The Hockey PDOcast - Revisting the Watchability Rankings Through 20 Games

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Thomas Drance to revisit their watchability rankings from before the year, and take stock of where they’re at with teams after seeing them play nearly 20 games this season.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 HockeyPedio cast. My name's Dmitra Filippovich, and joining me here in studio is my good buddy Thomas Drenz. Tom, what's going on, man? I'm doing well, my friend. I'm excited. It's a good night of hockey tonight. It's a really good day of football tomorrow.

It's just a good sports segment of the calendar. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like every evening I make plans to do something and then I'm like, really I just want to watch five games all at the same time? Really, I want to follow my college basketball parley's. Well, yeah, there were great college games last night, which made up for the lack of NHL games, which, how does that happen? Oh, Jeff Merrick tweeted out.

It was actually like, there's a logistical explanation where because of the rinks and Thanksgiving and the teams that were in Europe, they couldn't structure it accordingly. Yeah. Yeah, it was a missed opportunity. Certainly. Although it's very exciting because we've got a lot of games Wednesday night. And then Friday, for Black Friday, there's going to be, that's one of my favorite days of the year because there's all the matinee hockey and stuff. You know, just to quickly get into this, though, like the NBA had the midseason tournament, which has been a smash for television ratings.

You know what I mean? Like that has been a huge success. That's the only thing happening last night other than the Maui Invitational, which is big for me, but nobody else. and there's no NHL games, there's no signature NHL games, just makes no sense. Yeah, well, that's okay. We're getting here, getting together here.

I'm not okay with it, Dimitri. I'm not okay with it. No, well, what I'm okay with is we're getting together here today. We're going to talk hockey for an hour. Let's go. Before you and I go down south to celebrate the great American pastime, watching football all day,

sweating our fantasy teams and parleyes and all that good stuff. And then actually going to the game. And then actually being in the ring to watch, well, we're going to go watch a football game, and then the next day we're going to watch. crack and canucks. And then the next day we're going to come back, but I'm also going to spend much of the day being like, but do you want to go see Washington State versus Washington? I'm willing to be talking to Twitter. We should put up a poll for the listeners. If they vote, yes,

and enough volume will go. So here's the plan today. We're approaching the 20 game mark here, right, which is about a quarter of the way through the season, quick math there. I think we're reaching that sample, right? We generally talk about how we want to see somewhere between 20 to 25 games worth of performance, both on an individual and a team level, before we start feeling like we can make definitive statements and feel like we have a good grasp of how good or bad things really are. Sorry, you're a 20-game guy? I mean, the more the better, but I think like...

Yeah, I'm a 30-game guy. Okay, well... It's my ironclad. It's not the best for content business, though, you know? No, I know. We can't be like, hey, let's not form any opinions on any of these players or teams for the next couple weeks. Give us some time.

I still do the trending thing right now, like with the Canucks talk. talking about the Canucks a lot. They're trending toward being this, but I need to see it for 10 more. I go kind of in 10 game increments. And I think that's reasonable. And I don't think at any point, really, I say stuff with like a hundred percent, like very much conviction or or definitively, like, right. Obviously, you can kind of get a feel for where things are going. But for the most part, I think 10 game increments particularly give you a good feel for where things are headed, kind of the trajectory or patterns that are forming. And we'll talk a little bit here about the actual performance. I

think what we're going to revisit, though, is our watchability rankings from the fourth the season, because right before the year started, you and I got together, we did a two-hour marathon PDO cast where we ranked the teams from 32 to 1. In typical fashion, when you and I get together, we spent way too much time lingering on the bottom five or six teams. And then by the time we got to the end, we were just rushing through, we were like, Colorado, McKinnon, McCarr, New Jersey, Jack Q's. They're great. Yeah, yeah. And then, but you know what? We got a lot wrong. Well, in revisiting it, maybe that was the right way to do it. Because this is the takeaway that I had from looking at our list.

I think we were too low on the low teams and we were too high on the high teams. Yeah. Like if you think about the watchability, other than maybe Colorado and even they've had a bit of an uneven season because they're just like, when they lose, they lose really poorly or an embarrassing fashion like they did in Nashville the other night. The top teams haven't delivered, right? New Jersey, partly due to injury certainly, but 5-15 has not been the team we expected. Buffalo, they haven't been the offensive juggernaut that we came to love last year. Edmonton, I mean, we could do a full episode and we have on this show of everything that's

got wrong for them. I mean, I can't look away. Does that count as watchable? It does, but I think I want to differentiate, though, because I think from the Oilers perspective, like the game against Florida the other night was on Monday night, I watched, everyone was watching. It felt like on my timeline, but it was for the most part, like, it's like Doom watching. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it. It doesn't feel great. Like, I'm not like, it's not entertaining to me. Well, and McDavid being compromised to some extent, more or less. He scored two goals in that game, I think. But no, but you know what I'm saying. Like, we're not seeing as many event horizon, you know, moments where he like folds the paper and is just in a totally different part of the ice than any human being should have been able to travel to.

Like, we're just seeing those, you know, high-end explosives from him somewhat less frequently. and I think that makes a huge difference. It does. Yeah, certainly for watchability. Yeah. It looks much more immortal than we're accustomed to. Let's go from the top again, or from, I guess, the bottom in this case. Number 32, San Jose, you had an argument that you think...

I think we got this way wrong. San Jose, we put them there because we quite rightly knew that this was far and away the worst team in us. Yes. We got the... We underrated how bad they would be. We underrated how bad they would be. Or I think what we underrated wasn't necessarily how bad. they'd be because I think we knew that they'd be historically bad.

I think we underrated the perversity of watching this sub-NHL level team get absolutely destroyed by the best players in the world. Like the fact that for a month this season, teams with a Vancouver, Pittsburgh would waltz into the shark tank and be playing like all-star game quality defense and just putting up, you know, touchdown and a field goal against them. I found that I couldn't look away. I was like tracking their betting odds really closely just out of curiosity to see like how the market handled such an anomaly.

I thought it was a ton of fun. One thing I'll say is, you know, they get Kalin Addison. I think they played better. Yeah. The last couple of weeks. And all of a sudden they look more like just like a bad, an ordinary bad NHL team. And now I have less interest in it. Yeah.

But early in the season. a side show as much, right? I would say, I would say the sharks are like third or fourth on my list of teams I've watched the most this season simply because there was a spectacle to the dramatic way they were losing games. Well, the most entertaining game, the Oilers have played this year was that game they lost in San Jose, and it was combining both of these things we just talked about. I was on these coast. I was up to like one-third. It was unbelievable. And I was Twitter, hockey Twitter was at its best that night. Everyone was just like launching jokes from from beyond. It was amazing. 360 Tomahawk dunks.

Unbelievable content. Even though 360 Tomahawk dunks on a team wearing Velcro shoes. There's just no stakes though, right? Like other than you watched them here the other night in Vancouver and it was a much more respectable performance than the time they lost 10-1, certainly. But other than William Eklund, who has nice moments every single night, it feels like that's really the only player you even need to become invested in in any capacity moving forward. Like by the time this team becomes an NHL team again, is he going to be like the only guy from this group that is actually playing a meaningful role. Maybe Ferraro?

Yeah, but even then he'll probably be at like a different stage of his career. Totally. He'll kind of be like some veteran. Third pair. Yeah, exactly. No, I, I, you're not wrong. It's, it's grim. It's just grim.

Which might not be bad. Like, I think we've spoken about how, like, you probably want to keep a guy like Will Smith away from this period. Oh, 100%. What's the point of this being the introduction to the league? It's like, that's not a situation you want to put young players in. Well, and at least the top guy in the draft is having a historic freshman campaign. for BU and was a former San Jose

Junior Shark. So at least like if you're going to, if you're going to be this like postmodern dystopian distillation, like the worst possible example of a tanking team this is the year for them to do it. Are you going to be turning out the

Maclin's Celebrity content once we get into the spring? Oh, I've already done it. Oh, you're already there. Oh yeah, you can go check the athletic. I wrote a big thing about his recovery. That's right. That's right. I do remember that. Okay. But I'll keep going. We're sure their opportunity will be there. I was going to say we were joking before we went on the air though. So the Canucks

challenged a goalie interference call. Won it took a call off the board that would have made it 1-0 San Jose. Right. And would have dramatically increased to how entertaining that game was. And I'm only partly kidding. I think San Jose should be allowed to interfere without the team's goalie. Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with that. Obviously, like to a level where it's safe.

I'm not saying taking shots at the goalie, but like one guy should be allowed to be kind of skating through the crease. at all times. I think that means that they have the puck in the offensive zone. It's already a miracle. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, there have been parts, like, you know, they've played games this season where if they'd been credited with a goal every time they cross the opponent's blue line,

they still would have lost, so. Well, they've played 18 games. They've taken 250 fewer shots on goal than they've given up. Stunning. They've yet to, this is a stat that I will be tracking. They've yet to out shoot a team in a game. The closest they've come was a game they lost 10-1 in. to the Canucks where they, I think they got out shot 33 to 31.

That was the best shot share they've had in an individual game so far. And when that game was decided, the shots were like 25 to 12, right? So like it was just all the Canucks being like, well, let's pack it in here. So I think if we were redoing this, I would have the sharks average to above average. That's how high I am on their watchability now. Okay. 10 minutes in, we've done only the sharks. So we are not changing the course of-

There's such an anomaly. They deserved it. The next team we had on the list, this is one. definitely got wrong was the Philadelphia Flyers. Yeah, they're fun. And it's because I think we all expected it. It's like, oh, John Torrell team that's tanking. They have all these guys who just aren't good. They haven't played that way at all. I did a whole bit with Harmon on Friday where they're one of the best rush teams in the league. They're one of the best five-on-five teams in the league. They've got Owen Tippett dunking on people off the rush. Yeah, like Tippett therapy,

connectney, yeah. And I didn't realize the Caturier, I didn't remember how much I missed the Keturier experience. Yeah, they're playing in a totally different way. And they're like the top 10 515 team by every metric. The power play is the only thing that's brought them down. But 10-7-1 with a plus-8 goal differential is remarkable. Islanders 30, Canadian's 29, whatever, we don't have to do that. I do like that the Islanders right now are 6-6-5.

They're one OT loss away from 666, a lose tribute to the devil's there. Wow. Montreal, I just want to note, I think the speed that they have from the back end has made them more fun than I expected. Like, Caden Gooley's been way better than I thought he'd be. Mike Matheson's actually fun. So I think the Canadians play faster than I anticipated as a five-man group. I just thought it would be fun occasionally to watch Cawfield and Suzuki do stuff, but they've been a little more fun than I expected. Yeah.

Well, if you told me that every game was going to be 3rd 3 with Cawfield, doing something. I would put them really high on this list. For sure. Um, the ducks of 28. So I will say the caveat here is at the time we couched it with, we just got burned so badly by them last year that we cannot give them the benefit of the doubt, but we're keeping the door open. We're keeping the light on for them. And boy, have they reward us. They're coming back down earth a little bit here in terms of results which we expect, right? They're not going to keep having all these crazy third period comebacks. But man. I don't think they're bad though. Like, I don't think this is a, I don't think this is, I think this is a team that can get to like the mid 80s point totals. And if you

make it to the mid 80s point totals, that means you're going to play some sort of game in the spring where it's like a win could catapult you into a playoff race. Like I think they're at that level at least. Well, let's talk a little bit about a theory. I don't know if we've ever actually broached this on the air, but you and I have spoken. We do, spoiler, hang out or not recording shows. And we've talked a lot about how improvement by teams isn't necessarily linear from one year to the next, right? I generally, people think like, all right, you're going to be bad, you're going to be at the bottom of the league, you're going to get a top pick.

And then a couple years later, you're going to be 500. And then a year or two later, you're going to be fighting for a playoff spot. And then you're going to be a playoff team and then you compete for a Stanley Cup. Where in reality, you might need to take those steps as a playoff team. We generally don't see teams go from lottery to like legitimate Stanley Cup contender. But for the most part, I think there's this accumulation of high-end talent that happens. and we don't see the results for it yet. And then all of a sudden when it happens,

it's like, wow, this seems just way better than we thought they had any right to be heading into the year. You're bad, you're bad. You're bad, but you're picked to improve, but you don't. And then all of a sudden, you're very, very much not bad. Right. And we've seen that Carolina, New Jersey. The devil's last year were like the best example.

The best example. I think we were hoping that Buffalo would be that this year. I thought Buffalo, but I still think Buffalo gets there. It's just that it might be a year beyond what we expect. Also, they haven't been that bad. No, they've been fine, and Tage has been out, right? And it's not late for them yet. No.

You know, that team can still crest, especially if they get goaltending. But I think the Ducks also have a shot. The coyotes also have a shot to be teams in that mold over the balance of the season. Well, I guess we'll do more on the Sabres later because we had them like top five, right? So they're not going to come in this conversation for a while. But to your point, in terms of like the timeline here are our expectations, a lot of the things holding them back right now beyond Tage Tom. Thompson being out is like Eric Johnson just isn't good at hockey anymore.

Jeff Skinner shouldn't be playing on the power play. They probably just shouldn't like I understand Kyle Koso was their captain and he just played his thousandth game, but they probably have better options. A lot of it is older players actually dragging them down and that's also probably something else that happens in the NHL quite a bit that we don't really talk enough about where we tend to think of older players and veterans being kind of the safer option, right? It's like, oh, they've done this before. We can rely on them more.

Young players are too risky. Their performance is too volatile. And then you get into these situations where it's actually the younger players who aren't the problem at all and are actually driving the bus. And it's the older players who are kind of bringing them down or holding them back and restraining them in the time being. And so I think the Sabres are an example of that. Yeah.

And it's a one-year deal, right? Like at some point they can just move on. Yeah. And I'd expect them to if things don't change quickly there. So anything else on the ducks before we? we move on here? I mean... No, just that, I mean, just that Minchukov is so much fun to watch.

Yeah. That's it. And they'll add Zellweger soon at some point. Yeah. I mean, they're going to keep adding guys who are a ton of fun. I do like the idea that, you know, I gave Dallas Aiken such a hard time last year. And I got a lot of pushback or some pushback. I think people for the most part were in on the bit.

But I got some people that were like, what is he supposed to do with this team? Like, that's clearly not good enough. And then you see, I understand, they added Mityukhov, right? They add Leo Carlson. They, whatever, signed Alex Clorin and Radco Goudas. Like, they certainly got better from a personnel perspective. But everything you hear from behind the scenes is Greg Cronin came in and essentially brought in everything that the Colorado Avalanche organization was doing in terms of preparation and, like, methodology and philosophy and all this stuff and how he wants his players to play. And everyone just singing his praises.

And it's a first year coach, right? Fresh. Yeah, he's got. Everyone's excited. It's got that shine. I had to try at some point it's going to wear off. But just in terms of the impact of coaching and how difficult it is for us to quantify and know how much it's worth, in this case, you actually see that, all right, like you can actually trace back to what a new coach is doing here.

And I do kind of, I find that very satisfying. It's not a situation we're off in, right, where you can point to last year and then this year, be like, wow, this is just fundamentally different with a new voice. Yeah. We also should just say, like, Mason McTavish might just be him. I think you're going to remove the mite. Yeah. That guy's unbelievable.

Yeah, he's going to be their next captain, right? Yeah, I mean, he's, he just, he looks like he's going to be playing and doing outrageous things in really high stakes games for a long, long time. Now, the next team in our list of Blue Jackets, I had them 27. You had them 20 ahead of the Los Angeles, Kings. Well, I didn't realize they'd reassign Kent Johnson. Playing in the H. I can't even argue with healthy scratching Patrick Liney just because he's been so bad. But then you like read the comments and it feels bad especially like just he's so sad about

it but also the fact that he's coming back from my head injury and it's like you just put it all together. It's like this is such a mess. I mean this team's 4.11 and 4. They are minus 18 goal differential, 27th in scoring as a team. Ivan Prorov is the only player on their roster. who's pacing for more than 50 points this season. Like, I feel bad for the coach, right?

Because he was put in this spot where he wasn't obviously even their choice to be the coach. And then right before the season, they're like, all right, you're going to be our head coach. And then all of a sudden, he's trying on the fly, make it work and over tinkering and overmanaging. And I saw the stat about how many different line combinations they've already used this season. And it's a mess. But for whatever reason, a lot of people there can just get a free pass. don't you feel like? Like especially with, I guess, the management in particular.

Yeah. It's like, I don't think they will at the end of the season, though. I think it's, I think that bad. You think it's getting late? Yeah. I think that, I think the bad, to hire a new coach who doesn't even make it to get one of the regular season, I think is, it's hard to come back from that. And, you know, the statement that they put out was basically like, you know, for stability's sake, but it was pretty tepid. And then to have everything breaking down like this around the club, I mean, I think, I think.

it's going to be really hard for this team to sell continuity after this season if things don't change significantly there. Well, I think you and I actually did a show at the start of the off season, I guess, right, after they brought in pro-Rob and Cverson, and you read all these fluff pieces of people being like, oh, the blue jackets are very serious about competing next season. And then, like, you just critically looked at the roster. You're like, I don't see, I don't see, also why, but also I don't see a roadmap for that actually happening.

One, like the Eurichick thing, like he was told to get a place and then still sent down. Like, none of it makes sense. It's strange. On line A, what's a solution here? Do you think there is one? Because he's turning 26 in April, I believe he's got two years left after this one at 8.7 per. Two goals and nine games, just the one assist. Five-on-five numbers about as bad as you can have underlying, right?

He's like hovering around the 40% mark in a lot of the shares. Now they, my problem is, is I don't even see like the speed. Like my, the answer I want to give you is, you know, what if Lion A's a guy who's just capable of being like Phil Kessel? Like, if you put him further down the lineup on a really stacked team. Right. Power play, insulated scoring. But like, I don't even see. I don't even see that potential for him right now. And so I sort of worry if, you know, we're talking more like late career.

Mike Hoffman, like if he's just a DH. But Hoffman had some years on Ottawa there where he was legitimately, like, was legitimately very productive. I mean, watching him last night with the sharks, like, he can still dunk on guys. He's still, like, savvy and hard to, and hard to guard one-on-one. I'm just saying, like, that's why I'm not even saying, like, prime Mike Hoffman, like, late career Mike Hoffman. All right. I think there's more salvage here than that. I hope. Here's my pitch for a year. Yeah.

Why doesn't the team like the ducks get involved here? Oh, man. You've got the room for the next couple years. I'm speaking financially, right? Would you do problem for problem, given what the ducks have gotten out of Trevor Zegris this year? Is Trevor Zegris a problem? Well, I mean, he's not doing anything. Well, he's hurt.

Yeah, but. Yeah, I think he's struggled when he... He struggled from a production perspective. I actually think there's been some pretty encouraging. I know he got benched the one game as well, but... I'm holding all my Trevor Zegris. I think, even defensively, I think I've seen a lot of habits running the season that necessarily haven't resulted in production, but I do think it's been encouraging.

I don't view that as a problem. Okay. I just think in terms of like if Columbus had decided for whatever reason, like we cannot get more out of this situation and we just want to clear the room and either try to add elsewhere or whatever the direction of the organization is, I still think it's an interesting, very low risk,

like flyer for a team like the ducks to take because you can add the money without worrying about it right now. And then if it doesn't work over the next few years, you're not necessarily on the hook for picking up the tab on a next contract, right? But all of a sudden... I can see it. If there's teams that should do it, it should be the Ducks or the Blackhawks. Right?

Like those are the two teams. Yeah. Okay. Next on our list, Jets, we were certainly too low on them. The Capitals... The Jets have been... Well, yeah. The Jets have been...

I don't think I was too low on them as a team. I thought they'd be... No, from entertainment, yeah. Yeah, but I didn't think they'd play... this loose given, you know, what we've seen in the past from this group and from this head coach. Yeah. But I think we also said, like, we feel like the personnel warrants them being higher, but we've also been burned by them. Well, and I mean, I still love watching Kyle Connor work to get open. And it's been nice that Nick Laillers has had a run of health here. The Capitals,

I had them 25th on my list. You had them higher. And I was just like, I don't, I, the time has passed. I'm not interested in this. At the start of the year, they started so poorly. I think are one three and one. They were just getting schlacked. And I was like, wow, this is going south really quickly. Since then, they're 8-1-1. Now, they still, despite having this 9-4-2 record, have a negative goal differential this season.

And their shooting percentage is low. Their safe percentage is high. Ovechkin's not really even scoring goals. It's been a weird season. I was probably too low on them or maybe too quick to write them off as being at least like a relevant competent team this season. but we'll see. On the one hand, the shooting percentage is so low where it's like,

all right, they're going to, Ovechkins, I think, beat the goalie like twice this season on 60 shots. That will probably improve. But then they also have a negative goal differential and aren't a nine, four, and two caliber team. I feel like they've been one team for 10 games and one team for another game, and I just have no idea how to rate them now. Yeah.

Red Wings, Senators, Flames, Blues, Wild. Those are the next five teams. Red Wings, Senators. Red Wings, you had 30th. That was too low. they're certainly not the 30th most watching the team. Red wings are fun. Red wings are fun. Senators are fun. Yeah. I would say those two teams have been more fun than we expected. I'd say the wild must be like a league leader in team that is less fun than I'd hoped.

Yes. No, certainly. I mean, Caprizov has not been himself this season. They have like a historically bad penalty kill. The goal tending hasn't been good. It's been all over the place. And even things like, you know, weird stuff like, you know, watching Yoel, Eric, Rickson Eck make other people batty, watching Marcus Felino just destroy people. I feel like even those subtle things that I used to enjoy in wild games, I haven't seen as much of. And they just don't feel as crisp moving the puck. Yeah, I agree. I think there's personnel issues on that roster, certainly.

And I don't think it's really a coaching thing as much as a construction issue. Hurricane 19th, you had them 16. We had a whole bit. I was listening back to it about how I would. that I had the guts to have them even lower, and I stand by that. Yeah, I mean, what, they're...

They started the year, like, they were giving up way more goals than we're used to. They were scoring much more, certainly, but I think for the most part. They are who they are? Yeah, which is much better than their results probably indicate so far, but also just in terms of,

I don't need to rehash the bit about my preferences on them. Well, that team's going to be Totally fine. Once their percentage is normalized, they're going to be, they're going to win 10 in a row at some point. Yeah. Okay. Tom, let's take our break here. Okay.

And then when we come back, we will do the top half of our watchability rankings. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right. We're back here in the Hockey Ocas with Thomas Drans. Tom, we are doing our rehashing or revisiting of our watchability rankings from the start of the season. Revisiting in our case. Yes. So we just did the hurricanes.

were at the 18 mark with the Bruins. Any notes in the Bruins here? Because I think we felt like, okay, this is finally the year where they take a step back. They've lost Bergeron. They lost Krati. They've lost all their deadline additions of Orlov and Bertuzi and so on and so forth. It's like they can't, they can't do it again. Yeah.

And yet, what are they, 13, 1 and 3 or so far this season? They were the last dance Bruins last year. We expected this with, especially with Bergeron's retirement. But, man, I've fallen for this. so many years in a row, right? Like, Tuka Rask retired, and I really thought that was it for the Bruins as this consistently elite team. And then Bergeron retired, I'm like, man, he's like both the best player and the coach of this

team. I felt like he was holding everything together. Yeah, Atlas. Holding the Bruins at the top of the standings. He wasn't. That infrastructure is so strong at this point. You've gotten a lot, I think, from guys like McVoy, obviously Pasternak. But, like, Coil 2 has been awesome.

Beecher, Poitris. Like, they've just gotten more from centermen that I thought were, you know, like, I was high on Poitris going into the season, but I didn't expect this. Right. And I certainly didn't expect, you know, top line quality two-way ace stuff from Coil. And then the goaltending. I mean, that's fundamentally the Bruins have this elite goaltending, and that's why they keep getting away with this. Well, there's a couple things they do really well, right? They had the infrastructure in place where, yeah, they don't have some of the names and in particular Bergeron,

but it's a bit of plug-in-play where you can just people know exactly what's expected of them and what they need to do. And then if they're physically capable of doing that, in this case they have been, they can step in and kind of make it work. Special teams is elite, right? They're best in the league on the penalty kill still. Power play is top 10. And then just the goal-tending where every single night they're going to have a top. top 10 goalie in there probably. And most nights, that'll be good enough.

Like, that raises your baseline so much in the regular season where there's going to be a lot of nights where you're playing other teams who are playing on a second of a back-to-back or have prescribed a night off for their starter. And for the Bruins, they never have that happen. They never have a schedule loss in that regard. No. And they've had a pretty soft schedule to begin with,

so we should know that where I'm not sure I would expect them to go 13-1-3 regardless in their next, whatever that is, 17 games. But especially, like, I think once they start playing, better teams like they played Tampa the other night. There's going to be a bit of regression in that regard. But yeah, we were... They're still one of the best teams in Lake. It's amazing.

I don't know what year of this conversation. We've been having the same one for five years now, but once again, just basically copy-paste. Yeah. Us being low on them at the start of the year and then us being shocked 20 games in. The, yeah, the Bruins have disproven gravity. It's really incredible. Now, the coyotes at 17, we were high on them.

In fact, this was. probably the team that we flag planted the most, I think, at the start of the year, right? Because... Along with the sharks being bad. I think we should know... I'll give you credit. You were strong... I mean, obviously, I wasn't like, I think they're going to be good.

But I just didn't expect... I didn't really know that a team... It was capable for a team in the modern NHL to be as bad as the shark team's been. I was really banging the sharks are not just bad, but maybe historically bad drum before the season. Because they were being lumped in with Anaheim. Right, and there was just no way. Yeah, there was just no way. So I have to say those.

were the two things I feel like we were strongest about flag planting. Yeah, Arizona was the my personal one just because it was like, all right, 76 and a half, I think they were like 70-ish last year, and they were still in that phase of cutting costs, trying to penny pinch, trying to get a top pick. And then they made it very clear. I think they acknowledged once they decided to actually keep Nick Schmaltz and pay him more than his cap hit is, I was like, all right, they're actually pretty serious. Action speak louder than words in this league.

and they're actually serious about fielding a competitive team that has taken seriously in this league. And then they made a bunch of additions, right? They're bringing in a lot of actual NHL players. And so their power plays carry them quite a bit so far. But I just think that it'll be interesting to see what their final landing spot in the Western Conference standings is because I think they're fourth right now in that central division. And they're right there with a team like the Blues. A lot of teams we probably expected to be above them heading into the year, like Minnesota,

maybe even Nashville, then certainly some of the Pacific Division teams have been not only poor from a win-loss perspective, but have shown legitimate reasons to be concerned about them the rest of the season, whereas this Arizona team has some flaws, certainly, but I'm like higher on them getting better as the year it goes along than those teams. And so I'm pretty curious to see if they can actually compete for a playoff spot. I definitely think they're going to be like high 80s point totals at the end of the year.

I know their futures, like their odds of making the playoffs plus 425, which is about a 19% implied probability. My athletic colleague, Domless, has them closer to 5%. So no delta there. But I like the idea that this coyote's team could be a pretty intriguing spoiler over the balance of the season. From a watchability perspective, shout out to Sean Dersey. obviously like one of the patron saints of my guest appearances on this podcast at the very least. Yeah, we're on a Cal Ripkin-like streak right now of referencing Sean Dersey when you're on the area. He's sick.

Like, he's just so much fun. And, you know, I saw his agent Alan Walsh tweeted, you know, some article that was like, no one expected this of Sean Dursey in Arizona. And it's like, well, not nobody. I know a couple of guys. I know a couple guys who are zero percent shocked that he's this productive. with 23 minutes a night on a team with a ton of top end skill. Now, this range...

Now, if you told me, though, no one expected Lawson Krause to be one of the hottest goals scores in the NHL in the month of November, I'd say yes. That is true. If I was his agent, I would share that. That is true. The Canucks are next on this list. And once again, a team we were too low on, we underrated, I think, how valuable from a watchability perspective, and I guess from a results perspective,

perspective, like individual star power is here. Now there's a lot of reasons we've spoken about for why they got off to the start they did. I think just Quinn Hughes in particular, leveling up the way he has, though, has brought along pretty much everything else for a ride in this case, especially from a watchability perspective. Yeah, I mean, going into the season, and I think I've been just about as high on Quinn Hughes as it's like realistically possible to be ever since he entered the league. but even I would have come into this season being like, this guy's got a shot to be one of the five most valuable defenders in the sport this year.

I probably wouldn't have made the case before the season. In fact, I know I wouldn't have made the case that this guy's got a chance to be one of the five most valuable players on the planet. But he has been. Like, he has been without question through the first quarter of the season. The way that he's shooting, the way that he's attacking as a shooter, and then grafting that pretty seamlessly into all the cool stuff he's always done in transition as a playmaker. I mean, I think his level up is sort of not even being, I know it's, I'm sure people are outside of the Vancouver market are actually sick of hearing about it. And yet I still don't think enough's being made there.

I feel like so many people are focusing on, you know, the three guys who are scoring, you know, at the top of the league or the Rick Tocket effect or Philip. Peronick and Quinn Hughes and what that pair can do together. But fundamentally, we've seen an unprecedented glow-up from an already great player to become just an absolutely dominant force with very few parallels elsewhere in the league right now. Well, that's also cool because you take a player who was obviously already very good and productive and impactful. And then there's been like fundamental mechanical changes with his shot, stylistic changes, is like things he's doing that are manifesting themselves in these results.

It's not just a matter of like he's playing the exact same way he played previously and now pucks are going in more, which they are, but he's helping that happen in some ways, right? Yeah. And one final note on this, like any time you see like, all right, well, we need to be a bit skeptical of his impact because his five-on-five numbers aren't as good as some of his peers at the top of the position, I think it's important to know the context of how the Canucks use their top players,

which is Quinn Hughes typically plays with the J.T. Miller line. He does not play with Lice Pedersen that much. I believe they've only played 80-ish or so-five minutes so far together, which is like 25% or 20-ish percent of Quinn Hughes's total ice time. And that's very rare because teams typically just load up top line, top pairing. Let's get them out there for situations where we can high leverage this into goals. And that's not how this team does it. No.

So it's impacting maybe huge. uses 5-on-5 metrics, but it's probably better for the team's result. Well, and I think Rick Tock deserves a fair bit of credit for this, which is that he's using Quinn Hughes to buttress J.T. Miller, Phil D. Giuseppe, and Brock Besser, when he's feeding them to Tufts, right? And he's feeding them both territorially, like J.T. Miller starts a ton of his shifts in the defensive end, but also in terms of minutes and matchups and how disciplined he is about sticking with them whenever he's got the option to.

And then he's using Pedersen to effectively give cover to. to a defense core that's relatively thin against secondary competition. It's worked for this team. It's, you know, they're still not carrying play enough with their top six forwards on the ice despite what I think is a pretty ingenious approach

to maximizing what they're able to do on a team level. But, and by the way, that remains a concern for me going forward for this team. You know, they're going to need to out-shoot teams, out-attempt teams, control more play with Miller and Pedersen on the ice. they're going to sustain anything close to the start that they've authored in the first two months of the season. But, you know, it's worth noting, especially in the context of like Hughes versus McCar, that Hughes's sort of five-man group is McKinnon, Rantin, Natchewishkin, and Taves, whereas Hughes's five-man group includes like Phil D. Giuseppe.

So, you know, it's really impressive stuff from Quinn Hughes. He's, I'm serious. I think the idea of a Canucks player being considered for heart and it not being Quinn Hughes, I think betrays a lack of understanding about what's really driven things for this team so far. Yeah. And just for a comparison sake, you mentioned that McCar-McKinnon partnership, I believe, like 70% of Macar's 5-on-5 minutes have been spent with Nathan McKinnon on the ice, which certainly helps matter. Good gig if you can get it. Yeah, not too bad.

So, yeah, I think that context is important. and if you like that, some of those anecdotes, you and I on your show, Kinnukes Talk here on SportsA Radio Network, did a defenseman draft with your co-host. A ton of fun. The three of us drafted six men defense corps. A lot of shenanigans ensued. I made fun of you for your Erin'Bad-Bad pick. Eckblatt's awesome.

I reached a little bit for Drew Daudy. It was all sorts of fun and sued. I made a lot of fun of you for picking Aaron Echblad, and I picked Drew Doudie. Yeah, so go check that out. Okay. Both great players. Cracking Predators next. I want to jump to the Kings after that.

Sure. We referenced them earlier in the show where we were both high on them from our watchability rankings, not nearly high enough. You had them below the Blue Jackets, which we already belabor that point. We didn't need to keep bringing that up. But I just think this Kings team, I've been so impressed with not only how fun they are, but I think how good they are. And I don't know if the market has caught up to it yet, right?

Because I think we all have this idea of what this Kings team under Todd McLeodlin has been like the past couple years. Right. And they've bumped into that ceiling in round one against an Oilers team that just had more high-end talent. When they felt like a foil. Yeah. Like even when they pushed the Oilers took the series lead in both series. It always felt like...

Like serious, yeah. It always felt like they were a team perfectly calibrated to push the Oilers without actually eliminating them. So then Connor McDavid could have his hero arc. Right, exactly. Yeah. And it was like, they're doing enough. Oh, it's like any sort of plot like that in a story where it's like... Yes.

McDavid's like been brought down a peg and all of a sudden now he needs to really channel. He has some sort of like come to Jesus moment where like he reaches his low and then all of a sudden now he like he overcomes it right and then and then he stands high and tall and proud. They're like the putties from Power Rangers where it's like they've got you know Tommy in a chokehold as you go to commercial but you're not actually worried about Tommy on the other side. Yeah. And so that's yes exactly. And I think they're just not, they're fundamentally not that. No. Like I understand to an extent the concerns of, I think, heading into the year where like, all right, they totally punted the goalie position. They spent no resources on Cam Talbot and Phoenix Copley.

And then they brought in David Griddick as the third guy, sent him down to the H.L. And I was like, all right, how far can this take them? Which is strange because on the other hand, we're kind of speaking out of both sides of our mouth here because we also all just agree that goaltending is very volatile and random. and we shouldn't waste our time trying to predict it. What happens in front of them is just as important in terms of putting them in a position to succeed with the workload they have, the types of shots they face. And this Kings team is not only fundamentally different offensively,

but they're one of the best teams of defending the rush as well, limiting the types of chances they give up. They're so good defensively. So I think it's a spot where either one of those two guys or potentially like last year where they go out and they spend a first to add a unit score passalo. They once again could conceivably do that this year. There's so many outs for the guys.

them that I think they need to start being treated as not just a good playoff team, but a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. And I know that might be like a step too far for some people, less than 20 games into the season, but I think they've answered a lot of the few remaining questions I had for them

after last season. They look scary good. From a watchability perspective, I think two things need to be shouted out really quickly here. One is the byfield glow-up. Yeah. Especially from an entertainment perspective, right? Because he's doing outrageous stuff.

Like he's making the sorts of plays that I'm watching and I need to you know like hit the 10 seconds back button on my remote just to be like, wait, wait, what did I just see? And then obviously the Fiala Pierre-Luc Dubois partnership has exceeded

I think all expectations in terms of the offensive creativity that they've been able to graft onto the king's usual like super disciplined north-south structural game. And I think it's interesting because I was so high on what this Kings team had done this offseason and the improvement that they'd make. When you add a top of the lineup caliber piece, I always just sort of say, you know, like the Kings and the Penguins, for me,

were the only two teams that really brought in like star level new players into their group. And when a team does that, I always think, let's not overthink this. That's the most valuable thing you can do in this sport. Those teams are going to be among the most improved in the league. And so I use that to sort of just be like really high on the Kings going into the season. But I wasn't necessarily high on the watchability thing. So I think I sort of fell not from an expectations of their team perspective, but from a watchability perspective, victim to that idea of like I know what the McClellan sharks are. And they play simplified North-South hockey.

And there's not a lot of East-West movement. They don't really care about generating quality chances. There's and I, you know, Dubois, a great playman. I think has had a far bigger impact on their stylistic sort of attractiveness, the attractiveness of the hockey they play than even I thought he would. Well, and right now I think they're ninth or something, or ninth or tenth in terms of like Stanley Cup odds for favorites. And I think we need to start viewing them as more of a top three to five caliber team than

that sort of top 10 range. Yeah. And eventually at some point in that Pacific Division in the Western Conference, they're going to bump into Vegas, it feels like, right? It feels like that's a collision course that's. It's almost set. You know what, though, this is what going zero goalie does to people's expectations. Right.

You know, it's like no one believes that the team with everything but a goalie is a contender, just like no one believes that the fantasy team with Brian Robinson and Rahim Mostert is a contender in week three of the fantasy football season. But, you know. The three people listening to the show that got that reference. You get to the pointy end of the spear, and it's impressive. No, it is. Well, I mean, you know, the Kings, they don't have a proven Stanley Cup winning goal to gole quite yet like Gaden Hill. So it's going to be difficult for them in that type of matchup.

No, I mean, stylistically, those two teams are just like, they're one of the only teams in the league, honestly equipped to meet Vegas's fastball in transition and match it step for step. Yeah, maybe punch back. And potentially even frustrate them because they're able to do so, whereas even a team that I'm high on like Dallas, you saw in that West Final last year, they weren't really able to get to the. that gear and that No, they, they, they got truth serumed. Yeah. Right.

Like Vegas showed us what the Dallas stars are. What's interesting is I do feel like the Kings are very much a mirror image, right? From the punt goalie thing to like, hey, we've got a really good team. Let's bring in an elite playmaking center. You know, that's, in so many ways, it does feel like Vegas and L.A. are sort of circling around each other, shadow boxing and have been for months. In fact, it almost feels like the kings have constructed a team in Vegas' image to come for them.

And look, it's going to be a ton of fun. The mobility of that blue line, the way that they're able to play, the possibility that we see Brand Clark at some point be a major contributor or even just, you know, increase Spence's role. I think that guy can play legitimately. And then the byfield thing is just such a, like, it adds volatility into their sort of projection but in a really positive way

I mean if Byfield sustains what we've seen the last five weeks they've got another star level contributor at the top of their lineup and that's going to make them you know a nasty piece of work down the stretch yeah and Talbot's been great for them so far I think he's like a 930 say percentage plus five

right what's expected now I would expect that to come back down earth but here's the thing if you're biggest concern as a team or your biggest reservation for putting them into that Stanley Cup contender tier is goaltending, similar to how to feel about New Jersey, I'm fine with that. If the skater town is there and you're playing in an environment where you're going to make life easier for those guys and you have the firepower to potentially win games 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 5, if

you need to, that provides you with so many outs for winning and also rectifying that moving forward that that's where you want to be in as a team. It's all fun in games to have the edge and net going into a playoff series and then Ilyas Samsona outperforms, you know, 100 of Aslovsky or Jeff Skinner outperforms Jacob Markstrom or Sergei Brobrovsky, you know, turns four of five consecutive seasons being below average save percentage into, you know, an electric two-week run, fattening his safe percentage off Carolina Hurricanes point shots or, you know, Aiden Hill outduals Jake Onger. Like, at the end of the day, we don't really know.

I think there's a humility in the King's approach. Like one thing that's sort of funny is Cam Talbot's been on this heater and Phoenix Copley, who stabilized their season last year before the Corpus Solo trade, has like massively struggled. And in three months, if you were to tell me three months from now that that script had flipped, that like Talbot had lost the starting job, but Phoenix Copley was playing really well. And every night on hockey night in Canada headlines, it's reported that the Kings are kicking the tires on some other goalie. Like, I'm going to be like, yeah, that all makes sense. Yeah.

None of that surprises me. Yeah, that checks out. Okay, the Rangers 12, Lightning 11, Blackhawks 10, you had them five because you wanted to watch every single Conrad game. And I've done pretty close to it, and it's been a rewarding experience, but I think it's interesting here. The Blackhawks have exceeded my expectations in terms of the credibility of their team as like an NHL team capable of. of picking up actual points, not getting blown out. There's more of like a baseline fortitude that they have than I expected. And so in some ways, that's made them less watchable, but more impressive.

Right. As an actual hockey team, I thought there'd be a little more chaos, a little more pandemonium, a little more like, hey, we really need Connor Bedard to go off or we're getting blown out tonight. And instead it feels like, you know, if Bedard gets two points, like they're going to lose four three or maybe win three, the baseline competence that the Blackhawks have shown has exceeded my expectations and as a result caused them to massively underperform my expectations as a watchable team.

Yeah, I mean, when he's cooking like he was in Florida for those two games, especially that Panthers game where it was like a matinee game so was an afternoon, everyone was... He was so good that I turned off football. Yeah, and yeah, yeah. That's about like... On a Sunday.

...a praise as you can give a hockey performance these days. and I mean I expected the team to be bad around him. I just didn't necessarily anticipate him to do this much heavy lifting right away where he has twice as many 5-15 points as anyone else. They're basically scoring goals as often. Like they have as many with him on the ice as they do without him, except they've played two times as many minutes or even more without him. It's wild.

The power play scoring hasn't even come yet. They're like 28th and now something we're heading into the year where like, I'm concerned about his 5-15 game right out of the gate. I think there's going to be a learning curve there. But in stationary attacking situations, he's going to let it rip. And there's just not enough threats around him, I think, to cobble that together. That'll come with time. But the fact that he's already producing without that is like a feather in his cap moving forward, right?

So very encouraging stuff there. And in true PEOCast fashion, we're not even going to talk about the top 10 teams. Oh, really? We're out of time? Well, we got a couple more minutes. I mean, we had Panthers 9. I think that's about right. I've been impressed with them, but.

They've been better than I thought. Yeah. At this stage of the season, like with Montor and Actblad, like just coming back, they've been better to watch and better in terms of actual quality than I thought they would be in the first six weeks. Penguins 8, Maple Leaf 7, Golden Knight 6, Stars 5, and then Aves 4, Sabers 3, we already talked about that. Yeah, we got that. Oilers 2, Devils 1. There's been a lot of...

Yeah, we... At the very extreme, we were, I think in the middle, we actually had a decent feel. Yeah, we were too low. And the low teams, we were too high on the top teams. Yeah, interesting. At the top. Well, you know, maybe that's a good lesson. A reflection also maybe of where the league is right now, where it kind of really feels like

everything is kind of converging towards the middle. Yeah. Although I still see, it is, but at the same time, you know, we're talking about the teams that have, like, what teams have exceeded your expectations the most, they're the best team. You know, like Boston. Boston was historically good. L.A., Vegas has been better in the early going. You know, like with the exception of Colorado has done a better job of holding the fort than I thought they would.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, their staying power at the top of the Atlantic, like virtually unchallenged relative to where I thought it might be, given the state of their defense. Right. But some of the young upstarts around them, yeah. Right. Like Buffalo, Detroit, like senators, like these teams. are having such a tough time actually. So I think it's an interesting thing where things are converging in the middle

and yet this myth of parody remains a myth. The absolute best teams are still the absolute best teams and getting to the point where you're like a New Jersey devil's caliber group actually capable of banging on that door requires just such an unfathomable mess of talent. The best team stay the best. As Oilers fans listening to this are like,

oh God, I wish that were true. All right, Tom, we're going to get out of here. I'll let you quickly plug some stuff on the way out. What do you want to listeners check out? Theathletic.com. We've got our Black Friday sales on, so check us out right now. That's the first time hearing of this. Why aren't you guys wrote that anymore?

Oh, I tweet that four times a day. Don't worry about it. Just check my Twitter feed. But go check it out. Lots of good stuff. Had a good J.T. Miller piece up, I think, this week. Prospect Stockwatch. We'll have report cards as the Canucks hit the quartermark, a mailbag, a bunch of stuff.

like that, so check that out. And then obviously Canucks talk here on SportsNet 650. Awesome, man. We'll keep with a great work. We'll have you on again soon. Looking forward to going to watch Canucks Cracking in Seattle with you over the weekend. And some football. Absolutely. And happy American Thanksgiving to all your American listeners. Oh, absolutely. And we'll be back soon with plenty more of the PDO cast. Thank you for listening to us here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.