The Hockey PDOcast - Regional Broadcasts, The Dallas Stars, and The Michigan

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Sean Shapiro joins Dimitri to talk about NHL broadcasting rights, why the Dallas Stars are such a fascinating team to follow down the stretch, and how goalies are dealing with skaters trying 'The Michigan' on them.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty.  The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Amitra Vilippovich and joining me for a Friday show to end another week here at the PEDEOCast. My good pal, Sean Shapiro. Sean was good on. Not much. Not much. I'm looking forward to doing this.

And it's going to be a good weekend after this. And as long as none of your listeners or mailbag users or whatever asks us to do math, I'll be happy. So that's the slips. I can't promise you there will be no math, but I will see how it goes. It's been a hectic week for me. I've been knee-deep in Jacob Chikrin Prep in advance. So I feel like I'm just being held hostage at this point, waiting, just refreshing my Twitter feed every single week in an hour, waiting for this trade ever since last Saturday. And it's crazy that it's already been a week now.

it's it's almost getting like dangerously close to kind of becoming that like sitcom character that's constantly referenced by the other characters on screen but never actually makes an appearance themselves it's like everyone just like talking about this this jacob jickering trade it's kind of hanging over us like the boogeyman but uh it still hasn't still hasn't shown its face yet so we'll see maybe maybe as i say this maybe um maybe it'll come through over the we can but maybe like a maybe like big show here like that would be something right that'd be good that'd be good that be good a lot of experience yeah yeah well we'll see about that but i um that that's kind of been the majority of my work but it's been it's been a fun week at the pd yes okay let's get into some uh i got a list

of topics here that i want us to to to hit on so i think we should start the show by talking about this developing story with Bally Sports and the Diamond Sports Group. And I'm not sure if you've been able to do any reporting on that in terms of reaching out to people behind the scene and getting a better sense of it. But I'm kind of curious for a take on it. Yeah, I've done a little bit. Not to the, I haven't written anything on it. I actually had someone ask me if I could write something about it for the substack.

And I actually told them that I would probably do something on Monday for it after I do a little bit more reporting. So anything we talk about right now, and I'm happy to talk about it right now, is subject to change. It's subject to change. But there's definitely, I've definitely, I had a couple calls of people about it. And it's definitely the most important thing to get out of the way for everyone is if you are a, if you are a hockey fan in the United States and in one of those markets, it's not going to change anything this season.

It's not changing anything this season at all. That's just for the simple, anyone who's got the, oh no, will they not air the games anymore? That's not going to happen. Is that because most of the rights fees have already been paid for the season? Well, if it's partially, partially that, but the other big thing is, if,

If the teams stop airing games, the rights fees are basically what that entire company is based off of. And so if they stopped airing games, they would not have a company to come out of bankruptcy. They wouldn't be showing any, they wouldn't be able to really, and I don't know the exact legal term, but they wouldn't be able to like, good safe claim bankruptcy if they're like, we're just basically just closing her company down. And the up end, there's also, there's also a couple caveats here to this where if they, they, they're, want to get out of this and kind of the long-term play seems like they're trying to basically turn that debt into equity where they're trying to find someone who another billionaire company to buy them and take them and take the debt and just make it equity that company is going to those contracts are the most valuable thing they have because those are cost-controlled things even though

they're their million dollar expenses there's something that the teams are stuck in how many times do we hear about teams being frustrated and I hear it all the time where teams are frustrated because they can't control their game their games there because they sold the rights. And so teams actually, there's a couple, there's not all the teams, but there's some teams that would actually be thrilled if they went to the bankruptcy and didn't air games because all of a sudden that would void the contract and the team would be able to then try to sell to someone else. So it's really the only leverage they still have is to keep airing games. So they're going to keep airing games.

And so that is not a, that's not a concern for you as a consumer and a hockey fan right now. The bigger question, and this is the millions of dollars of questions, is what's the long-term play? How does it work? And in reality, what does this start to do to hockey-related revenue? Because we're in a spot where we always hear about like, oh, our game's never been healthier. Players have never been better, yada,

yada, but you lose if you've got 13 NHL teams on the Valley deals, right? And the average RSN deal in the United States is about roughly

25 million per season. What, you're talking about a good chunk of change that I'm not going to do that math. I'm trying to trap me here. This was sneaky by you. But you're talking about

13 teams that on average. I think it's 12, right? Um, hold on. It may be 12. I believe it. I mean, it's all, yeah, yeah. It's a dozen or 13, you know, it's either 12 or 13. The, uh, but the, the, the, basically you're talking about 12 times 25 million dollars. And that's a significant chunk of change. That's a significant impact on hockey related revenue. And what will the, uh, and how, and how will that impact in the long term is really going to be interesting.

and the long-term model is something that's going to be very interesting because it's not just a hockey issue. It's these networks are these sports and RSNs and teams have gotten so intertwined where it's like, and I don't know if this is the, if they, this is how it's being aired in Canada or not, but like MLS, right? So MLS just did the big deal where they basically cut off. They went league-wide. they didn't allow teams to make RSN deals past 2022.

And then they inked to one big deal with Apple TV where they have the no blackout package where everyone gets it. And the reason MLS was able to do that was because, A, it's a newer league and their media rights aren't as big as the other leagues. And so it's not as, while, like, you look at what the MLS did and the MLS package, all of a sudden I said,

I mean, MLS package is exactly what every other sports fan is asking for. Okay, I want to pay X amount of dollars per month and I get every single game, no blackouts. That's what the MLS is giving people. The issue is, in NHL, it's not just figuring out for these, the dozen or so Bally's NHL teams, it's also, you have, Bally's has deals with baseball teams, they've deals to basketball teams, it's just so, there's so much crossover and there's so much

untangling that has to be done where one shoe drop leads to another. Like, it's going to be a massive, it's going to be a fascinating thing to watch as it untangles because somebody's going to make the move first to try to get their rights away. I just kind of my gut feelings is at some point, and it won't be hockey because hockey is never on the forefront. It will probably be, it'll either be the NBA or it'll be baseball. It'll be the NBA by like trying to be by advance or baseball as in because baseball has already baseball positioned themselves actually to better separate from RSNs. People don't realize this. And it's more so because NHL teams gave all their digital rights.

to the RSS. So all of these, the baseball teams, though, like, so that ballet sports package that you can, in the United States where you can stream local games, it's 20 bucks a month. There's only four baseball teams that you can do on it because Major League Baseball refused to give, to freely give away these digital rights with it.

Like some of the ones that actually have it, like are there ones where the teams that had to negotiate for more. So the untangling of all of this and what the future model looks like, just like I think there's an idea I think we know what it'll look like eventually but I just think there's so many hurdles

between for it to for it to actually happen before like I would love to tell you next year you'll be able to build a package where you can get every game you can get your in market streaming pay one thing I just think there's too many legal hurdles

and intricacies that need to be untangled for this to happen in a reasonable time okay so there's a lot to unbacker I think I should have tee this up better for the listener because I think sometimes I make a problem with uh with the PDO cast is I just assume that everyone listening is on the same wavelength in terms of following this sport to a degree that I had I described fondly as as being a degenerate in terms

of my life right so I think some listeners are like what are these guys talking about so we should say we should yes they skipped a $140 interest payment this was due this week right and And it seems like that has entered them in this 30-day grace period. And it seems like ultimately they're headed towards bankruptcy. And I think this is one of the biggest and kind of strangest developing stories in sports right now, especially for NHL fans, because we had the NHL in this almost surreal tweet, just be like, we are aware of the situation and we are monitoring it. And it was like a two-sentence statement that they released from their official account that was like,

about as ominous as it gets, right? I talked to, in my reporting, I talked to one of the executives who was part of the writing of that tweet and the fact that there are multiple executives said to be on, it's like, I would say this as kindly as possible, but like the fact that multiple people

were on board to write that tweet is just, oh, the most NHL things ever. Really, really put their combined brain power together to write that one up. Yeah, so it remains unclear, what the impact is here from like a hockey related revenue perspective. I don't know if we have any, if you have any details on this, I believe like for the MBA, for example, about 15% of their revenue is tied to the RSN deals that they have.

Yeah, it's, it's not that much from on a national standpoint. It's, and I can get, you better answer for this because I once had, Because for the NHL still, like, they're much more dependent on gate revenue, right? Yeah, it's, they still are. It's still in Gate League. For example, I'm pulling something every now. So, there 40, I had a, and this is from, I have a, I have a document, the ones that was shared with me by an NHL executive where it was, basically their rough breakdown was,

And this is a team that was making 25 million on their RSN. And so of their team revenue, of their, of their, quote, unquote, controllable revenues, things that they controlled that weren't from the league. RSN was $25 million. It was about $48 million a year in ticket sales, $25 million in premium. And that's kind of how they did like combination suites, like areas, stuff like that. And then $30 million in like partnerships. And so you're looking at about 25 million out of 130 million for an individual team.

It's not the 15% it is for the NBA. And the NHL also has the other thing about it too is the NHL doesn't have the, they don't rely as much on the RSN because the NBA has, the NBA has, only one team outside the United States, right? And so there's the, there's a little bit more of the, the RSN power in the NBA because every team other than Toronto has a American RSN deems. And so that comes into play too. So I had a, a very smart person reach out to me the other day when this was kind of

breaking. Yeah. And they brought up this kind of question of like what legal rights. are in play here from like a moving forward from a salary gap perspective right because I think for for a lot of people in the league and for fans I think part of the concern here is all right if there isn't money coming in we're all kind of working under this assumption that the cap is going to keep going up and in a pretty significant fashion over the next couple years and if all of a sudden that money dries up coming in and it prevents us from accomplishing that then all of a sudden my team's

plans are going to be dashed right we're going to be restricted in terms of we've allocated or budgeted these future expenses and all of a sudden that's not available to us so what does everyone do and the person kind of raised the question of like be very curious to look at the contract and the details in terms of whether the NHLPA would have some sort of a legal argument to say that all right either the owners or the league should um should basically like cover the cost and honor the original broadcasting agreement to to make sure that there isn't a significant hit in terms of the hockey related revenue uh i don't think that is going to be the case because I know looking looking a little bit

through the through the CBA it seems like the most likely thing like if we play this out and and say all right like this is going to completely fall through they're going to file for bankruptcy there's going to like they're going to have to totally kind of revisit this entire operation it seems like the NHL will just heading into next season probably

go back to the drawing board or go back to the negotiating table in terms of like the rights to revert to them and all of a sudden they can take them to another bidder and I guess my question for you is does this actually present a unique opportunity for them to finally explore pivoting to a different streaming model in terms of either Amazon or whatever, what have you,

that we've seen other leagues explore? Yeah, it would, and I think it would open up, on the one hand, just from this NHLPA, NHL situation, there's really nothing in the CBA that gives the players much power on this at all, frankly, and it's the type of thing where 20, 25, 26, after the current CBA expires, that's something that the players want to discuss then. It'll be, it's something that could come up. Now, what the PA's motivations are are going to be fascinating going forward anyway,

now with obviously new PA director and Marty Welsh and everything like that. We have all this new stuff with the direction of the PA is, we don't really know exactly where it's going. I mean, under the prior PA ownership, leadership, not ownership, leadership, the NHL and Gary Betman basically just bullied. Gary was like, Gary negotiating with the PA was often like how I negotiate with my kids

where it's like my kid is like, my kid wants something, my kid is like, oh, I want the cookie. And I'd be like, oh, well, you're going to go brush your teeth. Oh, can I have two cookies? Oh, you got to brush your teeth and you've got to clean your room. That's what Gary did with the Olympics. the Olympics for the cookie.

Like the players got all caught up and like, can we go to the Olympics? Can we go to the Olympics? Can we go to the Olympics? And that meanwhile, Gary's like, I don't know. And they were like, oh, well, you can have this. And that's how things work under the prior PA, under the prior PA leadership. And so, hopefully.

Except for extending that analogy. Yeah. Except for if Gary Bedman is you and the kids are that HLPA, he's like, all right, you can have this cookie after you go brush your teeth. The players go brush their teeth. And then he's like, oh, well, you can't have a cookie now. it doesn't make sense. You just brush your teeth. You're ready.

That makes sense. Why would you eat something? You just brush your teeth. And so. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. So that's, yes. That is. So hopefully from a PA standpoint, the new leadership is not as led around by the NHL Ben and Gary Bedman on this. So I don't, it's one of those where, like, would the players

have a recourse on it? Even if they did, I just don't see them having enough of a players don't understand the business of the sport. That's one of the biggest issues. That's one of the biggest issues with hockey is players don't understand how the business works.

The amount of times I've asked a player, because players talk about escrow all the time and everything like that, the amount of times I've asked players and I always do this anonymously because I don't ever want to burn a guy, but like the amount of times I've asked players what escrow is, they have no idea.

They just know it's a certain amount of money that doesn't go into their check. Like very few players understand how the business works And so if you asked a player, I wonder how many players even realize that this ballet thing is even happening. They're so into their hockey bubble. And obviously the PA is supposed to have concerns and they're supposed to fight for it. But when your contingency isn't vocally battling for things, like the NBA Players Association,

NBA players actually care about things more. Like they actually bring up business things and push as a union. It's why the NBA PA and same thing with the NFL PA, it's why they end up getting more done is because their group is more united and more individualistic and actually pushing for things. The NHLPA as a group, the players are very, they don't do that.

And so when the leadership isn't getting the push from the players, it's a really smart question the person sent you, but it's also, I don't see where you would take an entire, like, switch and how hockey works. I mean, it's just, but here's the thing, John,

it's in 2023, with all the technological advances we have and how everything is just so accessible and available to you, watching hockey has never been more difficult. And, and that's a stunning thing to see. I remember I think last time I had you on,

we were talking about broadcast and stuff and how they're falling behind other leaks, but that was purely from like a information being presented. And, yeah, products. For me right now, like, so in Canada, everything now is on support set now. The issue is like you can't even pick which broadcast you used to be able to do, which was like a function on an HL TV previously, which was great because there's certainly, the quality of broadcast is,

is wildly bearing across the league. And especially for someone like myself who wants to be in tune with every team, it's good to be able to like watch a home broadcast for a team that I don't typically get to hear because you get little anecdotes and nuggets that you might not otherwise get on the other team's broadcast. You go on ESGM Plus, all right, well, you don't get the TNT games. And then so it's like you're kind of jumping, jumping from one thing to another. It's just, like, I just want every single game available to me one click away and let me pick the way I want to watch it. And I don't understand why this is still an issue in 2023. It seems like this should be very ironed out. It's like it's almost like the league doesn't want you to actually watch its product.

You know what I mean? It's like, give us your money, sign up for it, and then whatever happens after. And the reason why I say that is because like for me, it's not ultimately that big of a hurdle to cross because it's my job. So I will find a way to find whichever game I'm looking for eventually. But if you're a casual fan at home and you're presented with some sort of roadblock or obstacle to watch a game that you would have otherwise sat down and watched, you're probably not going to really pursue it beyond maybe trying one or two things. and then if it doesn't work, all right, I'll go watch an NBA game. I'll go watch something else. I'll put on Netflix.

Well, yeah. You hit the spot exactly on the point there where, like, I'm trying to, and I do this for a living, right? Like, I'm watching the, I'm trying to, my, I'm in the kitchen the other night, and I'm getting the TV in the other room and getting some chumped out in the kitchen and trying to put the, I think it was the New Jersey, St. Louis game was supposed to be on ESPN two last night, I think it was. Yeah. And I've got it on regular cable on ESPN, but there's a women's college basketball

thing, game before that goes to overtime, right? So it's like kind of delayed going in. I'm like, okay, I want to turn hockey game on. So I use the little Apple TV clicker and go, and I leave the YouTube TV app to go to the ESPN app. But on the way, I'm doing that, like, oh, there's the Netflix app, there's the Disney Plus app, there's the HBO app, there's those other shows that I've been wanting to catch up on. Oh, they're right there. I could just just get caught like easily right like it could just be easy to be like i could just i've been i've been meaning to watch the last of a show like i could easily just click on that right there instead of going because it's so i have to go from one place to another i i think one of the things that from us as a

sports fan and a consumer um as a movement we all should watch more m l and and and i'm not even saying this because i'm a soccer fan and i'm someone who for years didn't really watch the mLS but all of us need to watch more MLS this summer because people need to see that that model works. The MLS TV package on Apple, it's this Apple thing, right, where you get every game, no blackouts, local, everything in one place, and there's every single team game will have one broadcast. And I was talking to a guy who's a play-by-play guy for an MLS team who's one of the radio guys. Every single broadcast will have the option of the national broadcast or either radio or either the homer. So from a perspective of putting your money where your mouth is

and getting something in a user interface that works, we should all watch way more MLS this summer just to like, just to basically make our point that, hey, as sports fans, this is what we want. Instead of trying to click around and watch Major League Baseball, that you have to go to Peacock, you have to go to MLBTV, you have to go to this, this, that, and the other, just watch more MLS. And it's just from a, that is the model that hopefully someday we can get

to with these other sports. I want to be able to have this space where I can, I can just watch hockey without having to jump from it. And I'm someone who understands it better than most people. But for people who, it's the amount of people that are getting, so I laughed about when, so Mickey Redmond, who's the color analyst for the Red Wings. So the, Ken, his, the play-by-play guy, Yeah, Ken Daniels, yeah. Ken Daniels was telling me how on the night when the Red Wings played like an ESPN Plus game, right? And someone from Mickey's demographic doesn't know to get the game on ESPN Plus. So Ken literally just, so Mickey just comes over to like Mickey's, like the broadcast partners, they're supposed to have the night off because the games have been taken by ESPN Plus. And Ken is still having Mickey over to watch the game because it's just easier for it to go to someone to go to the other person's house. then try to get it all set up. Well, that just sounds like a couple buddies hanging out. That sounds pretty good to me.

It sounds like a good evening. I wish I would. Yeah, it's like, yeah. If someone doesn't have a buddy like that, all of a sudden they have no other recourse for watching the game, they'll just go to something else, and it's a missed opportunity.

Yeah, it's another person bringing up to me, like, on the one hand, there's so much room for growth because the league has fumbled a bag on so many, like, little things and big things, and it's accumulated over time that in theory if you change your approach, the room for growth is like exponential because it's just like doing little things the right way, well all of a sudden it increase so much opportunity to bring in new fans.

But the reason why it's so upsetting is because it seems like that day is not any closer than it was last year, the year before, the year before. It seems like it's kind of the same things that we keep talking about it all the time. It's like we're expecting something different or we're expecting change, but unfortunately, the NHL just keeps operating in the same sort of tunnel vision way. And so one day, I think there will be room for growth, but unfortunately it seems like that is as far away as it ever was. It just goes down to further too, where it just keeps going to, you try to,

like, you should have jumped the stuff they're doing with streaming and everything like that and figuring out the messing around with it and stuff like that. That's stuff you should have done years ago, right? Like now, like, that's the thing where you figure it out years ago. And now you're in this spot where you're, you're catching the middle audience, right? You're catching the people in our demographic. You're catching the people who are still grew up with hockey, can't live without it, will go, will jump through hurdles to watch it.

But you're losing the older people who are, you're losing the older people who are like, I just want to be able to watch the game on TV, and I'm going to, I now can't just watch it on TV. and you're losing and you're not reaching out to a younger generation where I saw a stat today where it's like something like I don't even know what the new generation name is but the current teenagers like only like 15%

actually watch sports the study showed or something like that and you're not reaching out to that generation that is so used to having everything in a spot where you get your TikTok highlight on your phone and you know what you should be like they can't watch the game on their phone right like it's it there's like

You're missing both ends of the spectrum. If it would have been, if you're going to like, I, we're just going to basically stick with the old school way. Or like they just, they found the weird mushy middle that doesn't work either. I mean, do you think the league is unaware or do you think they know and they don't care? Or do you think they're just kind of trying to save face because they don't know any better? Because you reach this and it's kind of unrelated to the broadcast, I guess.

But it's just along the lines of like the hilarity of, of what's going on sort of behind the scenes. So a quote on January 24th of this year from Gary Bettman is NHL teams don't try to tank to win the draft lottery. And then February 15th, 2023, so less than a month later, you have Clayton Keller after a game saying, like, asked why they haven't, this seven game on beaten streak or seven games where they have a point in,

it's like, oh, we got a good burst of energy over the break. I'm sure GM's not too happy about it. Yeah. And meanwhile, you've got Jacob Chikrin and Vladislav Gavakov being basically put on ice about a month ahead of the trade deadline. And we started the show talking about Chikrin. Like I understand from protecting your investment perspective, a guy who's had various injuries over the years and especially at that position where he's kind of more in the line

of fire or potentially blocking a shot that could break a bone or he could get hurt. And he plays a very physical game. I understand all of that, but it's like we're a month out and you're telling a 24 year old who's a good player to basically just hang out in the press box and watch the team play while they try to figure it out. And not that I think that's preventing any coyotes fans who otherwise would have tuned in to be like, oh, Jacob Chickman's not playing today. I'm not going to, I'm going to skip this game. But it's just like it's so bizarre and backwards in the grand scheme of things of like,

this is an entertainment product where you watch professional athletes who are the best that they're sport do that exact thing and instead you're just not getting to actually see that or it's not happening for reasons that have nothing to do with them being able to be out on the ice. I just thought of a wonderful thing that this is an entertainment product and this is content and this is stuff that the NHL will never do because it would be too self-aware and too much making fun of themselves. But like Jacob Chitrin should just like enroll and like go undercover as like a transfer student at Arizona State right now and just like follow them around have them like like that that should be the thing right now just like you know what like I'm a transfer

student I'm here for a couple weeks like that would be just I that would be the content in the programming I would love well he's not a lot of free time I think he can certainly he can certainly or should at least a couple hours out of his day to do so so he's not playing hockey right now that's for sure yeah all right Sean let's let's let's take our break here and then I will we come back We'll finish the week strong with another segment here on the Hockey Pee-Docast, streaming as always on the Sports Night Radio now. The most comprehensive Canucks coverage in the city. Canucks Central with Dan Ritio and Satyar Shah.

Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back here on the Hockeyedio cast of Sean Shapiro. Sean, let's talk a little bit about Dallas Stars, your former place of work, I guess, as a beat writer, where you cover the team very gloriously for a while. It's where we first kind of connected. And we used to do Dallas Stars deep dives. And you still are, while you're still not covering the team on a day-to-day basis, you do write about them occasionally and you still have, you know,

sources and people that were in the loop with the organization and all that. So I want to talk a bit about the Stars with you because I think they're quietly building the case to be one of the most interesting teams to follow down the stretch run. particularly, I guess, starting with the trade deadline in terms of how aggressively they move, what they try to do, what their motivations are, what they're trying to accomplish this season, because they're in this very, very fascinating situation where I did an Oilers conversation yesterday with Daniel Nudgeon Bowman, where we were talking about whether they should go out and get Carlson, why they'd be motivated to do so, and part of the logic is the West is as wide

open as it's ever going to be, right? And you look right now, the top six teams in the league sorted by point percentage are all out east. Al-Stars are the number one team in the West right now just ahead of the Golden Knights and they're the seventh best team in the league, which is fine. It's just great for them, right? Because it presents an opening.

It's an area of opportunity where they can make a real run here and potentially be the class of the West if they really load up at the trade deadline. And I know they're already down their first round back in this coming draft because of the Niels-Lunquist trade. I believe they've already moved their 2023 third as well. But there are, as good of a team as they are, I think they're in a unique buying opportunity

because there's clear weaknesses or areas where they could have significant improvement. And I think they should have the motivation to do so. And I think they have the resources, right? Like, yeah, they've drafted very well over the past couple years, not that they would really be moving any of their top prospects that they've accumulated in a lot of these theoretical trades. But with the depth of their prospect pool, they have interesting assets they could part with. have the picks and they can make the money work as well right like they could very easily

attach and unhood opens whatever 2.5 million whatever's buried in the hl right now and clear up some more uh flexibility that way so i'm going to curious for your take on what sense you get from what the next couple weeks are going to look like how motivated they're going to be at the trade deadline and sort of what the actual ceiling is for this team uh the rest of the way so i i hope here's I hope that the motive from the stars is because different GMs have different jobs, right? Like, I think we've talked about this on this show before. You and I at least have talked about this where a GM's job is to win the Stanley Cup, but a GM's job is also to follow the directive of his owner.

And I hope that from a star's perspective for a team that could be really interesting, I hope the directive from Tom Golardi comes down of, let's championships hang forever, the West is wide open, let's go get it. That's what I just, that's what I hope the directive comes down in Dallas, because that's the space where you can do things where, like, we talk about Jacob Chikrin, Chichdrin would be great in Dallas. Like that would be, that would be the one where if you could, if you're the stars, if you could all of a sudden actually get another,

an actual real viable, consistent top parrying defender, like Colin Miller's playing above and beyond what he really is right now. Like, that Colin Miller playing with Miration, good for Colin Miller with what he's doing right now, but Colin Miller is not the top pairing guy on a team that wins the cup. Jacob Chitrin is the guy. Who's that? And so, hopefully, from a Talas perspective, you have, the message comes from the top of, let's go do this, let's win this thing, let's build, and do it.

And because I would love to see that. The stars historically, under Jim Nill, have been a very, very, very, patient team almost to a fault at times. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, like, I like where our team is at, because Jim would often say that after a deadline where they didn't really do anything. And, uh, Jim is, Jim loves hoarding his picks. See, the fact he traded a first round pick for Nils Lundquist tells you how much he believes Nils Lundquist, but it also tells you how much more unlikely he is to trade another first

round pick. And so, there is, what I would love. And so, there is, what I would love, to see the stars do and then there's what historically they've shown where Jim is going to be very, very patient, very like, I'm just going to sit at the edges, nibble at the edges, maybe at this, maybe at this. That's very underwhelming. And hopefully it's somewhere in the middle, because that will at least be entertaining. Somewhere in the middle between those two will at least be entertaining for the rest of us. Well, here's the thing. Speaking about ownership and motivation and and sort of paying the price to try to achieve present-day glory. Another team that Tom Gilardy owns is the WHL, right, in the Amos Blazers,

and they are hosting the Memorial Cup this year, right, which I hopefully plan to go to and it will be fun. Their best player also happens to be Dallas Starz's top prospect, Logan, Stan Coben, and at this year's CHL trade deadline, the Blazers went out and traded handpicks. including like, what, three or four first round picks to come for Olin Zellweger, who's a top duck prospect to help basically load up and give them a better chance of coming through and winning it all.

And so, you know, not that that would necessarily be indicative of what they would, what the star's motivations would be. Clearly, I think there's its apples and oranges, but it's an interesting thing to consider here. I mean, the reason why the stars are so fascinating beyond being the best team in the West right now from a point percentage perspective is because if it's an interesting, you know, you look a few layers deeper at like how they've accumulated those points, it's amazing. So here's some stats for you.

They are seven, four, and eleven. They've lost 11 times in overtime right now. They're seven, four, and 11 in one goal games. Only the San Jose sharks have left more points on a percentage basis on the table in basically what we describe as coin flip games, right? Yeah. 19 of their 30 wins are by three or more goals. which is the most in the league. It's even more than the Boston Bruins have.

So when they're winning, they're just absolutely doing so in a landslide. They're just steamrolling their opponents. And then they're losing all these coin flip games. And I think statistically from what we know based on history, that's a good position to be in because if you're winning games decisively, that's generally a sign that you're pretty dominant. And if you're losing a bunch of games that are mostly luck driven, that'll eventually change. I don't think there's anything necessarily, you know, innately flawed with this team where they just don't have what it takes to win these close games. I think it's much more randomly, randomly assorted or, I guess, sequenced. And so if anything, I think there's statistical profile would indicate that they could be even better than they already have been from a points perspective.

And so I think that would be very motivating to really make a push here and go for it. At the same time, though, you look and it feels very top heavy right now, right? like the top line has like a 70% goal share of I-1-5. They're driving. They're in middle of the pack in terms of 5-by-5 offense as a team. They're like right behind Oilers. I think we're having a historically great power play in terms of power play efficiency. And pretty much all of that is because when they have Roberts and Hins,

Pavelski and Heiskenen out there, they're just downright filthy and can't be stopped. And so, and Jake Onger is having a phenomenal year as well. So I'm very curious to see like how they go for. I think this is the time to do so because they have Roberts in at this like sweetheart deal where he's making 775 for the next couple of years. Jake Odinger similarly, although we see like the earning power for goalies is pretty limited. Four million for him for the next couple years is still a massive steal. And they have a bunch of like, you know, orally allocated money, let's say, coming off the books

over the next couple of years and contracts that they probably would like to shed. And so all of it will work out from a timing perspective when they have to pay their best players. they'll be able to do so, but they don't really have any other financial decisions right now either, right? Like, Tides Landryl will have a nice little pay raise, I guess, as an RFA this summer, but Haines has already been extended and his raise will kick in. They don't really have to, like, budget for any contracts coming down the pike next year. So I really, I think if they don't ambitiously go for it, I think it's a big mistake. And I don't know if they have the appetite to be in the Jacob Chaker or even the Timom Meyer sweepstakes

and what that would kind of require. But I think this is a team that should be thinking that way, not, all right, let's add a third parent defenseman and a fourth line center because ultimately we're even like the conversations about Patrick Kane or trying to find someone to play with Tyler Sayagan. Like I'm dubious how much that addresses what the team's flaws actually are, which are limited. Like there's a lot to build. There's a lot of good stuff here, right? But when you're nitpicking Stanley Cup contenders, you have to get serious about it. If I had told you, there's something,

just such quick pause on all this, if I had told you a year and a half ago that you'd be going into this, at this point of the season, saying the stars have no big financial decisions to talk about. And then you would have had realized that our poor, our poor boy,

Dennis Scurionov is no longer. Like, like, it's a, like, it's sad that that is the reality of it. But this was supposed to be a big financial year for someone. But unfortunately,

our, our beatboxing 100 mile an hour shooting speedy winger is uh well he's much more likely to be attached as making making the money work in a trade than yes to their into the decision yes i mean you brought up you brought up chikrin there

yeah yeah man it is i'm sure stars fans have to deal with this reality on a day to day basis and they're aware of it but the fact that they gave Ryan suitor that no move clause is so restrictive because if you could make a deal work around getting Ryan Suter's money off the team basically and attaching as many futures as you want to it and replacing his minutes with Jacob Chichron I would feel very good about this team being definitively

the best team in the West and you know it it is what it is at this point but like just thinking about Chikrin on this Stars team where all of a sudden you can play him with like Niels Lundquist or something that you want at 5-5, but then you have this like breaking, break in case of emergency option where you just load up him and Heiskenen on a tone pair if you really need to go for it in high leverage moments. It'd be so intriguing. Instead, you're left with a situation where the reason why I brought up the power play splits is when their top players are out there, the top unit, they're like every bit as good as the

Edmonton Oilers who are historically great power. power play. But then they're giving two power play minutes a game or so to Ryan's suitor quarterbacking their second unit. And it's just like, I do not, I really do not understand what is going on here. Like I, I, it's, it's baffling to me. For a team that generally makes pretty smart decisions and I like a lot of what they've done, like the doubling, tripling down on a sunk cost here is, is a real issue when you're like, we're going to go into a playoff series against the dominant team or another great West team. And it's like, how is that going to shake out, well, we're going to be seeing a lot of Ryan

Suter in a high leverage moments, and that's a real issue. Yeah, it's, I mean, that's a, I the Suter one is just, it's, I can't help but I've had it out sometimes because like you look at it and you think about certain decisions that have made

and how other stuff happened and it's, like, that was, you were willing to make the priority to give $4 million a season, or not like, what is the exact number? to give, sorry, $3.65 million per season to Ryan Suter for four years. Four years. And the no move is the tough part there.

Exactly. That part is just, it's still, because like every time you say, like, oh, how do we build this stars defense? There's one thing where you go from your dream world where you're like, okay, we just take Ryan Suter out and we do this. But we, there's no world. where the stars take, like, we have to live in some reality of this. There's no way at all that Ryan Souter is not playing.

It's not playing, if he's not playing insisting games and minutes for the next three years. You got a GM who signed him to that deal. GMs, and this is something that people always forget, it's not the player who looks bad when it ages deal. It's the GM, and the GM is going to continue to play this guy because, and he's going to tell the coach to continue to play this guy, because that justifies his purchase. He has to justify his purchase.

And we should say, I haven't talked to Pete DeVore about this, but I imagine he probably, he probably likes Ryan Suter. He's like, yeah, he does. He does. I feel very confident of him. He's a veteran, right? Yes, I have talked to Pete Tabor about it. He likes Ryan Suter. So it's, so. Every coach has their blind spot, and most of them are evaluating the performance of veterans versus young players. Yes. Okay. Well, let's close out the show here by talking about an article you wrote recently about the the Michigan and sort of especially from a goalie perspective on how they they play it and sort of every the the chess match that is involved between shooter and goalie there and yeah you can get into kind of the details of that and how it came together because the idea

was initially born out of a conversation that we had here in the PDO. Yeah. So I'm curious for all that and then it's a good way for us to promote EP Ringsside as well on the way out because that is a shared workplace for the both of us. Yeah, it's it was something that really, were talking about early early in the year first week of January I think or whatever it was we were like okay what are you working on and i said like well now i i really want to do something on goalies in the michigan and i used that as an account the pboh cast as an accountability spot to do it and

it was great um the real element to me that really moved this story forward was um talking to i talked to guy in dylan dylan who's a goalie coach in uh in the in the toronto area and he reached out to me after hearing us on the PDO cast. And he actually said like, hey, I'm going to rent. He rented some ice to test this, to test reaction time. And with a, with 15 year olds. So it's something where the guys who are coming up and it's a spot where it's one thing when you talk about the Michigan and you talk about at the NHL level.

The goalies are all six foot five, right? Like basically. Like it's, it's so someone reaching the top corner. like the Michigan in an HL game is so much more impressive just because the goalie is monstrous and him reaching the top quarter isn't a big deal. So many times you see like these these kids do the Michigan on like YouTube or Instagram or whatever, right? It's like the goalie can't reach the crossbar anyway. Like that's like that's not fair to the kid. But the to me I wanted to like for this story and I was down at the all I was down at the all star break and used it as just basically a chance to talk to a bunch of guys.

I talked to Andrea Vasselowski, talked to Linus O'Amark, talk to Connor Hellebuck, just talked to a bunch of goalies about what the threat of the Michigan does and kind of how it came to be. And there's two things that really were interesting to me about it. One is the Michigan, as much as we think of it as a flashy, like, as a flashy showmanship move, it actually came and became more prevalent in hockey because of the pendulum swing. So goalies for reverse VH, quick, 10 seconds thing. So reverse VH is the style of play where the goalie is basically doing a post lean. Imagine when they load their shoulder into the post and they're staying down and everything like that.

So that became super popular in the NHL and trickled down to the youth goalie camps and everything like that. And so goalies basically found a new formula to play the post, play from below plays. plays behind the goal, below the goal line, everything will go. And talking to a lot of goalies, basically, it's kind of, now, if you're going to lean on the post and you're going to do that and you're not going to, and you're leaving that top quarter there, especially for younger guys, the Michigan just became almost a natural progression of, okay, I'll just go right to that spot. Like it said something where, as much as it's in the old stand-up style,

pucks behind the net, the goalie's standing there. It's not like you could flip it. It's not like you could do that. It's because the goalie would be standing, and you would just tit him in the head. So it's interesting to look at the Michigan as a, and remember that it's not just showboating. It's not just showmanship. It is a piece of the game that has come from a pendulum and become more prevalent because of how goaltending technique has changed. And when it comes to a goaltender perspective, for NHL goalies, it's still kind of as simple as like, I'm big enough I can reach over there.

and it's still a little bit frowned upon by coaches. Like, coaches still aren't, other than, other than Anaheim, I don't really know a team where, like, a coach is giving the full green light to go do the Michigan whenever you want. Like, I honestly think there's kind of, that'd be another discussion to have with head coaches of how many coaches are, they don't want, I mean, we saw what have it when Canada tried to, in first game of World Junior in the discourse.

Yeah. I do want, before we move on two from me, I want to have me the point of it, like the functionality of it. Yeah, yeah. And there's a point in your piece that you had from a goalie perspective of how everyone's gotten so robotic. From a stage selection perspective where you see a certain shot, you know exactly what to do. There's no thought behind it anymore. Like it totally removes the cat and mouse element, which is why it's so interesting where not even just the Michigan,

but you see a guy like Jack Hughes should have talked about on the show previously. When he goes down to the goal line from the wing and he's trying to bank it off the goalie's helmet and in, it's a new look, right? You want to present them with different things that are not necessarily prepared for, they're not practicing for as often over the course. of their training. And so the functionality of Michigan not only does that, but then from a defenseman perspective, it forces you to come down potentially and go behind the goal line, which leaves the net of the front, net front wide open. And so there's this whole X and O's perspective that extends

beyond, wow, that look cool and that's going to be a highlight real goal. And it forces another decision too. And one of the things that when the goalie coach I mentioned, he was talking about how he was looking at the times. And there's the time where from the player, picking up the puck on his stick to either showing Michigan and maybe going to a wrap-round or going to a wrap-round and not the Michigan or whatever. It's another data point the goalie has to process. And even if there's just a threat of it, you still have to process that data point. And it's something like when it comes to making the right read, like, and he did this with a 16-year-old goalie, and they did the drill 12 times. And he wanted to make sure he was

avoiding fatigue factor, right? He's like, you don't want to do it over and over over again because eventually it's just going to be. And so he tried to basically, they did the drill 12 times and the 16 year old kid made the right read on the, on the play eight of the 12 times, where it was, so that's a 33% success rate for the Michigan on there. But it also is a, it's also shows it by no means a certainty either, right? Like, and, and we're talking about a 16 year old. We're not talking, we're not talking about an NHL goalie. We're not talking about someone who's even even higher. So goalies are making that safe. And it's, and from a goalie perspective, I thought Helibuck had a really good take on this where he talked about, where he talked about, hey, he's coached kids

before and he saw how robotic they were becoming. And he kind of showed like, you don't need to copy me, be yourself. And that's a huge thing where it's just like, how do you, beat the Michigan is you be an athlete. Like, be an athlete, you're not a robot. Yeah, you got to read and react. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's not give it all away, all right? People should go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go read, go read, you go read, you. Go subscribe to Deeperingside, read it. We'll save some meat on the bell and we'll revisit this topic. Maybe we can talk about it next time from a coach's perspective. Sean, this is a blast. Thank you, as always, for coming on. Everyone go check out Sean's work at EB ringside and also his substack shapshats.

We will have you on again soon. Thank you to everyone. for listening to the PDOcast as always streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.