The Hockey PDOcast - Quinn Hughes’ Monster Season, and How He Creates So Much Offensively for the Canucks

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Darryl Belfry to dig into the monster season Quinn Hughes is having, how he's been able to create so much offensively, and why having someone like Filip Hronek as his partner has helped open things up even more for the Canucks as a team. 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/a2QGRpJc84This podcast is produced by Dominic SramatyThe 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.

Since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Dimitra Filippovich, and joining me, he's my good buddy, Daryl. Daryl, what's going on, man? Excited for this one this week, boy. I've been, had this one circled for a while. I was hoping we'd get to this guy, and here we are. Yeah, it's another week, which means it's another Gloria's opportunity for us to have some fun on here.

We're going to try to follow up last week's show, which was received with a lot of praise, and love for the player that we did, which was Nikita Kuturov, and he rewarded us certainly with that magical performance on Black Friday, I believe, against the Carolina Hurricanes. And we're going to try to follow that up with another player who's highly skilled authoring a monster season of his own. And I think part of what intrigues us so much about this player and what makes us want to do this particular show

is not only the season he's having, but the fact that it gives us a chance to talk about the way he's doing it, right? Because I think there's a lot of improvements that have been made this season, they give us an opportunity to really sink our teeth into it, unpack it all, and kind of discuss the work he's put in and the position it's put him in to, I guess,

achieve the types of results he has so far. Yeah, like I said, I know this player very well. I've worked with him for a couple of years now. And, you know, it is a process.

And what he represents, I think, and why I love talking about him and why I love watching him play is because he represents how difficult it is to play in this league and how it is a process to learn to become as great. Like he is now coming on glued. There were signs of this all the way through his development, but now Vancouver Canucks are ready also.

And so like a lot of this is timing. And it's also like he's ready. teams ready, but it is a process to get to this point. And I think, you know, as a player development guy, obviously, like, these types of stories are the ones that I like the best. So Quinn Hughes so far, just for those scoring at home, eight goals, 25 assists in 22 games so far, those eight goals are the most by defensemen. The 33 points are second to only Nikita Kuturav, the aforementioned Kuturov we profiled

last week. And so the stats are certainly there. I think a great entryway for us in this conversation is to talk. about those improvements he made and in particular the shot right a lot has been made of it here locally certainly with his goal scoring rate going up but just the fact that he's looking for and utilizing that shot so much more and we know that he put in a ton of work on it in the off season right it was one of those things where for as productive as he was previously and last year i think he had like 76 points or something like it was a very very good season but there's still

the fact that all right he kind of leans a bit too heavily sometimes or skews towards defaulting to pass first. It's something he's more comfortable with. He's clearly not going to just actively look for his shot. And that's all well and good, but I think we both agree that you need to at least present the illusion or threat that the shot is coming to maintain those passing lanes and to make yourself even more dangerous as a passer.

And that's clearly what he's done this year. And it's great to see that, you know, it's one thing to, I guess, go address a weakness and work on in the off season, but then to actually get it to a point where you're utilizing it to this extent in game settings is an entirely different thing and that's what's really cool about it. Yeah, like for me, it comes down to how good do you really want to be? Like, that's really what it is. It's how good do you want to be?

You got 70 points. You're a point of game guy here for a while now. So how good do you really want to be? Like, do you want to get 100 points? Do you want to be in the Norris conversation? Do you want to lead the team into the playoffs? Like, how good do you want to be? because if it is those things,

then the guys that do that that are in the Norris conversation, the guys who are leading their teams into the playoffs, the guys who are like in the flirting around with, whether it's like Carlson with 100 points, or you look at like McCars, like the points that he puts up, those guys are 15 to 20 goals. That's what those guys do.

And sometimes more, 20, 25, right? So a clear pathway for Hughes to take the next step in his career was to figure out could he score at a higher level in this league. And you can make improvements with your shot for sure. That's not an overnight process. It takes a couple of years. And he's put the time in over the last couple of years to get it. But what really puts it over the top is it's scoring, especially as a defenseman,

it's a determination to get into scoring areas. Most of the shots that defensemen take are not good shooting positions. The point shot could really be the worst spot to shoot the puck from. You might be better off to shoot the puck from below the goal line and have a higher scoring rate than you would from the point. It's just not, if you're trying to score from there, now that's not, that's not to say you can't generate goals from there

because you clearly can't. You can shoot it. It can be dangerous. It can be difficult to see through traffic. It can produce second chance opportunities at the net for sure. But if you're trying to score 20 goals from just shooting from the point, I think that that's really difficult to do when I don't even know, what the number is, but it's like somewhere, it's like 2% is what the number is. It's not high.

So how many shots do you need from the point to get 20? So when you watch and you see the way Hughes is scoring, it's not, he's got a couple from the point, yes, but he's getting into scoring areas. He's working himself into scoring areas. And I think when you look at McCar, you look at any of the defensemen who score at a high rate, those guys find their way into scoring areas. They're in the slot. They're coming downhill. They're working on diagonals. They're leading the rush or joining the rush.

These are the things that these guys are doing. What is that process like, Daryl, because I think you're uniquely equipped to kind of speak to this. I think fans listening to this would be very interested in just obviously sort of the timeline, I guess or the steps taken for we hear all the time about it, especially for the great players, right? It's like every off-season they use it as an opportunity to add to their game

to address either a weakness or a thing that they think they can get better at and then they put in all those countless reps over the off-season and then voila they come up next time we watch them play in NHL games. They're all at a sudden utilizing it more and it's becoming a real weapon for them. What's that process in terms of like identifying

what you want to work on and then sort of the steps you generally would take to actually go about it, Obviously, the practice is one thing, but I imagine there's like video as well. You want to provide some sort of concrete examples for what's actionable about it. Like I'm very curious about sort of what that process looks like for a player in the off season in particular. Well, the first thing you got to do is you got to figure out where are you getting your most shots from? So you have a body of work like when do you play 76 games last year or 78 games the year before he had very similar number of games.

So you have, you know, shots that you're getting on goal. And then you have shots that you have that are missing the net or or getting blocked. So for me, my process is I want to see all of them. And then I profile all the shot chances, every single shot that they took throughout the whole year. And what I want to see is where are these pucks? Where are the most amount of pucks coming from? And how are those shots generated? and then what is the success rate of those shots?

And does it even make sense to be shooting from those areas as often as you do? Like when I say point shots are, like they're not easy to score from. That doesn't mean you shouldn't shoot them. Like you still, there's still times to shoot those shots. But when you have an opportunity to do different things, what should you do? So then from there, then you have to take a look at the assets of the athlete. what kind of a player is this? What kind of skill set do they have? And if they were to improve their shot position, how would they do it? So some guys are going to use their feet. Some guys are going to use, they're going to use catch angles. So they're going to position themselves purposefully in a certain place. So when they get the puck off the pass, they're able to use that angle to get into an improved shot position. Some of the of them might have to do it off the pass where they might move it, have to kind of do a lot of the

work off the puck, and then they find themselves in a scoring area consistently to generate those shots. So it just a lot of it depends on the type of athlete and type of skill set is. And to me, the quickest way to improving the player's shot is to figure out these type of dynamics, marry the assets and then try to take those high frequency low success rate events and try to flip the numbers on that. And to me, scoring in the NHL is it's like it's a math issue. That's what it is. It comes down to lottery tickets. You're trying to get a race to how many instances you can get in good areas to improve your chances. Because the truth of the matter is, I can tell you to get into prime shooting locations, but you're still probably going to be at 15 or 18 percent even when you get there.

So you still need a lot of shot volume. So that's why you got to go through their highest number of instances that they have and those success rates and then marry their assets to try to improve what they're doing to try to find better shots. that's a lot of it and then once you're there now you say okay I can get you now into a better shot location now what shot you're going to shoot what are your assets

in there how do you shoot that shot what type of shot what are the shot locations or what how can you create a more higher danger situation so can we move the goalie can we you know and if you could how do you do that can you and then what are the shot location

where's the goalie most vulnerable? Where are you trying to, where are you trying to go and develop like a plan for the types of shots that you're trying to shoot? And then of course, then the athlete does what athlete does. You do all that work. Then they get there. And then they read what needs to happen. And then they, they find a way like that that's goalie scored against San Jose.

Like normally, you wouldn't shoot that puck necessarily in front of the goalie to get to the post but the goal he flattens out right on the goal line because he's worried about the short side he reads that the goal he's flattened about and is straight across the goal line opening up the opportunity to go cross body and go off the post and in like that's where you got to get to me my goal is to put the athlete in a place where they can become more special and like that goal is a great example of that he does everything right to get the situation that he wants once he's there he reads the situation, he reads where the goal he is,

and then he creates a special shot for the situation. Yeah, I'm so fascinated about that process. I mean, as we pull up the video here and watch some of the shots he has been taking to kind of help illustrate that point, he's scoring at a 30-goal pace now,

and he's shooting like 12%. I think despite all these improvements, that's obviously on the high end now, he's already matched his previous career high with eight goals. And so the reason why we're starting with this is because there is like a meaning, full change that we can really tackle here. And I think you made a great point of like the shot is one thing,

but putting yourself in that position is really the crux of it here. Because I think there's a difference between how you come across those shots. I think the shot total and the volume is one thing. But if a lot of them are just the fact that you're out there and then it's kind of like, all right, well, no other options available. This is the last resort. Maybe I'm viewing being pressured. I'm kind of at an awkward angle at the point.

I'm backfooting it. just kind of throw in a muffin towards a net. That's one thing. A lot of these instances from Hughes are him taking the initiative to attack aggressively with purpose, right? And as an option A, a lot of the times, I think more times already this season in these first 20 games than in any year previously I've seen him

off a set play off of an offensive zone draw. It's one back to him. And he has the space to take the middle of the ice. He steps into it and he challenges the goalie, right? And I think that is just like the mind frame or the process, I guess, is so different than maybe previously where it's like, all right, more methodically, I'm going to get this puck back. I'm going to survey, look for my options, maybe pass it, D to D to my partner, and we're going to set up here. It's more of a, I get the puck, I step into it because I have the lane, and I'm going to try to

either score here or at least present the threat that this is an option I can beat you with. Scoring for defensemen is a little bit of a chicken or the egg type of proposition. So do you need goal scoring is typically people that are really confident tend to score a lot of goals. And those guys tend to shoot as option A a lot, right? So do you have to score to get confidence or do you build confidence in your shooting rate to score goals? that's the chicken or the egg. And for defensemen, I think it's more of the latter. You got to find courage in trying to create your own shot.

And in that courage, you build a bit of an understanding of what it takes to generate your shot. So it's less about scoring initially and more about getting into prime shooting locations and pulling the trigger. more often than not, defensemen have a hard time scoring because they don't figure out routes to put themselves in dangerous positions. And so to your point, their shot is the last option on the list.

They look at their partner, partner's not really available. So then they look to maybe make an interior pass. Okay, that really isn't available. Is there someone on the back door? No. Now I'm coming downhill. I'm on the boards at the hash marks.

Like what should I do? then they just throw a puck at the net. That's very different than all I'm doing is waiting for the puck. Once I get it, I'm going to attack that areas that I want to attack. So I'm going to attack once I get in there. Now I'm looking to generate my shot. If it's there, I'm taking it. If it's not there, then I'm going to make the next play.

That's the difference. And so that's where the chicken or the egg is, is like you got to have confidence to score. but if you're waiting for confidence to pull the trigger to shoot, that's probably not going to happen first. So where do you derive your confidence from? It's not from scoring. I mean, Quinn Hughes is on fire.

He's scoring at 12%. He's on fire. 88 out of 100 are not going in. So that's not really like if you were playing baseball, you wouldn't be in the league at that percentage. So this is the point. So where you drive your confidence, confidence from is the process of generating the best quality shot chance.

And then from there, you'll build it out. And then the next thing, you know, you are going to score that'll encourage you to get into those spots more. You'll use your assets better. And then when you're in there, because you've threatened so well and people believe you're going to shoot it, now all these other plays become available. Backdoor tap-ins become available, passes across seam all of a sudden become available. all these things start to open up and you become much more diverse and offensive player.

And that's why the pathway to 100 points is through those 15 to 20 goals because that's what opens up. For him, 20 to 30 more points is going to come from not only the goals he scores, but because he's threatening the net so much, he creates easier goal options for other people. Yeah, 88 out of 100 probably isn't even doing it justice because that's just shots on goal, right? We're not even accounting for all the ones you're either, you know, you're hitting someone in front. Like he's hit his own teammates who are kind of creating traffic in front of the net a bunch of times. Pucks that missed the net, of course. Like there's a ton of those.

But you're right, it's kind of a means to an end, right? Because, yeah, certainly when you step in from a dangerous area, the shot is you're trying to beat the goalie. It's a one-on-one against them. But not only does it create future opportunities in terms of tips and rebounds and all the other ways it can go in, but also now you've presented it's like, all right, I can. do this. I have this in my repertoire next time you can't really cheat on it. You have to stay honest. And all of a sudden now those passing lanes, the back doors and all that are more frequently available. So I love all that stuff. And you can just see the impact, right? Like the points are

one thing. But here's a stat for you, Daryl. So Quinn has played 392 515 minutes so far. The Canucks have created 25 goals in that time. In the 650, five on five minutes he hasn't played this season, they've also created 25 goals. Like it's pretty much identical despite being nearly twice as much that he's not playing out there. And that's with the fact that they don't even really, as I've talked about on the show in the past, use him with Elias Pedersen that much. They split them up. He plays more with the J.T. Miller line and a defensive assignment against other

team's top lines. And so, yeah, he's, I mean, he's driving this bus right now offensively for them. And it's fun to see. I think the frequency has certainly elevated. Like, he's gone from 11 shot attempts per hour played to 18.3 this year, which is such a massive spike. The number of rebounds he's creating has gone up. from 0.6 per hour to 1.5, which is massive.

And so you put it all together. And I think it's just like opened an entirely different set of possibilities for him, regardless of how many goals he winds up scoring the rest of the way. I just think like his baseline as an offensive player now has increased so much more. And that's what we're seeing as a result of this. You know, while we're watching these clips, they're all the utilization of, I want to talk to you about particularly at the offensive dome blue line, that like little inside out move, which I think,

We, you know, we've seen Kilma Carr do it like countless times and he does it so smoothly and so effortlessly. McQuin's been utilizing that a lot this year too. And I don't know, just anecdotally, I think it works 100% of the time. It might not create a goal 100% of the time, but in terms of actually creating space, right? Like where a guy's coming at you, you sell your going inside while you're doing that. You push the puck to the outside and then you weigh transfer and explode to follow it. That it, because you have to account for the threat that, all right, we're strategically told. protect the inside.

A lot of these teams now are trying to keep everything to the outside. You're going to shade that way. And all of a sudden, it allows him to come down that left wall and he's utilized in a shot there as well. So I kind of just noticed that and watching his tape that it's something that he's really been leaning on quite frequently this season. Yeah, it's a tactic that follows the,

basically the, the opportunities that come from attacking defense, defenseman's heels. So in this case, you have a defensive force. forward who are, they're less agile, no matter how good a skater they are, defensively, from the top position. So when you think of defensive agility, if I took that same player and put them in the corner, is agile, as agility in the corner defensively would be significantly different

and better than what it is when it's up at the top. And the reason why is because of the threat of a shot. They're responsible for a shot block getting into lanes. So they're almost the easiest to manipulate is that that strong side defensive forward because they're in a really awkward position against a guy like a Hughes whose skating ability is what it is. I mean, it's world-class skating ability. He gets the puck. He starts dragging you to the middle. He's shown that he's probably going to shoot it. So now you're in a just an awkward position because you have to try to shot block that. And shot blocking technique is, you know, you might have to go to one knee.

You might have to get your feet together with your stick. Like your posture in shot blocking is not really a great posture to be then agile next. So if the cues comes across and he shows that he might shoot and he has this propensity now that he is willing, definitely willing to shoot, that defensive winger is in a terrible posture to then react. So that's why I mean no matter how good a skater that guy is, he's most vulnerable to be taken advantage of on his heels, especially when you're talking about attacking middle out because he has to go with you.

And so you're going to get his heels. And then the second you show your heels, boom, he's going the other way. The other thing is Quinn is a fast skater, and he knows when he's breaking to go the other way before you do. You're trying to react to when he's going to do it. He's hiding it. He can cut on a dime, and he knows when he's going to do it. So he already has his footwork.

He's got everything set up. It just favors him so much. And so that's why these types of plays are, they're a nightmare for a defensive forward. And a player like Quinn with his skill set would be foolish not to try to take more advantage of those situations because that player, regardless of how good a skater, how good a defensive player is, he is most vulnerable. And so it's almost a responsibility with a skill set like his to take advantage of it.

And that's an attitude, sorry, that's an attitude that needs to be built. Do you know what I mean? Like you need to show that, that player needs to understand that this is a competitive advantage for you and you have a responsibility to take advantage of this if you want to generate points opportunity for your team so that improves that confidence right you have a vulnerable player go after him attack him so think of all the things that we just spoke about and then just think about this that situation that's the kind of stuff that we're trying to do yeah i mean speaking of like just how he puts you as a defensive winger in a

tough position. His manipulation this season of the gravity that he carries, right, because his puck protection and his escapeability and his ability to move, you know, with those edges and with all that beautiful skating in an attacking position, has everyone's attention so much that you see he's been able to create so much additional space. Like, we've focused a lot here on his shot. And I think that is a big part of this conversation. But I just want to kind of branch out and talk about the full offensive zone experience and how he's operated there in such a clinical fashion this season because what you'll see from him,

especially on the power play, but even in these 5-15 settings now when he's playing with Philopronic, is he's able to essentially utilize the fact that he knows that you're very worried about him. And he'll drag that defender to kind of an outer edge of the offensive zone, right? And then once he's stretched out that defensive zone structure and he's brought the guy with him, he'll pass it back against the grain.

now all of a sudden, whether it's an Lash Pedersen or J.T. Miller, they've got all this space now to work with where the defender that previously might have been there, might have been closer there, has vacated. And then all of a sudden now he's able to make plays for others as well. So that's how like this threat of the shot and just making people worried about it more and what you could possibly do in different ways that you could beat you in planting that seed, it opens up so many other pathways for the Canucks as a team to beat you and not just Hughes with his shot, right? And so that's why I think this is such an integral part of this conversation. And we've just seen him utilize and leverage all of that to make all sorts of problems for defensive wingers this season.

Well, the other thing that you have to consider is the way teams defend in the offensive zone. Many teams are doing some type of a hybrid zone low, man on man high. So once it gets up to a high three on two, they bring up another guy and they try to go man on man. So now you got Quinn Hughes, who's going to now utilize the entire top of that zone. So he's going to skate from one side all the way to the other. So do you stay with him? So if you're on his side and you're the defensive forward and he gets the puck and now he starts skating to the other side, do you stay with him the whole time?

Well, now you're at a huge competitive disadvantage because the odds of you being able skate as well as him is really low. you're probably not at that level. So he's already probably going to take the corner and come downhill, as we've seen a lot this year, him go across and then all of a sudden now he's downhill. And then so then if you lose him, which you probably will,

well now someone else has to pick you up. But that player is at a real disadvantage because by the time they pick you up, they're already coming from like a standstill position. They're not in a proper position to be able to be defending. So now they have to pick you up like the bus is already moving at 60 miles an hour. And now you're trying to jump on. Like that's not an easy place to be.

So it creates a lot of mismatch off of problems for, for defensive teams. How do you play them? You can't play like a zone of sorts where, hey, you take care of this quadrant and you take care of that quadrant because he's going to attack seams between when you stop and the next guy picks you up. you can't stay with him man on man because he's too good for that so now you've got to start switching and next thing you know you got 43 is attacking across and then down and he's getting into prime scoring situation so the fact that he's using the top in the way in which he is it creates a lot of problems there's not a lot of solutions for it like that's the other thing like if there if you knew how to stop it you would have done it with macar that so and no one's stopping him

he keeps doing it year after year. And now you got a guy like Quinn is now doing it. And there's other players that are doing it. And it's a major, major problem, especially when you get a guy who can really shoot it, which was always McCar's thing. He would not only take that corner,

but now he can beat you. And now we're seeing that with Quinn. He can take the corner and he's also going to beat you. He can beat the goalie. And then he can make interior passes. It's just a lot. It's a lot to ask. And the other thing like we've,

we talked about Colorado before. Like Colorado does that whole five-man unit, you think. Quinn is not, they're not doing that necessarily in Vancouver. So he is finding these solutions and finding these plays. And I think what he's doing, it makes everyone on the ice just that much better because they're more inspired to move purposefully

because they know that there might be a puck that's going to come their way, where as opposed to like a sifter coming in, or something else that's a lower probability. When you have point shots, people tend to stop and stand still. When you have people moving like this, it inspires others to get moving and rotate. So now you win a lot more pucks in puck recovery. And so now you sustain your offense. Like there's so many benefits to what he's doing to the offensive zone and why that shot share.

And to your point, the goal share is so much higher when he's on the ice than when he's not. Well, and this is where the addition of Philoponica's partner has paid the biggest dividends, in my opinion, because I think coaches sometimes box themselves into this area where when you have a defenseman like Quinn, who is profiles as an undersized kind of quote unquote puck mover, you want to overcompensate for that by pairing them with, you know, a more lumbering kind of what you perceive to be safer defensive defenseman, right? And we've seen the Canucks sort of fall into that trap over the years where pretty. much after Chris Tanna have left to Calgary and free agency following the 2020 season. These are his partners in the three years prior to this season. Luke Shen, Travis Hamanick, Tyler Myers, Tucker Pullman, Kyle Burroughs,

Jordy Ben, Noah Julesen, and then OEL, right? And they just couldn't find someone who could play off of them and be a willing and capable partner to the extent the chronic has clearly been. And you mentioned sort of the avalanche thing. There's been a lot of comparisons between the McCar-Tave's partnership and and I don't want to get too crazy with that and they play differently. But one area you have seen it is the way the chemistry they have in the offensive zone where all of a sudden now, because of Quinn's movement,

you need a partner who can read that and then do that side switch, right? Interchange with him and then all of a sudden present as a threat on the weak side. And we've seen Philip Pronick not only do that, but benefit off of it this season where all of a sudden, okay, Quinn's bringing the puck along. Phronic fills that space he left behind. And all of a sudden, Quinn could pass it back against the grain, like I said, And Heronik has a wide open shot and he's stepping into it. And he had one of the hardest shots ever.

I don't know how hard it actually was, but that's the way the league tracked it. And so you put all that together. And all of a sudden now you've got this beautiful partnership where it's not necessarily a five-man interchangeability, but the fact that you have those two guys up top who are moving around and filling space and creating all sorts of miscommunication from the defensive wingers, I think that's a huge step for him that he just didn't really have the luxury of before the season. Yeah, I think there's a space in the NHO on any team for players who are defensively responsible and who make contacts, who stop cycles and they excel in defensive situations. There's no question that there's a place for those players.

It's just very hard to justify putting them with your best all-world players. that's what's difficult because they just don't need it. And that's the thing. Quinn Hughes doesn't need anybody holding his hand in the defensive zone where the impression, and maybe early on he did. And this is to talk about where he is now. And that's what I mean about the process. And what you've talked about is also the process.

And I don't want to discount that because I do think that there is a window of time where he probably did need his handheld in the defensive zone. because and he had to figure out how to defend in the in the in the NHL I truly believe and I think the numbers would back me up with that and and there was a time when he needed to figure that out and probably putting them with people like the people that you mentioned would be good but at the point in which he has now what's most important is how much more dynamic he can be to keep you in the offensive zone the worst thing you could have is a guy who doesn't have that ability to or the the understanding of how to switch and how to change and how to

how to support properly support them and then now you know he ends up passing to the guy and the guy throws a sifter and they gets blocked and now they're going the other way and now you've killed a very promising offensive sequence the truth is in the NHL you want to spend as much time as you can in that offensive zone and you don't want to unnecessarily be giving pucks away to then be coming out and having players that can read off of each other. And, you know, it's not to say that a defensively responsible defenseman in the NHL is going to just throw pucks from the point and cost you those situations, just that they have to play with partners who they understand more how to play with.

And that can be a process. That can be a process. And I think what they've done in Vancouver by getting heronic showed a lot of forethought on their part and understanding, that Quinn's growth from last year defensively and the type of player that he was warranted the opportunity to then have a player who could play off of them like this and then that would take both of them to the next level. No, you're right. I didn't want to discount that. I think that especially that year after 10 have left, I think there was a big adjustment

there and the entire team was a mess defensively. But yeah, the numbers certainly bear that out where that that was the case. I think that's maybe the idea some people still have in their mind and that just hasn't been the reality for a while now and certainly is not the reality this season. You know, we've done 35 minutes or so here and we haven't even talked about his transition ability and the breakouts. And I did obviously want to allocate a bit of our time here today to that.

But on the one hand, it kind of goes without saying because I think generally anyone listening to this watch, he who understands that he's just a breakout machine, right? He's so clinical with his approach and his ability to transition to puck up the ice. But I do think he doesn't, a couple things that are very interesting time and time again as kind of he leans on that allow him to do that and make it so fun to watch.

And I did want to just highlight those here quickly before we move on to some other stuff. But yeah, I don't know. It's become to the point like I joked where, you know, it's kind of cardinal staying in your own zone to chase whoever has the puck behind your own net because all of a sudden you're leaving your own net front exposed and that's just a big no-no. In this case, you almost never want to chase this guy behind his own net. when you're forechecking because that cat and mouse game he's just trying to bait you into he's like oh the puck's here oh no come get it from me and then all of a sudden as soon as you follow him

he's taking you for a ride and he's breaking it up the ice and it's just amazing to see time and time again he gets people to fall into that trap it must be so tantalizing and he he plays it up so much that he just gets away with it time and time again and it's really fun to watch well the problem is is what's your alternative to not pressuring him true you don't want to just go them a three pass yeah so that's the issue right and this is what happens like a years ago um i have had this same situation with patrick kane he had the same situation like do you go hit him you can't go hit him because if you go hit him he's going to eat you up with uh with a pass and then if you don't go get him then now you're now you're opening up yourself to all kinds of other problems this is where

Quinn Hughes is at. If you pressure him, he is going to, he's going to come out the other side and he's going to put you in a bad spot. But if you don't pressure him, he's going to put you in a bad spot. So he's at that level where everything you do is wrong. Every decision that you make is the wrong decision. And it's an unbelievable place to be. But what I love about Hughes and, you know, his escapeability and his puck handling and his understanding of space, that's all one thing. And I think that, you know, we could talk for hours on just those, just those elements. But what I wanted to talk about as it relates to him and what I think his impact is in his breakout machine aspects of his game is the impact on others.

And the difference between when he has the puck and when other people have the puck and breakout. The real impact of Quinn Hughes is that people are inspired to move off the puck when he has it. When other defensemen have the puck, they're more inclined to be positionally sound in the defensive zone. So they're going to be outlets. They're going to stop at the, you know, they're going to be on the wall. They're going to stop on the wall. They're trying to make sure that they're available. So what happens is the breakout zone is compressed because we need short pass. We need pops to the middle. We need these availability.

We got to have everyone's got to be tight. We want to move together. That's the normal way in which you would want to break out. So everyone moves as a group. So the problem is that no one's moving off the puck as aggressive. You might have maybe a slash forward or a forward trying to get out of the zone. You might have one guy. Hughes changes all of that.

You don't need to be standing. And when you look at the breakout clips you have, Where's the winger on the wall? He ain't there. He's in the neutral zone. He's gone. He's gone. That's the impact of Hughes.

Hughes's impact and the reason why the breakout is so phenomenal is because he inspires people to move off the puck. So now your speed through the neutral zone is way faster. You can attack both sides of the ice. You can create two-on-ones on entry. Last week we talked about entry, exit to exit. entry and how important that is. It's not just an exit. It's exit to entry that's what's important.

Hughes, it's not just, I would say he's not an breakout machine. He's an entry machine. He gets you through two zones because he inspires people to move and that's the difference with those players. Now, you say, okay, Darrell, well, that's great. How do we train more players to do that? Because that sounds really good. there's just not a lot of guys who have that impact. Like there's how many guys in the league have that impact

where they have the ability to escape pressure to be able to handle one on two situations regularly to be able to control the puck. And then he's got the passing ability. Like he's throwing the puck 60, 80 feet at a time, right on the money to guys who are moving. That's the impact. And I think when you talk about goal share,

and ultimately that's also shot share, which I'm sure would correlate and all that sort of stuff. This is a big part of it. He people are here not breaking out of the defensive zone with him. He's in the D zone. Everyone else is in the neutral zone. And then you're creating entries. And then that just fuels the whole thing.

It's just, it's fascinating. And if you go after them, you just make it easier. And if you don't go after them, you also make it easier. So, you know, you pick your poison is basically,

what you're doing. No, you're right. I mean, most people can get the puck out of the zone. It's what, where it's going and what you're doing with it and what you're trying to accomplish. I think that's the key distinction. I think this is where Heronik has helped as well, right? Because all of a sudden now you can work this two-man game on the breakouts where not only is he capable of sprinting up the ice and providing a support option and someone, another outlet for him to hit, but all of a sudden now there's more ability to one of them goes back, plays the puck, improves the conditions of it, gets it to the other, eats a four-checker, one's able to make a play.

Like they've been able to work off of each other in that regard as well. That's where teams, when you put someone with less puck handling ability with a skilled player like Hughes, right? You're increasing the burden on him to make the play out of the zone so much more because not only does he know he has to do it, but all of a sudden now the touches he's getting in those situations are so much more ramped up, right? The difficulty is than they're ramped up because they're either getting in a worse spot or

the puck's bobbling. All of a sudden, they're trying to do everything with it. and you get yourself into trouble. Where I thought you were going to go with it, and this actually connects to a conversation we had on the breakouts with Nikita Kucharov last week was his utilization of the backhand in his own zone is phenomenal. And in fact, I think he almost seems more comfortable at times

as a left shot working kind of around the right side and then flipping that puck, especially as he comes out from behind his net off the backhand. And it just reflects how much, how talented the players are today, how much the game has changed, right? Because I think there was a time not too long ago where that would have just seemed like impossible that a coach wouldn't even like allow players to do this.

And now it's just time and time again, Hughes is going back there and making a play a high degree difficulty run. It's not just like a simple tape-to-tay pass. It's like up the middle of the ice through sticks and all of a sudden break out and boom, you're moving up the ice and attacking. And he just does that over and over and over again. It's beautiful to watch and he's just so good at it.

Yeah, I think that I also like to go back. I thought the way you articulated that was brilliant in the need to have two guys breaking out with similar mindsets, which is what you're referring to. And why the changes with Hughes is he now has someone who can play with them. So when I was just talking about those kind of two ways in which you would break out, you know, one way where everyone's kind of coming together and you're trying to make short passes and then you have Hughes now opening the whole life, two thirds of the ice up. That's the, that's the problem with having the defensively responsible just first

pass guy who's just trying to, he's trying to break out one way. And Hughes is trying to break out a completely different way. That's why those things have a difficult time. Now, if it's not to say that the other guy is no good, it's just that he can't be paired there because you have two guys trying to do two different things. Now with Hironic, what you have is you have someone who can read off of them, give them the right puck, solve a couple problems himself, give him a puck that Hughes can now use, and then next thing, you know, it's a two-thirds of the ice is getting utilized with people with

speed. But I really thought that you articulated that really well and wanted to make sure we hit that because I think that that's the difference. And I think that pairing defensemen to be able to accomplish what you're trying to do in all three zones is more now of a consideration than maybe it has been before. But that all comes with the caveat of it's a process for these players. And we don't look at the NHL like it's a development league because it really isn't in a lot of ways. It's such a performance league. We break it down to the nth degree every single game.

It's all about performance. It's all about winning. But when you see a guy like Hughes, what I love about him is he is such a testimony to a talented kid who came out of college, who came into the NHL, and it has been a process to get him to now. I mean, there's been people talking about this guy being the best player in the NHL this year. And having the most impact. He's got this Canucks team. in a playoff spot and they look dangerous.

And he's a big part of that. And the captain of the team and all that comes with all of that, that is a development process that we sometimes under value. And, you know, this guy didn't just fall out of the, you know, he didn't fall out of the turnip truck and all of a sudden now he can play. He could play, but it just takes time to learn how to defend and then to learn to play with different partners.

And now he's ready to do this. And it's just trying to evolve his process. along and I think that that is a to me and that's why I said it on the outset this is why I couldn't wait to talk about him because I think that that process is so important on every team doesn't and every player needs to go through that process yeah and you've seen that process in terms of the development and the improvement and the adjustments in his play off the puck as well defending right and we should close the show with that a little bit because I think there's always going to be a certain limitation just with the physicality, right, in terms of like there's certain things that he just won't do or will have to do differently than whatever this ideal that we used to have of a defenseman, but not only has the game evolved so much, but he has evolved to kind of work around that. And you see that with obviously the prevalence of rush defense and the importance of it in today's game and his ability to use his skating in that regard.

But one area we don't talk is not as much about, but I think we should, is, you know, for all the focus on the nifty edge work and the skating in that regard, his ability to use that deep in his own zone to stick with attackers one-on-one, right? If they're trying to make little shifty moves and use edges themselves, he's uniquely equipped to hang with them and stick with them and provide some sort of resistance. And then obviously the skill with the stick to disrupt, to knock pucks away, to at least provide some sort of initial disruption so that whatever your game plan was offensively, it throws the timing and rhythm off and you're not able to,

you have to at least go to a plan B. And that allows help to come, crowds to form all of a sudden, the entire play gets a little messier than you envisioned as an offensive player. And that's what he does so well, I think. And so obviously all the attention is always going to be on his play with the puck and his dazzling skating and his ability to create

and we're referencing the points and all of that. But I didn't want to just completely omit the conversation about his play defensively in his own zone because I think that, has come leaps and bounds as well this season. Yeah, like if we look back at our byfield talk and we talked about how most defensemen are going to be undersized against him, right? And we talked about how he defends that space between his stick and his body and how critical that space actually is to defend.

And when you take a look at the way Quinn Hughes defends, that's the space in which he is defending all the time. He's got a great stick. but he is also there early. There's a lot of work he's doing with his feet before the conflict. So before the moment of truth happens where he needs to defend, he's already done three quarters of the work. He's already put himself in a great position.

He's got a great angle. His stick is already in a good spot. He's arrived with great timing. And now he's in a position where he can defend and he can, you know, he can pressure you to turn or, you know, he can start attacking those spaces. but he does have to do it, does have to do it differently.

And the reality is, is like he's playing a lot of minutes. And regardless of his size and stature and how he might or how you might want him to defend, you just can't ask him to be physically running into guys over and over and over again for 82 games and ask him to do all this puck stuff. So he has to be able to defend and he has to be able to get the puck back. But he has to be able to do it a different way. and it can't be from physically engaging with people over and over and over again. And I think that there has to be an allowance for that.

And he has to become a master of being able to defend in a different way. Because ultimately, he is not defending to defend. He's defending to get the puck to get it out, to get it moving, to get out of there. That's what he's doing, which is also a completely different mindset. And those are two different ways to defend, two different mindsets and not One is not necessarily better than the other. We need both. You need people who are going to be physically hard on you

and going to be able to make it difficult in a variety of different ways physically, stop you, force you to come to a stop, all those good things. That's really important on a team. You also need these guys who are going to get in. They're going to be very surgical in their approach, which is I think the best way to describe is defending

is he's very surgical. And I think that that's what, it separates them, but I don't think you can have one without the other. I used to get really, really angry when we talked, we didn't necessarily talk, but I used to have these, I used to have these discussions. Don't get, don't get mad at me, Daryl. I'm not mad at this. There's, um, what people used to talk about Ryan Suter. And, uh, Ryan Suter was playing an ungodly amount of minutes in Minnesota. Like, it was, it was crazy. But when you watched him play, like, he was not really moving a hell of a lot. He wasn't really overly physically engaging. He wasn't joining the rush off.

He was leaving so many skills off the table of things that he could do to contribute because he had to play those minutes and he's doing it back to back nights and over and over and over and over again. And that's where our league is so hard because, you know, on the one hand, you want to see Hughes playing 25 minutes. But on the other hand, when he plays 25 minutes, there's certain things. He's just not going to be able to do for those 25 minutes and you don't want him to do for those 25 minutes. The rub is, and this is my argument with the Souter thing, was to what degree is he degrading his game of what he would do at 20 minutes to play 28 minutes? Those extra eight minutes compiled over and over and

over again, what is he taken away? Now, my argument with Souter was, I felt like he had stripped away so many things that he was so good at. This is the thing in Vancouver is to watch Hughes's minutes to make sure that he's still doing all the things that make him great and that he's not degrading what it is that he does well to play those extra minutes and that you're not asking him to do things that would be a major tax on him that would have him to have to make choices against his assets. I think that that's something that's really important in this league. And I don't think people talk enough about it.

And I always love that suitor reference because when you go back and watch some of those years, like I thought that Minnesota at that time had the best defense corps in the league. I thought and there were times where his minutes actually held them back. And it was because of his now not joining the rush. He's trying to pick his spots, but it was kind of fewer and fewer and fewer in between. And that's what you've got to be careful of. You can't ask this D to do everything and play at those minutes.

It's just not you can't do it. I completely co-assigned that. And Darrell, this was a blast. We got to get out of here. We're out of time for today. But this was a really funer. And I'm glad we finally got to do Quinn Hughes next week. I promise we will finally do Sasha Barkoff.

We haven't forgotten about him. He's back. He's healthy. We're going to do a deep dive on him. Looking forward to that. everyone check out belfry hockey Darrell keep up the great work and we're going to have you on again soon.

If you're watching us on YouTube and watching the clips along with us and in kind of incorporating that visual experience, good on you. If you're listening to us in podcast form or on the radio, that's awesome too, but I highly recommend searching out the HockeyPedocast on YouTube and watching along with us

for just an added visual to kind of boost the experience. And we'll be back next week with Darrell. We'll be back tomorrow with another show here of the HockeyPEDEO cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Thank you.