The Hockey PDOcast - Setting the Scene Out West

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Jesse Granger joins Dimitri to break down how the Golden Knights were able to beat the Oilers in round 2, and what they did to resurface a lot of issues for Edmonton that we thought we were done with. Then Sean Shapiro hops on to discuss last night's Game 7 in Dallas, the heroes for the Stars, and why this upcoming West Final will be so fun.This podcast is produced by Lina Setaghian and 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.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipo. Welcome to the Hockey PTOCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Jesse Granger. Jesse, what's going on, man? Not much. Having a good time. Playoffs is the best time of the year coming off a thrilling series, getting ready for another one. That's right. Yeah, we're coming off of Vegas's series win on Sunday night,

where they finished Oilers off in six games. And what you and I are going to do here today is we're going to unpack how it happened, what the Golden Knights did to give the Oilers problems and maybe kind of do like a quick little look ahead. Now that we do know that Vegas will be playing Dallas in the West final, we can kind of touch on that a little bit as some foreshadowing. But, you know, I wanted to start this with, I want to do a bit of a Miacopa on the Oilers.

We're going to focus this certainly from the Golden Knights perspective. But I was, anyone that's been listening to the show knows I was very high on them. After the deadline, basically, heading into the playoffs. I kind of framed a lot of my series previews through rounds one and two, like through that lens. I just thought that after they acquired Mitya S. Kohlm, everything kind of fell into place for them, right? They looked different. The results reflected that.

A lot of the issues that they'd had previously and a lot of the concerns we'd had for why they kept falling short in the postseason appear to be addressed, right? Like their forward depth was holding up better than it ever had in the McDavid era previously. With Ekholm there, they were able to sort of limit the minutes of some of their other defensemen and ride him and Bouchard much more. than they had previously. And their 5-15 play had much improved too, right? For all the talk about how historically great the power play had been and how much they were producing there, in round one, they went up against a really good 5-15 team in the Kings,

and they dominated them particularly off the cycle. And it was like, all right, well, this is, if this is going to be the norm for this team, we need to really adjust accordingly in terms of our expectations. And then they run into this vague school, the Knights team in round two. And pretty much every single one of those issues, popped back up and got exploited and exposed by the Golden Knights.

And so I don't know if saying disappointing is the right thing, because I think maybe we should be celebrating what Vegas did and sort of how the comparison between the two teams for everything that Edmonton was lacking, Vegas kind of had none of those weaknesses themselves. But it certainly didn't look like the series that I expected heading in. Yeah, I pretty much agree with all of that. I thought that the Golden Knights were able to bring back some of those weaknesses. Because I was with you.

I thought, wow, Edmonton looked so good against L.A., especially at five-on-five. And knowing the disparity in the special teams, because not just how good Edmonton's power play is, but the Golden Knights power play has been bad for a long, long time. And it wasn't good in that series. It scored some big goals for them. So they got a couple timely goals from it, but it's still, overall wasn't very good. And in my mind, it's like, I don't know how you can overcome that big of a disparity in special teams unless you're so obviously clearly the better team at five on five.

And I wasn't sure if the Golden Knights could do that, but they did. And I think a big part of it is you mentioned like the faults for the Oilers that popped up, like forward depth. We all kind of looked at their forwards and said this is the deepest they've been, but they weren't as deep as the Golden Knights. and the Golden Knights depth forwards just outplayed them. And not necessarily in a head-to-head matchup, it was they would out, they would go out there and play a good shift against a McDavid or a dry sidle and basically neutralize that shift so that then when the Golden Knights top guys could get out there against one of the Oilers depth lines, the Oilers' depth lines couldn't neutralize Vegas as stars the way theirs did to Edmonton.

So yeah, I think, I think Vegas was uniquely, built with a lot of strengths where the oilers weakest parts were. Well, and one of those was goaltending in this series, right? Stuart Skinner had an 875 save percentage, natural statute had him and minus 5.2 goals save above expected in the six games. And he was pulled on three occasions, including in the last two in games five and six. And while there's, it's kind of lazy to just put all the blame on the goalie because I think there's a lot of stuff that happened in front of them that led to that.

it's impossible not to compare him to the guy at the other end of the ice given to disparity in performance between the two, right? And Aiden Hill comes in, I believe it was early in game three, right, when Lauren Braswa got hurt, kind of going side to side on a two on one on off a rebound off of a rush shot. And he was largely phenomenal. Like he had a 934 percentage in the series plus 5.1 goal saveable of unexpected. So essentially mirrored in the other direction what Stuart Skinner did. And, you know, the clincher is a great example where he gives up goals on the first two shots the Oilers take in game six.

And then he just stops the next 39 with a bunch of high degree of difficulty ones in there as well. And in watching that, I was thinking back, last time I had you on the show, I looked at it was April 12th. So it was a few days before the playoffs started. And we had a conversation about who we think the Vegas golden night's goal he's going to be. And you correctly were like, it's going to be Lauren Brousa to start because he's been playing. playing well and he's kind of gotten into this point recently. And then we had a whole conversation about Aiden Hill and how I was interested in him in an Oilers matchup because I felt like his athleticism and sort of his sealing performance

because of those physical gifts gave them a unique opportunity against what this Oilers' offense could look like. Now, obviously, he didn't expect the circumstances in terms of coming in in game three after an injury, but certainly wound up coming in playing really well and showing a lot of the things that I think we liked about him in a matchup of this kind of caliber. Yeah, he played really well. It's basically the story of the Golden Knight's season is a throw in an unheralded goalie. I guess in the case of Jonathan Quick, not unheralded, but just struggling at this point in his

career. And unheralded in the case of Logan Thompson and Laurent Rousseau and Aden Hill and even Yuri Patera who came up from the H.L. And played a few games for him. And all of them have played well. And the goalies deserve a ton of credit and Aden Hill deserves a ton of credit, especially after, I mean, giving up two, the two first shots of the game, you give up goals. I play goalie in Men's League. And I can say I'm very experienced with giving up goals on the first two shots.

And the mental side of the game, rarely does it, no, not rarely, never do I save the next 39. I'm usually angry and not playing well for the rest of the game. I was so impressed with his ability to shake those off in a huge game and a tough environment. and play as well as he did. But as much credit as the goalies deserve and they deserve a ton, I think the difference between Vegas getting the play they got out of Hill and even Versaweil before that and what Edmonton got out of Skinner is Vegas makes life easy on their goalies. They've done it all year. Bruce Cassidy said it when he got the job. I run a goalie friendly system and it's proven to be every bit of that all season long. They have constantly made the lives

of whatever goal is in net, so much easier than pretty much any other team. I think that they, the way they use their zone defense and create a shell around the slot and have all the shots coming from the outside, part of it is limiting the high danger chances. But I think another part of it is how many low danger chances they allow. They allow a ton of shots from the outside. They let their goalie. One, it boosts their safe percentage because you're making a bunch of easy saves.

Two, it gets, it lets you feel the puck. It gets you some confidence. you don't feel like you're not playing in the game. Like sometimes your team doesn't allow any high danger chances as a goalie. You're kind of cold back there and then suddenly it's a two on one and you give one up. It allows you to feel like you're part of the game. You're making saves. You're feeling the puck.

And yet you're not being overextended. You're not being asked to make really, really tough saves. And then when you do have to make one like the Eckholm shot in the in the slot that Hill explodes over to get his blocker on, he's ready for it. Meanwhile, on the other side, I think the Oilers, they don't give up as many shots. at the shots in game six and it was like 22 for Vegas, I think, and 40 something for for Edmonton, but they give up high danger ones when they do. And they don't make life on their goal easy. Like you look at the third goal, I think it was. They double screened Skinner, both of his own guys. There wasn't even a Golden Knights player in front of the net. And his two

defensemen both screened him on the shot on Hague's blast. So it was the fourth goal. And they just did not make life on easy on Stewart Skinner. I just thought, every goal that they scored. Like maybe you could say was a little bit his fault, but there were always reasons to blame the defense every single time. So I think that, yes, the Golden Knights got the advantage in the goalie department, just their goalie outplayed Edmontons.

But I also don't put that all on Skinner. I think if, and like a lot of people said, oh, they should have put Campbell in like, well, Campbell, I think out of 107 goalies this year, I think he ranked 104th in goals saved above expected. Like, yeah, he wasn't just the worst goalie in the league.

Like, he was worse than three goalies on every team in the entire NHL. Like, he was awful this season. So I don't buy the, like, Jay Woodcroft made a mistake by going back to his goalie over and over again. So that's kind of my stance. No, I completely agree. And I think part of the logic of why I was, you know, high on the oilers heading in was like, Stuart Skinner was much better than Jack Campbell this year. And hopefully in the playoffs, they just won't have to play Jack Campbell because Stuart Skinner will be

good enough and that obviously wasn't the case here you know that's a great point you make about hill there because i believe the two goals he gave up right one was like a big david rush shot and he just beat him and another one was kind of like a a play coming out from behind the net it was a high danger opportunity and so on the one hand it's nice after that to get some low danger saves in you to at least kind of be like all right i'm finally making i've made more saves than i've given up goals against we're also a good start right at the same time though a trend in round two we've seen is that when it started snowballing, teams have really gone off the rails, right? Like some of these games have, and Vegas got the first goal in this one, so at least it was

2-1, it wasn't 2-0 right out of the gate. But we've seen a lot of these games, even in this series, all of a sudden, you look up and it's 4-0, 5-1, and it's like, all right, this game's over, and then they make the goalie change. In this case, at least he'll, like, stuck around long enough to see it through and eventually give them the result that they got. So, yeah, it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B, but for sure. on the 5-15 front in this series, Vegas won 15 to 9 in terms of 5-15 goals.

And for me, the key battleground was off the rush. I was really curious to see how that would work out. I believe the even strength goals off the rush were 6 to 3 in this series in Vegas's favor, if I have that correct. And a fun stat I have for use in the four wins the Vegas had, they combined for 52 5-15 rush shots. In the two losses, they had just 12, six in each game. And so I think that kind of, that details to me sort of the differences in game environment

and kind of the seesaws we saw in this series in terms of the back and forth, particularly in the first four games. And also how much success Vegas was able to have when they finally got out in transition and got on the move and how they were able to attack the Oilers defensemen that way. Yeah, the Golden Knights have been this way for basically six years where they don't score all that well with sustained zone pressure. When all 10 skaters are in the offensive zone and they have to cycle the puck around, they just don't find ways to score goals in those situations for the most part.

They're excellent in transition. They have been for basically their entire existence. And when teams feed into that is when they're at their best. And like Jay Woodcroft, after every Oilers loss, the reporters would come in. They'd ask him about how the stars didn't score, about how. They couldn't get goals. He wanted none of it. All he wanted to talk about was the defensive miscues.

And that's exactly what he's talking about is we didn't defend them well enough in transition. And not just defending well, but managing the puck well enough to avoid having to defend in transition. The Golden Knights are so good in the neutral zone. You look back to that series two years ago when they upset the avalanche after losing the first two games. They just shut Nathan McKinnon and Miko Ranton down in the neutral zone and would not let them get speed. and they would force miscues that when you have a team as dangerous as Colorado or Edmonton, their players are flowing up the ice so fast. So when you do force the turnover, when you do force the mistake,

you've got a lot of players on the wrong side of the puck for the other team, and you can take advantage the other way. And to me, this series mirrored that Colorado series so much in that Mark Stone, William Carlson, Riley Smith, Chandler Stevenson, Jack Eichel, all defended incredibly well in the neutral And obviously the defensemen did a good job of keeping their gaps to allow those forwards to get in those lanes. But the forwards forcing mistakes by the defensemen in breakouts and by the forwards trying to gain the blue line allowed them to get into transition. And when you give the Golden Knights space, they finish. There were so many two on ones for the Oilers that they didn't score on.

And for a team that talented, that's, I mean, you're not going to win miniseries if you're not finishing your two on ones. Whereas the Golden Knights, when they would get a two on one rush, they would cast. in on it. So I think that was a big, a big difference in the series. And it'll be fascinating because I believe the stars have scored more rush goals so far this postseason than any other team by a pretty significant margin. I think ESPN during last night's game seven flashed. They had like six more or something than anyone else in the league. So that'll be a that'll be a heck of a battleground there. I'm excited about that. But I'm doing a big, big preview coming up soon. So I don't want to step on the toes of that too much.

But okay, on the other side, though, like they really just pummeled that CCNERS pairing. I think it's, I think that's an important point for us to hit here that, that you can't overlook because in Cody sees he's 82 515 minutes, Vegas won that matchup 8 to 1. In the other 186 minutes, it was 8.7 Edmonton. And for me, it was strange. And we can talk more about coaching here and kind of transition to that because I know we wanted to highlight sort of the disparity in what Bruce Cassidy was able to do here for his Jay Woodcroft. when someone's getting hammered to that extent, and this isn't like some sort of niche expected goal model or like something where it's like,

oh, you have to go on the dark web to find out this metric that no one else knows about. This is pure goals being scored and also just like from the eye test of seeing it happen before your very eyes. Generally when the games or a series is going that way and a player specifically is getting hammered to that extent, a coach you'd think would like take extreme measures

to try and alleviate that pain, right? Whether it's making some sort of a tactical change or significantly shifting their usage. And in this series, not that he necessarily had too many options to experiment with, but Jay Woodcroft just kind of kept going back to that well. Like, he didn't really seem to be able to do anything to stop that bleeding. And I think that's a bit of a failure,

both in terms of the roster construction and also his own in this series. And I think that that's kind of a case and point of the difference between these two teams here where that was a very exploitable weakness and Vegas just kept kind of pressing down on it, whereas Edmonton wasn't really able to do anything like that to them on the other end of the ice. Right. Yeah. And when you say that, you bring those numbers up, like you mentioned the eye test.

In my head, I'm picturing Vegas getting to CC on the forecheck over and over and over. Like once they would get pressure on him, they would pin him up against the boards and win that battle. And generally, a scoring chance comes shortly after. Um, they, the golden nights have done this for both rounds in these playoffs. Um, in terms of like Winnipeg, they got to their defensemen pinned them against the walls and were able to create chances off it. Um, and a big part of it's Jack Eichael. Like I've been so impressed with him off the puck. Um, and then he was really good in that series too. So he, he's going to the front of the net. He was beating CC a lot. And I just when I think back to this series and I think about puck battles, because I feel like the golden nights winning puck battles was a big part of the reason they won. Cece was on the wrong end of a lot of those when I think back to it. So yeah, I do think that and in terms of Bruce Cassidy and the way he,

I thought the way he managed things when Petrangelo got suspended was brilliant because he had a tough decision to make. And honestly, he was waffling because you look at the way he lined them up in morning skate the day of the game. It was different than what he decided to do at game time. So Petrangelo goes out. He's their top pairing right side defenseman. It's played next to Alec Martinez, basically the entire season.

The options were, do I put Nick Hague up there? Now, you're putting Nick Hague on his offside, the side he's not comfortable playing against, in a top pair of minutes role. With a player he's almost never played with, like it's like five games he's played with Alec Martinez. That was what he did in morning skate. That's the way he lined up. And then you put Ben Hutton, who's your seventh defenseman, you plug him into the bottom pair with White Cloud and call it a day. or which is what Cassidy ended up doing last minute and it was brilliant, put Ben Hutton, your seventh defenseman who's only played one playoff game up to this point,

put him in next to Martinez on that top pair, leave Hagen White Cloud together and just elevate their role. And I thought it was, it worked so well because so Hagen White Cloud have played together, not just basically their entire NHL career, but they played together in the Chicago Wolves organization and the HL girl. They played two full seasons paired together as the top pairing in the HL. Then they get bumped up. They're probably the best bottom pair in the NHL.

I've been saying it all year. I think they are the best bottom pair. So you keep Hague on his comfortable side with a guy he's known forever. They communicate so well. Just give them more responsibility. Let them play against McDavid and Drysidal a little more. And lower Martinez and Hutton's responsibility. Martinez is going to be playing with someone new regardless.

So lower the load on those. those guys. And I just thought, and it worked brilliantly, that might have been Vegas's best defensive game of the entire series. And they did it without Alex Petrangelo. So I thought Cassidy was, was excellent all series long. He's been, he's outcoached both coaches that the Golden Knights have played in bonus and Woodcroft. He's got a bit tougher of a matchup with Pete DeBore here coming up. But yeah, Cassidy's been brilliant. Yeah. And, you know, despite not having the luxury of last change in what, three of the final four games after it was one one heading to Edmonton, it felt like as the series progressed, he was also able to more and more often get every

matchup that he seemed to prefer as it went along. And what sticks out to me is, so in games one and two, the Oilers were being able to get that Ryan McLeod sort of checking line out against Jack Eichols unit more often. I think they play like eight five on five minutes head to head. And in that time, Ickel's line generated the one goal, but shots were eight to four for Edmonton, high to hit your chances, three. to one and the Oilers you'd think would love that matchup based on those results right and then you go to games three to six the rest of the way they wind up playing just nine minutes head to get head to head against

each other don't really see it at all despite the fact that once again shots were six two high danger chances for nothing in that time for the Oilers and instead Cassidy's able to get Eichel out against either Dreisital after the Oilers split him and david up or bugstead and with both guys kind of generally being having CC and hers as their last line of defense. And they just teed off on those combinations. I think Iko's line outscored Dr. Cidal 4-0-0 in 28 minutes, 3-0 against Bukstad and shots for 18 to 5 in those 20 minutes. And that's about as one-sided as it gets.

And so being able to free up your top scoring line that way, and then what they did as a result of that is also, I think, why this opened up for Vegas the way that it did. And kudos to him because he managed it perfectly, right? he was able to to get either Carlson or that kind of stone Stevenson combination against McDavid more often than not. And then that freed up, I call to just basically, like, I'm with you. He was awesome along the boards.

He was awesome off the puck. But the difference maker in this series was him, Barbership and Marshalls So creating goals. And they were able to do so, I think, in large part because of what their coach did to put them in that position. Yep. I totally agree. And I think a big part of that leads to that. And like you look at it.

You say like, well, Woodcroft had last change. Like, why is he not getting that matchup? I think the biggest reason was the job that William Carlson was doing on dry sidle and McDavid. They didn't, the Oilers did not score a goal this series with William Carlson on the ice against those two, which is incredible. And Woodcroft even admitted it after the loss in game six. We asked him about not, he was basically avoiding putting McDavid on the ice against

Carlson. And he said, well, that's the matchup that Vegas would like. So we were trying to not have that. And then Cassidy said, well, that tells you what they think about William Carlson. And it backfired. It backfired on him because Cassidy puts Carlson out to start the game. Woodcroft says, okay, well, we're not putting McDavid out there. And then Connor McDavid ends up playing five minutes and 26 seconds in the first period,

which I looked at that on the statute during the intermission. And I was like, that's got to be a typo. Yeah. Let me go on the internet. Let me go on the NHL page and see what the number actually is. I could not believe my eyes. Connor McDavid played five minutes. And he scored the goal on the first shift of the game,

his first shift. Yep. And then just didn't look in rhythm for the rest of the game. And back to the McLeod line, Woodcroft decided to put the McLeod line out there against Carlson as much as possible in order to have Drysidle and McDavid away from Carlson. So Carlson's defensive efforts,

and not just Carlson, Amadio and. Waugh and Smith who played against that on that line were excellent also it wasn't just William Carlson but he's he's obviously the center so he gets talked about the most but the way they played against the oiler stars forced Woodcroft to put that McLeod line against them just for no other reason to avoid to try to get his stars going to try to get dry sidle and McDavid going and that allowed Eichl to play against some more favorable matchups so yes I think when you look at the way these lines matched up whether it was in Vegas or in Edmonton, Cassidy got the better of it.

No, he did certainly. And I'm glad you'll highlight a Carlson there. I mean, he had 28 minutes head to head, 5-1-5 against McDavid in the series, and not a single goal was scored. And then the Vegas didn't generate anything themselves, but I think they'll take that trade off, right? It's kind of like you're sacrificing yourself for the betterment of the team. And that is why, you know, he's had some goals in this postseason.

And there's a handful of Vegas Golden Knights that have more points for him than him, all situations. But he has been right up there as their most important player because of that two-way element and what he's meant to allowing some of these other matchups to fall in the place. And so I wanted to give him a bit of love there. And, you know, that Ico line. So they were up 8 to 1 at 515 for the series. Him, Barbosheb and Marshaven and Marcia So combined for 11 goals in all situations.

And Marshallson in particular, you know, he has that natural hatrick in game six, which is kind of the cherry on top. But even before then, I thought he was getting about as many good looks as you could possibly ask for. I think for the series, I had him down for 16 scoring chances. He had 34 shots on goal in just six games. And so they were the difference for them. They were able to keep creating sustainable sources of offense. And so, you know, kudos to everyone involved because it worked out from a chess match

perspective. It worked out perfectly. It's almost like Cassidy kind of baited Woodcroft into this. And I'm totally with you. It looked like they were spooked a little bit by that matchup in game six. And at that point, they totally took themselves out of the element by they're trying to avoid it so drastically where it's like, you have Connor McDavid. You should be the one enforcing your will in this situation.

And it was reminiscent different players, but the conversation we had when Vegas was able to come back from down 2-0-0-Ans, Colorado, and they did a similar thing to Nathan McKinnon's line, where by the end of that series, Jared Bednar was like jumping through hoops just to get McKinnon off of the ice whenever Stone was out there. And that totally threw everything they were trying to do and everything that made them successful in the regular season completely out of whack. Totally. Marsha, man, he's been so impressive. I mean, so like he started the playoffs on a, like he was really snake-bitten. he couldn't score. I think he went the first seven games up until game three of this series without a goal. And Bruce Cassidy, I was talking to him after the game and he's like, yeah, at that point, about halfway through the playoffs, he realized, I'm not going to be able to score these one-timer

goals on the rush. Like they're not setting it on a tee for me. I've got to go to the dirty areas of the ice. And Marsha, so he is very generously listed at 5-9. He's not 5-9. No chance is he 5-9. He's like 5-7 at best. He's a little guy. But he plays like he's 6-6. His second goal of that game, I just thought, was such a great example of how, like, yes, the Golden Knights coaching, the strategy beat Edmonton, but you have to, the players have to win individual battles. And Marsha's second goal in the middle of that natural hat trick was he checks dry sidle behind the net, behind the oilers net, separates him from the puck. Then he skates to the front, shoulder checks dry sidle out of the way. Drysidels got like four inches and 30 pounds on him. Shoulder checks him out of the way and then immediately pushes nurse out of the way to clear this giant space in front of the net.

And it's like these two guys have six inches and 40 pounds on like on Marsha's. And yet he won both those battles. Martinez's a shot goes off Skinner's arm bounces up in the air and then Marcia so is there to slam dunk it in. And it's like the only reason he's there to slam dunk it in is because he just pushed two guys there twice as size out of that area so that he could be there. super impressive individual effort by Marsha. Yeah, and he was one of a number of guys that contributed in meaningful ways in this series. And that's what that's the main lasting takeaway from this and kind of the differences between these two teams, right?

Like Oilers, for all the talk about even their bottom six depth or whatever, what really let them down here was their top six wingers where they just didn't do nearly enough. I believe between Hyman, Nugent Hopkins, Yamamoto, and Evander Kane, they combined for two goals in this series. One was like a goal to make it for nothing in game four and another just kind of bounced in off of Zach Hyman and he didn't actually even do anything in front of the net. And considering all the opportunities McDavid and Dre said a way able to create, that's not good enough. Whereas with Vegas, not only did they get contributions from everyone, but they also showed no kind of discernible weaknesses as well. They were able to kind of play in various different

game environments and forms. And so as we look ahead to the West Final, that's what makes it such a riveting matchup for me, amongst many other reasons, is that the stars are much more suited to kind of hang in that way where they're getting contributions from a bunch of guys up and down the lineup. They can play in different ways themselves. They're not necessarily a one-no team that's limited to having to play a specific type of game. And so I think that's going to make for one heck of a West Final. I'm really excited about it. Yeah, I agree. I think Dallas mirrors the Golden Knights very, there's a lot of similarities, whereas the Oilers and Golden Knights, it was kind of a like, like, can this type of team beat this type of team series?

Dallas, you look at their, I was actually, I was writing the preview last night, and I look at their lines. And it's like, wow, they have three legitimate scoring lines with the, with the scoring kind of pretty evenly distributed. Obviously, that top line is putting up numbers even without Robertson scoring a lot. But, and then they've got a fourth line that's like checking line guys. And that's exactly what the Golden Knights have. The Golden Knights have three legitimate scoring lines with the Ica line, the Stone line, and the Carlson line.

And then their fourth line is dirty checking players that are going to try to get greasy goals. And it's just, and then you look at the Stars Blue Line. They've got some offense with Heiskenon. They've got really good depth veteran defensemen down the pairs. These teams mirror each other. And then the stars have a massive advantage in net. But the Golden Knights out did. I mean, the first round, it was Hellebuck versus Brose.

And Bursua got the better of it because the Golden Knights made life easy on him. So it's going to be interesting to see if, I mean, it's a tall task to ask Aden Hill to outplay Jake Ottinger. But I think it can be done. Yeah, I think so too. I'm excited about it. Looking forward to deep diving that in the next couple days. Jesse, I'm going to let you go here. I'll let you quickly plug some stuff and let the listeners know where they can check you out.

Thanks. Yeah, it's lots of stories going up. This is the time of year where it's like it seems like every eight hours. There's a new story up on the athletic. But yeah, lots of playoff coverage. I have a big thing coming out on Jack Eichel and maybe he's one of the favorites for the con smite and his first playoffs ever. So go check that out at Theathletic.com. Well, not if I can.

I'm going to make a William Carlson push. So he's going to have to get through me first. Jesse, enjoy the West Final. Keep up the great work. We're going to check in with you sometime down the road here soon, hopefully. And we're going to let you go here. We're going to take a break ourselves. And then when we come back, we're going to finish up the show with a look at the other side of the West Bracket.

you're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Discussing the biggest stories that matter to Vancouver sports fans. Halford and Brough in the morning. Subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We're back here on the Hockey-Ocast. We've replaced Jesse Granger with our pal, Sean Shapiro. Sean, you're accepting the hot tag coming into the ring here, bring the heat. What's going on, bud?

It's not too much, actually. weird, right? Like we've gone like nights after nights with playoff hockey and now we go two dark nights, three dark nights without games after, before the start of the next round. Two dark nights, Tuesday and Wednesday, right? And then Thursday, Carolina against Florida starts. I mean, here in the content game, I certainly don't mind it. It's nice to have some time to do our recaps round two and do the previews for round three. All that's great. But it does certainly feel weird to have nothing on the schedule tonight. So who knows? My, uh, I just hang out.

We'll see how it goes. But here's the plan. So let's talk Stars Cracking. We're coming fresh off of last night's game seven. You know, it was a tense game, I thought, especially at the start, right? When it's like that close at zero zero for what, the first half of the game or so late into the second period. There are a couple posts at either end. But, you know, I definitely subscribe to the theory of like in these game sevens where it's do or die.

The longer the game goes on, the more the underdog should be viewed as, as, like it's in their favor, right? Because it feels like there's a weird energy in the rink. You start kind of like hearing murmuring and that angst among the home fans, like, wondering like, what's going to happen here? Our heart's just going to be absolutely crushed any minute now. And also, you know, just have more variance. There's fewer events left in the game.

And so if you are an underdog, all you really need to do is just score the one goal, then you could probably hang on. And that's why that Rupert Hintz goal that he scored was just so enormous. Beyond the fact that it put them up one-nothing, it just felt like such a release of energy. And it was a vintage. I hate when young players already have vintage attached to them, but it was such a vintage Rupé Hince moment, I thought.

Yeah, it was kind of, you're watching that game. And it was one of those moments where with how the game was played, it was always for the longest time it didn't feel like if Dallas would win it would be when Dallas would win but the longer it's zero zero that when turns into

that when starts to turn into ifs if that makes any sense right like the longer in zero zero the longer it becomes well maybe the Seattle four check creates a weird goal maybe a shot takes a a weird bounce. Maybe you get this and you're and maybe it's Grubeauer's night. And the hid

skull kind of settled things back to the norm of the game. The score at least started to reflect the fact that Dallas was controlling possession. They were the better team. And the Hinskoll kind of put everything back to a normal level where the score is like, okay, this is, this is how this game is going. The score at least somewhat reflects what we're seeing in front of us. And definitely had that impact. Watch it on the stars. Definitely had that impact on them. Some of the uneasiness that we could have potentially crept in a little bit more, didn't. And it was, I mean, and it was also, you're right, vintage vintage Rope hints. I mean, I liked watching that game. And if you like screen gravest,

it's kind of one of those like jami alexiac has like one of those like one of those movie moments where it's like you're probably wondering how i got here like right there like right when the when the puck's kind of like when he's when he's struggling to control it and hints is like six feet away like i'm sure he's had that experience and practice many times in the past exactly yes so that was uh that moment obviously uh it's kind of it's where the series kind of ends right there obviously i know seattle scores late in the game and and and white johns and you need the second one one to make it two to one. But that moment right there, that's the one where that made sure the team that was deserved to win last night, won. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he just, I feel for Alexei

because on the replay, it looks bad, right? It's like, oh, what a boneheaded mistake by him. But then you put yourself in those shoes and you just had this maniac flying at you a million miles an hour. And it was vintage because he rushes at him. He pokes it away. And then just moving at an extreme speed downhill, just rips past the goalie. And it was also such an infusion or shot of adrenaline as well, right? And, you know, not that this affected the home crowd, obviously, because you have your own sort of energy and excitement there. But as a viewer at home, just hearing Bob Wussuzin's call of it was also amazing, right?

Because it reflected the kind of the moment where the buildup and energy and the excitement and then the release. And so it was a perfect moment. And it was really cool. And avoiding going into that second intermission where you're like, all right, it's zero, zero, and we're going into a third period. This is a very scary situation where anything can go wrong, as you alluded to, avoiding that as well, was huge.

And, you know, in that game, it really felt like the stars gave the crack in some of their own medicine, right, with that, like, swarming defensive effort. There are a number of times where they caused a, with their four check, a turn over behind the net, and then quickly whipped it out front and got a good scoring chance off of it. And they just didn't give them anything all game. in the 52 5-15 minutes they were played the Cracken generated 17 shots

1.3 expected goals and I had the scoring chances at 19 to 6 for Dallas before they pulled Grubao and kind of mounted a late spirited comeback towards the end there but it was it was good to see that it was a well-earned win

and it was also a reflection of the series as a whole right because you look at it now we have the snapshot of these seven games and there were a bunch of twists and turns in terms of goal is being pulled and exchanging blowouts and stuff. At the end of the day, each team scored 26 goals in this series. Yeah. The shots were very close.

I think Seattle actually got slightly better of it. But then if you look at it, the high danger chances, all the scoring chances were so far in favor of Dallas. And that's kind of also become a trademark of theirs over the past couple of years, but even this year under Pete DeBore where the quality they're able to generate of their shots is always going to be significantly higher than just the raw shots. And that was the case in this series, and that was certainly the case in this game as well.

Yeah. And it was, and it's a game, too, where, like, I know it's only 2-1 and it looks that way, but it is a game where you have to give, you have to tip your hat to Rubauer kept the game closer early on than it,

than it should have been. Like, you're watching that game and you're looking at shot quality. And it was also a game that kind of encapsulated the series, too, because like you look at you want the the two minutes that will probably show and the crack in postseason highlight reel when Dave Haxel shows his team it'll be that first period power play where they blocked what 10 shots nine nine or 10 shots on that on that Dallas power play in the first period where it's like that's the video where it's like you play like the

you play like an epic like music score whatever like this is like crescendoing towards bannon tann of throwing his body around yeah Yeah, like, this is what we're all about. This is like, that will be like the, that will be like in like Crackin TV commercials next year of like the team put in the body on the line and, uh, and everything like that. And it just the series kind of the Cracken worked hard. They built a team that is, has reached higher, uh, heights than, than an expansion team is supposed to. I know Vegas rechanged the kind of what everyone expects with expansion needs, but in reality, you're not supposed to be. this spot in year two and part of it is Seattle built a team that works hard and does and and

comes at you this way and so it was really was a good encapsulation of the entire series and the better team advanced and and I think at the end of the day that's what we're trying to get with these best of seven series yeah Sean just so you know though crack and don't reach greater heights they were they reach greater depths yeah yeah I think that's an important distinction here if we're going to be, you know, if we're going to call it like it is. Yeah, I think the only negative for me, and you're right, the better team one, is I'd been to a couple games now during this run, one in each series at Climate Pledge of Atlanta in Seattle, and I really just enjoyed it. It was a great experience, fun time, awesome rink. And I've forgotten how much I missed, like,

just going to play off hockey, living here in Vancouver, and I haven't had a chance to watch too many of those games in the past handful of years. And so won't get to do that. I was definitely planning. I was like, man, I'm going to go for games three or four of the conference final if Seattle advances here. So I'm going to miss that. But might have to make a trip out to Dallas, especially if there's a Stanley Cup final game

there this year. Let's go through some of the heroes of the game seven then. So I mentioned Rupert Hins, right? Obviously stood out, had the 13 shot attempts, scored the goal, kind of not cementing because there's still so much more runaway here. But through two rounds, so far and away, the Kahn-Smith favorite at this point, in my opinion, especially with some of the players that have been eliminated recently. It just feels like it's kind of open there for him.

I mean, the nine goals, 10 assists in 13 games, already a handful of these memorable moments that are like unique to Rupéi Hints as well. So that's some of her track. We can talk about Miro Hayskin in here as well. I don't know if you have any other notes on Hints or we can move on to Mero, but I think both guys because the depth is a story certainly but I think the role those two guys played particularly with the season on the line should not be lost over. Well, yeah, and I think hints it should be noted too.

You talk about his performance is so great and vital and important and everything like that. But it's also it was needed with, and we've talked about, and you look at Jason Roberts and he started to find a little bit bit of it, but Jason Robertson doesn't score in that series. And the fact that, so without Rope Hince was doing the heavy lifting by necessity as well, because he had to kind of step up in a space where the guy who had 109 points in the regular season didn't look like that guy. And I think that's important. I mean, I did find it a little bit funny.

It's just people are talking about like, oh, well, Hintz is right up there with the two the Edmonton guys when it comes to scoring and everything like that. And it was never also followed up. By the way, those guys are out of the playoffs now. Like that's like it's, I do, I do think we should make a quick note of the past five stars games have now. The game winning goal has been scored by someone who lives in the Pavelski residence. I think, I think that's, I know they can't. When you look at Hans Smyth voting and things like that,

I'm not sure how being the landlord. Was the Pabelsky household? Yes, the Pabelsky household has, that's five straight games of Pavelsky household scoring the game winning goal. So that's, uh, that's important. And obviously, I mean, Heskin in last night, that's another, that's another difference in that Dallas Seattle series, right? Where we saw how disheveled Dallas got when he got hurt and left the game.

And as good of the Seattle story is, and I like the depth they built on their defense. It's a pretty good, really good defense. for a second year team they don't have anyone like he she can and that's the difference and he played what 32 minutes or whatever last night and it's well Dallas it's become so it is I have very few teams do have a a mirror of their own right um yeah but yeah 32 7 last night these are his I tweeted this but these are his ice time totals in this series in games where he actually played the full game and then leave after having his face broken yeah 28 57 2559 3102, 2851, 3,4, 54.

So quite the workload. And, you know, a couple defensive plays in game 7 in particular that I noticed where, and I thought the broadcast was awesome, particularly the play by play. But, and so this isn't unique to them. But he makes it look so easy sometimes in like these little plays where a Ryan Donato or something would take the puck into the zone and then quickly have his time and space. is taken away to the point where he just gets like sealed up against the boards and then suitor or whoever the stars player around there is can just basically come and just take the puck

for themselves and then break it out or pass it to someone else and it's just like immediately got removed in the cleanest way possible by Miro and he does that a handful of times it makes it looks so easy that the commentator almost doesn't even note it it's like if they're just having a conversation about some other's anecdote or something they don't stop to be like oh what a play there it just kind of keeps going with the play-by-play call. And the way he does it, it's almost, I think, left in the wrong hands, a lot of these plays could go wildly differently, but we just never get to actually see the other team turn it into what it could have been

because he stops it at such an early point in time in the sequence. And so I wanted to note that because it's just, it's a joy to watch. Anyone that says defense is boring has clearly never, watched Mero Hayskin and do his thing. It's like watching the, it's like if someone, if you really wanted to like watch an NFL Sunday game and ISO on like, I don't know, who's who's like a like a top cornerback in the lean right now. Like a Stephen Gilmore or something like that.

I'm far from the NFL expert now. So someone who's could give me a better example than that. But if you wanted to ISO on one of the best cornerbacks in the league and just see how they basically position and take. take out a top receiver. Like, it's what Hachkinin does throughout the entire game. It's impressive. And he is someone who,

you and I have both watched a lot of Dallas Stars hockey. You really appreciate it there. And I think it's something that unless you watch the Stars a lot, you sometimes miss it because you can think that's, oh, that's just that's coincidence that the guy ended up there. But then you watch this team over and over again, you realize

how much Hachkinan really just by the way he skates plays to death. It's impressive. Really cool. I'm really excited. I'm starting to fire myself up for this West Final. I think he's going to be awesome. I think it is very deserving of determining who the Western Conference Representative

is going to be in the Stanley Cup Final. And I've seen some takes so far that are like, what a disaster for the NHL this is. I don't care about these teams. I'm sorry, that just says more about you than it says about this series. Like that just, you clearly have not been paying attention then. You're probably just following on Twitter and like watching team accounts, tweet little clips or something because I don't know how you can watch these teams

and not be really excited about not only the on ice product, which I think is going to be really fun and played at a super high level that's aesthetically friendly, but also just the storytelling, right? It's like, oh, how do you market these teams? I don't know. Pick one out of a handful of very easily marketable storylines from Pete DeBur going against his former team. Yeah.

Evgeny to Donov, the way he was discarded, playing a big role now for the Stars team against his former team. The rematch of the 2020 bubble West Final, which maybe, okay, fair enough, we don't want to relieve that necessarily. But, you know, there's so many, things here to the point where it's an 100, it's a 111 point team

to finish first in its conference against a 108 point team that was second in the league and goal differential this season. These are two elite teams. This isn't like, oh, these scrappy underdog story of two wildcar teams that are lucky to be here. These were arguably the two best teams in the Western

conference this season and now they're playing for the chance to move on to the Stanley Cup final. I hate the other thing that's been just hilarious to me has been the I've seen some of the Twitter takes of like, oh, well, it's small market. And like, if you want to make the case for the Eastern final and you want to try to throw it around and I would even argue with you on some extent there.

But Dallas is the fourth largest market in North America, which is, which would therefore in the world, I don't know, this makes it pretty large. And then Vegas is arguably the most, I don't know, it's probably after, it may, even be one of the most recognizable cities in North America now, depending on when you think about it's where it is with Formula One and where it is worldwide. Like to call these two, to call it small market is kind of objectively hilarious. And it's objectively hilarious. Objectively hilarious, Paddenly Falls. Exactly. Exactly. And it is, it's going to be a fun series. It's going to be there's the storylines are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are,

with this. Like, I love the, from a Vegas perspective, and I know Jesse, you and Jesse probably already talked about this, but like the Jack Eichel conference final, right? Like, this is, this is, this is, we get, we get to see Jack Eichel in the conference final. We get to see the, uh, the stars have, are the like quintessential. I know Joe Pavelsky is always going, we've talked about Povalski, but Povelsky is always going to be the quintessential old guy without a cup because of, but, but we're looking at, and I'm working on something right this for for the magazine down in Dallas right now, D Magazine, working on a story about that where the fact that we're getting this far and we're talking about we're missing, Jamie Ben's not the storyline, right? Jamie Ben is,

Jamie Ben is kind of the background character because of where he is that his career and everything like that. But where I remember, and obviously having covered the team I covered it more closely than many other people, I remember the end of that 2020 bubble run where there's that viral video, where my good friend Jeff Toetz was the videographer for the time, where he captured the video where after the stars lost that game six to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Edmonton bubble, the entire team's out of the locker room and Ben is still sitting there and just full pads, just completely broken down. Like, this is Jamie Ben's, he's getting his chance to get back there again, probably

much sooner than a lot of us would have thought and expected. So there's so many great stories about this. And it's going to be a fun series. The hockey's going to be good. And, like, this is, these are two teams that aren't going anywhere. Like, you look, like, Wyatt Johnson scored the game winning goal in the last series. He's not going anywhere. where we've seen how Vegas continues to build and reload and everything like that.

This is this is not supposed, this is, this is going to be part of the norm going forward. And that's, I love how angry. I don't know how many years of angry Dallas, how many angry columns we can get of Vegas is the most northern team in the Stanley Cup court semifinals.

Like I, that's, well, I, I just think it's going to be, be such a more fun series to watch purely in terms of the product as well.

Like the Starz team is so much more fun than that version than made it far. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned Ben there. How about Tyler Segan getting a play in a series with like a functioning body after what he went through last time, right?

So yeah, no, the storylines are amazing. If you as a person of the media, not you yourself, but as a media member, if you can market this as a league, if you can't promote it.

then that's on you and you need to reflect on why that is because it's it's very easy to promote this and get excited about it that's what we're doing here i'm fired up about it i'm excited to do this uh preview it tomorrow on the show more uh sean we're out of time here i'm going to let you go i do i do i do want to give you one thing real quick because you and i talked about it there was when derrick laland was on sports net he let he sparked the uh he was he said the thing about and Vasaleski and John and I want to give you I want to hear your thoughts on this real quick so I'm hijacking the show for a second. John, John Cooper is going to be on the panel for game two of the TNT series.

Is there a chance where we get John Cooper just basically stealing the narrative to talk about Derek Lawn? What is it or what is the revenge point John Cooper brings up here when all of a sudden he is now the one on a panel after he's been the one playing. in these series for the last three years. I think it'd be way more fun if he just totally took it in a, I'm just audible and was like, so this is how you want to target more excited or drone injuries or something.

And then it's like, what? Like, where did that come from? This is, this is, been working on this for weeks. Yes. No,

yeah, I'm excited. I mean, John Cooper is always fun to listen to. So I'm sure he's going to provide some nuggets and not necessarily be restricted to the general coach speak that we sometimes frown upon. Sean, enjoy this series.

We're going to have you back on soon. The only thing I'm going to promote, as I'm going to say, was everyone should go check out EP Ringsside where you and I both work. We're going to have a bunch of content about this series and then gearing up for the draft as well. So if you haven't subscribed, this is a great time to do so. Smash that five-star button wherever you listen to the show. And we'll be back tomorrow with that conference finals preview. Thank you for listening to the Hockey Ocas streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.