The Hockey PDOcast - Skating Development, Advancements in That Field, and Working With NHL Players on It

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Luke Chilcott and Sean Shapiro to talk about his work with the Dallas Stars as their skating development coach, the advancements made in that realm over the past 10 years or so, and the distinction between skating fast and playing fast. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey-Pedocast. My name is Dimitra Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? I am happily to be here talking with you. I was running around some NCAA hockey on Thursday, but I'm home today. And after you, after we finish this show today, I'm going to sit on the couch and watch more of it from the comfort of my couch today. So I can't complain. Very exciting. Busy times. feel like this is also your first, uh, your first appearance back on the show since your epic insiders rant at the end of our trade deadline special that got the listeners going.

Uh, yes. Quick note from me, we are finally back from an extended break. Apologies for depriving you sickos of shows over the past 10 days. Appreciate the patience. I figured it was a good time to sneak in a little break during this period between the trade deadline and our big playoff push recharge, get a bit of sun. I went to Hawaii. It was great.

It was bittersweet for me. though. And instead of just like fully enjoying my vacation, I was thinking about how, and I really needed it after the trade island especially, but we've been building such good momentum here since the four nations. And I'm really proud of the work we've been doing. And so I was just Jones and to get back at it. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sitting on the beach in Hawaii, just kind of brainstorming and itching to get back at it. And my guests here today can testify to that because I've been bugging them for the past week about doing this. We finally put it together.

We're finally back after this much time off. We've got a lot to make up for. And the only logical way to do so is with a splashy return with the type of certified bang or you're only going to get in the PDO cast. And that's why Sean's not our only guest. Also joining us is our pal Luke Chilcott. Luke, what's going on? Hey, how's it going?

Pleasure to be on the show. It's about time. Sean and I, I feel like every time we get together, we give you probably more free plugs than anyone else gets on this show. And I figured it was about time. We actually just get you on the show and talk with you as opposed to just talking about you. I swear you're not one of our sponsors. You're not paying for the plugs. They're all free. They're all deserved because we love your work and you're a

great guy. And so I'm excited to have you on. I think that the reason why I wanted to do this, and I'm generally kind of reticent about bringing on team employees because usually like you watch any media involving them. It's a lot of the toe in the company line, right? It's a lot of cliches, a lot of just like hitting all the same beats, but you do such an interesting, where you work in such an interesting field when it comes to skating and skating development with the stars. And I feel like it's such an underappreciated or maybe under unheralded part of the game as well, right? Because a lot of the work happens behind the scene, certainly. You and I, Luke, we're talking before we went on. This is a pretty relatively quiet period in the schedule

for you actually, because I feel like in the off season, especially when you're working with the prospects and development camps, it's very busy once we get into the playoffs. It's obviously all hands on deck. But a lot of the work happens behind the scenes away from our eyes. And yet I feel like the skating component of the game plays such an outsized role in molding the final product we all get to enjoy when we watch NHL hockey every night. And so I figured it'll be good to have you on just provide a little bit of sort of invaluable behind the scenes insight into the direction the modern game is headed,

stuff you're doing with the players, all that good stuff. Do you want to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and sort of your past, to getting here and working with the stars. Yeah, absolutely. So I have a background in figure skating and a little bit in hockey as well, which is kind of funny. Both my parents coach figure skating. So I've been around the rink my entire life and just being on the ice since I was about

18 months old. You know, there'd be people helping me on the ice, taking me around, just getting reps in, just for fun. Kind of more like babysitting me, if I had to be honest. But then that turned into a good competitive career competing for Team GB. And then unfortunately got injured. And that was what brought me into working with hockey players and using my background in skating to troubleshoot areas for youth hockey players at the time. But then progressed into pro hockey players that then turned into me working with pro teams.

I worked with the San Jose Sharks for about five years. and then after the pandemic really got involved with Dallas. Dallas is my home base. That's where I live and I was training out of here when I was competitive. And so now that's where my Chalkout Skating Mechanics business is based. And then that allows me to use kind of DFW as a hub to get out to our prospects, drive down to Austin to visit our HL team, the Texas Stars, and then pop in and see the big team whenever I can when that schedule allows.

This is very exciting, Sean. I know you sharing that excitement, obviously. You've got a connection with Luke and your coverage of the stars. You've chatted with him and done pieces on him. You and I have talked about him endlessly, especially during our, I feel like it was last postseason, right? Whenever we were talking about Neil's Lundquist

and we were curious in one show talking about what he was doing, whether he was getting sore from sitting on the bench for extended stretches at a time. And then all of a sudden, Luke just got our DMs. And he's like, actually, this is what's going on. And he like, walked us through all the mechanics of the behind the scenes. And I was like, all right,

we need to bring. this on the show. I think this is what the listeners want. Yeah, and you and I, it's, Dim, you and I've talked about this. And Luke, one of the things that I, you and I've spoke about before, I'm excited. Just the thing I wanted to kind of give the, you the platform to talk about real quick, and then we'll go a little bit more nuanced here. But like, I, I would love for, because we were just talking before we came on the air where I was at a NCAA regional hockey game yesterday. And stars have a have a prospect playing for Cornell. And you're talking about how, you know, I'm going to, I got to go watch his, watch his game and everything like that.

And just the whole, if you can't skate, you can't play, right? Like, that's a term I'm going to, I'm going to use right now. I'm sure other people that've used it before. But, and when you kind of jump into, in your path, when you jump from your own skating competitive career to working with hockey players and everything like that, I've always been curious of how you bridge, the gap from coaching it and being able to explain it and teach it to from a hockey sets and the utilization to it to from from just competing because it's one thing to hey i know i'm a i'm a skater and i'm a high-level skater it's another thing to be able to teach it and i kind of wanted to just open it up for the air of how you're able to teach it and connect to the players

because i think that's a big thing that i've always heard rave reviews about from guys is how you are explaining something they've done their entire life and you're coming to talk to them about it and you're not ripping them down, you're building them up while helping them at the same time. And I wanted to kind of give you the platform to talk about how you're coaching, how you developed your ability to coach that way. Yeah, well, I think being an athlete helps,

you know, because you have daily struggles where, you know, some days you're having bad days and nothing's clicking. Then there's other, you know, big periods of time where you have that block training where you're always working on something you do not have in your tool belt.

And so then the goal is to, you know, come in every day. with the attitude of I'm going to fail at this. I need to work at it. But being a coach or having had good coaches, my parents and others, I've taken that into now taking my in-depth knowledge of skating technique and then bringing that to the players with hours of research and time on task

to then let them know, you know, this is where we're going to be. This is where it isn't right now. Here's video to back up where we want it to be maybe by next. season, you know, using George, like you mentioned, but where you went to sort of Cornell, you know, I visited George when he was still with Muskegon Lumberjacks. And so, you know, we spent hours, a couple hours on the ice doing skating development since he's one of our players. And then left him with the video. And he has an extremely hard work. He has a great work ethic. And he works at it behind the scenes. And so then, you know, you can see that slowly becoming

having had it. So at the time, a part of it is selling it correctly. You don't want to make it sound completely impossible. And these players have all gotten where they are because they are extremely talented. But then, you know, showing them where I think it could go to, giving them the confidence and enabling them to work on it so that they take pride in their own development. And then they want to become that next level. And then hopefully that turns into the product you eventually see at the NHL level where it's almost now, completely hands off and it's all maintenance, you know, and you guys know, and I'm sure the listeners know better than anyone that the schedule at the NHO level is so intense, that it

becomes a matter of, hey, we're just going to do maintenance for this, and maybe this is something we want to keep that bar at a certain height throughout the season, and then we'll tackle this in the off season. But ultimately, it comes down to progression drills, coaching, having a bit of empathy, understanding it's kind of like a holistic approach. There's going to be bad days, know, the player themselves mentally might be, you know, in a rut and they're looking for something to get out of it or they're looking just for somebody to help them pump their confidence and get them back after it, you know. So that's the difference between the pro level and then coaching on the youth level, really. That's where I kind of have those interventions with the pro

guys. I'm really interested in that and kind of pivoting off of that. The in season part of it with the pro guys, a lot's been made of how just jam packed and condensed the NHL schedule is, we just alluded to, right? You see teams sometimes have these stretches in the season where you're going weeks without an official conventional practice because you're on the road, you're bouncing around, CBA mandated, you got to give these guys some rest. How much of it is actual on ice work where, or compared to sort of off ice video work where you're going through the tape, you're spotting certain things,

whether it was a decision the player made offensively with like a cutback or an area. They could have explored more or defensively with a gap or sort of. of what they chose to do in a specific one-on-one defensive situation. How much of it is actual hands-on on ice stuff versus the sort of sitting down, breaking down the video, identifying areas of improvement. Yeah, that's a good point because, like I said, at that NHL level, you know, if we start to just walk it backwards, the NHL level, it's so intense with the schedule that you really are just making these small tweaks

that you've laid the groundwork for in the off-season, you know, and it might just be, hey, I noticed that we're starting to get back to these old habits. So if I have five minutes after practice, like, let's just run through these drills, get that muscle memory going, the motor pattern of what we did this summer. And yeah, hearing you say defensive footwork, I've got a bit of a passion for defensive footwork. And, you know, like you said, you might see a guy playing something one-on-one. It sticks out to you. You want to then get in the next day to make sure that, hey, this is kind of becoming a habit again,

where we're stepping into these areas when we could be more reserved with our footwork and hold ice in a different area. So there are some things where I'll shoot short clips. You know, I really will, maybe it's recording my screen for a five second clip and I'll get that over to the guys

because you don't really want to, as a skills position, you know, it's not really my role to have a sit down meeting with the players and take up even more time. I like to kind of move quickly, touch lightly and just get them short clips of here's what I noticed, here's what we're going to work on when I see you next. And that's really what video looks like at that top level.

Fortunately, at the AHL level, you have a closer schedule that resembles college. So then, you know, Neil Graham down in Austin does an incredible job of allowing me to come in on weeks there at home. And I'll have a Tuesday where it's two groups of forwards and one group of D. You know, we're really digging into the weeds on that footwork. And then on a Wednesday, you'll have optional skill development. guys will pop out, we'll build on that. And then maybe Thursday at that point, you know, you're just getting the guys ready

for the Friday, Saturday games and get them going there. With that, and I can, yeah, so I kind of, Luke, when you work and I actually went and I chatted with Neil and a couple of the Texas players on Wednesday. They were in Grand Rapids on Wednesday. So I chat with Neil a little bit there. And I was, I was talking to Justin Ritzkovian about kind of his transition from playing to Texas this year. He's played a couple of NHG games.

games. And one of the things that he talked about quite a bit was getting, he's talking about the time and space when you go from the pro game. And he mentioned sometimes, I wasn't asking about you, I'll be clear, but he just talked, I just couldn't help. But when he says getting that first step right. And I'm kind of curious for you, when you're working with guys and you're watching the game and you're working with that, there's so many things. But how many guys actually have the right first step and how many guys have to learn that? once they get there because that to me is something that I couldn't help but think about after you're saying this and helping guys in Texas and Justin literally on Wednesday said he worked on

getting his first step right in the last year and it's helped him a ton. Yeah, actually, Ritzie's come a long way and he's funny because he will ask me a question about cutbacks. We'll get on the ice and we'll run through it. He'll send me clips of his games. You know, he'll text me a little screen recording. I'll send him some stuff back to work on. And then he'll really get into it and work on it. And I think that's what he has identified in his own game, which is massive. Because now he's getting those cutbacks worked out at that level. And he's able to possess the puck a little more along the wall

and in areas where he realizes, hey, you know, I don't have enough time to where I can skate in one direction for a while, then cut back and then have a lot of crossovers to generate speed. It literally needs to be, what am I doing going into the cutback to maybe set myself up for or success coming out of it and then immediately move the puck. You know, you can't, when you have that time and space is so limited, it's really about how you're going to set yourself up for that move. And if you're pre-scan and, you know, the information you receive on that shoulder check just isn't there, then we're not even using that skating.

We're just resorting straight to making the correct play, you know. So it's interesting. But if you don't have that tool in your toolkit, it makes it incredible difficult when you're trying to prolong and extend time on the perimeter to help your other teammates. You know, so he's done a great job on those cutbacks. And like you said, coming out of it correctly with that first step, like a good couple of crossovers. And that might be, you know, that might be the total difference between the blade length to

slip a pass through to a high danger area or getting it blocked and then you're eating pucks in the corner. Sean, I think why I'm so captivated or intrigued by this particular area of the sport and its advances in developments is I was doing a show a couple weeks ago with our pal Thomas Trance and he was talking about a conversation he had been having around the four nations with Ray Ferraro and Ray was talking about this power dynamic shift we're seeing in hockey right now that's happening around the league where when I started doing this back in 2015 which feels like forever ago now we were in for lack of a better term the money ball era

for the NHL where I feel like there was still ways for teams to find cheap young players who had a specific limitation in their game and that one was often a lack of size, right? Or kind of a diminutive frame.

And there was, I think it was a, teams were able to mind that because there was such a gap at the time in skill and skating ability depending on the size of the player, right? Like players were sort of pigeonholed

and if you were a certain size, you came up playing a certain way and then you come into the NHL and you play that role. Whereas smaller players, were generally shifty or faster, playing a more offensively oriented style, could put up a bunch of points, and you could get those guys for cheaper because they just weren't valued as highly by NHL teams.

We're getting to this point now, though, where I think that balance is shifting because that gap has shrunk. Being big and being fast and skilled is no longer, I guess, like inversely correlated with size. Like you see big young players at a young age. They all have specialized coaches, whether it's skills, coaches or skating coaches. They're refining these areas of their game. And then they're coming to the pro level. And they're already way ahead of where players previously would have been. And so it's not really, that dynamic isn't really in place anymore. It's not as much of an advantage to just be undersized and use those tools to your advantage and leverage them against your taller opponents. Now everyone you're watching, it's like, Tage Thompson is whatever, 6'6. And he's one of the most skill players in the league. I often talk about one of my favorite players in the league, Alexi Proto's here. who's 6-6 and he's done phenomenal work the past couple years with the cap skating coach Wendy

Marco and totally like reinventing his skating and then it's opened up all these doors for him and he's producing so much more offensively this year. I think that's a really interesting angle here to dive into a little bit more. I'm curious for Luke's takes on it as well and whether he's sort of seen that firsthand in terms of when he started how that dynamic was between like the taller players and the shorter players and whether that was just a different component of their game and how much of an advancement we've had there and whether we're going to come to this point where

now everyone is just going to uniformly kind of like goalies just being 6-6 made in a lab, skating as fast and shooting as quickly as anyone, and everyone's going to look like that and it's not going to be a thing anymore where it's like, all right, well, you can find these guys who are 5-9 in the fourth round and they produce a lot, but no one wants them

because they're undersized, it's just not going to really be a thing anymore. Yeah, and I'll let Luke, I'll lead Luke into something on this. I think I have a good example that I can lead Lucan on this if I remember correctly here. But I think for me watching it used to be a lot of those big guys just watching from afar. It would be you're just using your strength to power through. It was more of power over form. And you watch the like use Tage for example and and it'd be a guy his size before, be like, oh, well, you skate, you have big legs, you're strong, you know what to do. And I think a lot of the form has then been at it. Like I'm watching.

a couple of guys in these NCAA games last night, these 6-5-66 kids who they have that power, but they're they're taking the right edges, they're taking the right angles. And he's not 6-5-66, but Luke, I know you worked when Jamie Ben came back. I know you worked closely with Jamie. And Jamie was a guy, when I look at Jamie kind of, he's a guy who has his career, he's

defied aging curves a little bit as far as opposed to he's getting to his mid-30s and he continues to get around pretty well. When I look at him, he was a little bit more of a, just a quote-unquote power skater earlier in his career. And he had the athleticism to make it work. And he's become more nimble on his feet. And I'm going to, hopefully I'm teeing you up the right way, Luke, because they're giving an example. But I know you worked with Jamie on that. And one of the reasons that maybe he's able to still get around a little bit more effectively now is he took some of that power and channeled it the right way or whatever.

And I'll let you use the proper terminology here. Yeah. Well, one of the most eye-opening things is, working with Jamie is for somebody who is such a big guy and is so strong. He's incredibly nimble and then he's also a great athlete. So you, you know, that summer when I came in, we did three sessions a week throughout the summer. Some of it was just, you know, edgework purely. And then as the summer ramps up, you know, we layered in more drills that ramped up the intensity to get you ready for the season. And as we started to do, you know, things like build.

building speed on a curve and crossover technique, cutbacks down low, being able to glide mainly on your edges versus digging in and having those wasted moments where you, you know, dig in too deep and lose a lot of your speed versus gliding on the flatter part of the blade, maybe on the middle of your profile. And he does a ton of those things well already. So that whole summer was an interesting learning curve because when somebody brings you in, you want to come in and make big changes. Then you realize that they're already an incredible athlete and they do things very well. And then at that size, you know, he accelerates incredibly well. He builds a lot of speed on a curve if you watch him cross over at times. And then the first couple of strides,

he's always working on that explosive power. And so, you know, if you see him need to get out to take time and space away from a guy, if he's, you know, trying to get out to the point or if he's on the kill for any reason, he has that ability. So, So, you know, then he's a real weapon for us, you know, because he can move. He has size. He's a great leader. So that's what's crazy there. And then, you know, now to bring in a guy who's even bigger, like with Lee and Bischel,

he's worked a lot on his strategic defensive footwork. And that's something that, you know, he's a young player. So there's always room to grow. But he's a really interesting example of taking something that's less skating technique and more strategic footwork. you know now we're now that level you're kind of training to perform so we've got some defensive footwork similar to like if you were to look at positional coaches let's say in football we're going to run through that defensive footwork so you got to practice it enough to where you know you're

doing it until you can't get it wrong instead of trying instead of training something just to get it right that one time because it's the the time of space isn't available and you have to have that muscle memory so he's a extremely nimble player for his science you know So there's another good example of somebody who's that frame. You know, limbs are possibly all slightly longer than your prototypical skaters that you think of when we just jump to your McDavid's. I calls those guys, Quinn Hughes even. And then you think about what Leon's doing at that frame is pretty impressive. Luke, another example that I remember you were telling me a story about a younger player you're working with in a development camp.

And they came in from junior and they're just a massive body and you're watching them go through it. And you're like, oh, have you ever thought about incorporating this into your skating? And they're like, no. Like, why would I, why would I be evasive? I'm just going to go right through this guy with my frame. And I wonder, you know, some of it is certainly technological and physical advancements and just like evolution that we're seeing across society, irrespective of the sport. But I think part of it is also just, I guess, that philosophy you're talking about as well,

where previously players were pigeonholed based on their role in their size and they were, like, approaching it just through one away. And now all of a sudden, all these doors and avenues have opened for everyone to incorporate more of these techniques and different playing styles into their game. I think that's why you're seeing a bit more of that uniformity around the league regardless of the size. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not to keep singing Leon's praises, but that was one of the most interesting things when he came into a development camp or training camp one year was there was a small area game and he had the puck and he was far more

intrigued in and how can I play this with my feet and speed and deception. And that that's why and I was really impressed with him because most players that are that size, they'll pull it to the outside and use their body to protect it. Well, he would pull it to the outside, protect it, and then accelerate and force that smaller player to then skate with him as well. So then that's a good mentality to have because naturally you just sink into a bit of, you pigeonhole yourself if you just only become a player with size and you do that for a window with time where then your foot speed isn't getting trained in the background.

you almost have to have that mentality of, hey, I need quick feet, even though I'm this size. And then you become a real problem to defend or get pucks away from it. I think you kind of saw that a little bit last night. You know, on Wyatt's goal, he was able to accelerate up the ice and make a play. And so that's when, yeah, some of the bigger guys that come into development camp and they're a lot younger at the time, you know, you'll say, what training do you do in the summer? What sort of, you know, evasive footwork do we have in training? and then they might tell me like, well, I've always been bigger than everyone,

so I'll just protect the puck, you know. I said, well, that's something for sure, you know, and you can't train size. But maybe if we add it all together, you know, you could be a real problem for guys out there, then you have to kind of see the penny drop. On that front look, I'm curious of something, because I, one thing you come from a, when you're coaching figure skating, right, you're training the whole body, right? Like the motion and your training, everything is about what the feet do, right? If you're skating.

It's all about getting your body into the best position so your feet can go everywhere. In hockey, obviously, you have this whole other limb and you have this stick and you've got this other thing. You can't be like, oh, well, just to skate fast, you got to put your arms this way or that way or whatever. When it comes to you for working with players on connecting the whole body. We're going to talk a lot about the feet and the footwork here, but kind of take us a little bit through with that, especially with some of these bigger guys. And I think that might be something too. You see everything connected as much as possible.

Take us through kind of how applying the upper body and the mechanics there allow these guys to apply those skills when you do have effectively this other chaos going on up top. And you can't be just feet. It's not just like in other forms of skating. Yeah, I know. Hockey itself is kind of strange, obviously. You know, it's not even like tennis where you really have a forehand in a backhand and it's only on one side of your body and you can incorporate movements to help

the back. And so when you're holding your hockey stick, one hand is lower than the other. So it forces you in a position where you're rotated in a position that's uncomfortable to start with. So then you add that into, and I've been, I love deep footworks. I'm always thinking of things from a bit of a de-skating perspective. But, you know, if you're a right shot that picks the puck up on the right wall at the blue line, you're going to skate to your left, potentially drag.

the puck completely disassociated to the right. And then you see, you know, some of those top players like Cal McCarr and a lot of the guys now that can thread a puck through without actually getting their hips around the puck. You know, the stick technology and everything else has made it so much easier to release a puck from awkward positions. So now you've got a guy who's taking, you know, two, three strides like John Klingberg was so good at for us here on the blue line. You know, a couple of strides down the blue line dragging the puck.

You think you're lined up to the puck. you're actually square to the player and then they thread something through from their torso being, you know, close to like 50 degrees, 45 twist to the other way. And then the hands are even further back than that. So it's really strange to have to teach certain movements. But once you do get those mechanics dialed in, then cutting back on your forehand that people might have found a little awkward now become easier. You know, that's something we'll work on a lot. And so even though I'm working on the footwork,

we'll think about where your body position is, is it will be carrying the stick. And then on top of that, we'll mix in a puck because now you've got a puck that you might bubble and you have to retrieve it and continue to move your trunk in the right direction. So you can't allow those things to throw you completely off of your power output, which will happen from time to time. You know, you can't help that.

But the more drills we can do to prepare you to have the puck in a certain position to get your body around and make better plays, that feeds into it too. All right, fellas, let's take our break here. And then we come back. We'll join right back into it. I got a few other things that I want to run by Luke. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.

All right. We're back here on the Hockey Ocadst, joined by Sean Shapiro and our pal, Luke Chocot making his PEDeocast debut before we went to break. Luke said the wise words. Hockey's a strange sport. And he also talked about how enamored he is with defensive footwork. So he's making him, he's endearing himself quickly into the hearts of the PEDOCast. listeners by staring Barry on brand. I wanted to talk about this next because I think the stars draft approach under Jim

Nill is an interesting component of this. I would say that historically the stars have prioritized kind of hockey sense or quote-to-co just being good at the game, maybe more than other organizations that sort of tend to focus on raw projectable tools like either size or straight line skating or shooting ability and then being like, all right, well, you know, these guys have this one particular trait. We're going to bring them in, see where it goes, and then they wind up being disappointed because the player is limited.

The stars, I feel like, generally try to bring in players that already have this certain base of understanding of hockey. And I was thinking about that, Luke, when you were talking about what goes into skating and how sometimes it's not always limited to the actual act of the skating approach itself, but sometimes the preparation for it, in terms of the scanning, the instincts, kind of laying that groundwork.

And I imagine that working with those types of players that already sort of have that in their bag a little bit might lend itself to incorporating some of this stuff once they come into the Star's organization and start working with you and some of the other staff, a bit more of an easier transition because they already have a certain aptitude at just a well-rounded game. And then you can start kind of tinkering and manufacturing other skills off of that, as opposed to just sort of being big or fast, and that's the entirety of their skill set. Do you find that?

I'm kind of curious, especially the stars have examples of that in the past and I had success doing so. We see that around the league where you have prospects sometimes that put up big numbers in Major Junior, but one of their limitations, despite just being good at hockey, is being perceived as having a skating weakness or a deficiency, and then that's why they drop down boards during the draft process, typically the stars for whatever reason haven't really been scared off by that historically i feel

like yeah i think those players that can visualize situations for the skating that's really helped me do what i do where if you know i might say kind of to steal that term scanning you know a lot of open hip skating for me is more so can i get a panoramic shot of whatever i need to look at versus is just my regular, you know, regular 4x6 photo that I might have taken of the ice. So, you know, you might watch a player that always possesses a puck in a specific position and then add some open hip skating to that. And now they've become a lot more dangerous. And if you show them an area where, weirdly, I'm always watching everything from a skating

perspective, which makes it difficult sometimes to just watch the strategy break out. But I'll try to, at least if I'm watching a player that has asked me a question, I'll try to watch their shifts and then watch that same shift again to make sure that the skating even works in that scenario. And if it does, then that's a green light to get them a clip and some skating work for, let's say, open hip skating to scan the ice better and see what might be available. And then that's what really leads me into, hey, that's what we're going to do as soon as I see at practice.

And then that gets the player on board big time too, because they can now see, you know, that NHL level, it's all trained to perform. you can't really spend much time, hey, you know, we're going to take open hip skating and then we're going to really break it down into technique and then we're just going to do it might be a few key tidbits how to utilize what they have right now, their incredible knowledge of the game, and then maybe add that into an area where they haven't been thinking about deploying that footwork recently. But now that we've adjusted in season, they can already see the game well enough to where

using that skating as going to open up lanes and open up chances for it. Sean, I couldn't help but think about it. Let me just ask you something. I'm curious for your take on this because I feel like, you know, Luke's very close to the situation. Of course, he's a very humble guy.

I feel like he's not going to talk himself up here directly. But in your cover, you've been covering the stars for a while now. I think it's fair to say that they have a certain justified confidence that you can see in their approach of the draft in their infrastructure and development model with the types of players they generally covet and they feel like they can bring them in to their facility, get to work with them,

and develop some of these other physical components internally and sort of bridge that physical gap during these prime development years of age 18 to 22 or so as they worked their way up from Major Junior or whatever through NCAA, through the HL finally getting to Dallas. And I feel like, I mean, I think that's a great strategy. I think it certainly makes sense in this entire conversation, the theme being sort of having that base and then being, able to nurture it and sort of refine it as opposed to having to do a full wholesale like,

all right, you don't do this at all. Now we need to just like totally change you as a player and remodel you. They already have a certain base and then they kind of work off that a little bit. And that's why you've seen a lot of these development success stories of guys that were drafted in a certain slot to come in and significantly outproduce that at the NHL level. Well, isn't the big, good example that pops into mind for this is Jason Robertson. Jason, Jason's a guy who scored his entire life and everything like that, but you always heard the popular narrative was he's too clunky of a skater or whatever it was. His skating's going to hold him back. Well, two years ago, he is the first 100 plus point season in Starr's history.

And I know when Jason, I remember talking to Jason in his AHL days when he first comes up and he's talked about, like, he kind of said something to me along the lines of, it wasn't arrogant, but it was just one of the spots of it's like, it's not necessarily whether the skating looks pretty or it's not. Am I getting there? and am I getting there to the right place at the right time? And so I think maybe this is a good one to throw to Luke with a guy like Jason who has had a hat trick the other night has been having quite the offensive production is his division and play have always been there, but he's a guy who maybe the popular narrative was, oh my gosh, the skating's going to hold this back.

What's it been like working with Jason and kind of with a guy like that where there is that popular narrative? And in your view, was that narrative even correct? I think that's an example that comes to mind for me right now, who as someone who maybe goes four or five slots earlier in the draft if his legs look a little faster on video. Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting, you know, skating is only a small part of it.

And so that's what's interesting too is sometimes you come across these guys that, you know, our scouting department does an incredible job. Joe McIndo does a great job with everything that he's doing. And so you get a guy like Jason who is, you know, his hockey IQ is incredible. and he knows, like you said, he knows the areas he needs to get to. And then you layer in the component of having an elite skater like Rope as your linemate. You know, so that's where it's such an interesting combination of a player that has incredible scoring touch, incredible high IQ, another player has incredible skating and

scoring touch. And then same level of like hockey IQ with them on that line playing center. It's just like, it becomes a serious problem, you know. And so I think that is what helps some guys that maybe have a deficiency. You know, you can you can team up with somebody and have collaboration and then achieve elite performance. And I know Jason does do a lot of skills work in the summer. He does work on all of these things. He also actually has some pretty good open hip skating.

So there's some mobility stuff that maybe you wouldn't notice right out of the gates. But then if I wasn't involved when when Jason, came on board, but I did work with him a little bit at the AHL level, and then his skills coach that he works with in the summer addresses a lot of those deficiencies. So there's little things in there that everyone can work on to, you know, there's the cliche saying that get one percent better every day. It really is just within specific categories you're looking to get one percent better every day. What about with him and when you watch guys like him, not necessarily under his, but you watch guys like him. And we talk about, we were talking about defensive footwork earlier,

But there is the, a lot of time people think skating, they think that, that blazing speed. They think of a rope bay hence and they think of that. But there is the level of, and we've talked about it quite a bit of that 1% better, that 1% space where there is the, if you can be half a second quicker to get to that spot on the power play before the defender, you are open for the one timer a little bit more. Like when you're working with guys and you're on that one step, not the big long strides, not the big, the big skating ones where people think of and the end to end. rushes the the little plays within three to four feet in the skating and taking the right step. What are the things that you watch for and what are the things that maybe, I don't know, sometimes, Demetri, I'm sure you have people listening to the show. If someone's trying to be like, hey, I want to get better at that space, what are the things

you watch for in that area and kind of that, the micro area, not the big long, rinklong skates there? Yeah. Yeah, I would think more about, you know, I think I'm going down the right avenue to stop me if I'm just waffling on here. but sometimes it's just your athletic ability to get your center mass ahead of that first step because like you said, if you're coming from standstill and you're maybe on the penalty hill, it could be that I need to reset my feet and hold in some neutral ice and then use

a couple of hard strides to get to a spot rather than many crossovers, for example. So if you start swimming around with your feet, that's kind of an inefficiency. So that's something, some guys just think, you know, harder is better. And it's not always that case. Sometimes, you know, you want to have that first step that's efficient and that gets you there. And it's difficult to have confidence in that when you can see the play develop and you just feel intense panic. But yeah, at any level, really, if you think more about the quality of every push and getting your center of mass ahead of that first step, if you're a multi-sport athlete and you have good pro perception and, all those additional things, then that's what you're kind of watching on TV.

But really anyone, like I work with my youth hockey players and a lot of the focus today was, you know, these starts. We don't need to have, you know, two or three crossovers to get going. It's really a matter of set your hips in the correct direction and take off. And so that's when small technique like that, hopefully you use that tool and you apply it to build whatever you would like. But sometimes at the top level, you know, you have to work that equation backwards and say, okay, this guy's now on the penalty kill, for example.

He needs to get to a spot immediately. And these are the inefficiencies I've found. So let's just work on those first couple of steps. Well, I think this comes up every summer as we prepare for the draft and in reading the elite prospects draft guide every year. I know the staff there is very in on this sort of people generally equate skating ability to just like conventional straight line burst. And once you come to the NHL, maybe during the rest,

regular season. It's a bit more open and there's opportunities to kind of get into track meets and actually skate in open ice. But once you get to crunch time in the postseason, the ice shrinks, those opportunities become less readily available. And then it comes down to sort of like small area skating, whether it's coming off the wall as a winger or the net front as a forward. And I'm curious for your take on this, Luke, because it sounds like you're not necessarily as preoccupied with just purely like getting a point A point B it's more so especially in identifying a player who you feel like if you work with them there's strides to be made sometimes it comes down to other things whether it's like balance the center of gravity coordination ability to weight shift

kind of some of the small area stuff that allows them to get to that spot a little bit more quickly in a very well-defined window as opposed to like going from their own blue line to the opposing blue line faster than anyone else on the other team. Yeah, I think they're well, most people want to know who the fastest schedule in the NHL is and that guy's so fast. And speed is obviously a massive weapon. Like if you have speed, then there are ways to back people off, create space for yourself. Maybe you get given a lot of more respect just because of the reputation of speed coming in. But then there are the times where like a Kutrov would maybe come into mind where it might be more about generating a small amount of speed,

kind of holding and finding some inside edgework that maybe weaves your way into the ozone and then an abrupt pull-up that then allows you to have a bit more space. And so I think the group that's out in California, P3 that do all the studies on basketball players, there was the study done on James Hardin where he just led the abrupt stopping category. So his rapid deceleration was just that much better than everyone.

So that might be some, you know, I'm not a huge basketball fan, but that might be somebody where you think like, well, he's not very fast. You know, how is he creating all this time of space? That's actually more a matter of can you sell speed coming into a zone and then rapid deceleration be your best friend. You know, so there's ways to work things in different areas. And like you said, maybe I'm creeping up the half wall.

And it looks like I'm selling a pass maybe to the D. And then I'm able to rapidly decelerate and change direction. Now that creates three feet down low where other guys create 10. feet flying from D zone through the NutraZone and into the ozone. So we're all creating time and space. You're just got to kind of pick and choose your spots to deploy the footwork that's going to help you the most. Have you ever worked with a player as young as Wyatt Johnson that understands it as well as Wyatt does at his age? Because like he's one where you talk about that. And I know Demetri's had done good film studies on Wyatt and how his arrival time. But like with his

understanding of that, combined with his skating technique to me, at his age, that's incredible. Because if you ever worked with, when you think of him and his ability to do that at his 21, however young he is now, like, how rare is that? Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, he's just wildly cerebral. You know, I mean, there's no other way to really put it. He and I will have good conversations about what we should be working on and what he works on in the sum with his skills guy and and he's already thinking about scenarios which really bridges the gap between hey look i know you want me to work on this but you know i just i don't know if i could ever install that in my game in season to oh that's right i've forgotten about that piece of footwork for now i know the scenario

i'm going to use it in and now i'm visualizing how i would use it and create space with it so it's really unique you know and a lot of the best guys have that and i think um you know why it just does a great job of that. He really studies the game. He's a student of it. He works on his skills work, and then now you're kind of seeing that marry together. I think that's a perfect example of the distinction between skating fast and playing fast, right? And hockey is just generally, as you called it, such a strange sport, but it's so chaotic in nature, right? And often, especially with the way the stars play generally and how much they attack off the rush, it's going to be a more up-tempo, higher-paced system. And so not everyone necessarily needs to actually

skate fast within that. I think it's just as important to be able to play fast within it, to make decisions within that pace. And something I always talk about with another skills coach, Darrell Belfrey when we were doing our shows last year, was how now, like, he would work a lot

with Nathan McKinnon, for example. And I think it's almost a bit of a red herring how quickly and powerfully he skates because the secret sauce for him in terms of his glow up over the past, whatever, five to seven years, has been learning how to within that skating, make decisions and make plays, right?

So whether you're in full stride and being able to shoot from that position from awkward angles, as you were talking about Luke earlier, or making decisions as a passer, just incorporating different stick handling skills while you're moving that fast, I think that's a really interesting part of this, and why Johnson's probably one of the best examples

of it where I wouldn't say, I don't think anyone would necessarily describe him as a pure conventional burner by any means, but he plays incredibly fast in terms of keeping defenders off-balance, getting to his spots at the right time. And the James Hardin example, you pointed out there, is perfect. I know, Luke, you and I have spoken about that in the past and our fascination with it, this concept of sort of deceleration and speed differential. And there's different ways to get to that final result, right? One of them is skating fast. The other one is changing speeds very

abruptly and very quickly and essentially putting your defenders into very uncomfortable, awkward positions where they're off balance and then leveraging that to your advantage. Yeah, you will again, like when you bring up McKinnett or somebody like that, if you know you're defending somebody with a ton of speed, if you realize they're getting into an area where you might be a step behind, you're going to over commit to that acceleration. And if you're smart and your shoulder check's good and you realize that guy's into his first three strides or maybe even a couple of hard crossovers,

and then you put the brakes on a change direction, you might catch them off balance, accelerating towards where you were going. So then you become a real problem. them to defend, you know, and that's where that rapid deceleration is quite interesting. And I think there's a lot of technology coming soon with the, well, there's a lot of technology already out there, the measure the pressure that you're putting into your skates through the inner soles that you can fit in the boots. And so that will be something neat to see in the future on like an NHL edge where you can see now how much force that guy creates when he's

decelerating. And then factor that into the wear and tear on your. body. You know, it's, it's really incredible what some of these guys do. And, like, I'm a big fan of that punch stop or jab stop tight turn. That's a kind of a route for a lot of our deceptive footwork that I work on with players. And then sometimes with, you know, McKinner, for example, you'll see him accelerate to a spot and just completely jam the brakes on and then explode out of that and go the other way. At which point, you know, there obviously is technique behind it, but he's really just beating you at a brute force, accelerate, decelerate, and then accelerate again in a different direction.

You know, that's just how that's going to be. I wanted to kind of go into a, and I wanted to touch on this too, because Debutre and I did a show a little bit back where we were talking about goalies we love watching, and we both love watching UC Soros. And one of the things we both talk about Soros is, we loved his how he skates, right?

His skating work and net and everything like that, and it's why he's able to be so explosive as he is and take up the space he is at one of the only guys in the league that's under six foot. So I wanted to throw, how much do you work with, goalie skating and goalie footwork. Obviously, I the stars, Jeff Reese is the goalie coach there and he does a

great job with the goalies. But like, what's kind of when it comes to the skating footwork and working with the goalies on that, I know what I've seen you put goalies through the the paces at development camp before. But like what's kind of the, when it comes to that position, where, where's the line for what guys you're working with and what you're kind of bringing into it? Yeah. I mean, I don't work with our goalies a whole lot.

I certainly am not against it. You know, if somebody happens to reach out to me and say, hey, the goalies this morning, they just want to do some edgework. Would you mind going out? You know, Luke, Luke, I'm going to look out for you. Stay away from them. Don't. It's not worth it.

They're weird as Sean can certainly test you. It's not. It's not worth it. Stay far as far away as you can. Maybe I'll have to just lean on my time restrictions. You know, there's only so much time we can have it at the rig. You know, so I'll leave the goalies with the goalie guys. But no, it's funny.

Even, you know, with conversations between Ben Bishop and I, we've talked a lot about footwork and mobility. and where your balance is on your skates. And he even had some questions for me when I was skating with Jamie in 2018 about where I'd like to load my weight and where you think I should keep it. And a lot of that came down to a bit like a tennis player on the baseline. You wouldn't see somebody just sitting on their heels and then expecting to make an incredibly ballistic movement

to get to a serve out wide. And I kind of see goalies as that very similar position. And I kind of look at it where goalies live on those inside edges because you need to be ready to make a reactionary movement in either direction. If you build it out slightly to the two defensemen, that's where we're working so much on inside edges for them too, because they're basically an extension of the goalie. You need to be able to make a reaction to whatever's dictating your movement

on the way into the zone. And then from out for that, you're just getting into completely creative footwork with the forwards. It's always just chance creation. So, yeah, with goalies, it's really a matter of drilling down on some inside edge work. And then it comes back to the basic mechanics of keeping your center of mass ahead

of your ground contact. You know, if you see a Saros who potentially moves with his eyes and his hands and then has a great explosive push off of his inside edge where his center of masses ahead of it, you're going to get the most out of that push. And so you kind of see that out of these athletic goleys and then kind of to circle it all back to the size factor. Now you've got these incredibly athletic goalies that are also the size they are.

you know, and that's why guys are getting over from post to post and making these crazy saves on a theme pass, you know. Yeah, Luke, I'm curious. Have you seen that video? I've talked about on the show previously. It was from a couple years ago. I think it was from like a preseason development camp or whatever for the predators. But when Sean and I did our goalie watchability rankings earlier the season, I was referencing it, where Sarosens and like two or three other predators, goalies, they're all doing the same drill.

And it's that lateral push with the kind of hip swivel to kind of just move from their knees up to the end. ice and he's just like essentially lapping everyone by like three times of speed like he's already back before there are at the blue line and he's just kind of like almost making him look silly he's almost a he's a one of one in that in that sense what a what a freaky is in terms of lateral movement at that position yeah i feel like power to weight weight ratio really comes into play there and then your mobility and then what you're doing to maintain that that uh pliability to steal a term uh from some other guys but you know when you have players like that that can rotate their body and use basic rotational power into their edgework, you get this

slingshot effect where it all marries together. And, you know, a little bit like speaking of lateral movement, you know, Thomas Harley's incredible with this open hip skating. And he's gotten to that point now as well where it's layered into his deception. And then naturally when I skate on the ice, I love to use my open hip skating a lot. And it's becoming a big thing, I think, in the skill development world. but I will use it even just to like gain a little bit of power to reach for a puck while you're also simultaneously looking in an opposite direction. But then the better you get at that technique, you find that you can grab a little inertia and add some speed to that movement.

So it's really interesting now. I'd like to go back again to the Saurus example, the guys that can create power in an uncomfortable position. And it just doesn't really register to the average brain. But there's a lot going into that that's coordination athletic and, and it's a bit of a gift, you know. There's two things he's hit. Well, Dmitri, real quick, I want to give you a compliment. There's two things he's hit on real quick that are, that are, that are, that are, that are, that are one. He said something doesn't register to the average brain.

So us, you and I noticing it means that we, our brain is a slightly above average. That's slightless slightly above average. The other one that I wanted to throw and then I'll let you close it out since you're the host properly here. But the, just Luke, when it comes to, and this is something just that is kind of stars, relevant. We know Tyler Sagan is skating with the team again. Tyler's working his way back. He's going to, Jim Nilla said he might play a game or two before they enter their season, hopefully back for the playoffs. At some point,

Miro Hishkin will be back as well. When you're working with guys coming back from injury, and I was kind of curious just from a skating perspective, what's it like working with guys who they've done this their entire life and maybe they're coming off an injury that is going to, now they've got a guy that build up that strength that they didn't have to build up before or there's a muscle usage or whatever. And we'll use Tyler just because he's the one who is out there and publicly open that

he has been skating. He's on the trip with the team. So you're not in any trouble talking about it. So let's use Tyler as an example. Yeah. I haven't done a ton of return to play skate. So I'm not dodging the bullet there, I promise. But with somebody like him,

he is a player that has such a big skill set of things that he works on. That, you know, when he's kind of working himself back up, up to his baseline skating. There's little various edgework drills that I know he's drilling down on to get that mobility back. And a lot of it comes down to, you know, basically building in these drills that you already know that baseline skater has maybe based off some of the data with the catapult data

and other things that our performance group has. It's going to be a matter of getting him back to that one baseline without aggravating anything he needed to address surgically. but yeah it's definitely great to see him back on the ice and I actually with the team being on the road and then me being on the road I haven't seen him in person but much like what you mentioned there the clips that I've managed to see on X he's he's getting around just fine he looks good and I hope that he just continues to progress the same way because he's such a fun fun skater to have out there for us that was a good note Sean because I think the reason why I wanted to do this show

was I believe that sort of this skating development in that incorporation and gains there along with the medical staff organizations are probably the two biggest sort of uncovered edges for teams that we see right now. I want to end with this. You mentioned Thomas Harley and I can in good conscience do a full star show

without talking about Harley a little bit. I'm curious because we've seen they've played 21 games the stars have now without Miro Hayeskin available, right? And we've seen Harley's workload bumped up from, I think he was playing 2220 per game for the first whatever 50-ish games

to now eating up 25, 21 per game without Hayskin available as a team's number one defenseman. He played 31.10 against the lightning here over the past week. I wanted to ask you about sort of that workload management, I guess, especially with your, you know, fixation on defensive footwork and sort of how managing a workload like that when you jump up to all of a sudden that stratosphere where, you know, we see Mero constantly playing 25 to 30 minutes. And obviously he's such a smooth and elegant skater.

so he's just able to almost effortlessly cover large swath of ice and not be tired and stay out there for these two two and a half minute shifts. I think that's certainly an adjustment, especially for a young player that hasn't really had been tasked with that before. I'm curious in terms of how that works in terms of the maintenance of it, I guess, either from a footwork or gap perspective or from decision making. And especially I imagine once you start getting a bit more fatigued with that workload, maybe sometimes the details tend to slip a little bit for some of these players, though they're obviously in the top percentile at their craft. I think it's natural once you start getting tired, you start slipping up a little bit, you start making more mistakes. We haven't really seen that from Harley.

Like if anything, he's really blossomed and flourished from the Four Nations break on through this stretch of games for the stars. But I do think that's an interesting topic to get into in terms of just like defensemen that play that much in managing everything so that it's the same as when they were playing 22 minutes previously. Yeah, I mean, the crew. rises to the top, that's for sure. When you watch some of those top guys and you think of the defensive position,

even if you think of the best skaters that have played defense over the years, you know, your poor coffees of the world or the Niedemeyer, and then you get into even like Miro in-house for us and then Tom, those guys all glide and cover ice very efficiently, which definitely plays a role into how much of attacks you put on your muscles over those same minutes. So when you watch some of those players cover the routes that they cover, you know,

though like Tom Harley is so efficient with this skating and is gliding, that you can cover a lot of ice without really overworking the engine. Even though playing at that level is incredibly taxing, I think that's where you're able to get away with a bit of that. But, you know, the way those guys skate, it's unbelievable. And then when you still get asked to play as many power play minutes as those guys do, and then you hop out against some of the top lines that cover most of the ice, you know, guys that are covering, I forget what it is now.

You know, some of these guys are over 200 miles a season, you know, cover it defending forwards. So I don't know, you know, when you think about that on the defensive side of it, that's so much ice to cover. But yeah, I think it comes down to the athlete taking care of their own body and then our performance group, making sure you're getting what you need done off the ice as well as maybe dropping down my reps so that the intensity is simply a 40% and we walk through footwork on the ice for skill

development or maintenance at that level. So I think that's what comes into play when you're talking about a player that jumps up in minutes unexpectedly and then figuring out how to tailor their program off the ice and then and then through skill development. All right, fellas, well, this was a blast. It was great to get Luke on finally. Generally when we sign off on these shows, I asked the guest to plug stuff. Luke, what do you got to plug? Watch Dallas Stars hockey on Victory Plus. You got any other, any plugs other than that? You want to plug your Instagram page?

You can start posting more clips in the off season of you working on skating techniques with some of these young guys. Yeah, though, that's a, I do need to be better about posting more clips onto my Instagram page since skating's a bit of a visual thing. It helps to be able to see what we're working on. But no, other than that, yeah, definitely watching our team on Victory Plus is great. I think they're pretty exciting to watch. I think analytics have backed me up there without always just being romantic about our guys

that can skate and play so well. And then the Texas stars, obviously, down in Austin, they're at Top of the Central right now. They're doing incredibly well. And so I'll be down visiting them soon. And it's really neat to see what they've got going on there at the moment. They've got Mateo's obviously leading the AHR and goals at the moment. So he's put in hard work, a great skater.

So, yeah, tune in there, hopefully on Chil-Cut skating on Instagram. I'll get some more videos out soon and definitely this summer. And then absolute pleasure being a great. on the show. It was great. All right, buddy. We'll keep up the great work. Good luck the rest of the season. And thank you for coming on. Finally, now that you've been on, we're going to just like with free will, just ramp up the references to Luke Chocotot. I'm talking about you in spots where it doesn't even, it's not even justified. Sean, what do you got to plug? Yeah, go check out the, obviously all the work I do with elite prospects, but check out my site, shapshotshockey.com.

I think I've talked skating there with Luke before. Got a couple things on there today. I got something on there this week just kind of about the, we talked about Justin Hurtzkovian on this show. I talked to Justin and I had a really good conversation on Wednesday about how he ended up in Dallas and how a lot of that relationship building goes into those college free agents and a little bit of the human side where it's a relationship with Rich Peverly, it's a relationship with the guys, and it's not just depth charts.

Deps charts come into play, but it's how you treat people as well. So check that one out over at my site, Shapshapshatshockey.com, And yeah, and I'm sure I'll have to, now that we've had Luke on the show here, I'll have to bother him and we may have to break down some other skating things because that was always a fun when we've done that before as well, individual guys and breaking down how Miro takes a better first step than some of us will ever dream of. All right. Well, good stuff. That's not all from us today. We're officially back. And as we get into our regularly scheduled programming routine, we're going to have one more episode here to close out the week.

So check that out. Thank you to Luke Chukot. Thank you to Sean Shapiro. and thank you to the listeners for listening to the Hockey Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.