The Hockey PDOcast - Outliers, Regression, and Your Mailbag Questions

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Harman Dayal to answer your mailbag questions about teams who regularly outperform their publicly available metrics, Alexis Lafreniere's goal scoring, and contenders like the Avalanche and Devils having some weird results.If you'd like to participate 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. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dmitra Filippovich and joining me to close out the week in styles, my good buddy, Harmon Dile, what's going on, man? It's a beautiful Friday. Can't complain, regular seasons in seeing things. You love to see it. So we're going to have some fun. We're going to open up the mailbag.

It's becoming a weekly tradition here in the PDR cast. We had in the week on Fridays, answering some listener questions. these are all from the PDO cast Discord server, which is blowing up. It's really good in there. A lot of fun questions. The listeners came through if you want to participate in future editions of the mailbag. I highly recommend jumping in there. The invite link is in the show notes, and you can participate in future ones with us.

Harm, let's get into it. So, Nonsense Lazin, great name. There seem to be a few teams that consistently outperform their public analytics while we hear whispers that the private model look on them much more favorably. Is there anything that those of us who don't have access to these private analytics can do to bridge the gap in understanding beyond just waiting a few years for patterns to emerge? Yeah, so a couple of things. I think right off the bat, Corey Schneider's tracking data is immensely valuable.

I lean on it a ton. He has it on Patreon and it's packaged in a nice Excel sheet. And the main thing that he's able to track, which isn't captured in public, models is passing data and that's where i remember the st louis blues for example in 2021-22 there were this team that had a really high percentage public metrics didn't necessarily love them and yet you would look at some of cori's tracking data and it's like okay the blues are right near the top of the league in terms of how many high danger passes they make and again the public shot location data we have right now is just shot location doesn't account for was there a cross-team

that made the goalie move from side to side, which obviously significantly enhances the danger of that type of scoring chance. So that's what I tend to lean on a lot in addition to, like if you think there is a team that fits that profile, I don't think there are a ton of them. But when they do crop up, honestly, watching them makes a sort of big sort of difference as well. Because sometimes you'll walk away from watching a team and go, all right, they may not have been the best of controlling shot volume there

or XG model may not have loved them over this stretch, but maybe they create a lot off the rush, or there's something there that maybe you pick up just watching them. Yeah, I think the how in terms of like the playing style and how they're coming across their numbers is really important. And that does a great job in illuminating. I think we've done a pretty good job so far of understanding what works and what doesn't in today's game, right?

I think we generally have a pretty good idea of what sustainable offense looks like what you have to do to actually generate threatening looks and what doesn't, right? And kind of like accumulating point shots and sort of just fluffing your numbers that way might look good on the statute but doesn't necessarily actually correlate to creating goals, right? And nonsense lasagna here also cited that Blues team which you're referencing also included the Rangers, which I feel like is a team that for a couple years now, even with different coaches, different players coming in and out, is a team that constantly doesn't necessarily look great by the 5-1-5 metrics, right? Like, you look even this year, and despite the fact

they have one of the best records in the league, I think they're around like a 48% 5-1-5-expected goal-share team or something, which is kind of in line with what they've been for a while now. And for me, I think we have enough evidence now to inform us that that doesn't really mean that much, right? Just because of the talent they have from a skater department and the goaltending when just Turkin's healthy, that 48% for them is not necessarily. necessarily the same as 48% for a team with significantly less of that specific type of talent. Yeah, they're so uniquely built in terms of that power play being an absolute weapon. And like you mentioned, one of the best goalies in the world that's a unique combination that few teams can sort of match.

And again, I'll just say this. Sometimes you, again, I feel like I don't mean to be the guy that's like, oh, watch the games, guys, because I'm sure everyone does. But I found that immensely valuable because, for instance, I've watched a lot of the Oilers in the early going. And I think if you hadn't watched them, it'd be really, let's say, point at some of their, you know, dominant XG numbers. It'd be like, wow, look at how great they're playing. And they're going to regress positively. And there is an element of that, absolutely. They've been pretty unlucky offensively.

But on the defensive end, you can watch them and go, boy, this is a disastrous team off the rush. And I don't think an expected goals model is doing it justice in terms of how poorly they're playing. They're sort of like lack of structure defending that rush. They're getting exposed in that department. And it's like you can sort of piece together and have a much clearer picture, I think, when you can sort of combine what you see with the numbers. Well, and a lot of like an expected goals metric is kind of, it's good for the aggregate, I guess, right? it kind of accumulates over time.

But in these like isolated events like that, you're talking about where there's just like massive spikes in terms of what you're either creating or giving up, it probably won't be accurately reflected because it might just look like another event in the grand scheme of things. But in reality, in that specific game, it obviously was much more like impactful.

Yeah. Than that, right? I think part of what complicates this is that there's the whole public first private models debate, But then there's private versus private as well because if you compare a lot of these different companies, they're also going to have wildly different stuff, right? Like I take the goalie metrics, for example, sport logic's data looks much different than evolving hockey's. ClearSight analytics also looks much different than sport logics, right?

And I always have this with Woodley where I always, I come to him feeling smart because I'm like, oh, I'm going to give you a bunch of inner slot shot save percentage data and all this stuff. And goal save level expected from sport logic. And then he's like, well, actually, if we break it down here to East West plays from below the slot line, from a right shot to a left shot with this much of a screen in place, actually, when we adjust it for that, this is what we get. And I'm like, all right, come on, man. But, you know, that's how, like, minutia goes. And so depending on what the input and what the variables are, I look a lot different. I think that's kind of what we're dealing with here.

And we don't even have a chance because it's behind closed doors to test them for whether it's repeatability, what they're predictive of. it's tough to know exactly what to lean on and I think that's where you use it at least from my perspective when you see little tidbits that pop up you just sort of use it as an extra piece of sort of input as part of the larger aggregate picture of your understanding of of that team instead of putting your sole focus into well this is private so it must be the most robust it must be the most reliable that's not always the case either well and I do think that there's some pretty clear blind spots. And last postseason, we spent a lot of time documenting that here on this show, particularly

for a team like the hurricane. The entire Eastern Conference Final kept hearing about how Sergey Babrovsky was having this historical performance because his goals able to have expected was this high and Carolina was unlucky because they were actually generating this many expected goals. And then you actually kind of critically look at that game and think about what Carolina was doing offensively. And it didn't necessarily really pass the sniff test of like, I just watched that game. and I tracked all their chances, and I don't think they had 4.5 expected goals in it because

none of that stuff was actually threatening at all, right? And if a goal he's playing well, which Mabrovsky obviously was at the time, you'd expect them to stop all of that. And that's where we get to a team like the Rangers, for example, right? With Chastric, and it's like, if he knows where the shots are going to come from and he can prepare for them, I expect him to stop pretty much every single one of them. And if that's the way you play defense, you're going to be very successful time and time again, right?

And so I think teams that sort of pack the paint and have that type of vagus style defensive structure of making life easier for goalies in that regard are always going to outperform their expected goals against metrics, right, and are going to be actually better fundamentally than they are maybe on paper. Offensively, I think we agree, right, teams that counter a lot and are really good off the Russian and transition in particular are probably going to be more dangerous than maybe we would think just purely based off volume metrics, right? because we know that a rush shot, especially from a top line, is probably significantly more dangerous than some extended offensive zone possession where you're accumulating four or five shots in that sequence. Absolutely, and I'll give you a practical example from last season. I remember watching the Canucks at the start of last year, and yes, Thatcher Demko was struggling,

but I remember seeing some of the goals saved above expected numbers publicly. I don't know what they look like privately, but publicly they were really down on him and people were sort of looking at it and going yes the Canucks are bad defensively but also Demco's been well below average that's what the numbers bore out he had one of the worst goals saved above expected

in the league to start through the first you know four weeks or so and then I remember I'd obviously covered each game in and out and I'm like guys you would not believe the number backdoor plays the Canucks are allowing where it's empty net tapins even if an XG model has that location-wise is like a 0.25% chance of that being a goal.

I'm watching that. That should be 0.8, like, 80% chance. And that's just the sort of thing where they'd allow those types of cross-seem plays where the goalie has absolutely no chance, just sort of leaving them out to dry. And again, that's just something the metrics weren't really able to capture. And it's kind of what you mentioned, where the goalie, just wasn't given a chance to actually get square to the shot. And so, you know, obviously that's a big area that the Canucks have cleaned up under Tockeet,

which is why, yes, That's Datsy Demko has been phenomenal, but a huge part of it is both on the penalty kill and five on five, he's actually able to only, he only has to worry about the shooter instead of worrying about, oh, there's a guy on my back door that's wide open and he's going to tap this puck in. Yeah, he gets to actually just focus on the shots that he has to face as opposed to all the other possibilities around him, right? Yeah, I think rush shots, pre-shot movement, which you mentioned, screens.

I think rebounds are overrepresented, right? And we've talked about those with Brady Kachuk a lot over the years, but often those are going to register. And that's why I think Carolina kind of juices their numbers a little bit and maybe falls into a blind spot for a lot of these models. They take so many point shots and then they crash the net, right? And so there's a lot of sort of jamming away in front of the goalie. And it's all accounting as high dangerous shots because,

of the location, their proximity to the net, right? And so it looks, if you just look at it purely on, on, like, the ice surface if you're mapping it out and plotting it, it's like, whoa, they're, you know, they're getting really close here. Like, these are all threatening looks. And in reality, I remember, like, in, I think it might have been game three or something that East Final. I don't know.

That East Final just drives me crazy still to this day. But natural staturek had Jack Drury down for like six high danger chances in one sequence. And it was all like. A zero percent chance of scoring, really, unless something magical had happened because Bobrovsky had the puck the entire time and he was essentially just started jamming away, just jamming the puck further and further into his pads. And it was like, wow, man, that was an impressive sequence from Jack Jerry. It's like, it really was not.

And that just beefs up the totals. And so if you're not accounting for that, it can kind of give you a distorted picture, I think, of what really happened. So I wanted to point that out, I guess the reason why I thought this question was so interesting and why I wanted to start it off with this was, do you think that the Canucks, this year's version, falls into this category in terms of team? Because I believe,

what's their 5.15 expected goals right now? It's probably around 47, 48%, right? It's like certainly kind of lower half of the league. I believe they were maybe even in the bottom third. Right. In 5 and 5th expected goals. So they had dealt playing really well, right? Their power play, I believe, is third right now in goals per hour.

and when you watch them play, that certainly passes the eye test. And obviously with Hughes and Pedersen in particular, playing at the level they're at, I think we would expect them to sort of outperform whatever expectations you would have, right? Just because they're constantly generating such clean looks for their players. Do you think that this Canucks team, obviously at some point, if you're low enough, you start to get worried about it as a longer term sample, but do you think this Canucks team falls into this category of a team that can somewhat reliably outperform what raw metrics we have.

I think somewhat for sure. I mean, just watching that power play, it is unbelievable. And that right off the bat, when you have that much of a superpower to sort of lift you, you can overcome being a middling 5-on-5 team. Obviously, the goaltending helps.

But also, and I found this really interesting, and I'm curious to see how the trend will solidify over the larger sample. I was looking earlier this week, by 5 and 5 expected goals those metrics hate the conflict frankly but they're 11th in the NHL in controlling 5 and 5 5 shot attempts

so at least in terms of shot volume they're knocking right on that door in terms of top 10 and controlling play so that's something that I keep an eye on especially in small sample size is because there are more events with shot shot attempts to sort of measure. And I feel like you can trust that a little bit more.

But that's one of the biggest things I'm looking at is, okay, over the next 25, you know, 30 games, what seems to be more predictive of, like, what seems to be more signal? Is it the 5 and 5 shot volume, which is a lens through which the Canucks look really promising? or is the 5-5 expected goals which, you know, don't love the Canucks? So that's something to keep in mind because there's been a lot of talk about the PDO, the regression, and a lot of reference to their goal differential relative to their expected goal differential on how wide a disparity there is. And meanwhile, I'm going, well, they're actually doing a pretty good job of controlling, you know, shot volume, the power play is elite.

And I know that their PK expected goals against numbers aren't great, but there's been such a market improvement in them denying those cross-seam passes, which again, even just as a rule of thumb, I don't trust expected goal models for power play or like special teams in general. So I'm like, I do think the Canucks are one of those teams that can outperform their expected goals, but I'm also not sitting here telling you that, oh, all the things that the Canucks do will sustainably lead to them doing this forever. You know, there's a middle ground.

I expect them to sort of fall back down to earth. But there are legitimate signs of substance, too. I don't just think this has been a fluky run. Yeah, I'd be curious to see what the expected goal number was for Elias Pedersen's goal in Calgary last night where it was on the power play, right? And J.T. Miller is coming down hill in that typical fashion he does. And instead of ripping the rister, which we've come to expect from him, he passes it kind of cross-ice. And Pedersen is pretty far away, right?

I don't think that, like, geographically speaking, he was in a high danger area. But Jacob Marksner had absolutely no idea what was going to happen or where the puck was and was completely out of position. And so it was essentially a tap-in just from really far out. And so I imagine that probably didn't register as a very high danger opportunity when in reality it was about 100% success rate. Yeah, I'm curious to see what's going to happen. I was on our pal-drances show, Canucks talk here.

And first off, all of this conversation locally about PD. has been great for raising brand awareness for my show, and it's been free marketing opportunity for me. But we were talking about this, and I think it's an astute point to make, that in any given game, the team seems to have so many outs for getting the job done and either staying in the game or winning, right?

The power play, Demko's performance, and then 5-1-5, as long as they're not getting trampled, right? It's like any one of those things over the course of any given game can be enough. Now, over a full season or in a playoff series, it becomes a bit of a different conversation. But I assume most nights, one of those things, or just Hughes-R-Peterson, just having like a super dragged the team along with. It will probably happen on most nights, and that'll give them at least a chance to be competitive. And so I think that's pretty good, right?

That just instantly baseline, whereas a lot of these other teams, if everything's not going their way, they just won't have a chance to beat you because their margin for error is so small and they need so many things to happen. Especially because the parameters of their defensive play, their defensive floor has risen

significantly since Rick Tocket is taken over. I mean, I remember through the first 50 games in the Boudreau watching this team defend. It was a total nightmare. It's what I was mentioning earlier when I own goal saved above expected. The number of odd man rushes, this team would bleed

They legitimately looked like the early season oilers for that entire 50 games or so until Taki came over. And since then, the Canucks have been so much more disciplined about cutting down on those dangerous offensive entry attempts, the ones where you're trying to thread the needle on an east-west pass that gets picked off. And as a result, they're surrendering so many fewer odd man rushes against. and it's gone from them being one of the worst teams in the league to that. And now I don't have, obviously, the stats in front of me, but I would guess they're probably around league average in that department now, which, again, when you have one of the best goaltenders in the world right now,

that helps you a ton. So when you raise your defense, and you have the weapons you mentioned, all those different ways of being able to sort of win a game, it sort of makes sense why they've picked up a lot of, wins and have looked like a good hockey team. Well, and another point on regression is I think there's a bit of a misconception, and since it is a hot topic, I just thought it was important. Like, they're right now playing at 120 point pace or something, which is obviously

ridiculous, right? I don't think even the biggest fan of this team should necessarily expect that, although maybe some might. But if you expect, like, let's say you think they're true talent levels like 95-ish points, which is still a good team, right? Obviously, not what they play at now, but I think you'd take that heading into the year. they still have 65 games left, right? They've played 17 so far.

In those 65, you wouldn't necessarily expect them to perform like a team that's going to counteract what they've already done in 17 to get to 95 points. You would expect them to play like a 95 point team. So if they play like a 95 point team the rest of the way in these 65 games, that gets them to over 100 points of this season, which is going to be comfortably in the playoffs. And I think that's an important thing. And we're going to talk more about shooting percentage here for players,

is with the following question, and that's going to come into it as well. I think when we talk about regression, we enter it with an expectation of what the actual numbers should look like based on talent and our expectations of it, right? And then if it exceeds it early in the season, the regression won't necessarily mean that at the end of the year, that total will come back to that initial expectation. It'll just mean that over the long haul, we'd expect the rest of their performance to look like that initial expectation, which then you have to be. bake in all of the points or goals or whatever you're looking at that's already

accumulated along the way. Yeah, it's like if I flip a coin and I get head six out of eight times, it doesn't mean the next eight times that I flip a coin that I'm more likely to get tails. To even it out, yeah. Exactly. It just means that the more times I flip this coin, it's, I'm going to get closer to the baseline and the baseline probability is 50-50. So same sort of thing when it comes to, uh,

regression and I thought you did an excellent job of framing it. Oh, thank you. All right, Haram, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we've done one question, so far, which is great. But we will jam in at least a handful more here, hopefully after the break. You're listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the Hockeypedo cast joined by Harmon Dile. We are doing our Friday mailbag.

Harm, let's go through some of these other questions. So Spiel here asks, when a player's shooting percentage is, Alexei Lafranier, for example. How much should we would be waiting for the PDO shoot a drop? I know a 29% shooting percentage can't last, but is the alleged glow-up of a guy like Lafranier real? Or is it a shooting percentage bender induced by Psycho Mode Artemi Panarin, which is a great description of how Artemi Panarin has played so far this year.

Let's talk a little bit about Lafranier and sort of the season he's had, and also kind of this ties into the initial conversation we had before the break about, you know, themes, like underlying metrics and how that relates to the expectations and all that. And now we'll take it more from a more micro player level and how we kind of view shooting percentage. So, I don't know, take this any way you want. You can start with Lafranier if you want.

Yeah. For me with Lafranier, first off, there is a little behind this glow up. I see it. There's sort of two things to keep in mind with Lafranier in terms of your future expectations. First, when a guy does not play for a shooting of power play, it is so hard for them to put up huge counting stats. It's tough to be, you know, like a 60 plus point player.

So that's important to sort of keep in mind, right? Because Lafranier's got seven goals and 11 points and 14 games while barely getting any power play time. That's incredible. And I don't think that you can maintain a 41 goal, 64 point pace, unless there's a significant boost in power player opportunity. And that's not on Lafranier at all, right? So I think opportunity is sort of one thing to keep in mind as you sort of think about what could Lafranier's goal and point totals look at the end of this season.

The other thing is that when we have these small samples, right, let's say you remove two of Lafranier's goals, right? He has five goals now. He'd still be clipping at a 29 goal, 52 point pace, which again is incredible given his lack of power play time. And now of a sudden you remove those two goals. and a shooting percentage is down to 20.8%. Right. Which is still high, but keep in mind, Lafranier is a career 16% shooter. Plus, he's playing with Artemi Panarin,

who creates so many of those high danger passes, which you're more likely to sort of convert on. And all of a sudden, if we were talking about sort of that profile, we're not, like, this shooting percentage doesn't look so insane that we're like, oh, this isn't real, this is all a mirage. Yeah. Well, he scored seven goals on 24 shots on goals so far, which as we've talked about is 29%. 17 of his 53 shot attempts have been registered as high danger.

I say I think what's encouraging is that his ice time's up, his shots per minute generation is up, and his high danger chance per minute generation is up. They're all at career highs. So that's very encouraging. Now, the shooting percentage league average for forwards the last three years was 11.8%. And I looked this up, I was kind of curious about it. So since 2005, 2006, there's been 20 instances total of a player scoring 30 or more goals and shooting over 20% in that season. Like it's pretty rare most of the time kind of what you're talking about. It's very opportunity based and situational based, both from playing on the power play, but also just generating a lot of shots, right?

Like there's being efficient is great and there's certainly players like Braden Point who's done that, who's been on that list a couple times, or Leon Dreisaitle who are like just absolute freaks where they get good volume, but also because they're constantly shooting from like the slot and they're very talented. They're going to score on a high percentage of them. I think in Lafranier's case, I don't know about the true talent shooting, but I know that what you mentioned, he gets a lot of tap-ins and a lot of wide open looks from high danger areas. that are Temi Panarin set up. And so I feel pretty good.

He's not getting the power play time, but I feel pretty good from like a playing environment perspective that he at least checks those boxes. Absolutely. And that line has been so good for the Rangers. I haven't had as much a chance to follow them over the last week and a half, two weeks. But over the start of the season when I was able to watch them a lot more,

I mean, that line with, like, Hedel when he was going and Panera, I mean, they were the Rangers as his best line, just consistently generating. And it was such a nice stylistic fit. right because you have panarin as this ultra-gifted playmaker um heidel as this shoot first speedy centerman and lafranier it sort of took a lot of the burden off of him in terms of he doesn't have to be the one to drive the bus to be creating a lot of offenses on carries now his job is okay get in on the forecheck when pox back find ways to get

open and in around the net and just be a good finisher and tight which i think is a lot more reasonable of an ask, then go out and drive your own line, be the best player on your own line. That sort of complimentary role exceptionally well. And yeah, I mean, Panarin's been such a treat to watch. Yeah, Lafran's last game where he scored the two goals, the second one came with like 10 seconds left to send it to overtime, and then he scores the sick back end goal in the shootout to win it. That was obviously a very prolific and encouraging performance. Panarin, I mean, 24 points in the year, which is obviously really good and amongst the league leaders, but especially so when you consider that the Rangers have scored 46 goals this season as a team.

So he has a point on over half of their goals this year. They have 24-5-on-five goals the Rangers do in 670 minutes. 12 of those, so half of them have come in the 170 minutes that Panarin and Lafranier played. Wow. So you go on down the line, Panarin. Only Keller has more average offensive zone possession time, according to sport. logic. I think he's fifth in the league in shot and slot passes per game. Like he's doing it right now. He's absolutely humming. And I think we talked about this actually last time I had you on the show and we

quickly talked about Lafranierre in this combination and it's carried over. It's like a match made in heaven, right? Because Panarin essentially dances on the out and then quickly passes it around the net. And Lafranier, even before the season throughout his career, is shown that that's one thing he's actually really good at is kind of carving out space for himself in tight. And then finishing those opportunities. And it's just remarkable to me that seeing how good they've been together and the fact that those skills are so complimentary that David Quinn first and then Gerard Glenn after him never really tried these guys full time together.

Like I think they played like 250 minutes or something over the past three years total. And they're well in their way to matching that like through 20 games this season. So yeah, it's kind of sad that it took this long. But I guess it's encouraging for Lafranier moving forward in terms of like, differently, I guess, as a prospect, both him and Byfield, the glow-ups they've had this year, doing it in wildly different ways, but still finally producing much more to the level we expect from a top back and a top prospect. Yeah, it's been, like you said, I'm just surprised that it sort of took this long for, for an year to get a proper top six look with somebody like Panarin,

because I think watching him so far, sort of even before this season, you could see that, okay, he probably doesn't have the foot speed to be doing to be the main puck carrier on a line doesn't have that skill set yet and that's okay but then put him in a position where his individual skills which he's shown which has been the five and five goal scoring ability ever since he's entered the league put him in a role where that can sort of shine and they've finally done that and it's great to see it paying off i'm glad they finally did it before it was too late. A rookie for Panchetta here.

Fantastic names from all the listeners here. Among defensemen, Philadelphia's Sean Walker and Nick Seeler are top five in evolving hockey's goals above the placement. As a pairing, their 5-1-5 expected goal share is nearly 70%. What do you think is driving that success? Now, I will say, I watch an unfathomal amount of hockey. I watch all the games live in real-time every evening. Then the morning after, I go back and re-watch the most.

interesting ones. Then if I'm picking a player to deep dive either in an article for early prospects or on this podcast, I'll go back and literally watch every single shift they've taken the season. And even I got a close eye on this pairing to break down the, the exes and nose and the minutia of how they're coming across this. But I did want to include this question because it inspired me to look more closely at this Flyers team. And they might be low-key, the most interesting team in the league right now, just purely from a statistical perspective and trying to figure out what's going on and kind of trying to piece all the puzzle pieces together, right? Because I think your natural inclination heading into the year is,

this team's going to really suck, right? Like they were aggressive sellers in the offseason. It's going to be a long road here. We're going to have to wait a couple years for Matt Van Mitchcove to come. It's going to be pretty bleak until then. John Chorderella is their coach. You know, they've got all these guys like Garnett Hathaway and Nick Deloria. It's like, all right, like it's the Philadelphia Flyers. I kind of think I have a feeling of like how this is going to look and how it's going to go. And it really hasn't been any of that at all, right? Like I still don't think there's a lot of talent on this team and I still think they're going to wind up losing more than they win, even though they're over 500 right now.

But they just don't play like that at all. Like they're not a meat and potatoes, dump and chase, try to beat you off the team. Like they're an undersized young skill team that plays really fast. and I have to say heading into the year, that was not on my bingo card. Yeah, I mean, seeing how well they've controlled play is incredible. Like, they're like a top seven five-on-five team in the league by any metric this year. It's actually crazy. It's wild because a lot of times you'll see, like in previous years,

John Torto-Rella teams get off to good starts and they look like the scrappy competitive team. Like, okay, they've benefited from extraordinary goaltending, and their play control metrics are awful and it isn't going to last. But this time we're like, geez, they're actually playing really, really well. I think their forward group is pretty underrated, right? Because their blue line and, I mean, first of all, it helps a ton that Travis Anheim has had a monster bounceback year. He's played an exorbitant amount of minutes. He's been after a disastrous season last year.

has been huge and that's been massive but even with that sort of bounce back I think we can all agree that that blue line isn't very good on paper in terms of established names but their forward group I think it's helped a ton to have Kuchurier back and playing at his usual level Cam Atkinson has been a monster as well and I think both those guys after having missed

a ton of time I didn't expect them to be this good right away especially them sort of being especially in Atkinson's case older players then you mix in the emergence of a guy like Bobby Brink who's been fantastic. Noah Cates. I loved him as a sort of underrated piece as a rookie last year. And quietly, you sort of look at their forward group and it's more competitive than I think a lot of people would have realized.

Well, at 5-1-5, their fifth and goals, ninth and expected goals share, and 12th in high-dangered chances. The only teams that generate more rush chances than them this season are the devil's abs, abs, and blue. Joel Farabee is ninth in the league in five-on-five points per 60. Owen Tippett is second in the league in shots generated per 60. They're getting major contributions just from all the guys you mentioned, but just to put it in perspective, Cates and Frost who are 24,

Farabee, who's 23, Brink and Cam York were 22, and Tyson Forster, who's 21. And so that's highly encouraging, right? I still think where you see that talent deficit on this team, ultimately, in terms of like the true high-end talent with all due respect to a guy like Travis Kinechnie is on the powerplay where they're aggressively bad to the point where they're generating more goals per hour this season on the penalty killed than in the power play to do but that's what they're doing right now and every other metric you look at on the power play suggests that they are in fact that bad it's not a matter of being

unlucky and so that's just something where that's where you sort of see top-end talent creates those looks and turns shots into goals and they just don't have that. But just in terms of watching them and the way they're playing, especially at even strength where most of the game is played, and the players that are driving that bus, it's a pretty fun story, I think, actually. And I'm just watching them play the other night against Carolina. Like, there's a lot to like there that I really did not expect heading into the season.

Yeah, say what you want about John Torrella, but he's a good hockey coach. That much is abundantly clear with how much he's gotten out of this roster, how much he does in terms of raising the standard and you can see it in how competitive, even the roster battles were going into the season. A guy like Wade Allison who showed sparks and flashes last season, Philly had to have room for him. They had to wave him, right?

And I think they've, in this sort of turning the new leaf with a new management group, Philly fans deserve this new dose of optimism and excitement. This is what you want in a sort of, as the team is still bad and collecting high draft picks. It's still nice to see young players contribute, see some winning hockey here and there, see some of the, like a Coutureer look like himself again. It makes the whole experience more enjoyable than if they were doing the San Jose, you know? Well, it's also cool when, like, as much as we like to be right,

and to like look smart based on like everything we say wound up being perfectly correct it's i think it's more fun when something like this happens where you enter the year and i had them like 31st or something in my watchability rankings and then you actually watch them and it's like wow this doesn't look like anything like what i actually expected like i i'm all for that i i want more of that i don't want to know what's going to happen right like it's much more interesting uh embracing that kind of unknown okay j pierce asks should the avalanche and their fans be concerned that when they lose they're getting blown out. Is losing by four or more goals the last couple times they've lost

indicative of a longer term problem? For me, no. The reason I say that is they're also blowing other teams out when they win. If they were in a situation where they're getting blown out when they lose, but they're barely squeaking out one goal victories, then I'd be a little bit concerned, but the abs have eight wins this year where they've won by three or more goals. So there's been some absolute sort of,

you know, Wopper's in there as well. I mean, after losing the St. Louis A2, beat Seattle 5-1, and then beat the Ducks A-2, which Anaheim's been obviously a lot better this year, so it's not as if you're stomping all over a bottom feeder. That, I think, is right away a reason for me to, you know, not be as alarmed. And then the second thing to sort of keep is more, not necessarily related to strictly the blowouts, but a trend that I'm curious to watch moving forward is Georgiev's a workload.

Because remember, this is a guy that before he got to Colorado had never been a workhorse starter. He played 62 games last season, which in today's NHL is a ton of volume. And then he's played 13 of their first 15 games, which is a 71 start pace. And keep in mind that you saw in the early part of the season, he was unbelievable. The abs were so good defensively, but Georgiev was unbelievable in sort of shutting the door. And in his last seven games, he slipped to an 850 save percentage. You can, I think, start to see a goalie who's starting to play too much. Obviously, with Fransuze's injury, it's really unfortunate and it puts them in a night.

But I also wonder, and I know in three of the four blowout losses, Colorado has, they didn't score a goal. They got shut out. so it's not as if you're blaming him for their losses. But I also wonder if he was fresher, whether the score lines wouldn't look as lopsided. Yeah, 4-0-0-0-Buffalo, 4-0-Pittsburg, 7-0 to Vegas. I believe all three of those were on the road as well. Yeah, on the one hand, you're giving 889-s, say,

percentage minus 7.4 goal save above expected according to sport logic. On the other, I think sometimes over the course of a regular season, there's just a weird inexplicable results like the abs losing a game a two and then winning a game a two like four days apart is very strange to see but then you think about the team they lost a two to st louis they follow that up i believe by beating tampa bay five nothing and then last night they were losing five nothing to san Jose before they scored like a late garbage time goal and so it's this is the n hl regular season for you right the league wants to talk up parody and all that And there's still a delineation between some of these teams. But for the most part, you're going to get wacky results over the course of a season because that's just how it works. Right. Especially for a team like the Aves where I know last year was very disappointing.

And it's been a, you know, they didn't win the cup last year. They won it two years ago. But I think there's a fair to wonder kind of what the motivation is on every single regular season night when you've already accomplished and gone to the mountaintop with a lot of these players on that team. right. I know they changed up quite a bit of their forward core this offseason, but for the most part, I think they're kind of approaching this year with a bigger picture of you of like being healthy and ready to go come the playoffs. Obviously you have to get there first, but rather than just fully emptying the tank. And so maybe in some of these nights, if you go down a couple goals, your goalie's not feeling it. And it's understandable from a human element perspective to kind of

dial it back a little bit and call it a night, right? just because you realize you're probably not going to win every single one of these games. Absolutely. If you, it's impossible to go all out as a team in all 82 games. That's why he sort of, I think especially veteran teams, they can sort of coast it. And there are some games where, let's say a contender is playing against a team that's not very good. And you can see that they're putting in just enough to win. and they're just like, and for the, maybe for the first sort of half of the game,

you know, the contender looks like they're, you know, sort of struggling or like stuck in the mud a little bit. And then they just turn it on for a 10-minute stretch, blow the game wide open, and then they go back to sort of just sort of cruise control mode, and then win the game. And what it is, because it is such a grind when you're a team that not only has to play those 82 games,

but you're also planning and hoping for a long, postseason run the wear and tear especially with the travel is is a ton especially when you're a team like the abs where despite the fact they added so many new people

still has such an immense burden on their top players where I think it's really important and probably for especially so for a guy like Nathan McKinnon who probably has no desire to actually ever access that off switch right and goes full blast

every single time he's on the ice I imagine there's like from like a management perspective there's a bit of trying to sort of walk that fine line between the two. I just think seeing that performance, like you mentioned that 5-1 win in Seattle the other night where they're up to one heading into the third period and they just turn it on. And I believe the cracking had one shot on goal in that entire third period. And they just like, they just swarmed them and didn't give them anything and scored three goals themselves to put that one away. They can still hit that gear. And I think that's what you want

to see that you can kind of reach back and still hit that fastball on the radar gun. right and I think they still have that in them now I don't know what do you think about the secondary scoring and kind of all the moves they made this off season to try and make life easier on those top players because I think like someone like ross colton he's been very encouraging and seeing him playing with wogan o'connor they've been really good with their speed element but there's still i think room for improvement uh to put it nicely in terms of some of the players they brought in to help them so that when the top guys aren't producing they still have a chance to score enough to win Yeah, I'd like to see them by the deadline, sort of add a piece or two to sort of fit into the bottom six and give them a little bit more scoring.

Drouin hasn't exactly panned out the way they would have hoped. And when you look at the year that they did win the cop, it was such a luxury, sort of having cadres or 2C allowed you to sort of have comforer in a 3C role, where he was a fantastic fit there. And you saw the difference last season, last, you know, playoffs. when it's like, okay, now you're leaning on Comforer and a two C role and it just wasn't enough, right? And also sort of in that year, being able to use a guy like Berikovsky, you know, third-line role, what a luxury that was. And of course, this is part of what the NHL wants in the cap world, right? Which is McKinnon, when he signs his extension, he's now, his cap, it's almost double,

which means you don't have as much to sort of spend. And so, yeah, they're going to have to get creative because, you know, as much as I love their top horses, when you get into the playoffs, you don't want to run into a situation where if, let's say, you go up against Vegas, the William Carlson line, which was fantastic shutting down,

Connor McDavid, you don't want to be a one-line team where it's like if that Carlson line can negate the top line or you don't get a lot of power plays that you don't want that to be your sole sort of source of offense. And of course, you're hoping that, I don't know if we've gotten any updates on

recently, but if Gabe Lanzacog is somehow ready for the playoffs, I mean, that would obviously be a huge switch as well, even if he isn't exactly the player that he was before he got hurt. That's another thing that you're sort of keeping an eye on in terms of storyline. Yeah, yeah, we'll see on that. But yeah, I mean, like their team defensive metrics are really good. I think they're, it's a strong team. I think, I think I'm not too worried about the kind of throwaway performances here. I think for the most part in the aggregate, it's been, it's been.

been pretty encouraging so far. Okay, one final question here on the Devils. It was about, you know, Lindy Ralph's extension and kind of, I guess in general, just framing it from the perspective of like the Devils a bit uneven start to start the year and kind of not necessarily after how high we were on them last year and how well they performed and then the additions they made to this roster heading into into this season. I think everyone was just expecting to take another step, right? And obviously not having Nico Hish year there for half the game so far. and Jack Hughes, who sounds like he's coming back this weekend, but he's missed the past five games. So it's tough to, like, evaluate their season-long performance when you kind of bake that in.

But what do we kind of make of the Devils and their performance so far and the fact that they haven't necessarily performed the exact getting in? I'm not concerned because, as you mentioned, in the regular season, especially these small sample sizes, weird things sort of happen. I mean, I can't even recall how many times a team has gotten off to a middling start, because let's be honest, they're 8, 6 and 1. It's not a good start, but it's fine. It's not as if they're scuffling and looking like a tire fire,

like the Oilers, for example. This happens, especially when you mix in injuries. You have the unexpected sort of slowdown of a guy like Dawson Mercer. Plus, you're integrating so many different pieces on your roster because of the turnover, right? Like you lost Graves, you lost Everson. You're integrating Luke Hughes, who's a rookie. And then up front, there have been some, you know, changes as well, losing Sharongovich.

Tafoli's obviously been an excellent fit. There are a lot of moving parts. Yeah. And I think as it sort of pertains to the Lindy Ruff side of it, I'm not worried about that at all, to be honest. This is a team that was dominant controlling five-on-five play. Last year, I like that this year under Travis Green, their power play has been. fantastic now. I know that's not going to be like they're not going to get to where they want in the playoffs

playing the way they have been in the regular season so far where it's like their lacklasser at even strength but they're just relying on their power play. But because of the small sample, because of the injuries and they've had I argue some tough pucklock like I know they're playing loose and need to tighten some areas up but some of their five metric are still really strong and controlling play overall.

I think this is something that sorts itself out. Yeah, just under 40% their total goal output this season has come on the power play, which is absolutely ridiculous to think about. Part of that is the power play has been so good. Part of it is they haven't been scoring at 515. All things considered, 8-6-1 is really encouraging, considering the injuries and considering the 5-15 play. And the fact that they've broken even in goals is remarkable,

considering that their goal differential at 5-1-5 is minus 11. So these are the bottom teams in 515 goalshare, 32 San Jose, obviously. 31, the Devils. 30, the Oilers, 29, the Blackhawks. 28, Crack and 27 Lightning. I mean, we're only, what, 15 games into the year for most of these teams, but that is still pretty stunning to consider. Now, they're 27th and 515 goals pretty much entirely, I think,

because they're shooting 6.7% as a team, which, given the talent in place, even with the injuries, isn't something we should expect moving forward. and I don't think that's a reasonable expectation for them. So, like, they're going to start scoring more, and once that happens, sure, the goaltending needs to be better, sure, they need to tighten it up defensively. I just think there's going to be some natural regression here. And once that happens, a lot of these concerns or whatever we have will be just organically alleviated, right?

So I think there's that. I do think there's a couple easy fixes for Lindy Ruff. I think they need to play Alexander Holtz more. They've started to out of necessity the past couple of games. There were some games where he was playing like five or six five-on-five minutes per game, and that was not good enough. No more Brendan Smith, please. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. The with or without you, stats are, you know, can be tricky sometimes, but I implore you to look up Luke Hughes' with or without you stats with Brendan Smith. Like his expected goal share goes from like 30 to 70 with and without them. It's, it's, just need to free. Do they have other options right now? I don't know. They can sign you to a 10-day contract.

I don't know. I'm sure they can figure something out. I don't think Brendan Smith is going to be the answer. I think they need to move away from that and then just get healthy. Those are my three suggestions for them, and I think they're all pretty doable. And so I still think it's reasonable to be high on this team. Okay, Harm, let's get out of here. I'll let you quickly plug some stuff on the way out, let the listeners know where they can check you out and what you got going on. Yeah, you guys can check me out on Twitter, Harmon Dial 2.

I obviously write for the athletic. I've got a Canucks podcast called Canucks Conversation. And next week, I'm excited. Me and Dom are going to be linking up on a piece looking at the best and worst drafting team since 2007. So we're deep into the spreadsheets, breaking down the data, excited to put that together. And yeah.

Awesome. We'll keep up the great work. We're going to have you on again soon. Thank you to the listeners for listening to us. Go check out the YouTube page where we put up the videos for some of these shows that we do, especially the ones with Daryl Belfrey, where we deep dive. players and go through their shifts. So highly recommend that.

And join the Discord, as I mentioned, at the top of the show. The invite link is in the show notes. If you can't find it, just message me. I'll be strong. And you can submit your questions for future mailbags like next Friday. And that's going to be it for another week here, the PDOCast. Have a great weekend. Enjoy all the games.

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