The Hockey PDOcast - Optimizing Player Development and In-Game Tactics

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Jack Han joins Dimitri to help answer listener questions about optimizing player development, hockey tactics, and game theory. This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty.  The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

2015. It's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey Pee-Ocast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jack Hahn. Jack. What's going on, man? Just came back from Toronto for the weekend. Was there with the Connecticut Whale? We got the split against the Toronto 6. So obviously, we would have liked to get two wins. But we lost the first one, 7-4, made some good adjustments, then took the second one for one. So lots of positives there. And maybe there will be a lot for us to talk about from the bench perspective. Yeah, yeah, we'll save that for a bit here. We're going to do listener questions, a mail bag here, and we got a lot of good stuff and a lot of really thopper-looking stuff. So we're going to try to get through as much of it as we can.

All right, let's get going here. So Tyler Blasinski asks, are the devil's running someone or are the devil's ruining someone like Alex Holtz by not giving him assignments with top-line players and then sitting him for weeks on end. Isn't it better for him to be in the HL playing regularly in Utica? I thought this is an interesting question. We talked specifically about Holt and the Devils, but also take a step back and view it through a kind of like bigger picture lens of just like

ideal development paths and routes and how you want to be trying to get the most out of your young players in these key developmental years where they could kind of, they're at a crossroads where they could either become an impact player or kind of change their game into becoming sort of a utility role player or just totally flame out and be playing in Europe in a couple of years' time. Yeah, I mean, I'm not super familiar with Holtz's situation in particular. I mean, I, you know, I've seen him play and I know that he's a goal scorer, you know, certainly more of a shooter than a pastor or a defensive player.

And you know what? Like every path is unique. I think certain players certainly would do better kind of getting opportunities right away. Like, you know, the obvious example is, you know, Jack Hughes got tons of minutes right away. He struggled for a bit and now he's a dominant player, right? But I think in the devil's situation, like they're in a very different place now than when Jack Hughes was a rookie. I mean, the devil is now, they're a win now team. Their job is to get the best roster on the ice every given night.

So I can see how maybe, you know, having holds in the top six on the power play, it's kind of, it runs counter to where the team is at right now. And certainly I think that's part of the challenge where if your NHL team is very good, it's difficult to incorporate new players because you're basically, your number one priority as a coaching staff is to put the best, most reliable players on the ice. and then, you know, if you have a young player who's kind of still figuring it out, there's a lot less opportunities for them to, you know, have this trial and error process. Well, here are the specifics of the situation. So he's appeared in 18 of the team's 46 games. He's been a healthy scratch in seven of their past 10 games, including the last six in a row. When he has played, he's averaging around 10 minutes per game,

and his most common 5-15 line mates are Sharon Govich, Bowquist, McLeod, and Wood. certainly, you know, more bottom six oriented or maybe even bottom line oriented. I think there's a couple things to play here, right? Like, in general, I'm very against using young players in the way that they have used holds primarily this season where it's really difficult to establish comfort, play with rhythm. If you're a young skilled player who has become accustomed to being the best player in their team at every level along the way and is used to being used in those high leverage

situations where they get to play with the puck and then all of a sudden you come to the NHL you're playing with Miles Wood in what's probably going to be kind of like a crash and bang line where you're not expected to do too much you you dump the puck in you go after it you throw a couple hits and you get off the ice and let Jack Hughes and jesper bratt play with the puck and and i don't i understand the devils are a really good team this season and they're deep right they have a lot of players. And so it's a unique circumstance where they got really good really quickly too. Like you say it's different than when Jack Hughes is a rookie.

It's a different situation for them than last season where they probably, if they weren't, you know, last year they didn't want to play them in the NHL because they didn't want to burn a year of his intro level deal and retained an extra season of it. And that provides him certainly with more flexibility moving forward. But, you know, he only plays nine games in NHL last year, spends the majority of an AHL does really well, scores a lot of goals. and now he's kind of stuck in the in between. And I'm not sure that sending him down to Utica

would necessarily be the best for his development either. Yeah, and I think it's a spot where I think every young player has to work throughout a certain point where either you're struggling in the HL as a rookie pro or you kind of get stuck as a quad A player for a little bit. I mean, you know, I'm looking at Holt's stats last year in Utica. He had 51 point to 52 games. would argue that he is basically too good for the AHL already. There's maybe not a whole lot for him to prove at least from an offensive perspective.

You know, maybe there's there's other things that you can certainly work on in the HL. And I think the inside perspective that lots of fans had to miss out on is how much money does an ELC player make in the HL? Yeah. And how much, and how much is that player making in the NHL? Right. It's a factor of 10, essentially. Well, not only that, I think something, and this is impossible to quantify really,

but I would argue it is a factor. In general, you want him playing games, but I think being around the NHL team has its benefits too that are a bit more low-key, right? But you get them around your coaching staff, around your training staff, you get him practicing with the team, you get him acclimating to being in the NHL, you get him, you know, the best, the best equipment, best everything that they could possibly provide. I think the gap between what you get in the NHL and what you get in the NHL in that regard and on a day-to-day basis is also pretty wide.

And so, yeah, he's not playing on the ice and he's not getting those game reps and that is unfortunate. But I think there is something to be said for being around the NHL team and getting to make the use of all of those perks as opposed to, you know, ride in the bus in the HL and doing what he was doing last year. And listen, he turned 21 yesterday, so he's still incredibly young and he's got two years left on his ELC after this one. But this is fifth year playing pro hockey, right? Like he was drafted out of the SHL. Like he's been playing pro hockey and scoring goals in pro leagues for a long time now. So this isn't a necessary type of thing where he's coming from Major Junior and you're like, all right, well, let's get him some reps playing

professional hockey in the HL because he's not used to it. Like, he's already kind of got that under his belt, I think. Yeah. So the fact that he's not playing every game and not playing a lot when he does get in the lineup. I think obviously there's a lot of hang ringing going on if you're a fan. But, you know, as I mentioned, the whole, you know, money and logistics and quality of, you know, the NHL experience. And also the other part is, you know, when you're at his age, you don't need to be playing 82 games or 72 games a season, right? Like maybe, you know, the devils do work him into the lineup.

He ends the season playing, I don't know, having played 40 NHL games. that's fine. Like I think he'll figure it out. And, and, you know, when he's going to be averaging, you know, 20, 25, 30 goals in the coming years, I think that this will be some that maybe fans would have already forgotten about. Wow. My guess would be he's going to get a lot of opportunities to play it down the stretch for the San Jose sharks after he has traded for Timel Meyer. I think he's going to get a lot of it's going to be a different environment in terms of roadblocks for playing time for him. So, well, we'll see. how that shakes out for them. But that's good. Okay, so we're done with the Holtz question. Let's jump to Jeff Arvin asks. This is an interesting thought exercise. In an ideal world where

all four lines and all three defense pairs are league average, so league average, first line, league average, second line, so on and so forth. How much time on ice does each set get? We've been seeing a skew towards top players getting heavy ice time recently, and I can't imagine it's good for their long-term performance. I'm curious for your take on this in terms of deployment usage, you know, literally the calculus changes depending on your situation in terms of how much the game matters and also particularly when you come to the postseason,

but let's say like as just in general rule of thumb over an 82 game regular season. Again, like this is one of those things where it's so much, you're depending so much on who you've got, you know, are these... Well, no, they're league average guys. Like they're a league average first liner, league average first pair defensemen. Yeah, but like, do you mean like average in every way?

Because, you know, certainly on certain teams, you'll get like fourth line guys who are more, you know, pure offense guys or fourth line guys who are pure defense. But anyway, so let's just say that they're average in every way, right? The difference, again, like, I don't have a neat answer for this because it'll depend on the score state. It'll depend on whether the games a lot of is happening at 5 on 5 or on special teams, right? Like, okay, so just to give an example. So when I'm on the bench, I see how this thing actually happens, right?

Basically, your best players throughout a period would get anywhere between three and maybe six more shifts than your third or your four fine players. Like, it's not that many if you think about it because, you know, in there you'll get a couple of power play shifts. a couple of PK shifts. And then one opportunity where you can put your best players on the ice is after a commercial break, right? Like if you're a coach, coach at a high level who pays attention, as soon as there's a commercial break, you know, the ice gets cleaned. You have like a four or five minute breather.

It just makes total sense for you to throw, you know, either your first or a second line or your top deep hair back out there again. Like if I see a coach putting out, you know, their fourth line or continue with a rotation after a commercial break, you know, either their top guys are tired or girls are tired or they're just not really paying attention. Like those are a good situation for you to give your top players an extra shift without necessarily burning them out. So again, it's not so much the pure minutes.

It's how they're distributed. So, you know, on Sunday against Toronto, so Britt Howard is the Toronto 6th is leading score. She leads the league and goals. And down the stretch, they're playing her every seven. shift and you can see her energy level going down, down and down. Right. So, you know, overall, in the entire game, she might have played, I don't know, you know, 18, 19 minutes, but it's the fact that in the third period while they were chasing

the game, she could hardly get her breather. Like those are the sort of situations that if you're doing this too many times over the course of the season, that really wears down your top players. But, you know, if, if you have control the game and you're using the TV timeouts correctly and you know you're using less of your special teams wisely uh you can play your top players quite a bit and not burn them out but but then you look at the nchal like if when you play 82 games in the season everybody gets kind of worn down which is why you know going back to the holds question like maybe the devils they start feeling good about where they are in standings and they start working different players inside the lineup um so so that might be a way for them to

give their top players a rest. Yes. Yeah, I think the raw minutes aren't as big of a deal as, as you mentioned, how it's distributed also just like finding ways for the coaching staff to manufacture like additional opportunities in high leverage scoring situations for the top players, right? So I think an example of that is a big point of contention for me as teams that split their power play usage pretty much down the middle 50-50. They give their first pair, for our first unit, the first minute, the pocket's cleared. All right, you're off the ice. We're bringing you on the next five guys.

And there's some situations, I guess, where if you don't have top-end players, you might have two equal combinations. Obviously, that would signal a pretty big concern moving forward about the fact that you can't identify your five most skilled players or guys most likely to score with an extra man. But I think for most teams, at least a minute and a half, assuming that they've been able to rest prior to that fireplay shift, I think that that should be the split.

I think the other thing to consider for me that teams don't utilize nearly enough is on offensive zone draws putting your two best defensemen together or I guess if they're, you know, your two best offensive defensemen in particular and kind of getting away from the structure of having three set pairings and okay, we're going to bring up our top pair here for the offensive zone draw, but your right shot defenseman there is, you know, whatever generic defensive defenseman that isn't going to likely be a threat out there. Like I love when teams take advantage of those opportunities to get their best players out on the ice because if you win the draw, you get established position, you're more likely to score even if it is at even strength. So let me just add some more nuance to this discussion because certainly if you have an ozone face off, this is a high lever situation with which to create a chance, right?

But from my experience, like the coaches that I've worked with, it's always a balance between optimizing this next shift. and kind of finding a flow and sort of a consistent and predictable process throughout the game. So let's say that, you know, we have a nose own face off. We go away from our usual rotation and we put our two best offensive Ds out there, right? In the best case, you know, we win the face off, we control the play, we get a set play going, or we find a good shot, you know, we create some chances we score, right? in the worst case, if you lose that draw

and maybe the other team is pushing the pace and you're looking to stretch the ice, maybe these two players are not used to playing with each other. Maybe it's two lefties or two righties. You know, like for me, like so much of playing good transition defense is knowing your partner and trusting your partner and

having a sense of what they can and can't do. So, you know, certainly from optimizing offense, I think like you're, there's something to it. overall like I'm kind of cautious about mixing things up too much just because you know about half the time or even slightly more than half time you lose that draw and then all of a sudden you're you got a defense speed so and and that's the first part the second part is okay well you've mixed up

your pairings now how many shifts how many rotations is it take for you to get back to what you're comfortable with in terms of rolling your pairs right it might take you you know two shifts or three shifts even to get back to, you know, your quote-unquote usual D pairs. So from a game management point of view, you're looking to maybe, sometimes you do leave some value on the table, but you're looking to make life as simple for yourself as a coach, but also for your players as well. You don't want them second guessing too much. Okay, like who am I even playing with next shift?

That was such a coach answer, Jack. My goodness. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're right. it's certainly a situation. I'm not saying like, all right, in a random January game for five minutes into the first period, you're all of a sudden pressing that aggressively. I think in the playoffs in particular, though, in close games, I think leaving value on the table in that regard is not something I'm okay with. Just because I do, I think the value in creating a positive shift right out of the bat, even if it doesn't lead to a goal, let's say you draw a penalty or you just keep them pinned in their own zone for a minute and a half. all of a sudden they're incredibly tired, they're struggling to get off the ice, it's the third period of a playoff game. That trickle-down effect is something that is a bit tougher to quantify,

but I think is a real thing and incredibly valuable to your teams. I'll look for the rest of the game. So let's go to the next question from Daniel G here, because it kind of ties into that idea. In a strange roundabout way, we'll get there. I'll explain it in a second. But the question is, should the goalie playing the puck up the ice for a stretch pass be a legitimate set play?

obviously it's most likely used on a power play but could it be used instead of or in addition to the draw pass to get the puck up the ice um i'm very curious for your take on this i should know that daniel g's uh username on twitter is sardonic leaps fan and so i'm sure it's fresh on his mind seeing what ilias amsonov did last night against the islanders where on the power play he goes kind of behind the net to play the puck and it looks like he's going to do sort of a standard leave it for his defenseman or whatever and all of a sudden he whips around fires a bullet up the ice and William Nealander who springs John Tavares I believe and they get an easy goal from it because Dallanors weren't set and weren't expecting it. I'm curious for your take on the kind of like the legitimacy of using that as a said play in your arsenal obviously it depends

on what kind of a puck handler your goalie is and whether he's capable of making that play regularly but what do you think about that? So I do like it on power play for the reasons I think that prompted the question. On the power play, there's more space, obviously, but also when the other team sends it down the ice toward the goalie, generally they're going to offer a change. And then that's a good opportunity for the team, the team with the 5-1-4 to have a guy anchor at the far blue line

and then for the goalie to send it. I actually had this conversation with Caldubis a few years ago when I was working in Toronto, and he's very pro-goly playing the puck, at least when we had this conversation. And my argument against it at 5 on 5 is, you know, anybody who's actually tally some stats about goalie touches at 5 on 5 will notice that goalies turn the puck over anywhere between, you know, a quarter and a third of their touches. That's just an unbelievably high percentage considering that defense been on these own retrievals, they'll turn it over anywhere between, you know, one out of 10 or maybe 1 out of 5 in the worst case, right? So for me that that's just the numbers don't really make sense.

And that's for five on five, but certainly five on four when you have more space on the ice, when your opponents are more conservative or even on survival mode, I think it's very much a viable play. Well, and also out of every one of those turnovers, the percentage of them that is like a complete backbreaking, soul-crushing, inevitable goal is also much higher than where a defenseman turns it over. because your goalie is generally quite literally out of position and scrambling.

It's like running back and diving back to try and save an ensuing shot, and it leaves you very vulnerable. So I agree with you there. That's a bad take by a listener of the podcast, Caldubis. I generally, like, people listen to the show, no, I'm very firmly against goalies doing any sort of extracurriculars in terms of playing the puck other than if it's a situation where they can kind of stop a rim around the boards and just leave it in set position for their defensemen and then get back in that. I don't want them playing the puck.

I think the value of a stretch pass from a goalie at 5-on-5 is incredibly overrated. You can have 10 of them successful, and if it leads to one really unsuccessful one, it completely drowns out the rest. On the power play, it is a different calculus. Certainly, you have more space. And I actually like it there because for the reason you mentioned, I really hate when teams let the opposition off the hook in terms of, of you've got tired guys out there, they're desperately looking to get off the ice,

and you just sort of reset and hang around in your own zone or wait for them to do so. And that applies to 5-1-5 as well, so not necessarily goalies playing the puck, but I love it when the other team clears it at 5-1-5, they're trying to get off the ice. You immediately regroup and you push the pace back up the ice with your defenseman, and that's what a team like the avalanche does better than anyone, and they do it to great effect. So it kind of applies to that in this instance, but yeah, I think it's more of a, more of a power play option than even strength for sure. So I'll just add a final addendum to my point, which is if a day comes where there's a cataclysmic rule change where, you know, goalie pads and

goalie sticks and goalie, you know, upper body equipment gets shrunk to look like more like a player's equipment. I think a lot of these goalies can actually make plays, but it's just the equipment's too big and they're not able to actually beat anybody or, you know, like the goalie stick is just not made to handle the puck with. So if a day comes where goalie equipment gets so heavily legislated that goalies end up looking more like players, maybe you can revisit this conversation. Yeah. Okay.

We have time for one more question here before we go to break. And instead of doing a listener at one, this is a good opportunity for us to talk about your experience during the PHF games. I know you wanted to talk a bit about the game day routine. And also you mentioned the adjustments that led to your second victim. Tell me a little bit about that and kind of what goes into making those adjustments in between games. So, you know, most of my job now when I work with players or when I work with both teams, it's about, you know, staying at home, cutting some video, tracking some stats and then, you know, sending whether it's a pre-scout or post-game review.

So once in a while, it's nice for me to actually go into the field and then stand on the bench and see the game at ice level. I think it's a good reality check or a good wake-up call for me. And the thing that we did last weekend that was a little bit different was because we were three coaches on the bench. And, you know, unlike the NHL, let's say we don't have like midgame video. Like we're not able to look at clips. So I did something that I used to do as a video coach, which is I started tracking stats actually while standing on the bench. And the one thing that I wanted to focus on is just to track a couple of really simple stats,

but that were really at the heart of the tactical battle between us and Toronto. And Toronto, so the particularity of the six is that they're the only team in the PHF that plays on international sized ice at home. So they play at York University. And so the ice is bigger and they're very much, very difficult to contain because they're such a fast team. They play a little bit like the way Vegas plays. you know, the fours are very aggressively stretching up ice. They got some good high-end talent.

So I picked a couple of stats going to the weekend that I thought would be a good reflection of, you know, kind of the way that the game is going. And during what is commercial breaks between periods, actually Colton War, who was our head coach, you would check in with me and ask me, okay, like, how are we doing on this or what are some trends? And I thought it was a really great talking point for us. in the absence of video to actually review how the game is going beyond just, you know, shots or, you know, the score.

Can you give us a specific example of one of those trends? So, I mean, it's nothing really secret, you know, we understand. No, it's absolutely not. So it was just a matter of tracking five on five controlled entries, four and against, and five five shots for and against. And it gave us a good big picture look at, okay, well, you know, they made a good start because they were able to get, let's say, five controlled entries in the first four minutes, get some shots off of that, put us on the back foot. But all of a sudden,

you know, once we started getting our possession game going and getting into kind of our affice offense, which is, you know, pinning them in their zone, all of a sudden we're getting a ton of these re-entry opportunities. And we're basically able to catch them, let's say, after they flipped the puck out of their zone, catch them on the reentry, then create kind of these af-ice rushes that ultimately, I think in the first game, we went away from that a little bit. We got caught with, you know, on the wrong side of the puck a few times. But then in the second game, I think we did a really good job of following through and playing the whole 60 minutes in that way. I love it. All right. Jack, we're going to take our break here. And then when we come back,

we'll keep doing listener questions. We're doing the mailbag with Jack Han today. You're listening to the Hockey P.Dio cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back on the Hockey Pediocas here with Jack. Jack, let's keep going with the listener questions. Ty Smith here asks, does the 131 powerplay work or is overload slash umbrella more affected? Well, I think the jury is out and, you know, no matter of who you ask, powerplay scoring has been going up. in lockstep with the 131 taking over as the preeminent

power play structure in the NHL. So I think I've written about it. I've talked about elsewhere, but geometrically, it is simply the best way to create high quality chances, either in the slot or on a seam one-timer. So I don't think it's going to disappear anytime soon. That being said,

there is certainly value in being unpredictable. And you'll see teams set up in a 131, but then rotate into something that looks like an overload or something that looks like a 212 or something of that nature. So certainly I think there's a lot of value in building a 131 with players of the correct handiness who can facilitate all these quick set plays that we know work. But then after that, it's a matter of also finding some values around the margins

with your other kind of rotations or plays off the rush or any kind of miscellaneous goals that can make the difference. I mean, do you think it's fair to say that the answer to this question is entirely dependent on whether you have talent? Like, I think, like, certainly there's ways to, if you can have good players and if you don't put them in a position to succeed, you're not going to get optimal results. And if you have, conversely, if you have really good players, whatever you do with them, they'll find a way to make it work eventually. But I think, like,

especially in the power play, just having the players who you can run the power play through effectively in the modern game off that half wall is, is really all that matters. Like, if you don't have that, I think it's really tough to fake it in today's NHL. Well, I mean, you know, the, the players are all so good that, you know, the difference between, let's say, a McDavid and Drysidal unit versus, I don't know what the worst first first power play unit league is but the difference is not that big it's just how quickly you're going to be able to find those set plays or conversely you know win a corner battle and then just uh you know sort of improvised and find something and again like one of the litmus test for me uh when it comes to you know knowing whether a player is ready or not to to

be on a top power play unit it's not about their shooting it's not even about their their stick handling what they're passing is their ability to receive hard passes and not bobble the puck. Right. Because if you have five guys that can zip the puck around that can, you know, find each other, but also just settle the puck down and then make a playoff that, it creates so much more tempo and so much more threat to the net that you're able to overwhelm the other team with your execution. Whereas, you know, if you're trying to string three, four, five passes together and there's one bobble, you've got to start over. Or worst case, you turn the puck over. And now, for the next 30 seconds, you're basically just wasting your time,

which is what the Oilers do remarkably well. Like when you watch them, when they start cooking on the power play, the number of, like, just quick one touches that are perfectly handled and executed going from point A to point B to point C is remarkable. But what I think about is, so I was talking about this yesterday, I went to the Friday game in the press box, sat and watched the Avalanche versus the Canucks.

And the Canucks Power Play has really been struggling, I believe there's still for the season like 11th or something in terms of goals per hour generated. They were much higher earlier. They've like in every area pretty much, you know, struggled and been dragging their feet there. And it was startling to see basically if you're the opposing penalty kill and you just sit on that cross seam pass that everyone tries to make. If you don't have other options to take advantage of like if they're blocking out that middle and you can't then on the same side do some sort of action, whether it's passing it down to the goal and then quickly getting it into the bumper or going straight from the flank to the bumper, if you don't have some sort of intermediate

play, like they just become completely discombobulated. It's like, all right, we're going to keep trying it, it's going to keep being intercepted, and then eventually you just don't know what to do, and it just, you may as well not be on the power play because it's that ineffectual. Yeah, so the one thing that Edmonton does really well, and I forgot, and I forget whether we talked about this early in season, but they like, so. Sometimes they'll have McDavid and Drysout or right next to each other. So if you kind of take that seam pass away from your top players, you actually see them problem solving small areas.

And I kind of wonder why more teams don't do that. Because even with the teams I work with, like once in a while, we'll score a goal off of kind of a strong side play with two players just doing a quick give and go. So maybe kind of after you have your one through on down pat, there are ways to work in a couple of these. quick sort of whether it's half wall to goal line and then back into the middle or or something

along those lines like the oilers uh again it's i think it's mostly a mac david and dry saddle driven thing with uh nudge helping out once in a while but uh really a nice recipe for just creating some more unpredictability well also playing to the strings like the amount of movement like the amount of ground the mac david covers on a two minute power play is remarkable because Like, you'll see him. You'll, like, literally circle around, go behind the net, come back out, pop out somewhere, come to the top of the zone, just like keep moving. Like, he's not just standing in his assigned position.

You're right. Like, if the opposing penalty kill is sitting on one thing, all right, well, then we've got two or three other options in our back pocket that we can utilize without just completely self-destructing. And so it's cool to see. And, but ultimately, I think that's a Connor McDavid thing. They have Connerick-David and other teams don't, so he's able to kind of break the structure that way, whereas other players probably just aren't.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's it on power. Do you have any other thoughts on the power player? Do you want to move on? No, let's move on. Yeah. All right, here's a question for you.

So Johnny Joe Star asks, and I don't know why he's including injuries here, but he says, what can a player do to overcome injury and significant time missed during key developmental years? Would you suggest simplifying their game to try to hit a lower, lower ceiling, lower but more attainable ceiling, rather than just swinging and missing as a prospect. Now, as yeah, I'm sure you're going to say it goes on a case-by-case basis, but on a recent show with Mitch Brown, we were talking about how Dawson Mercer is such a fascinating young player to me because last year he makes the jump from Major Junior to the NHL, and he kept messing up.

And the devils, to their credit, did a good job of still feeding him regular minutes. it was easier because they weren't winning, so it wasn't a matter of, okay, we got to get him out of here because he's costing us games. It didn't matter. I wonder how they would have acted if that happened this year. But I thought it was very productive for him because it was stuff that he was doing in Major Junior where he was easily the best player. He comes into the NHL, and instead of totally dumbing down his game, you could see that he was testing what he could get away with, what he was capable of, and then learning accordingly. And this year, he's toned that down. and been more successful to my eye, especially when they've given them top six minutes. So I'm curious for your take in terms of young players making that jump into the league, how you find that balance between not just immediately making them a role player that's being asked to do the bare minimum

while also not stunting their development because they just keep failing and eventually either it totally snaps their confidence or the coach just gives up on them. So I'm going to answer your question in a slightly different way. And, you know, this answer is addressed to any young player. So whether you're, you know, playing U14 hockey,

whether you're moving up to, you know, U18 AAA, whether you're playing Major Junior, whether you're playing pro hockey, there's two things that you really got to consider if you want to avoid injuries. Okay, first of all is you have to develop good B scanning habits. So if we're talking about a young player presumably has good skill and has, you know,

skates while, handles the puck well, shoots well. As you start playing against bigger, more physical, more mature players, if you don't have good scanning habits when you, when you're not yet in possession of the puck, then you're going to find yourself getting hit or getting, you know, putting yourself in bad spots. And obviously that leads to injury because hockey is played with boards around the playing surface. And any time that you find yourself in that kind of, you know, 15 to 5 feet danger zone between, uh, you know, you know, yourself and the boards, if you get hit and, you know, there's contact that you're not anticipating, you convert yourself very seriously. So the idea is to identify the threats

before you touch the puck, because obviously, before you touch the puck, fewer players are going to actually initiate contact. It's that moment when you get the puck that's you're under the most danger. The other side of preventing injuries in these key kind of developmental years is you got to find ways to get yourself healthy before you get back into play. Like, you know, this is purely anecdotal, but I see a definite link between something like a foot or an ankle injury and concussions because when you're, you know, you have a sore foot or a sore ankle and you don't have four range of movement and you're compensating. You put yourselves in positions where it's difficult for you to turn a certain way.

or create separation or, you know, absorb contact effectively. And then that's when, you know, if there's a big contact, you can put yourself in a really bad spot. And all of a sudden, you know, what was a sore foot or ankle that you could have rested for a week, now you're out for the season because you just had a concussion. So for any, so bring it back to, you know, how NHL teams handle these young players. I think these two aspects have to be top of mind whenever you're trying to. of bring players up from junior or college into a pro schedule because one of the challenges is

all of a sudden you're playing you know whether it's 72 or 82 games a season and there's a lot more pressure for a good young player to be in the lineup to be available all the time and certainly players themselves they will take chances and take risks with their long-term well-being even if they're not 100%. So I think if you're a young player you have to have to be. You have to have to have, you have to go into this process knowing, you know, the difference between ready and not ready to play and then also as a team as well. You have to think long term as opposed to, you know, maybe if we sit this guy for a week, he'll be fine. But if we press him into action, maybe something happens and he's going to be out for the foreseeable future

with maybe long-term consequences. Yeah. No, I think that's really well said. Compensation is a real thing in terms of leaving yourself vulnerable to future injuries, even if it's unrelated to the initial one. And the NHL has a real issue, I think. I mean, it's a good thing that it's so competitive, right? It's the best pro hockey league in the world. And if you aren't playing up to snuff, you're going to lose your spot. And so what that leads to is this kind of environment where, especially for young players, I think they want to prove that they can play hurt and play through injury and show that they're reliable and they'll be out there. And certainly, you know, if you have to know your own body and they're the only ones that they can say truthfully, whether it's just something that, all right, I'm a little bit hurt, a little bit sore, but it's not detrimental.

Or if it's something that they're trying to kind of withhold, but is really leaving them vulnerable. And so I think creating an environment as a team and in it with your culture that allows players or has the training staff, in place to sometimes save them from themselves, I think is an underrated quality for an successful organization in the NHL. Yeah, absolutely. Because you can do a lot of good things with your tactics or your player development or, you know, your research development in terms of, you know, quantitative analysis. But if you can't keep your players healthy or if you rush them back too early and you lose them,

you know, because you're essentially being greedy, then it's very difficult. called to be consistent winner in this league. Yep. Okay, let's rattle through a couple quick ones that I feel like I know what you're going to say, but we'll put them out there just for the listeners. And who knows? You always surprise us. Drew asks, is quote-unquote chemistry between linemates overrated in terms of importance?

I mean, look, like, when you put two players that really know the game and can really play the game together, you're going to see good things. Like, obviously we haven't seen Team Canada. or international best on best hockey for a long time. But anytime that there is best on best hockey, even if these guys have never played with each other, you see Mo's a match. So I think chemistry is maybe overrated in the sense that

you don't need a passer, a shooter, and a grinder on every line. Like you don't need that necessarily complimentary skill set. But like you put three guys with game on the same four line or you put two guys with game on the same D pair. like they're going to maybe learn to work with each other at first and get to know each other, but after they're comfortable and they trust each other, like you're going to see good things. Like good players make for good chemistry. Mm-hmm.

Yep. I agree with that. And also, I think sometimes it can be used as a bit of a cop-out for coaches where they get sort of said in their ways, they're comfortable with a certain lineup combination. And so it's like, all right, well, we're going to stick with it. and you could easily make the argument, like, who would have thought that putting Rupa hints, Jason Roberts, and Joe Pavelski together would lead to like the coolest forward line in the entire league? And then all of a sudden you put them together right out of the gate,

they have immediate chemistry and are the best, one of the best lines in the league. And it's like, that's kind of random, but they're good players, so it makes sense. But if you had never tried it, you wouldn't have known. Yeah. And I think again, like going back to that slight dig you took at me, I think coaches do sometimes mistake comfort and familiarity with effectiveness. So, so certainly, I think that's a thing. But, you know, you do what you can. Yes, definitely. Well, Wendy asks, why do so many coaches hate playing rookies in favor of slower, untalented players? Again, it's, yeah, it's, like, and it's not just, a thing that's limited to coaches, coaching the NHL or any other league. It's, you know, if you're a paper,

if you're, you know, if you're a company buying paper, like you're going with the company that you've always done business with, even though maybe there's a better company that's offering better products at a lower price. Well, you just don't know them, right? Like it's like people are creatures of habit and comfort. And I think it's just, uh, what we see in sports is just a, a, manifestation of our human nature. And, you know, anytime you complain that your local team's coach is, you know, playing older players and not trying enough things, think about your own life. Think about the decisions that you make on a daily basis. How many of them are driven by comfort and familiarity and habit and how many of them are really the best decisions that you could

be making. I think it's it's something that like whenever I see that, I tend to look inwards first. and it is what it is, you know. Well, I agree with you, especially when thinking and reflecting on my own life here, but I think this is also why it's so important for NHL teams to branch out and consider hiring different coaches and not just recycling one of 35 guys from the pool that has already worked for seven other teams and shown that it hasn't been working recently and you hire them because someone in your organization knows them or you're familiar with their name, I think that certainly there's a human element

and it's tough to fight that, which is why bringing in a fresh set of eyes, a different thinker from Europe or from a different field entirely, not necessarily be the coach, but for your front office, can provide such immense value to you because all of a sudden they might come in with that similar issue of doing things kind of their own way over and over again, but that might be entirely different from the way everyone else in your organization has been doing it this entire time. Yeah.

So it's just a matter of, you know, knowing your limitations, reflecting, you know, base your decisions on facts, being rigorous in collecting information and interpreting information. You know, I think it's always getting better. But these are good reminders for us as people, regardless, you know, whether we're players, coaches, whether we work in other industries, there's always a way to do things better if we're self-critical and if we do things with a clear mind. Yeah. Okay, one final one, which I think is interesting. Carter Rubin asks or says, the kings have a deep forward group, but less top-end talent on the best teams. How can they use that as a strength when matching up against the competition?

So if you have a team kind of going back to our initial question, right, you have a lot of depth, you have a lot of league average guys, but you don't have any anchors, you don't have any major drags on your performance as well. I think in the regular season in particular, you can really leverage that to your advantage when you're playing teams that are coming into town, playing a third game in four nights, off a back-to-back, that are top heavy all of a sudden you're going to clearly have a rest advantage. How do you, as a coach, though, how do you leverage going into a matchup against a team where you feel like you have the depth advantage, but they have the clear, you know, better top line or top defense bear? Well, you just try to roll your lines and play at a high tempo to tire the other team out.

It's difficult because if you look at teams that have won the Stanley Cup recently, these are teams that have an incredibly strong, you know, first wave. So it's three forwards and two Ds. Like if you look at Colorado, like very strong at the top of the lineup, if you look at Tampa, very strong at top of lineup, even if you look at St. Louis, like they had, you know, they have some really strong, you know, top line players, whether it's on forward or on D, Pittsburgh, Chicago, you know, L.A., when they were winning the Cup, they were able to put out, you know,

the data great top six and great, you know, great top four on D. So I think, you know, for teams like L.A. or Seattle, During the regular season, you can get a lot of wins by out grinding the other team and surpassing their energy and their work rate. In the playoffs, I think it's more difficult because players are, you know, they're really letting it all hang out. They're really emptying the tank. And I think it just comes down to who has the best five-man unit. So I think the priority is somehow to find a way to trade that depth for maybe a little bit more top-end strength. we'll see what LA does

but I think from a medium to long term planning it certainly it would be a priority for them to get better at the top of the lineup and maybe sacrifice a little depth and also not overvalue their own depth players and lock them up for too much term and too much cap hit

yeah yeah well it's interesting like if you get into a playoff setting right especially if you have home ice I do think it provides you with interesting opportunities to get into the matchup game. And if you really are comfortable with, let's say, your middle six, or you're not just purely a top line team, all of a sudden, that should theoretically, yes, when you're playing a Colorado or a Tampa Bay, it'll be trickier to pull that off, but against your regular playoff team, your average playoff team, you would think in theory

there's going to be opportunities for you over the course of a game to get advantageous situations where all of a sudden, oh, your line, which might be your third line, but probably could be a second line is going to have the leg up over whatever the equivalent of the other team is. And then it comes down to basically trying to win those minutes, I think, acknowledging that once their top line is out there, you're going to be kind of hanging on for dear life. Yeah, maybe LA can really use a Timel Meyer, something like that, right? Like somebody who can really kind of put their top six over the top and then maybe sacrifice, whether it's prospects or picks or something like that, some futures.

because looking at them, I think that's what they need. They do. And I think they're in a good position to pick what they're going to want to do here in the next couple of years and facilitate it, right? They kind of called their shot with Kevin Fiala, and I think that was smart. He's been awesome for them.

And I think there's going to be in a few more moves like that down the line, and if they nail them, they're going to be in a pretty good spot. So certainly something to watch for. All right, Jack, this is a blast. Thank you to the listeners for sending in all the questions and giving us some stuff to chew on and bounce around. I'll let you plug some stuff on the way out here. What do you want to promote from where people can check you out or what you've been working on? Okay. So I think at this point, you guys know where to find me on Twitter,

but one thing I like to plug today is I offer an analytics for hockey coach's video course on my Gumroad page, which you can find at j-h-h-an-h-h-k-y dot gumroad.com. And this is like it's a two-hour video course divided into 10, 20-minute segments. And this is a course designed for coaches at the minor hockey, junior, or even pro-level, who are looking to start tracking stats or using analytics in a very common sense way, which I've discussed a little bit earlier in this podcast. At the very end, once you get through the content, you can set up a 30-minute call with me. I've talked to minor hockey coaches, you know, junior coaches, college coaches, and pro coaches, and help them kind of just find better ways to use quantitative analysis in their jobs.

And I think if you're someone who works in hockey full time, it could be a great value for you. Love it. All right, man, let's the blast. All I got to promote, aside from the usual, please go give us five stars. If you enjoy the show, is go to E.P. Ringside and check out my upcoming piece on Keandre Miller, who is a player that I'm incredibly fascinated with. And I've been spending countless hours deep diving his video and breaking that down. So I've got a full right up on that there. And I recommend people check that out. I think it's going to go up Wednesday morning.

Otherwise, that's it. We're going to be back soon with more of the PDOCs here. So in the meantime, thank you for listening to us here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.