to his career, but has really turned it around since then. And I think for a team like the Jets, for example, who I think will want to, if this keeps going and they really solidify themselves at top of the NHL standings are. going to make a push to sort of reward that group and kind of go all in this season. He'd be such an interesting name for them because he still has the RFA, right? So you can sort of control that.

And it's not just a rental, but also I think they need more center talent. And, you know, Sheifley got injured last night, but even beyond that, it's like, do you really want to be just relying on a core of Adam Lowry and Vladom Mestikov as your next guy's up down the middle? All of a sudden, you add middle stat and this idea of like, you put, maybe you put him and Connor on this kind of like sheltered scoring line and he's just passing the pop to Kyle Connor like that seems pretty fun and so um her i'm very intrigued in the potential of that i'm sure we're going to talk a lot more about that between now and the trade deadline but um yeah middle stats having an awesome year and that's a that's a fun fit so okay is uh you had you had hagle was your

guy you didn't have anyone else uh i guess i can get you with one more um which is uh you know I feel like goalies don't often get talked about in terms of, like, whoa, you can't, you kind of can't believe how good this guy is. Or how much he's affecting the team. It's kind of taken for granted that, you know, if you're, if you're an elite level goalie, everybody's like, well, yeah, sure, he's supposed to do that. And if you got, you're a guy that kind of comes out of nowhere, people are like, okay, sure, but it's not going to last or whatever. But, you know, there's been a lot of talk, you know, we mentioned it. about like, oh, the capitals are kind of around the playoffs and they're making it harder for all these teams in the Eastern Conference, um, kind of unexpectedly. And, uh, let me tell you the one guy

who is responsible for that is Charlie Lindgren. Yep. You know, he's got, he's a 928 goalie. He is currently seventh in the league and goals saved above expected. Like the team stinks, right? And Charlie Lindgren's like, that's not a problem for me, Doug. I'm happy to pick up the ball and run with it here. And when he's not in the lineup, they're getting like 890 goal tending. And so, you know, if you're looking at a guy where like, again, at the end of the year are we going to be saying like, yeah, the Capitol's got into the playoffs and it's all because of Charlie Lindgren.

I don't think so, right? I think they're not going to make the playoffs. and he's been kind of, I don't know, like he, he's been kind of even for most of the season, right? Like he's been just routinely good, almost every game he plays. And I just want to shout him out

because he's a fun goalie and, he's the only reason we're even remotely talking about the caps as a playoff team. No, he is generally good for a while now. I guess I don't want to take it away from you because that is a good candidate. But we talk about him a lot of this podcast because every time I have Kevin Woodley on,

he's ranting and raving about Charlie Lindgren. And so, yeah, listeners of this show are like, that's not, I'm way more familiar with Charlie Lingren than Robert Thomas. So, so, yeah, I guess it all depends on your perspective. The other, the other interesting thing is, you know, I mentioned, you know, the other goalies that, you know, they're like 893 or something like that

when when Lindgren's not in the lineup. Well, the thing is, he's only played 15 other 39 games. Yeah. If I have now, I'm, look, I'm not a, I'm not a hockey coach, right? But in my head, I'm going, what if the goalie who's like 930 right now got more starts? How would that work out for us? I'd be trying to find out personally, but, you know, I guess you don't have all the good, you know, you don't know, respect your.

opponent a little bit. You don't want to rub it in, but you're talking Charlie Lincoln out there every night. Um, standing on his damn head. Yeah. All right, R.L. Uh, this is a fun one. I will, uh, I'll let you plug some stuff. What do you want to let the listeners, uh, know about? Uh, E P.Ringside.com. Sign up for all the, uh, all the info on the elite prospects and, uh, that you could ever vote for and also analysis of the national hockey league by me and Dimitri and Jay Fresh and, and more.

We got a lot going on over there and it's getting better all the time. We just had a big company meeting about how well EP ringside it's doing. So get in while the getting's good would be my advice to you. And then if you want to listen to Puck Soup, you know, all the podcast places

will have it for you. I don't know. I love that. Well, I imagine a lot of the listeners already doing so, but I recommend that. My only Pugs are joined a Discord server, which you mentioned here. The invite link is in the show notes.

check out the PDOCAS YouTube channel. We did a David Pastornak episode this week with Darrell Bellfrey. We're going to do Eilers and Valardi, who we talked about briefly in passing early next week. We're going to let RL go here, and we'll be back with more. You're listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.