The Hockey PDOcast - Slafkovsky’s Development as a Player, the Sharks New Look Top Line, Celebrini’s Role on Team Canada, and Tampa Bay’s Defensive Results

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jack Han to discuss Juraj Slafkovsky's development as a playmaker this season, the way Macklin Celebrini and Igor Chernyshov are playing together, Celebrini's ideal role on Team Canada at this year's Olympics, the difficulty of accurately evaluating defensive play for young players, the reasons the Devils are struggling to create 5v5 offense, and how the Lightning have been able to churn out the defensive results they have despite all of their injuries on the back-end. 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.

Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey P.D.O.Cast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dmitri Filipovich. And joining me as my good buddy, Jack, on. Jack, what's going on, man? Happy New Year. We're into 2026. happy new year indeed wishing all of our listeners a very happy new year hopefully they had a nice celebration the other day we're going to start 2026 with a really fun show we got a loaded list of topics that we want to get through today a lot of them kind of stemming around player development and skill sets and kind of getting the most especially out of young players and we're going to go through the league and cover some interesting names that have popped up recently i wanted to start with your i slovsky i've indemned of the habs in general because because they're coming off this, or they're still on a road trip, but it's been very impressive to date. They had a 6-2 win in Boston in the final game before the holiday break. Then they come out of that break.

They take five out of six possible points at Tampa Bay, Florida. Carolina most recently coming back with a couple of Monster. Third period surges throughout. They're up to 6 in the league in points percentage, just one point back of Tampa Bay and Atlantic through 40 games. And I think the most encouraging development to me this year for the HABS, beyond obviously the stats I just cited about where they are in the standings to date is the development of your ice Likovsky and in particular his play as kind of an on puck

creator in his fourth NHL season his work as a facilitator and distributor in my opinion is one of the largest individual improvements I've seen on tape this year across the entire league and I wanted to get into that with you because obviously he's a player playing for the habs that you're very familiar with and I feel like this is right up your out. in terms of this type of individual skill set improvement this year. So what are you seeing from him and kind of what we can attribute that to and what we can take away from it as it's going on right now? So first off, you know, props for the HABs for basically, you know,

taking another step and doing justice to what I said about them earlier this season. I remember in our first episode together this season, I said the models are undervaling the HABs. And then, you know, we had some pushback, but it's played out so far. And one of the main reasons is because, you know, the core of this team are at an age where we're going to see year-to-year improvement, right? Like when you have NHL players, especially high-end players who are in their early 20s, they could sort of drastically outperform their previous season, you know, and it wouldn't be highly unusual. Like, if you look at an NHL player's aging curve, Slavkovsky is in a place right now where, yeah, like, we should expect big year to year improvement from 18 to 19, 19, 20, 20, 21, et cetera, right? But that's not to say that what we're seeing with him is like what's going to happen naturally, because as we know, an aging curve is a is an average or a composite of every single outcome that we've observed, right?

it's not like you leave a player to fend for himself and then from 20 to 22 he's naturally going to improve at a certain rate it's like you know if you leave a six year old in the forest for two years he's not going to come back as a as a you know as a normally functioning eight year old you're going to have like a mowgli jungle book situation right so anyway so so going back to Lovkovsky like ever since he was drafted first overall you know and I would go see him whether it's a training camp whether it's a development camp or in practice or on TV during games I'd be like this guy is just guessing out there right like you would see him try to make a pass into the middle of the ice like there's no teammates there so he thinks that he's doing

something and he's just sort of taking a guess and it doesn't connect whereas this year the biggest difference is actually he's way more in tune with his environment so whether it is the pressure that's being put on him, whether it's the location of his teammates, whether it's his own location on the ice. And like we're seeing a player who is functioning much more like, you know, a high-end NHL playmaker, which is you have an athlete who's highly attuned and highly sensitive to his environment. And I think that's the biggest difference.

It's not that he got faster or stronger or his hands improved or his shot improved. It's just now, you know, if he's taking a test, he's reading the question bet. That's the biggest difference. Yeah, it was clear in his first three seasons. I mean, after going first overall, the physical tools that were so tantalizing, but then the question of the functionality of it, right? And I think early on his career, he'd kind of been relegated to playing a very simple third wheel style of game alongside Suzuki and Caulfield, where he'd kind of just hang around the net or in the slot

and wait for the puck to come to him. and now watching him this year feels like he's flourishing in like a significantly more nuanced or diverse way, especially initiating some of these offensive sequences. And that's what I was going to ask, and you hit on it a little bit there, but whether it's improved feel, skill development, just more confidence at this stage of his career, opportunity kind of playing and existing within a different context now that he's playing on a separate line and maybe getting the chance to just play with the puck a little bit more and do some of that more offensive creation early on in the sequence because just watching on tape

the combination of passes he's both attempting and executing with increased frequency has just unlocked a whole new level for me in watching them play especially recently and it's the variety of it right you could see in carolina setting up that that initial goal where it's the drop pass kind of following an entry getting into space and then allowing dem it up to do the rest some backdoor, Shaw passes, east-west, see him action, using his frame in particular to download to protect the puck, but then spin off a check, and as the defender's attention is on him,

hitting an open man with a chance to do something with it after that, it's been so fun to watch, and it's just an entirely different, it's night and day compared to what it was the first couple years for me in watching him play specifically. Yeah, and I would actually point to the goal that he scored. It's the one where he snuck the ball, puck short side against Bussie.

Yeah, it was in the third period against Carolina. Yeah, exactly. So that one is good to look at because there exists some replay angles where you actually see him like look up and take a snapshot of the net. And then he realizes that Bussie is a little bit loose off his post. And he's just like, I'm going to try this because I think I can sneak this in. Whereas in years past, like either it would be a totally blind shot where, you know, he would just hit the goal in the chest or maybe he doesn't see that opportunity because

again he doesn't look so the thing with him is you know i i i work with adam nicholas who who is uh in charge of i would say the have skill development the player development side you know we were colleagues for for a number of years and he is big into something called the constraint led approach cLA so it's a relatively new skill development sort of mentality where basically again it's it's like the idea is like you want to develop athletes who are attuned to their environment. So you're not necessarily forcing them to replicate a certain movement pattern or, you know, a certain skill or, you know,

you're more sort of developing athletes who are able to operate in a sandbox and find solutions as they emerge, right? So basically, you're looking to develop players who know how to improvise, who have the necessary toolkit to be able to, identify the situation that they're in and then find the best possible solution in that situation. And again, you know, at 18, Slavkovsky was a player who depended on his linemate's hockey IQ or problem solving ability to produce, right? Like I unearthed this quote from Thomas Tatar from a few years ago where they played together

on the Slovak senior team during Slavkovsky's draft year. and he was saying how Slavkovsky, obviously, he's a great player, but he's a kind of player who does really well when he's reading off his linemate and leveraging his linemate's hockey IQ. And, you know, so Tom Satar may wind up be one of the more underrated habs, you know, of the past decade, but also I think he's really underrated in terms of how he reads the game. And that's totally right.

So, you know, maybe last year we saw Slavkovsky being able to read off, of Suzuki and Caulfield and starting to produce, but now he's also able to create for his linemates as well, and now with Demandov and Caput. And so that's, that was going to be the logical next step. And I think it's a long time coming with, you know, Adams, you know, sort of approach to skill development, which I think is really promising. And we're already seeing some, some nice dividends. But yeah, like, you know, for maybe there's another couple of, gears that he's going to unlock in due time, but the direction that he's trending in is really encouraging both for him personally, but also for the HABS and also for this sort of

the, the, the, the, the, the, the CLA approach to skill development in hockey. Yeah, you're certainly seeing that the feel for an understanding of where guys are. And I want to talk about him and Demit, I'll, but just the last known as Slokowski, 12 points already in 40 games, or primary assists in 40 games. He had 16 all of last year. In the last 18 games, he's got eight goals and 12 assists since the end of November. or so him and Demadov together and I think this is obviously for the rest of this season important where the habs are but I think for the long term as well in establishing a second wave of offense

and not being as reliant on essentially Suzuki Caulfield and Hudson as a trio last year where they did so much of the heavyweighting offensively and they were kind of a one line team in that regard him and Demadov so far 189 515 minutes together they're generating about 4.1 goals per hour in that time and it coincides with Demidov I think I kind of on a show earlier this week, we waited to taking the training wheels off a little bit in his first one in HL season, where start of the year in October,

he's playing 1347 per game, November, they bump it up to 1446. In December, we've seen it go up to 16, 50, and I think there's another couple layers to keep expanding beyond that. And in the process of that, as he's played more,

I think Deminov's also started to lean on his shot a little bit more and look for it and not necessarily just be trying to set up everyone all the time. And we've seen some, he scores some cool goals, but I think just attempt a lot more. and that's going to unlock stuff for him as well. And that's kind of scary to think about considering the fact that he's already second on

this team in 5-on-5 points behind just Lane Hudson, despite the fact that he's seventh amongst Habs forwards in actual 5-1-5 usage. And so I think this is all really exciting. I mean, the habs have been playing some fun games. It was particularly amusing watching the game against the Panthers earlier this week because TSN had the Jets broadcast team calling it with Mike Johnson doing the World Juniors. And they were just audibly taken aback throughout that game, watching like how quickly they were moving the puck as a team and creating scoring chances.

And I think part of that is they've been subjected to watching the Winnipeg Jets play hockey all year. So they were comparing it to that. But it was pretty fun to listen to nonetheless. And yeah, it's really fun hockey right now. Yeah. So first to that point, like, wouldn't it be nice to have just out of market teams, you know, work these games once in a while just so that they don't always watch the same teams or the same players, the same styles? And because I think a lot of broadcasts get a bad rep about whether, you know, they're homers or they're hit on the same players or maybe they have certain blind spots.

And, you know, maybe having some sort of out-of-market coverage or some sort of, you know, cross-checking would be really cool from a broadcasting point of view. Again, you know, this was a very particular situation where, you know, you had the world junior, so you got a schedule issue. But as you said, like, maybe we also would gain from watching out. to market teams once in a while. The second thing is, you know, you mentioned sort of the point totals or the goal creation for Slavkovsky and Demidov.

And certainly, you know, that's encouraging and it's a sign of a duo with real sort of high-end potential. The play driving hasn't been there yet. And right now, the feeling in Montreal is like, you know, everybody's a little bit down on Suzuki and Caulfield because, you know, on the goal side, it's not as strong, even though on the playmaking, sorry, on the play driving side, it's still, you know, they're still in sort of that 52, 53 percent expected goals area, which is very healthy. Whereas for Demidov and Slovsky, they're like down in the 40s, which is bound to regress.

But I think the habs, again, they're on a really nice trajectory. I think they're going to overperform even the most optimistic preseason projections with the addition of Dono that's really solidifying the team. There's still a team that has like five top six forwards for six spots. So we'll see what happens down the row with maybe Michael Hayd or maybe Alexander Zorovsky who's having a really good KHL season but again this is a team on the rise

and I feel really lucky now to be able to watch them on a day to day to day basis. Yeah, I think part of that on the play driving thing is that they are playing with a 22 year old center who's essentially playing his first full NHL season as well and so I think that context is important in terms of maybe some of the the details. A couple other things

that I had in my notes. One is I feel like watching him play. He's utilized his reach so well now to like poke and prod at 50-50 pucks and either retrieve possession for himself or get it to a teammate and that's led to a number of these goals where amidst that chaos the opponent and if they lose position of the puck are on the wrong side of it and it creates an opportunity there i think the next step for him in terms of skill development is going to be tightening up some of the stick handling in traffic because it feels like he's still somewhat a little clunky when he's kind of fumbling pucks in those situations and that's why that play

that you talked about when he snuck at short side by Bussie was encouraging because that was kind of this end-to-end rush where he had to weave around a couple defenders and protect the puck in tight and then eventually led to that shot opportunity. And there's certain instances where he gets, especially like receiving a pass on the move where I think it's going to come with time for a player with his reach who's still kind of trying to figure out some of these little details. But considering the leap we've seen this year, I imagine that's going to be the next step that that Adam Nicholas and the haves are going to be working on with him in future off seasons. Yeah, I mean, you know, if he did everything perfect, he'd be a top 10 player in the league where, you know, obviously he's not there yet.

My favorable, comparable for him a few years ago was Nishushkin. And I think certainly he's trending in that direction now. So we'll see how that develops. He is. And Shushkin, especially at this stage of his career, is so much more straight line, though, I find. and maybe at times you'd want Slavkowski to be a little bit more in terms of using the frame to get to the net. But I think the East-West stuff we've seen from him as a playmaker this year

has been far more nuanced than a lot of what you see in terms of the way Nitchush can plays. Okay, let's get to McClabrini. And in particular, I wanted to get into him and the dynamic that's kind of building here over the past couple weeks with him and Igor Chernishov. We're up to 90 minutes and 31 seconds of 5-on-5 ice time. Between the two, the sharks have generated 12 goals in that time.

High danger chances are 33 to 17. for San Jose and I'm very proud of myself because I force you in preparing for the show to get into Chernyshov's tape in particular and you had some interesting notes from seeing that and so I wanted to break all that down with you and what we're seeing from the two of them and then get into maybe a bigger picture celebrating conversation after that. So Chernishov is a guy who I basically had no idea existed until a few weeks ago and who I never seen on tape before last night so I went And I grabbed not only his NHL games, but some of his last HL games. And like, man, like, this guy's good.

Like, all the things that I just talked about was Slavkovsky. Like, Sovkovsky, he's 21 and a half years old right now. And Chernoshov turned 20 not too long ago. And in terms of, like, his awareness of pressure and his ability to play in contact, in terms of his ability to find the best play available, in terms of his ability to you know, react quickly to turnovers on both sides of the puck. He's like a year and a half ahead of Slavkovsky. And we just talked about how good Slavkovsky is like,

this guy, like, I don't know how he slit the 33 because, you know, he's a six-foot-three winger who played in the pro league. Well, I mean, he didn't play a ton of the KHL during his draft year, but he played some. He's a right-handed guy can shoot the puck as sort of all the tools that you look for. and he hasn't been one of them more heralded San Jose Sharks prospects because they've had a lot with Michael Misa and Sam Dickinson but I think this guy can be a game changer for them

in terms of being sort of that third guy on a celebrating Eklund line like those three together I find there's just a perfect match of skill sets in terms of physical attributes in terms of play styles Like, I just love that line right now. You know why he fell in the draft? Because he, if you recall in the pre-draft showcase in Florida in his draft year, got a severe sunburn and wound up missing,

I think, like, a part of the drills in terms of teams we're evaluating and looking at, but also meeting with some of the teams as well. And I think he was going to be a late first round pick that year. And then he wound up falling to the first pick of the second round. But yeah, remarkable story. And he's been awesome to watch. I mean, getting this opportunity to come up and play with Celebrini after Will Smith got hurt, I think kind of as a reward for how well he'd be playing as a 20-year-old in the AHL this year

where he was about a point per game and seven games so far only, so it is a small sample, but three goals, four primary assists, eight points, 14 high danger chances already. And on a permanent basis at 515, he's already in that territory of some of the best kind of big body grinder and at front guys like Anders Lee, Zach Hyman, Arturi Lekanin, and so you can certainly see the vision there. And I think the playmaking is underrated as well because what's been really noticeable and particularly fun to watch so far between the two of these guys has been Cellebrini all of a sudden having access to kind of this big bodied battering ram that can take on defenders and win battles down low and create chaos and then have the skill to find him.

Is Cellebrini all of a sudden now has afforded some of these extra opportunities to just find soft ice in the offensive zone and then get catch and shot, catch and shoot looks off of it. he's so just devastatingly lethal on those shots in particular. And it's amazing that he had already scored as many goals as he did at the NHL level as a teenager, despite the fact that he had to do so much on puck creation where he has to do all the heavy lifting just to get in shooting opportunities and the entire defense is keying on him. And now all of a sudden he's getting a little bit extra space. And I think it's going to lead to even more goals in the future.

And so I think that's an important thing to think about as we think about the context of what celebrating he could do for Team Canada at the Olympics. and maybe that's the next good segue for us to talk about here. Yeah, so just one last thing about that trucks line. Like, I just, they remind me a little bit of the McDavid, Nugent Hopkins, Hyman trio. Just in terms of like how Hyman is good along the boards and goes to the front of the net and does a lot of defensive heavy lifting.

Like I think Sharnashav is already showing that at 20 years old. So obviously his ceiling is going to be higher. And I think all of a sudden, And I think the sharks have a legit top line now. So Celebrini goes from, you know, he makes team Canada this week as a 19 year old. And it's a great story. And I think heading into the year, I viewed it as already being a possibility. But if he had made the team, it would kind of be with the ability to bring 14 forwards for the Olympics as, you know, an extra guy providing a valuable experience to not only have them as a break in case of emergency option, but also just as the next wave.

of leaders for Team Canada at the Olympics. And now the way he's played and in particular how he looks most recently, I think he sort of worked his way into a realistic conversation for us to have regarding his role as like a potential core piece on this team. And I've given this a lot of thought in terms of how the lines are going to stack out over the past couple days now that we know who's going to be there. And I'm growing, or the idea is growing on me that they should seriously consider playing him with McDavid because I think some of the skills that he just cited,

there, I think are going to play really well where getting lost in coverage, kind of making you pay off of some of those catch and shoot opportunities. He's already top five in the league and chances off of four checks. So I think you'll be able to grind out extra opportunities and possessions with him out there. And he's not going to, he doesn't move at the pace McDavid does. No one does. But he's certainly able to play at that pace in terms of decision making and kind of recognizing where to go. And then thriving within that chaos. So I don't know what you think about that fit, but I think it would be a pretty dantalizing one. So I would actually go a step further and say that if Canada ever gets in trouble

and needs a goal or needs to push offensively, I think their top four combination is Celebrini down the middle with McDavid and McKinnon on the wings. Because a lot of the things that we see Celebrini do in terms of being high event with the puck and high event at forcing turnovers is going to benefit McDavid and McKinnon and also it's going to force the opposing team to not overcover any of them in particular because I would anticipate all three of them to start to chairman on different lines and if all goes well then great right because

you you can roll the lines you have depth but I think we're going to get into a situation if can is in a tight spot then Celibriene is going to be the guy who's being underplayed and deserves to move up the lineup to create something different like let's say that again during the finals against USA and you know Jacob Slavin is shutting down the McDavid line whatever that looks like

well if you put McDavid McKinn and Silbrain on the same line that's going to overwhelm Slavin and whoever's partner is for sure and maybe that's also going to open up some opportunities for you elsewhere in the lineup I mean that'd be really interesting

I do wonder about a not overlapping skill sets because they're obviously so good in so many different areas that I think they'd eventually make it work if they were given enough reps together but kind of a too many cooks situation with McDavid and McKinnon in terms of especially in transition like needing to kind of be on-pock a little bit more

and do the carrying as opposed to elsewhere but maybe they can make it work. I don't know. Do you have any qualms about that or do you think it's overthinking it and they're so good and so dynamic that they'd make it work even if they're not necessarily doing what they do on their current NHL clubs? Yeah, I mean, I would certainly not start determined that way. I would give all the marina on their own lines and see how that develops.

But again, if you're in a situation against either a very strong opponent or a very defensive opponent where you're not getting much going as it is, then that would be sort of my last resort, sort of your, you know, all hands on deck sort of situation. All right, Jack, let's take our break here. And then we come back. We're going to jump right back into it and keep the conversation going. You're listening to the Hockey, OK, streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right, we're back to the Hockey Ocast, joined by Jack Hahn, starting 2026 with a fun show. We talked to Celebrini before the break, and I think that's a good segue here for us to talk about a player who didn't make team Canada in Conner Bardard. And then in particular, his head coach, Jeff Blashill's response to that in some of the quotes.

They came out kind of citing the defensive metrics and maybe some of his skepticism surrounding their ability to properly capture impact at that end of the ice. And listen, it's obviously a coach who's advocating for his star player as he should. And I think ultimately he's not necessarily wrong in the grand scheme of things in terms of the nuance that goes into measuring defensive ability and how using just PR on ice metrics to as a proxy for measuring it is going to be flawed in a number of ways. know that you thought it was an interesting kind of angle and maybe we can get into that as it relates to not only Badar but also Celebrini who we just talked about because I think it almost applies

to to him maybe even more directly right now. So let me let me just pull up the quote because I think it's important. So the part that I think a lot of people have keyed in on is quote, I've read some things about defensive metrics and things like that. I would tell you I've studied these things tons and I've never seen defensive metrics. that I trust to say to me whether a guy, whether or not a guy is a good defensive player. I don't think they judge what they're supposed to judge yet.

We're all trying to, we're all trying to get there. We're not there. That's his quote, right? And, you know, you could take issues because there are some, actually a variety of stats that do tell you certain things about defensive play. But ultimately, like, I would agree with this larger point that, defense is hard to capture that offense and how I would explain this is offense converges right like if you want to score a goal you're going to do it within you know 10 to 30 feet of the net and

sort of in the middle of the ice more or less right maybe you would go back post or maybe you know you could go a little bit farther from a net but that's essentially where offense in terms of goal scoring happens. So whether if we look at goals and assists, whether we look at expected goals, whether we, if we look at passes into the slot or, you know, quick release shots or shots off to catch, like they're basically capturing something that, some things that are similar, right, which is we're trying to get to that area of the ice. So offense converges, whereas defense diverges.

If you look at, you know, the best defensive players in the league, whether we have Slaven, whether you name it right you can defend in so many ways because basically the goal of what you're trying to do is you're trying to prevent somebody else from getting into that area and then getting the puck with space to operate so is it by having the puck right like we talk about tons of players with really great um shots of pressure metrics who don't play a lick of defense because they always have the puck that's fine that's one way to do it is it by for checking up ice and forcing turnovers, you know, there are stats for that. Is it by preventing the opponents from exiting their zone? There's a stat for that. Is it preventing them from entering your zone?

There's a stat for that. Is it preventing them from getting to the slot via passing? Is it by blocking tons of shots if you have to as a last resort? Is it by, you know, being physical and winning battles? So it's such a divergent activity that I think I would tend to agree with Blaschell that like depending on what metric or combination of metrics you're looking at you're going to come to different conclusions about a player's defensive ability certainly i mean it's obviously fundamentally more challenging to put a number two just because the working definition of good defense is technically just the absence of offense against right and so as you noted there's a couple different ways to do it whether it's playing with a puck in the offensive zone whether it's

some of these low event wingers in particular that always come through with glowing defensive metrics because they just kind of keep the puck pinned along the wall or in the neutral zone and nothing is really happening. And so the belt volume is incredibly low or kind of some of these elite either absorbed defenders low in their zone or guys like Slavin who are just an eraser in terms of high danger opportunities, breaking that kind of last chain in the sequence of it and eliminating high danger chances. The thing that's tricky here is, you know, especially that's why I said it applies maybe more to Celebrini because I think he already has a reputation and why he was considered more of a favorite to make team Canada even before Bedard's injury and before the way

the season has progressed as a two-way force already because he's got some of these micro stats where, you know, last year was the puck battle wins. This year it's stick checks, kind of these like isolated individual defensive events that we can quantify and then the eye test and kinds of how it looks when he's doing so and then comparing it to the actual on ice results where the sharks are still giving up a ton of shots, chances, goals, expected goals when he's on the ice. And I think a lot of that doesn't really have anything to do with him in some sense it does because of playing style. I think David St. Louis, our pal, wrote a great piece on elite prospects a couple weeks ago about this in terms of risk profile where a guy,

like celebrating he has to do so much offensive creation for his team and they rely on him to do so that sometimes he's not making safe choices in terms of puck management and he's trying to make a high danger play and if it leads to a turnover it's going to wind up burning them the other way but that's kind of a requirement for him right now and that's partly because of not only who he plays with and you look at the specifically the defenseman like his most common linemates in that regard are dmitri orlov and john klingberg and you can watch their most recent game against the wild as an example of this where along the wall Orlov makes an ill-advised pinch gets on the wrong side of the puck. It's going back two-on-one the other way and

Teresanko buries it and it winds up being a high danger chance and a goal against for Celebrini. And then the quality of the team as well, I think, is an important thing here. It doesn't necessarily get discussed as much. And it's not necessarily that they're going to be a bad team, so they're going to struggle, but how it relates to the trickle-down impact it has on a guy like Elbrini where you're not evaluating its shifts, isolating them for what it is necessarily, because when he steps on the ice, chances are it's kind of in a negative game script already where they might not have possession because the players who were on the ice previously weren't very good or he's going to be in his own zone or any number of things in terms of

the situation he's stepping into in terms of environment. And so you're already playing from a disadvantage to the age's point. And so I think putting all that together is like an important part of this conversation about evaluating defense and who's good at it and who's not and especially for young players like a celebrini and obviously a badart as splash he'll talk about yeah yeah and i would say celebrini for me like he's in a spot right now where crosbie was around 2006 2007 where you know he was putting up points the penguins are getting better uh obviously crosbie was sort of a very high profile olympic snub back in o six were kind of um you know underachieved But, but, you know, Crosby never had really top, top sort of shot suppression metrics even in his peak, right?

He was always like a 99th percentile offensive creator, maybe a somewhat above average shot suppressor, which for his game style is fine. And I think for Cellebrini as well in terms of how involved he is at creating battles, creating stick checks, turning pucks over. We don't really need him to be a 99th percentile shot suppress on top of that. If he's able to play a high event game, then ultimately that's going to benefit his team. We had a question while we're just on, we're talking about Olympics with Celebrini. We had a question from the Discord about it. And in particular, you know, in a short term event like the Olympics with limited practice time, limited reps with the players you're playing with if you're not on the same NHL team,

kind of like how much prep work goes into it. But I think especially in first things like the power play, for example, where we know that the best units, in the league, generally in the HL, are ones who have the continuity of years together in terms of getting those reps and chemistry down so that they can execute with precision and pick you apart very meticulously. That's going to be a tougher thing to replicate a tournament like this, where you're just essentially putting together an all-star team of guys who, you know, might have played at Four Nations together or at orientation camp or in previous stops,

but aren't necessarily playing with each other on a day-to-day basis and figuring out each other's, strengths and weaknesses, but also particular quirks in terms of where they like the puck, where they're going to be, how they're going to react to a certain situation that the team does defensively. Do you got any thoughts on kind of how that plays out for some of these teams at the Olympics in terms of nailing all that stuff down and trying to do it all in the fly in a very deficient manner? So there's a few different mechanisms going on here.

So the first one is that every player that gets picked for Team Canada or Team USA or Sweden North Finland. They're all students of the game. They know their own games really well. They know the games of their prospective teammates to a certain extent, especially those that they see on a regular basis in the NHL. So there's going to be some sort of back and forth in terms of just communicating before the fact.

The second thing is, if we look at Canada and US specifically, the tactical playbook that they use really doesn't. change very much. It's a very sort of stock standard where they're going to play a 1-2-2-4 check and open play. They may go to 2-1-2 off a face-off loss. De-zone coverage is going to be very standard. It's going to be a 5-tight down low. It's going to be either a zone or a man-on-man up top. So it's very NHL standard stuff. You're not going to see a team can or a team USA head coach come out and start playing a 1-3-1 neutral zone 4-check or something weird and wacky that nobody's ever seen before like that that's not the point the point is you have a

predictable familiar structure and then the players uh can operate inside that and obviously sort of add their own twist so that kind of negates the need for a lot of practice time you're certainly going to do some video you're going to refer back to some of the things that happen in four nations in terms of player combinations in terms of you know clips of situations that came up but on that side, in a short-term tournament, there's not really a need to innovate tactically, which is conversely why once in a while, if you look at, again, like the world juniors or the world championships, teams like Latvia or Czechia or Slovakia, they can overperform because they can actually really take the time and mold something that fits their team because

they're such underdogs that they have to do it tactically. But for USA and Canada and to a certain extent Sweden, there is no need to change your tactics, which is why, again, you know, Sweden is in a tough spot because they're going to have to innovate to beat Canada or USA, but that also introduces lots of variables that make them vulnerable to Lester teams. You want to, I got a couple teams I want to run through here. We got about 15 minutes or so left. I had the lightning, devils, and oilers that I wanted to talk about, which one's most interesting team?

we'll do the devils really quick folks online are concerned about the devil's lack of scoring and I would tell you that if you look at their depth forwards their job is not to score and in fact they haven't scored at all and a lot of the shortfall can be there obviously the top guys in terms of the Heisher line and the Hamilton and Zygenthaler pairing have struggled but I think first I would try to figure out the fringes

and then maybe figure out whether you know I need to move on from Hamilton or Ziegenthaler or, you know, et cetera, because, you know, I don't think the core is the problem. It's really, you can rebuild around that core. Certainly. I mean, I think people are understandably worried. You look in their 31st and 515 goals per hour this year under two of them per 60 minutes. Only Seattle generates less.

Their 31st and 515 goals share as a result. Only St. Louis is worse than their 44%. Their rush chances are down from seven and a half a couple years ago when they were. were atop the league to around six now. And part of that is because Jack Hughes has missed a significant portion of time over the past two seasons, but this has been going on for a while now. And, you know, there's a good conversation to have between personnel and coaching here in terms of how much of it is deliberate.

I think the two kind of go hand in hand and your Sheldon Keith's obviously a coach you're, you're very familiar with because I imagine part of this roster construction over the past couple years has been done with the coaches say in terms of preference of players and that depth in particular you mentioned some of the guys whether it's certainly at the bottom with glendanning and lamaco but at codder and nason at five one five as well they're just generating nothing with them um it doesn't help that his year's production has has dried up at five one five and jesper brats finishing as well which has been alarming um the note on the defenseman is interesting though because in particular with seganthal

and the drain it's had on Dougie Hamilton's offense where he has three five-on-five points this season in about 620 minutes. He's been on the ice for just 16 devil's goals in that time, which is essentially cut his usual norm on a per 60 basis in half this year. And out of necessity partly because of all the absences they've had, but they're still running with it now.

I don't think it makes a lot of sense, especially at this stage of his career, to be using Dougie Hamilton this way, where he's got a 47% offensive zone start rate and he's playing with a guy with Sikenthaler's skill set and it's clearly eating away at his own individual production and so you put all that stuff together and that's why they're at. So I'm very curious to see how this goes.

There's a huge bounceback performance for them on New Year's Eve against Columbus in that third period, especially after the embarrassing effort in Toronto, they very desperately needed it. But I still think I have a lot of questions in terms of what this roster is going to look like between now and the trade deadline and how serious they are about turning this thing around. I mean, I don't think I'm wrong. I may be wrong, but I don't think 2017 Sheldon Keefe would ever have Luke Glendini and Uho Llamico on his roster ever.

Yeah, well, time comes for us all. The lightning. So the polar opposite in terms of what I wanted to focus on where you look and defensively, fourth fewest goals against per 60. First, according to sport logic, inexpected goals against. Second, in terms of fewest offensive zone opportunities

given to opponents, fifth best penalty kill, and as a result, their first in the Atlantic, fifth and points percentage, and they've done all that despite the fact that their top four defensemen

in total ice time this season are J.J. Mozer, Darren Radish, Charles Edward Dostoo, Anemia Lillelberg. Max Crozier has played more 5-15 minutes than McDonough or Headman. Declan Carlisle has played more games

than either of those two. They've used 11 different defensemen so far. We joked about their HL Corps. Last time we spoke about them. One of the 11 they've used was Maxim Groshev, who was a winger up until last year, and they transitioned them to the blue line in Syracuse and got a game out of him as well.

I'm curious for your take on how they're doing this with the players they've had in terms of the infrastructure and the results they've created out of it, and in particular, the interplay between forwards and defensemen and the role the guys up front have played in this operation, because obviously I think the two go hand in hand and lightning are probably the best example of that. Yeah, so first off, historically, Tampa has been a really good team

in terms of developing players. And a lot of times we think of developing players as you draft a guy top 10 and then he makes the team and he scores a pointing game. But in terms of Tampa, like they've been really good at finding guys who maybe fringe NHEL is at best and then getting them to Syracuse. and getting them good enough so that they're at least not actively hurting the team.

You mentioned a lot of these defensemen. Das 2 was playing in Liga a few years ago and then he went to Sweden. And then a lot of these defensemen who have this career trajectory, they sort of get stuck in the HL when they get back because they're just not good enough defensively

and also without being elite offensive creators. But, you know, Das2 especially, like the times I've seen him like he looks fine he looks like you're sort of run the mill average size third pair of guy who can move the puck some skate well defend some they've got lots of guys like that who can who can sort of just play their position right and i think that the big secret of what's going on here is the forwards are working a lot harder defensively to cover up for the defense mislimitations you know jj mozer has had a career season because, you know, he's maybe the only one in that entire decor right now with high-end skating and high-end playmaking ability in transition.

And because the forwards are being so responsible, he can pretty much play Roman Yosi and go whenever he wants. And, you know, that forward group, again, they're working really hard. They're playing really well defensively. We see Kuturov cheating for offense once in a while, and it tends to work out for him more often than not. But aside from him, it's just a lot of honest defensive play. it is and i think the forwards in particular whether it's haigel uh gensel point now that he's back and playing better they have some of these guys who can not only come back and help defensively but i think do a lot of the heavy lifting to initiate transition as well and get them moving in the right direction

and then they've got the guys up front to capitalize off that once they're moving in the right direction so yeah it's really fun kind of watching interplay between the two and and how they gel it and how they make it work and I think they do a really good job of all these guys have like at least one identifiable plus skill and then they highlight that and focus on that and cater their game to that and don't worry about the stuff that they aren't necessarily that good at and make it work and so it's it's led to a remarkable results and it's one of the coolest stories in the league you got any notes on on the oilers because we had a discord question kind of asking about the coaching in particular and figuring out how to sort of deal with the bottom six and make sure those players

can succeed when you have a top heavy lineup the way the Oilers do. We did a pretty long form conversation about them the last time we spoke, I believe. And certainly McDavid going completely nuclear offensively and them getting healthier and reuniting that top line with him has helped stabilize the results somewhat since that conversation. But they're coming off a pretty ugly showing against the Bruins on New Year's Eve. And I think in terms of the championship trajectory, and their spot as a contender in the West, I think it's a fair question to ask in terms of rounding it out and kind of getting the most out of all the players.

And I think what a difficult spot it is, in particular for some of those guys, because it seems like whenever the game starts to go sideways, they're so quick to kind of press the emergency button in terms of either loading up the top line or just phasing out certain players out of their usual ice time. And so I imagine that lack of sort of, sort of continuity and more stability in terms of opportunities and minutes only makes

it more difficult for players who are necessarily that equipped to succeed anyways. So I think there's some of what's going on in New Jersey happening to the Oilers, which is if you look around the fringes, they're just not very good. Like their bottom six doesn't excite me at all. Walman hasn't been healthy and he hasn't played great when he has been healthy. So it's basically, you know, they've got two good defensemen and then Darnel Nurse and then everybody else. And then, but the other thing tactically, which I find really interesting is I was looking at on hockey viz, the score effect breakdown of how the team plays when it's tied versus up by one versus down by one. And the Oilers are showing a really odd pattern here, which is, first of all, when they're tied, they're very sort of poor.

offensively, which is unusual for this team, which points to the personnel issues, I think. But when they're up by one, they actually dry play really well. They get tons of looks in the high danger area. And then when they're down by one, when they should be pushing for offense, it's actually the opposite. Like instead of being able to drive volume and create danger, they're actually a lot of the time, which this tells me that there's something off with this team's risk profile. And, you know, I'd file, sorry, when they're tied, it's maybe it's more of a personnel issue,

but when they're up by one and they play more of a counterattacking, patient, you know, reading off the opponent's style play, it's working well for them, even though they're probably more rolling their line instead of relying the top guys. And then when they're down by one and pushing, maybe they're riding the same horses too hard and they're trying too much to stretch the ice and make something happen quickly. So maybe it's, first of all, they should probably look to up. upgrade around the fringes, but also maybe if they just sort of backed off a little bit of their aggression, they would actually get better results.

Yeah, that's fair. I think there's certainly bottom six questions, as we've seen. I think they're going to be able to pay for it, but I think one thing they can't get around is that they just desperately need Jake Wellman back. I don't know how many more games of Regula and Nurse I can watch, and that's been a big issue, certainly. All right, Jack. Actually, let's end with one more question.

Just as a thought exercise, the question asks about why front offices still seem to value large physical defensemen that lack puck skill and whether there's certain elements, fans just aren't taken into consideration that the GM's acquiring these teams or the coaches leaning on them and utilizing them are valuing. Do you have any thoughts on this, especially from like a lineup construction perspective because we know coaches typically like to try to insulate like a young puck mover with a more traditional. older, stay-at-home defensemen, that's going to be a bit safer? Do you think that that is the right approach from maximizing a skill perspective and that it's too risky to have two guys with very similar skill sets that are going to kind of leave you exposed defensively? Or how do you view this? So I'm going to go a little bit off the board here.

And I think as a whole, the league has gotten smarter in terms of identifying who's actually good and who's not. I think that a large difference comes down to how you. consume the game like are you watching it on TV or even are you watching it from the spreadsheets versus are you watching it in person because you know I I do a fair amount of both and when you watch things in person first of all you can pick or vantage point but second you have a much higher definition look at who's who's basically who's soft and who's not right like which guys are shying away from contact which guys are you know getting rid of the puckers are scared whereas on

TV, like either the camera pans away or you're more focused on the puck and how it's traveling through space. So it's just a matter of, you know, the definition and the vantage point, I think if you're obviously, if you're a coach or if you're a manager, you're watching all these games in person and you know

exactly who's, you know, scared shit list to go in the corner. And maybe that weighs more heavily on your evaluation than, you know, what happens to the puck before and after a player touches it. All right, buddy. Good stuff. This was a lot of fun. Great way to start 26. I want to let you promote something on the way. I'll let the listeners know where they can

check you out, whether there's any updates for the Hockey Tactics 2026 edition, all that good stuff. So, yeah, so I'm working on the Hockey Tactics 2026 ebook. One big addition this year is, you know, in the past, I've shown you all the structures of the 32 NHL teams, but this year there's going to be more space for discussion in terms of how players like Salkovsky and Shernishav get better and control the game and I'll even share some drills where if you're a high school hockey coach or minor hockey coach or hockey parent, you can use with your own players to get them to play smarter. So excited for that. It'll come out, I would say around February, maybe Olympics time, maybe a little bit after, but look for it then. All right, buddy. Well, looking forward to it.

I enjoy 2025 as always. So this is going to be great addition to our reading material. And when you put it out there, we'll have you back on and we'll break some of it down and plug it then. If you joined today's show, subscribe to the PDOCAST Patreon for extra episodes. We did a bunch of abs content last week, and how could you not, considering the way they're playing and running through the league? And we clearly got a fan from that because Sam Malinsky's dad, subscribe to the PDO cast Patreon, which is great. So all the cool people are doing it. So join us there. Give us a five-star review wherever you listen.

That's all for this week. We're going to be back Sunday night with your hands for our usual Sunday special. The plan is to break down the Canadian and American Olympic rosters now that they've been made a fair. then hope everyone is a great weekend and thank you for listening to the HockeyPedocast streaming on the sports net radio network