The Hockey PDOcast - Playoff Trends, Issues With NHL Shot Data, and Stanley Cup Futures

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Rob Pizzola to talk about playoff trends, the importance of being able to generate consistent scoring chances, the current issues with shot data, and the Conn Smythe futures market.  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 PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dimitri Philpovich and joining me as my good buddy, Rob Pizzola. Rob, what's going on in? Hey, Dimitri, thanks for having me again. It's always a treat to get you on. I've always got a couple weeks of window every year to get you on. We need that sweet spot where you're far enough removed from the NFL season so you don't have football brain anymore, but you're dialed into the NHL postseason and then I start messaging. and I got to get you on for your takes and to apply some much needed critical thought to what we're seeing and look at it through a different lens. So I'm excited to have you on today and I think we're going to have a really fun conversation. I've been ranting to you about in the messages, of course, not publicly, but we will air some of it here about the state of shot data in hockey. And it's something that I've certainly talked about in the podcast a bunch this postseason because it feels like we really reached an apex of it. Of sorts right now, you're looking at the shot counter during some of these games, and it's wildly suppressed.

And I know Dom wrote about this, that the athletic part of it is just teams trying harder defensively, right? So you're getting more block shots. I think teams are realizing what works and doesn't offensively in today's game. So they're kind of prioritizing, looking for quality scoring chances as opposed to just throwing pucks wildly on net. You're seeing a lot of that stuff. And I think it helps that we're whittling it down to higher quality teams as well, right? that they're more likely to play that way in a positive EV fashion. But at the same time, it's 2024.

And a lot of the public data and a lot of the shot data itself is still so wildly off from being accurate and refined. And I'm not sure how we sort of incorporate that in a satisfying fashion in our analysis. Yeah, it's actually extremely challenging. And I think it poses or leads to a lot of. interesting debate online in terms of what teams really are, because people are using data to try to justify their points that may not be completely accurate in a lot of cases. I'm first and foremost a better.

I'm a huge hockey fan. I always have been. But from a betting perspective, I notice all sorts of these types of things, whether that's a specific score in a arena that maybe will allow shots on goal to be a little bit more higher than, it would be in another spot or somewhere else. And then you see the sport logic data that comes out, which the teams are using to track

expected goals. We get a glimpse at that and how much difference differs from all these public models that we have and we're like, okay, something's wrong here. I wish I could credit the person who started the thread years ago on Twitter where it was just taking the top expected goals from every single week and showing the highlight of that specific play and you would watch it and you'd be like, hmm, no, this doesn't, this doesn't add up. Or they would find the inverse, which was something that got a very low expected goals number. And then you'd watch the play and you'd be like, wow, this should be a lot higher.

So there's still a ways to go on this front. But as a better, it's certainly irritating, I would say in some sense. It's not specific to hockey, Demetri. like this happens across other sports as well. I remember when Statcast data first came out in Major League Baseball, there was issues with how it was being measured and tracked at certain ballparks, and it took years before that was figured out. And we're still kind of in the infancy of this data.

But I think nowadays people are so fixated on expected goals. And there's just so many problems with the public metric right now, whether it's the past before the goal. You just watch it. Sometimes you just watch hockey. and you're able to say to yourself, I've watched this play so many times before. This goes in the net half the time.

But the expected goals models will spit out something completely different. And I've noticed personally, from a betting perspective, a little bit different. But when I switched from a coursey model to an expected goals model, a lot of my error metrics actually got worse. and I still think that there's just too many issues with that metric to just reference it as something that's the be all and end all. Yeah, that's the issue. We don't have a reliable one right now, certainly.

And part of it is, as you mentioned, a lot of the variables involved. And even the private ones still haven't fully fleshed out a lot of these variables, right? Whether it's screens or whether it's the passing data before, which they have started to account for. but you've got certainly like just all sorts of different things. I mean, time and space, certainly like good defensive teams now are rushing shooters into taking less optimal shots and it still registers as a dangerous one, even though you can visibly tell that it was altered the way a layup at the rim against an elite shot blocker would be, for example. I do think the issue for the public ones right now is that they're so reliant because of the lack of information.

And to be clear, this is a knock on the league and what it provides. as opposed to the actual sites themselves, which are doing the best they can with the information that's being provided to them. But they're so reliant on geography on the ice where the shots are coming from and the proximity, right? And shot type as well, where I've noticed that rebounds and wraparounds are valued as by far the most dangerous shots in terms of expected goals in today's game. And then you watch against an Igor Shostirkin or a Sergey Bobrovsky, and they're so athletic and they're so good with their pads down low, that those shots are are just never going to go in, yet they're viewed as the most dangerous possible shots against

them. And so you got that kind of issue that's combating each other. But the data itself in terms of the shots, like, I was sending you clips, and this is happening every single game. These are just ones that I particularly found while I was watching it. But there was a game, Canucks Oilers early in the series, I believe it was game two. And they just kept recording shots that were like coming from the Canucks zone in their defensive zone that their forwards were taking on net, and then you go back and watch it.

And it's like a Brock Besser rush chance flying down the wing from the dot, Cleed shot, he hits the net against Stewart's Gitter, and it's registered as a shot 130 feet away from his defensive zone. And that's obviously going to be viewed as essentially him dumping the puck out of the zone and it's just making its way onto net, and it's never going to go in. So it gets no credit for anything. When in reality, that type of rush shot was probably the most dangerous shot that Knox forever going to register against the oilers. And so you just kept kind of having an accumulation

of those. And that just drives me crazy. And I don't know if you feel this way as your kind of careers progressed and you get more into the weeds with this stuff. But it's almost whether it's becoming more kind of curmudgeony or maybe just becoming more familiar with the flaws, but you just get so much more irritated I find by this stuff as it goes along where I started off and I was like, you know, all sunshine and roses, I was excited about everything. And then once you get to learn more about it and you really kind of dig a few layers deeper, all of it just becomes, I think, a bit tougher to reconcile. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think for me, a game one of Leif's Bruins this year was one that really stood out to me where I thought Boston dominated

that game. They won the game 5-1, I think was the final score, but there was a lot of sentiment out there of like, well, the Leif's won on the deserved to window meter, right? The Money Puck deserved a window meter. And no, they didn't. I mean, you know, you watch that game and they really got outplayed. And the chances that they got that registered as high expected goals chances, they really weren't because Swayman was facing the shot head on. It wasn't.

And that's another thing about it, Dimitri, right? Like, okay, yeah, expected goals. You know, your shot location on the ice, what type of shot it was. But you have to factor in where the goal. goalie is positioned in the net as well. If the goalie is facing these shots head on and he's in perfect position, the expected goals on every single one of those chances is going to drop relative to if he's moving across the crease or has some sort of movement to make the save.

And none of this is really factored in right now. And to me, like, I'm very much an analytical person. I always have been. I gravitate towards numbers. I want to use data and be able to apply it to sports effectively. That's what drew me to sports betting in the first. first place. But I do see nowadays, like, people just argue based off of imperfect metrics. And I think the best thing to do nowadays is just take an overarching view of everything that we have

out there, whether that's offensive zone time, high danger chances, rush chances, expected goals, sure, course, all the things that we have to, you know, to paint a picture rather than isolating one metric, which very clearly has obvious flaws associated with it. But Yeah, I see that all the time. I mean, you see that every night in the regular season where, and that was kind of a point of emphasis for my betting team with hockey, which was let's take these specific games that we see where there's a high discrepancy in expected goals and watch them back and see if we actually agree with those. And a lot of times we wouldn't. A lot of Rangers games this year through the regular season, I would look at the expected goals post game and it'd be like, oh, well, the Rangers got smashed again or caved again.

Then you'd watch the game and you're like, well, the Rangers are very clearly the better team in this game. Why is that not being represented in the data? So, yeah, it's extremely challenging. I do think at some point we will get there. But, you know, just even an average person can look at that metric and how it's calculated and pick out the obvious flaws with it. Yeah, I think it's easier in the regular season just because there's so many games,

not only league-wide on a nightly basis, but also for each individual team, just playing 82 games that, like, if you just take kind of a more macro view of it, I guess, and just pure volume-based approach, generally things will iron themselves out, right? And you're going to start to see, like, pretty clear trends. I think in the postseason, it's much more dangerous, where not only do you, like, just have to win four out of seven games, but every single game is such an isolated event in a way, right? Where for all the talk about momentum in a series and like bleeding into one game or another, every game is a clean slate. And then you see it, and this is part of why score effects are so drastic in the postseason is a team jumps out to

a lead. And they sort of realize that nothing else matters other than pushing to the finish line and securing that one win, right? Whereas in the regular season, I think you want to, you certainly want to win games, but I think you want to kind of prioritize or back. balance, establishing good habits within your team and like playing a certain way and then carrying that in, especially you're going to have a back to back or kind of managing those things. In the postseason, you essentially see a team go up. And if they're up three, one and the third, they're just going to stop playing hockey for the most part, right? Like they're just going to essentially just be like, we're going to do everyone is going to try to

try to block everything. We're just going to live in front of our goalie. We're not even going to try to get the puck out of our zone with possession. And we're just going to try to push this thing across to the finish line. Right. And so you kind of have to view it through an entirely different lens. And yet I feel like a lot of the stuff that might work in the regular season is being applied. And that's why, I mean, I spend way less time on Twitter these days.

I've set up a Discord for the podcast. And I just spend all my time watching games on there and chatting with people who are actually interested in, like, discussing this stuff we're seeing and kind of thinking about it through a more critical lens. But then every once in a while after a game finishes, I go on Twitter just to see what people are saying. And I find myself disagreeing. with the general consensus of like how the game was being portrayed or what happened with such increasing frequency that I'm almost wondering like, do I need to go back and rewatch this just to figure out what I'm missing or if I am missing something? And I feel like maybe that's always been the case, but it feels like this postseason more so than any other year.

Well, I find personally, especially with Twitter, is that you get a lot of what I would call results based analysts, right? And, and, I, The reality is there is so much variance in a seven game hockey series, an extreme amount of variance where sometimes you will look at serieses, and especially games at go seven, and both teams might take pretty close to the same amount of shots over the course of an entire series and have the same amount of chances or in a similar range. But one of those teams is going to win. And sometimes it happens where one of those teams looks in the public eye is,

is considered to be extremely dominant. And like when I say the results based analysis type of stuff, I love the point that you mentioned about like how teams tend to sit on the leads a little bit more when the games are a little bit more important. Regular season, okay, you're up 3-1 and the 30. Probably still playing your regular game. Whereas in the playoffs, it's like, okay, everybody, defensive mentality, block shots, do what we got to do to get the puck out.

And if that works, if a team gets caved in the third period, and their goalie makes a bunch of five alarm bell saves, but it works and they get the win. Everyone applauds that. But when it doesn't work, everyone's like, well, they've stopped playing hockey and they should have treated it like it was the regular game. Everything is fixated on what ended up actually happening

rather than just looking at the big picture of, okay, if actually this situation or this game played out 100 times, thousand times this way, which team would win more often than not? Or would the probabilities drastically change based off of the way that this played out. So it's really hard with the Twitter discourse because, yeah, everything is just based off of who won. They won, they must have done something right. You know, I hate to break it to people, but like the team that wins the Stanley Cup every year is not the team that is the best team in hockey. Like they were the best team in hockey over a stretch.

and they did a lot of things right, but there's a ton of luck involved. There is a serious amount of luck involved with who is going to win the Stanley Cup. And like this is even further, and some people will vehemently disagree with this, but even the referees that a team might draw for a series is going to impact their play. Some teams want more power plays,

what they want more calls over the course of the series. Some teams will want it to be, you know, the refs to swallow their whistle, but even little things like that have some sort of impact on the game. And I think that, you know, you're kind of foolish if you're not incorporating all of this and understanding that there is some sort of of luck involved in all of this.

But yeah, perception versus reality, I find, Dimitri, I'm in your boat a lot of times where I'll watch a game. I don't actually spend a lot of time on Twitter during the games. I'll go there afterwards. and it's the same thing.

And, you know, this team dominated this game or they played really well. And I'm like, did we watch the same game? You know, and that's fine. That's sports. I mean, we're all entitled to our opinions. But I definitely think that a lot of these, here, I'll give an example that might offend some Canadian hockey fans. But I thought Vancouver was terrible in this playoffs.

Like, top to bottom, I thought they were one of the worst teams of the entire playoffs, really. I don't think that they generated a lot of quality offensively. I thought they really struggled in the series against Nashville, where maybe if the team that they played had a little bit more skill, Nashville's not like the most super skilled team. They would have been out of there, but they will be viewed in a very, very different light than a lot of the other teams in the playoffs

because of the fact that they advanced through that round. They took Edmonton to seven. But ultimately, I think they just had a very lucky run. now granted, they lost that, or Demco. There's things that played into it, and I understand that. But again, we're evaluating their postseason based off of the actual results.

And it sounds silly for me to say that we shouldn't do that. We should look at the underlying metrics and how things played out. But that's always the way that I've approached sports. And I think there's kind of like a disconnect between the maybe, I don't even want to put people in a specific box. But there's certainly a disconnect between people out there. And a lot of people are just heavily focused on here was the final score.

That's all that matters. Well, certainly. I mean, even in that national series for the Canucks, for example, which you're referencing, what was it a game four where they have the dramatic comeback at the end, right? They tie it up. They win in overtime. If you lose that game and then wind up losing in six, it's obviously a hypothetical.

And that's not what the postseason is about. You kind of do have to, in some sense, I get it. Like, I'm speaking on both sides of my mouth, you do have to evaluate it based on results because that's the actual reality of the world we're living in, right? You're judging who won and who lost. At the same time, if they lose that game, all of a sudden, I think it's viewed through an entirely different lens. I do disagree with you about the quality of their postseason

because I think they had a clear plan. And they did this a lot of the regular season, but they had a clear plan of like, I think they understood their limitations from a talent and personnel perspective. And this is why I do think Rick Tocke deserved to win the Jack Adams. And he had them playing a very certain way to, give them a chance to win. And so in a postseason setting, like Nashville certainly did not want to engage in that type of series where the shots were 22 to 20 in a lot of the games, right? That clearly,

the lower events and the more defensive style favored the Canucks. The Predators wanted to get out and trade chances off the rush and use their skating. And the Canucks essentially either suckered or forced them into playing their preferred style, right? And so in that sense, I'm like, you know what? That's a job accomplished. The Canucks went into that series with a game. game plan and they executed it and they forced the opposition out of their comfort zone into their own. And so it's aesthetically ugly and it's probably in a vacuum, not the way you want to play, but they couldn't really afford to play a different way. And so that's why they were able to win. So I actually give them credit for that as opposed to just purely, you know, being lucky.

Here's a question that I have from a listener that I think ties into this and I think will also be a springboard for us in a bit of a different direction. And it comes from Rinkrad. And they ask, It seems every year in the playoffs, there's a specific aspect that people hyper focus on to the Clara team, quote unquote, needs this in order to win. Have we seen one this year? Now, I think there's the usual suspect of goalies, certainly, right? And if you look with the four final teams remaining, Stuart Skinner kind of sticks out as the most suspect goalie. And even his own team used a different option for a couple of games in their most recent series, whereas Andres struggled in the regular season, but he's you viewed regarded very well. well in league circles and then Bobrovsky in the postseason and just turkin as well. I think every year we get into this debate about whether you need a elite goalie to win and how many of them are actually available and who actually is elite. For checking, certainly I think defensemen they can move the puck. But here's one for you that I've been thinking about and I think really matters.

Just having people who can create scoring chances matters more than ever before because teams have gotten so good defensively at protecting the inner slot and protecting their goalies. And I've been tracking all these games manually for the scoring chances just to see what's happening. And it just, it matters so much in these games, right? Like the shots on goal, I think, are part of why, and I've gone on this rant before in the podcast, but part of why people are being kind of steered in the wrong direction in terms of weighing what's happening the game and who's winning. And the best example of that was that, what was it, game five in the Leafs Bruins series where it's zero, zero after one, but the shots on goal are like 13 to 1 or 12 to 1 for

the Leafs. And the entire broadcast and everyone online is saying, wow, the Leafs have figured out play off hockey. This is how you need to play. And I think the chances were like three to Boston or something in that time. And the fact that it was 13 to 1 shots on goal was completely irrelevant to what was happening in the game or how likely they were to score. And I get the issues and what you're saying of like shot attempts and shots on goal versus expected goals and scoring chances of what matters or what doesn't. But man, I just find that the scoring chances right now, assuming you have a good definition of it and feel comfortable with the representation of it, I think it just matters so much more

in today's game than kind of any of this other stuff we're talking about. Yeah, I would say I certainly agree with that. You see a tendency for teams to really collapse down low in the playoffs, obviously an emphasis on blocking more shots. And there's certain teams that are just more equipped to be able to get the puck into the slot, whether that's through quick passes or people actually just driving the net than other teams who are forced to play more perimeter. For me, the one thing that stands out, Dimitri, when I watch playoff hockey, that

that is really a focal point for me is that teams need players that are able to gain the blue line that are able to skate the puck into the zone. So nowadays in the NHL, there's no. not very many teams in my opinion that are really built for dump and chase that are built for puck retrieval. And there actually may be teams that are built for it, but it's actually pretty simple to defend nowadays in the playoffs because you can interfere with someone at the blue line and you're not going to get called in playoff hockey. So you get a player who dumps the puck in and someone's going to interfere with him as someone else retrieves it. And it's really hard to

establish control in the offensive zone unless the defenseman makes a mistake or you got some guys flying in there that really cause havoc. So to me, all of this sets, and this stemmed from watching Colorado first round, watching a lot of Edmonton this postseason as well. Florida does this really well. You know, you watched, and I'm a Toronto sports fan, I'm a Leafs fan, so I'll bring it back to the Leafs, but you watch Leafs Bruins. It seemed like there was like no space on the ice whatsoever in that series. It's like neither of these teams can get the puck into the zone and establish possession. And then immediately, game one, Florida, Boston is like the most wide open game imaginable. And I don't think Boston was playing in a different way. I just thought Florida

skated really well through the neutral zone. And they made life hard on Boston because they had players that were carrying the puck into the zone and establishing zone entries. And they were setting up shop that way. And game one, you know, it was just back and forth, like open chances, lots of slot chances in that game as well. So to me, it comes down to, you know, puck moving through the neutral zone, but ultimately guys that can skate the puck into the zone. And it's harder to establish chances and create slot chances and high danger chances when you just don't have a lot of offensive zone and you can't retrieve the puck in the zone. It's a lot easier to do that. When you're skating it in, it causes a lot more havoc amongst the defense as well, defensive play.

players. So to me, that's the big thing that I think a lot of teams have been lacking and teams that struggle early on in the postseason are lacking. You see some of these other teams, like Dallas right now, that series against Colorado, they were just gaining the blue line at will against the avalanche and then setting up shop and doing whatever they could. So that to me is a big one in terms of generating offense in the playoffs. It's, you know, keeping the puck rather than just trying to dump it in and retrieve it. No, I mean, that's a really, good point. Obviously, part of it is going to be not only situation-based, but also

your opponent-based, but you're right. I think that ties into a big time within the team concept. I have a little project for myself, maybe as we get into a conference finals here and we only have one game a night, I really want to go back and look at what percentage of the goals

this postseason have been scored off of scoring chances versus not, because I think our general perception of playoff hockey and how it's kind of what defines it, is these random goals from bad angles and the point that kind of bounce in or go off of someone's butt or someone's shit pad and beat a goalie who's otherwise playing really well and that winds up being the difference.

And I know that, you know, game won Florida and New York. That game was sealed with a very unfortunate bounce off of Alex Gilaferrinir stick that beats Igor's sister again. And it's like, I think we're sort of trained the human mind is to latch onto those and remember those because there's such sort of like outlier obvious events and they're going to wind up being on misplay highlight reels and all that stuff. But I think in the grand scheme of things, just anecdotally, I feel like this postseason that the percentage of those goals is actually incredibly low. Like, teams are so good defensively and goalies are so good that I feel like almost

every goal that's actually being scored is off of a play that's very by design and either a high level of skill or incredibly well executed by the team. And it's not happening by accident, right? And And so I really want to go and look at that and actually see whether that's the case or whether my own brain is playing tricks on me. But that's why I'm kind of gravitating so much towards scoring chances because I don't think, like sometimes you'll see these games where our team has so many shots. And then you actually think about it or you look at it again. And you're like, all right, well, they didn't actually, they kind of played into the other team's hand. I think the other team is going to watch that tape and feel very comfortable with what they gave up. And so I'm really curious to see whether, you know, what's going on there with that relationship.

Yeah, I understand the mentality with that, right? You have a lot of good goalies, big goalies that are remaining in the playoffs. And the general thought is that, you know, if they see something head on, they're probably going to save it. So, you know, get a screen, fire from all angles. Maybe you get a tip that changes directions. No, off the top of my head, I could think of maybe a handful of goals that, you know, had directional changes where maybe it was just thrown to the net, bounced off a shin pad and went in and off a skate and went in. And I do think that's a viable option to score goals against goaltenders who are positionally sound.

But I don't think that's like the be all end all. I'm not a get pucks to the net type of guy in the playoffs, right? You hear that a lot. Like you just got to get pucks to the net, get pucks to the net. Well, at some point, like generating one quality chance outweighs 10 spots where a team just got a puck to the net for the sake of doing it. Right. The goal should be to generate quality. It always should be to generate quality chances.

But there will be times where you have nothing in the offensive zone. And maybe it's a good play to just throw it at net and you get a bounce one way or another. You get a deflection. But it's just so hard to do that with the amount of people that are blocking shots nowadays. Like the increase in shot blocking is absurdly high. It's kind of like it's just a perfect play that will happen every now and then. But I agree with your sentiment. I don't think that we've seen a ton of those.

I think generally speaking, we're seeing a lot of teams score on quality scoring chances, a lot of power play goals throughout the playoffs as well, which by the way, like the randomness relative to the regular season for power plays and penalty kill is just like another thing that to take into account for the playoffs that can swing momentum one way or another.

But I agree with that general sentiment. I think I have to go back and confirm this, but I'm pretty sure there's been 12 postseason series so far through the first two rounds. I think Leifes Bruins might be the only one where the team that generated more scoring chances didn't win. And at least by my count, and even in that case, as the series started going, and it's very ironic, right? Because you wouldn't know this based on the coverage and this ties into what we've been saying. The narrative after games, what, five and six, and even into seven, we're like, all right, the Leaves have finally figured out playoff hockey, right?

They're playing the way they need to play the Brie the Bruins because they won games five and six. Game six and game seven were probably the two worst offensive games I've seen them play in this entire era of Leaves Hockey. They just were not generating scoring chances. You'd have an occasional sort of flash of brilliance by William Nealander. But for the most part, they weren't getting anything. Like in game six and seven, I think they had 29 scoring chances combined and were actually quite badly outchanced. by the Bruins and those were two of the only games that was the case so even in that sense when the when push came to shove and the kind of the series was being determined I know it came in the most excruciating fashion in game seven over time and it was just a one goal difference between the two teams but even then it started it started skewing into direction of the team that won and so I just it's really difficult for me if you win it doesn't really matter but I don't think this stuff happens kind of randomly as much as it's being reported I think certainly there's going to be occasions for it but I just I don't think it's going to be occasions for it but I don't think if your game plan is just create nothing offensively,

eventually it will come back to bite you. You know, a lot of that comes back down to, I mean, Leef Scarborough to Sheldon Keith now. I'm glad he ended up with another gig immediately. I think he's a really good person, deserved another shot. But I think the Leafs more so than any other team, I'm just trying to think off the top of my head,

change their play from the regular season to the playoffs more than any team. I strongly believe that with it. the Leafs. They went from a team that skates the puck into the zone to a dump and chase team. They go from a team that, okay, finishes some hits in the regular season to like, we have to now hit everything in the sight, even if that's going to take us out of the play. We saw some bad goals over the course of the series from guys just finishing checks and leaving themselves out of position. I mean, the first goal of the series is Ryan Reeves scraving entirely across the ice and him and Joel Edmondson teaming up to take someone out and giving up a two-on-one the other way.

And I don't know what it is specifically with Toronto, but certainly there's got to be a lot of pressure on that team. And you have consistent failures year after year after year. It's really hard to just go back with, okay, this is our style, let's play it, and eventually it's going to work. They just are constantly tweaking and constantly switching. And none of this stuff has ever worked. It seems like everything with the Leafs ends up being just countering,

intuitive to how their roster is built. And, you know, Jack Hahn, who you have on pretty regularly, Dimitri, I mean, he did a really good video analysis on Mitch Marner, where he talked about the differences between Marner and the regular season and the playoffs. The regular season, he's facing the net a lot more puck out in front of him in the playoffs, complete opposite, where he's kind of working the cycle and shielding himself, shielding the puck, because there's more of an emphasis on not making mistakes. And to me, that completely kills the Leafs advantage over a team like Boston. And I don't want to make this like just Toronto hockey.

This applies to other series as well, though, where teams just completely abandoned their style in favor of another style of play. And to me, more often than not, that just doesn't work out. But yeah, I mean, this is the beauty of hockey. Like, there's so many different ways to play. You have the postseason is very different in the sense that you're playing the same team. over and over and over, and there's constant adjustments that need to be made over the course of a series. But with regards to Leifes, yeah, I mean, they won game five, game six, they forced game seven.

I'm with you. Like, you know, they played in a manner that was, I'll call it scared to lose rather than, you know, trying to win. And you look at the teams that consistently do well in the playoffs and win cups, get to Cups, these are teams that they impose their will on other teams. They're not playing. They're not scared to make a mistake. If a D-Man is going to jump into the rush to make it a three-on-two, they'll do that. The Leif's really played, like, let's not make a big mistake here.

And ultimately, funny enough, they've made a ton of mistakes defensively over the course of the series that made the difference. And Boston was just more defensively sound. Well, then that does apply to other series. that's kind of exactly what I was saying in a slightly different way, but to the Canucks Predator series we were talking about, where I think once you get an opponent, especially when you're so diametrically opposed stylistically,

like there's a power struggle in terms of like the game state and environment and how it's going to be played. And if you get the other team to play the way you want to play, you've already kind of beaten them in a sense. I think there's certain teams like a Dallas, for example, that are just so deep and well-rounded enough that they can win very reliably in multiple different ways. And that's what we saw in the Colorado series, right, where they were by far the aggressor against Vegas because they could sense that they were just the better team and faster.

In round two, they were incredibly respectful of what Colorado was capable of, especially after what they showed against Winnipeg. And so they entirely changed the way they played. And I expect here in the conference final that they will once again feel like they can attack Edmonton and their defense and they're probably going to push much more offensively than they did. And that's a credit to them because that's how they were constructed and they can actually pull that off. but a lot of teams don't have that luxury, right? Like they have to play a certain way to be successful. Their margin for error is so much different. And so as soon as you start going out of your comfort zone,

that way, you're already kind of either shooting yourself in the foot or entirely eliminating yourself. Let's take our break here, Rob. And then when we come back, we'll finish up. We'll cover a few other topics. You're listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the HockeyPedioCast, joined by Rob Pizola. Rob, before we went to break,

I had a listener question that sparked a fun conversation about kind of trends this postseason or actionable stuff that matters. We talked about scoring chances, goaltending, style of play, all that. Was there any other stuff? In particular, I'm curious to ask you this because, you know, you're following the market very closely, kind of whether stuff's being overrated, underrated, properly rated, in your opinion, kind of trends we've seen in this post season, anything else that we haven't covered yet that comes to mind, or do you want to get into some specific teams here and maybe even some

Stanley Cup futures? Nothing crazy. To me, the most interesting thing and something that I like to follow every postseason is how the games are officiated and whether that is in line with previous years. And I think so far we've seen that over the course of the playoffs as well. I mean, people are always like, it's a tighter game. You're less likely to get calls and this and that. It's not really true early in the series in years past. And it hasn't been early in the series this year as well.

I think it's later in the series where the referees will kind of swallow the, you know, it's funny enough. You get a high sticking call because that's very obvious. You get a delay a game puck over a glass call because that's very obvious. Outside of that, you don't get much late in the series. But overall, I haven't noticed anything this year that stands out to me as like this is significantly different from years past. I need to drop everything I'm doing and investigate why this is happening. That's happened in years before, but so far nothing for me this year, DeBitri. Well, interesting on that note, the officials are just so obsessed with this idea of their actions

and decisions not influencing outcomes. And we know how ironic that is because by doing so, they are impacting it maybe less directly, but still as significantly. But that's all I could think about when that game six between Dallas and Colorado was happening with the disallowed goal, right? Because I understand it's like a different circumstance with a review. But that was very clearly a situation where they just decided

we don't want to end a series on this call. And so that's why we're going to call it, call it a no goal because I'm pretty sure every single person, there's maybe I'm a few Colorado fans, maybe they might disagree. But otherwise, I'm pretty sure every other person saw that and was like, all right, that's clearly a goal. If that's by definition, not a goal, then I don't really know what hockey is and we need to entirely investigate every single rule we have from now on. And it didn't wind up mattering because Matt DeShane actually himself winds up scoring later in second overtime. So fuck don't lie in that sense, but still, that's kind of what I was thinking about,

in terms of them not wanting to influence it, but then doing so anyways. I think there's certainly some trends with, you know, with individual officials, everyone's going to have their own different tendencies and stuff, and that's kind of what you were alluding to. I think for the most part, they very clearly have a mandate of like stuff around the hands or cross checks to the lower back are being treated very strictly for the most part, and we'll see if that continues later on. But like pick plays and subtle interference and stuff like that, like in previous posties,

is an absolute free-for-all. It's almost prison rules. Like, you can do whatever you want. Occasionally, they're going to pick someone out just to, you know, get a call in there every once in a while or send a statement. But for the most part, I think just understanding those things will help explain a lot of what's going on. If you see a tiki-tack slash that a hands that gets called, that's almost always called. A pick play eye in the zone is generally never called. And so, react accordingly. Let's get into some futures then. And whether it's got the consmyth market or the teams themselves, is there anything that's kind of popping out to you or sort of sticking out either as a good value or kind of something that's being

misprice or just something that's call your eye on either of those? From the Consmife market, so I'll just fully disclose that. I've wagered on two players for cons mif, and I'll give the numbers I bet them out. I bet Wyatt Johnston at 18 to 1, and I bet Sergey Bobrovsky last series at 25 to 1. Both those are down a little bit. Sergey Bobrovsky right now is depending on your sports book, roughly 10 to 1 to 12 to 1 in that range. And I actually still think that's a pretty solid bet.

Shutout game 1 against the New York Rangers helps his case a little bit. But what's happening with the Panthers is spreading around scoring across different players. You see Matthew Kachuk score yesterday, who's had kind of like a downed playoffs. He's kind of getting on the board. But ultimately, the Panthers are going to have to go back to back, beating the Rangers and then one of the stars are Oilers. It's very unlikely that they're going to do that with a poor goaltending performance. And generally speaking, when you do have a team like Florida with a lot of depth and scoring

that spread out over the course of the playoffs, can't really pick out one guy. So what might happen is voters turn to the goalie. Even though Bobrovsky hasn't had like a super great playoffs by any stretch of the imagination, he just becomes the guy by default. It's kind of what's happening with Jake O'Brien. Ottinger right now. And Ottinger has really had against Colorado, he played really well. Don't get me wrong. But it's the same deal with the Dallas Stars where it's just like, okay, Wyatt Johnson's got seven goals. The rest of the scoring is pretty much spread out.

Who's going to get it if the stars end up winning? Well, we'll default to the goalie because you must have played well if they're going to win 16 games type of situation. So those are the guys that I had my eyes on individually. I know some people who've really been pushing for Evan Bouchard. which I just don't see. And this is not to discredit the player whatsoever. I actually think Bouchard's been phenomenal. I love his game. I got to see him in person a couple times in Toronto and in Ottawa this year.

Great skater. Just to me, a very, very solid, underrated defenseman that probably doesn't get the notoriety in the league that he should because West Coast Canadian market, late games, stuff like that. but I just don't see how that's going to happen. Even if he finishes on par with points with McDavid and Drysidal, I do think ultimately you just the voters, which are a lot of writers and media that cover the league,

ultimately will side with the bigger name, especially when you consider like that Drysiddle this year, how quickly he got to 100 points in the playoffs relative to some other grades as well. So those are the guys that I've kind of pinpointed and I've seen some movement on in the bedside. markets. I get the blue chart argument because his numbers are obviously phenomenal, particular in that Canucks series. They were just through the roof, whether it was 5-15 impact or

the scoring totals, and his price is just so much higher, I guess, more more enticing than McDavid and Dreisital. And they're pretty much always on the ice together, whether it's on the top power player or sometimes even just loading up that five-man unit at 5-15. So if you wanted to get a piece of that, I get it. I find the Audinger. line to be incredibly surprising that I think he's the favorite right now for Kahn's might. And part of that's favorite. The fact that, you know, Dallas is very highly regarded and has a very good chance of winning the Stanley Cup.

And there's such a deep team, as you alluded to, similar to Florida, that maybe the skaters are going to kind of cannibalize each other's vote or credit. And then it's just going to go to Andre, who was really good against Colorado. I think the issue for me is one, they could very easily win the Stanley Cup, in my opinion, with him still giving up a bunch of goals because they have so many scoring weapons and I think they could very easily win games against Edmonton in 5-4, 6-5 fashion if they need to.

They're very comfortable winning them 2-1 as well, but I think Edmonton's going to push them to create more offensively. And the other thing is Wyatt Johnson's just been unbelievable. Like I just did a full episode on him with Darylowe. I know that the actual point totals themselves are necessarily that eye-pomping compared to the Edmonton skaters, for example,

but just how much he's creating every night from a chance perspective. I think the story of him at this age sort of establishing himself as not only their best forward, but one of the best forwards in the league. And also the fact that he's had these signature performances, right, game three in Vegas,

where he scores the overtime winner was just an absolute animal all game, game four against Colorado. I gave him out as my favorite cons my pick right before the playoffs at plus 11,000. So obviously it has dramatically changed since then. But yeah, I like him quite a bit. I like, yeah, the Bobrovsky one is interesting because his counting stats and his

state percentage aren't that good. They were certainly improved after that shutout. But even in the first two rounds, he had so many memorable highlight saves that no one really seemed to kind of care about the actual numbers because that's all you remember. The Panthers winning and him making sort of big, impressive saves. So there's going to be an argument for that. Yeah, I think it's a very interesting market because, it doesn't really matter what you think is the right answer in a sense, right?

Like it doesn't really matter who you actually think is the most valuable player to their team winning. If you are putting money on this or just even if you want to have a bit of fun with it, to have some of the cheer for this postseason down the stretch. You have to put yourself in the headspace of what is the most likely outcome from like a storybuilding narrative perspective, right? because Trisital has clearly been Edmonton's best most impactful player through these first two rounds, yet he's not, he doesn't have the better odds than Carter McDavid. And I still think regardless of my opinion on that, let's say they have playoffs ended today and the Oilers were just awarded the Stanley Cup. I think most voters probably would give it to Carter McDavid because he's Carter McDavid. And they wouldn't really apply a lot of critical thought or investigation.

They would just say, well, he has a similar number of points and he's the best player in the world. we're going to give it to them. And it doesn't really matter the dry title has been more impactful, in my opinion. It's kind of like last year where Jonathan Marshalls just scored a bunch of goals and wound up winning it, even though I made a very strong argument that I thought was compelling for William Carlson as their most important player. Jack Eichol was dominant. Mark Stone was the best player in the Stanley Cup final. And yet it was just such an easy thing to latch on to that this guy scored a bunch of goals.

So let's just give it to him. Yeah. I mean, it's challenging because these are markets where you have to put yourself in the mindset of a voter. and not just who deserves it. It's not about who deserves it. It's who is going to be voted to win. It's like the same people who bet the NFL draft or any draft for that matter. And they're upset when a team takes somebody and they're like,

oh, they should have went wide receiver. It's like, well, you know, you're betting on what the team is going to do, not what you think the team is going to do. And the same applies to the Kahn-Smith Awards or any awards market. But the thing with the Kahn-Smith here is like, you just got to think probabilistically, right? Like if Florida wins, Barkov probably is the most likely to win the Kahn-Smith. But the difference in odds between Barkov, who's offered at like 5 to 1, 6-1 versus Bobrovsky, who's, you know, 11 to 1, 12-1, to 1, to me that's enough of,

probabilistically, I think those two players are much closer than those numbers would indicate. And that's kind of how I think this through. The Wyatt Johnson stuff is interesting because it's kind of like this double-edged sword of if Rupert Hintz is out for a longer period of time or dealing with some comes back and he's dealing with something that affects his game, then stock up for Wyatt Johnson. But that actually affects Dallas's ability to win the cup as well and his ability to win Kahn-Smith, you know, if they don't win the cup, is pretty much nothing. So stock down a little bit.

So it's like that's another thing to throw into the mix there as well. But yeah, and just like looking at the stars, how many teams can lose their number one center? And then they just go on like nothing is, you know, just move Johnston up to line one. We got to Dushan and say again that that can play line two and three center. It's such a deep team. And in the past, there have been so many people who, you know, had called out, you know, you need the star power to win in the playoffs. It's not necessarily about depth. Vegas last year was extremely deep.

This Stars team, oh man, it's this, I know they only run out five defensemen and they're like not the deepest on the back end, but forward depth is just absurdly good that they could lose a one center and they're still favored in the series against Edmonton. Yeah, although it is closer than I suspect it would be, especially after they closed out the abs and then we watched the end of that Oilers-Connux series, the fact that it's as close that is in the fact that I think Dom has Edmonton favored in his probabilities, right? Or except when I checked he did. Very, very close margin.

But still, I thought it would be the other way because I was been so impressed by the Stars team this postseason. And the fact that they beat the teams they did and the way they did it after those first two losses to Vegas has only kind of further reinforced man and made me think even more highly of them. Yeah. And like the Stars as good as they've played, like look at the penalty killing percentages. the playoffs.

One, two, and three are Oilers, Rangers, Panthers, the three other remaining teams in the playoffs. Stars penalty killing is 69% in the playoffs. They've given up eight power play goals on 26 attempts. They were a top 10 team in the regular season. They were 82% penalty kill. Like, they've got here, you look traditionally at teams that get to the conference finals. There's a lot of similarities in the profile, especially on special.

on the special team side of things, you typically don't see teams go this deep who've had that bad of a penalty kill over the first couple of rounds. And they've gotten there with that. On top of that, like one thing I really like to do, and I know we talked about the expected goals metric and its flaws off the top. But I do look regularly at individual expected goals and actual goals. And I find the delta between those players to see who, you know, has probably been performing better than it looks like on the. actual score sheet, and I use that for betting purposes a lot. But if you look at the four remaining teams in the playoffs, the stars have six of the top 11 players that have the biggest delta between individual expected goals and actual goals. So they've had guys, like look at Joe Pavelsky, for example, Joe Pavelsky has one goal

in the playoffs. He has three and a half individual expected goals. He's shooting five and a half percent in the playoffs. If you go look at Joe Pavelsky's career stats, he hasn't had a season where he shot under 12%. Like, that's probably going to turn at some point here, whether that's the Oilers or the Stanley Cup finals. You look at Tyler Sagan, Jamie Ben, three goals each, higher individual expected goals. You know, you go down the board and it's like there's a lot of guys on this team that are playing well. And you've noticed their presence on the ice, especially Jamie Ben in my opinion.

But they haven't scored at the rate that they should be based off of the quality. of chances that they're generating. And if that flips like that, in my opinion, like the stars are the team to beat if that, if that flips. So I think they have a lot of room for positive regression here, whereas the other three remaining teams, I think are more likely for negative regression. Well, I think to your point on the penalty kill metrics, what works in their favor and why they've been able to win despite it is that they just don't really, they're not

taking any penalties, right? I think they're averaging like two times being short-handed. a game so far. And part of that is kind of, I think sometimes random based on what they're calling. We can certainly have a conversation about whether it's like a real skill. I think it is on an individual level, maybe less so on a team level. But they also don't really spend much time in their zone either. And that's kind of what Colorado really lamented after their series and part of why they lost.

And so if you're not, generally, if you're not living in your own zone, you probably won't wind up taking as many penalties. And I think that's a really interesting trend to watch in this West Final because I think that's probably going to determine who wins between the stars and Oilers. Rob, we've got to get out of here. I'll let you plug some stuff on the way out. What do you want to let the listeners know about? Yeah, absolutely. I run a betting network, a content network, I would say.

It's called the Hammer Betting Network. If you're interested in sports betting content, you can just follow us on Twitter at the Hammer HQ. You can head over to YouTube and check out the Hammer Betting Network. And if you're just specifically interested in hockey, no problem at all. We cover hockey betting as well with our brand called EdgeWork. So you can just check that out. Edgework HQ on YouTube as well. All right, buddy, we'll keep with the great work.

I'm sure we're going to have you on again. I want to get you on for like a preseason show in the fall. But I know that's when football is really taken off. So we'll probably just get you on for your annually scheduled appearance next May or so. I will commit to a preseason show for next. Okay. We got you on the books. I'm going to play this back for you in case you start waffling in September.

Rob, this is a blast. Thank you for coming on. Thank you to the listeners for listening to us. We'll be back with plenty more of the Hockey PEOCat streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.