The Hockey PDOcast - Summer Series 2.0 Part 6 with Bill Armstrong

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Bill Armstrong and John Matisz to wrap up this year's Summer Series with a chat about the value of having your core players already signed long-term in this current market, Utah's plan for building on last year's playoff appearance, their offseason moves, and finding ways to keep integrating young players into an already competitive lineup.There will be a couple of new episodes each week that will be Patreon-exclusive only for our subscribers, and won't be appearing on the free feed. To gain access to all of that content make sure you've subscribed to the PDOcast's Patreon. The subscription provides you with the ad-free version of every single episode we do this season, and they will be available for you to listen as soon as we're done recording.We've also finally got some merch available for our listeners! If you'd like to get your hands on a PDOcast shirt or hat to rep the show, you can do so here. We've recently added a really fun new option on there to celebrate the start of the season. If you've already subscribed to the Patreon, one of the perks that comes with it is that you get a discount on all of the show merch.I'd also recommend subscribing to our Youtube channel. We'll be posting full shows on there more regularly this season so that you can watch along with us. I'm hoping to grow the channel this year, so each subscription, like, and comment is greatly appreciated. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedioCast. My name is Demetra Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy John Mattis. John, what's going on, then? Not a whole lot. But, I mean, the weather's changing here in Ontario, which is the first sign that

hockey season is here. It's starting to get a little chilly, a little fall-like, which is awesome. And, you know, the hockey season is basically here. and we've got one last summer series interview. Yes. Yeah, we're really stretching the definition of the summer series. Preseason hockey's here. The weather is changing, but we've got one more to do.

And it's kind of a repeat of last year because our caper or a headliner, if you want to say for the summer series, the first time we did it last summer was Bill Armstrong. Really enjoyed that chat, got a bunch of great feedback on it. And the Utah Mademoth had a busy offseason and busy summer. And so I wanted to get them back on to catch up. And so joining us to close out this year's summer series is Bill Armstrong once again. Bill, how's it going, man?

Well, thank you. I'd like to think that you saved the best for last, right? I think so. That's the way we're framing it. And I feel like the listeners will agree. Let's kick it off because I've got a lot I want to run through it. Let's go. So something we've been talking about a lot on the show is, you know, just the manner in which

the markets exploded this summer. And I think everyone was anticipating and preparing for it to some degree. The caps rising. There's going to be more money. available. The leagues in a very healthy position. Future contracts like in other leagues are going to benefit from it as a result of that. I don't think anyone was necessarily expecting or preparing for the type of inflation we saw as quickly as it happened this summer right after the Leo Carlson offer sheet. And I wanted to kick off this conversation talking to you a little bit about some of

the work you've done over the past two off seasons getting first Dylan Gunther and then Logan Cooley signed to the eight year extensions. You did. I know, I think last time I had you on, you were in the of working that out with Cooley and his representatives. And we were talking a little bit about the importance of getting that done and sort of of setting the organization up for the future. How do you sort of view now that you've gotten that business done, maybe somewhat of a competitive advantage you've created for yourself in terms of not having to worry as much about what's going on in the market around you because you've got those numbers on your

cap sheet for the next seven years or so. And you'll reengage those conversations when it's appropriate. But for now, you can kind of use each side. with the cap going up to maybe add to your team as opposed to just reall allocating it to the players you already have on your roster. Yeah, well, first of all, I don't think anybody in the hockey market predicted the explosion of what happened this summer, you know, I don't think anybody could have predicted that. So I think it goes back long before when we had this thought process of building a championship

team and trying to get everybody coming in on our staff to understand, along with our players, to understand is like it's it's hard if you give out massive money you know and only two people get it on your team and we we're been fortunate in drafting really good hockey players that all have good impact on our club and they've they've all been you know very team oriented and understood we're trying to win a championship we're trying to build a championship organization and you can't the money only goes so far and even with the increase in the cap it's still hard you know, if you start putting guys in that make a huge amount of money, somebody at the other end of that has to go.

And our whole thing is with Utah and the mammoth is trying to catch you with a thousand different blades. And that's been our theme in trying to keep our team as deep as we can with many good players as we can and young players coming underneath and pushing. So we've managed to do that, but it hasn't been a process that we just kicked in when we started signing. And guys, we had that process long before that, you know, before we even probably drafted the Gunthers and the coolies. And, you know, we put that in play. And our players have bought into that, that ability that, listen, you know, you've, there's an aspect.

There's only so much money to go around. So it's been good. You know, there's other teams, obviously, that have done a good job in the league with that, too. Yeah, Bill, I wonder, like, especially with this changing landscape with the salaries going through the roof and, you know, being aligned with the cap rising every year. Do you think more of your brain space is being taken up with like, okay, how do we keep our core together? Like, and in that context, it'd be sort of like identifying who's worthy of being part of the

long-term core and then signing that player as early as possible. You know, you see teams around the league. They get these guys on six, seven, eight-year deals before they even break out. They've played 60 games. They've played 100 games. and it's just you know as an organization, they're going to be part of a long-term core. So let's get this guy taken care of.

I wonder if that's become more of an emphasis, more of a prioritization aspect as this sort of new development has come across your desk where there's a ton of money and these players want a ton of money. It's almost like locking those guys in has never been more important. It is, except if you're locking the wrong guy. Sure.

And then it's going to work against you. So it's really valuable to kind of have a great understanding. And I think sometimes when, you know, you draft these players and you go through the process like going into their homes to meet their families and understanding who they are as a person, and then all of a sudden you see little glimpses of what they can do at the NHL level where maybe other people don't see it as much because I remember when we signed, you know, Gunther and there, you know, there's a few comments. Like, really?

Like, I didn't see that coming in. But underneath watching him in practice, knowing him as a person, And that was a no-brainer for us on our side. So you just have to be right. At the end of the day, you got to be right in your decision-making and make sure that you get the right core, the right players, the right person that's in your environment and culture, you know, and you have to be right in those situations

because it's a lot of money and it's going to go on for a lot of term. Yeah, I say that often on the show, this idea of going as long as you can as early as you can. Certainly, I think, on the right players. But as an organization, you probably have a better feel for, the players and what the projection is like than someone from the outside. How do you feel obviously things are in flux, right, with like the cap just going up to the degree it has?

Has that changed the ability to maybe game plan or forecast years ahead in terms of like earmarking like, all right, in a couple years, we need to save this amount of money in the cap for when this player comes up again or this is what we want to do with it? Or does that dynamic change at all in terms of how far is it a future, you could maybe budget for, or are you still sort of trying to get that, let's say, three to five-year window and then adjusting as more information becomes available? I think you've got a plan ahead.

I really do. You know, everything that we've done here in Utah has been a plan, and we've stuck to the plan. So I think you do have to plan ahead. There's some stuff, like you said, with the, you know, the Carlson deal that happened this summer that, you know, you couldn't plan for that. That's something that changed the money in the national harm. hockey league. And so I think, you know, there's some stuff that you can't plan for, but you should be, you should be planning as much as possible.

Because at the end of the day, as I explained it, there's a pizza and there's, there's only so many slices for everybody to take. And if everybody, if one guy comes in and eats the whole pizza, you know, it's, you're going to starve the rest of your team. So definitely there's a lot of planning that goes in. And definitely there's a lot, there's a few things that come out of left field. You can't, you can't plan for. I want to talk about the year over year progression with the organization. So I was looking at this 70 points in 22, 23, 73, 77 in 23, 24. First year in Utah, 89 points in 24, 25. And then 92 last year, you guys get back into the playoffs. You get a taste of what the postseason hockey is like, a very competitive six game series,

which I felt like you guys had the Golden Knights on the ropes at times, particularly early in that series with the team speed. And that's a team that wound up making it to the cup final. what's the process like for you after a postseason series like that in terms of the post-mortem, maybe of your own group in terms of identifying like, all right, these are things we did well, these are maybe some limitations or things that we can stand to improve to take that next step next year. And then kind of putting the wheels in motion once the off season starts in terms of actually acting upon those objectives. Internally, we've always had a high drive where people are like, oh, you guys are happy, you guys are a good organization. but internally, we've always been pushing every day, but pushing the coaches, pushing the players. We want more.

So that hasn't changed in Utah, no matter who we play in the playoffs. When it ends for us, we break it down and we go at it. It's probably like, I think we spent like 60 days in a room together, just going at our team and trying to figure out different ways, you know, who can we add, who's ready, you know, let's watch this. And so it's, it was a process, you know, to get through there and understand what we want and bring the coaching staff

and make sure they're a part of it. So we can acquire players that are kind of in their wheelhouse of how we want to play. And so it was a big undertaking. And once the season ended the playoffs and just kind of going at it and trying to evaluate where we are, where we need to get to to make that next step. So we've been pretty good at that in the past.

And, you know, we've hit most of our goals. But like I said, we got big goals in the organization. and we're constantly pushing. How do you balance that, Bill? The two things that you're weighing where you as GM, you've got to be very long-term focused, and you have been, especially in the beginning, right, where it's all, okay, we need to acquire draft picks.

We need to draft those players, those players need to develop. Now you're at a stage where a lot of your premium positions are filled by players that are either just entering their prime or already in their prime. And so it could be, you know, I don't know, frustrating is the right word, but it could be, you know, disappointing

if you don't make it to the second round, if you feel like, you know, you had the potential to advance. Whereas, like, a year ago, you probably would have been like, we made the playoffs. That's excellent moving forward. Like, is it hard to balance, like not getting too far ahead of yourself, I guess you could say, or maybe just not getting complacent on the other hand? Yeah, it's a great question.

There's a balance there for sure where, you know, you want to push as hard as you can, but you don't get too carried away. A lot of times in rebuilds, what you've seen is they've got, they move too quick and they waste their draft picks because they're not ready to make that next step. And we've always had a good eye on the fact that, hey, Dylan Gunther is a certain age, Logan Kulay is a certain age. We can't make them any older. Like that's the truth.

So we just have to be patient in some of the movement that we make. But at the same time, we've tried to obviously push underneath and add better players and take that next step. And I think you just have to like, you know, with our team as we've gone through it, Our team's pretty good at when we come in at the start of the year and saying, hey, these are our goals. And one of the things we talked about this year was our goal is to get back to playoffs. And we recognize that, you know, it's hard. Like on a league average, there's five teams that don't go back to the playoffs.

Last year was a high where it was like six teams. And one was the president's trophy winner and one was the Stanley Cup champion. They didn't get back. So let's identify that. Our main goal is to make the playoffs. We got to get back in because once you're in, you get a chance. and we'll deal with the expectations from there. But we had to make sure that our team understood that just because you get in

doesn't mean you're going to repeat to get in and how hard it is. And I think we've done a good job, kind of laying that out to our group and make sure that they understand, like, it's going to be a battle. It's going to be a fight. And even though we're an improved team, there's no guarantee that you get back in. So that's the first thing that we've kind of set. And I think internally, we push the coaches all have bigger goals. And, you know, it's been a good mix of trying to get better every single year.

I think we've got a good process in doing that. So I believe the last time I had you on, we got into this a little bit, but I wanted to revisit it. The idea that you guys are currently in the midst of this transformation, right? You get out of that rebuild phase you're describing there where you're just accumulating assets, trying to get as many blue chippers or top prospects as you can.

Maybe you wouldn't feel this way on the inside. I think from the outside, maybe you could view it as like, well, a rebuilding team, there isn't as much pressure or expectation to necessarily win. I'm sure it's not ideal if you're going through a losing streak and everyone's feeling miserable about it. But ultimately, everything you're doing is with this long-term view in the service of the future.

And as a result, you have an increased opportunity, I think, to bring your young players up along the way, let them acclimate the NHL, give them those necessary reps for their development. I think as long as they're not drowning or picking up really bad habits, individual struggles aren't a deal breaker.

Like it's part of the process for young players. So you're hoping they use that to learn and improve over time. Now that you are a playoff team like you were last year, you've got even greater ambitions to build off of that this season. How do you balance those two things in terms of still creating opportunities maybe for some of these other younger players that you've drafted over the past couple years that haven't played in the NHL yet to have a runway to at some point in the near future step into the lineup and contribute in the NHL while still trying.

to make sure they're playing enough and getting all of those checkpoints along the way to keep developing in the process. Yeah, that's the hardest thing in our organization. But I think we're pretty honest with our younger players that come in. We say to them, hey, listen, the team's changed a lot since Logan Cooley and Dylan Gunther came into our team. We have a really good team here. It's going to be harder to make, and you need to be better than they were to make our team.

A lot of times we've used the American League with the guys, the likes of J.J. Moser, you know, Gunther, Donor, and a few other players that have made that adjustment and gone through the minors. And we had Simashevin Bood in there last year and they made huge stride. So we've really used our American League to allow our players to get up and running and get up to that NHL level because you don't want your young players swimming in the National Hockey League where they're playing under 10 minutes, you know, and they just, they can't keep up. And it hurts the team. So we're not at that point where we believe our team is a good team.

like you said, we were a playoff team last year, and we won't even be a better team this year. You know, so it's hard for those young players if they're not up to par and helping us achieve. And so I think it gives them a lot of goals. I think it pushes our younger players. And at some point in time, they're usually, if you're playing that well down there's going to be an injury

and you're going to create your space. And so the landscape for us has changed from when Dylan Gunther and Logan Cooley entered our organization, but it's made our prospects be better. And we've always tried to have this mentality inside our organization of developing this championship mindset where you come to practice and you're, you know, you're thinking about winning a championship and you're thinking about, you know, every day. If you know something good at the end's coming, you've really got something to work for and the purpose to get there. And I think that's been a huge thing in our culture and why our players, you know, stay out. They're on the ice before practice and they stay out extra and they do all the extras.

Bill, you and I have talked about Demetri Simashev in the past. And I love that you like to call him the fly swatter. Just a great visual of a rangy defenseman. He split last year between the NHL and HL, really popped offensively with the roadrunners in Tucson there. What's the latest on his development? And, you know, what do you appreciate about his game at this point in the process? Well, number one, being a young defenseman in the NHL is unforgiving. It's a hard position to break in much like a goaltender.

But I think he's done a great job. He's got home. He's got bigger, stronger, and faster. He came in early, and he showed really good signs of making our team. And obviously, you know, he's elite physical skill and ability. You know, and now he's got to, he came to rookie camp with us, too, which was awesome. So he went into the rookie tournament for us, played two out of the three games. he was one of our best players.

So now he's going to move into the exhibition season. And, you know, he's got to work hard to make our team. But he's probably the best, you know, big man I've seen in skating-wise. He's incredible full work and how he can close and take away time and space for me is incredible. And the game that we play, the smothering game that we play, he's really effective at it. So it's just getting him reps, getting him in there, getting him comfortable. And, you know, we're hoping this year he's going to make that next step. make our team. I want to get into some of the offseason moves you guys made Bill with you

and we'll kind of go sequentially at the draft. You trade JJ Petirka for the two firsts. You use one of those to acquire Sebastian Kosa. Famoka led the league last year in games played amongst all NHO goalies the year before kind of out of necessity throwing that spot. He wound up having that plus 20 game streak of appearances. How much emphasis that you sort of plays going into the offseason of resolving that in a way, where you bring in a backup that you feel confident can take on a bigger, maybe responsibility to manage that workload with the aspiration that when you get into April and hopefully May, your starting goal is going to be fresher and healthier and hopefully have better performance

as well as a result of all that. Yeah, you know, Veggie does a great job. You know, he's someone that, you know, he wants to play every game. He's really good about taking care of himself. He's probably the biggest goal tonner, I think, of the national. hockey. He looks like a linebacker. He's he really does a great job at just making sure he's got the maintenance, always keeping

himself in shape, and he's tremendous. And the one thing about veggie, too, he's also shown the ability to get better and get better every single year and take that next step. And so you know, for him, you know, he likes to play games. We like to, you know, obviously, you know, we've given him a

running partner in Mr. Costa and Sebastian Kosa, and he's, you know, he's young, he's a young goaltender. He's shown great things in the American Hockey League. Now he's got to take that next step and get into the National Hockey League. And it takes a while to get comfortable at that level.

He played last night for us. He was outstanding in the first two periods that he played in. So he's got to make some steps here. We believe that he can do that. We believe that he can be a great tandem with veggie and kind of take some games away at some point in time to give Veggie

a little bit more rest as he goes along. But I like both those, goaltenders, they're workers, they're guys that come to the rank every single day and get better, and they're constantly challenging themselves. As Dimitri noted, you acquire two first rounders for Peturca, you trade one out the same day. There was an interesting development over the offseason in terms of like the value of a first rounder. I don't know, I assume this was a hot topic in the hockey ops department in Utah where it's like, they were less precious, if you will, as previous seasons where, don't get me wrong, like,

Circa would definitely go for a first and something in a, say, previous market. But two first rounders, it's like, okay, let's make this happen. And you weren't the only team that dealt with that, where there was sort of less of a premium on a first rounder, if you will. Yeah. What do you make of that? What are the factors behind, like, first rounders just being thrown out the door constantly? Very interesting, to be honest with you.

I think it has to do with two things. It could be the strength of the draft. That's one. you know, when clubs get in the back, part of the first round, sometimes they believe they can get the player in the second round that has the same value. So sometimes that happens.

But I think the league got into a point where there's not a lot of teams rebuilding. Everybody's trying to win. Everybody's trying to take that next step. And instead of a first rounder, in hockey, you know, you draft the player and your owner turns to you and says, you know, when's that guy going to play?

He goes, oh, he's going to be great in about five years. And it's a long journey for, especially if you're a goaltender to kind of get to the, you know, get up to the NHL. So I think a lot of teams became impatient, which they want to win. You know, everybody wants to win. We're out of the rebuild phase. There's only a few teams going through it. So everybody's pushing.

So I think the first round pick had less value. And the player that's in the NHL, it's a good player, had a lot more value. So it was an interesting draft, and we'll see if the trend continues. So as part of that process, You clear up a bit of cap space. You get that extra first as well. But I think it also opens a forward spot in the top six, right? And you guys pivot on July 1st via free agency.

You acquire Andrews Lee. You also make the Benit Trochik trade. Kind of walk me through that process a little bit in terms of what your expectations are for those players immediately to step in, what type of role they'll play. I imagine the special team's value was a bit of a selling point as well. Your 5-1-5 play last year. I think you were top 10, the mammoth were, in a, in, goal share, but 18th at both power play and penalty kill, both guys are going to help on those ends.

Kind of what do you foresee as like the vision when you're putting everything together and making those moves finally as, all right, this is what our expectation is for these guys on the Utah Mammoth this coming season. Yeah, two outstanding players, but we felt like we had needs. And one of them was to make sure that we had a centerman, a right-handed centerman that, you know, could take draws on the power play and important minutes. And Benito-Chic's really good at that. And he's also really good at just playing with good players.

He can blend into any single line. He's kind of the glue. We can play the bumper on the PPs, PK, it's good on the draw. So there's a lot of little things that he can do that clean up and really help our team, whether he plays with Schmoltz and Keller or he might play with younger players. Who knows? But he's someone that can really get into our team and just kind of solidify who we are. And I think the other, you know, Anders Lee was, for us, was, once we got into free agency,

that was huge for us to be able to sign him and make him a part of our team. And, you know, he's, he's an anchor. He's somebody that's really good around the net. He's a big body that, you know, has some ability to play with some top, top two-line talent. So we like his heaviness. We like the fact that he goes to the front of the net. And we like the fact that, you know, he can play with the Gunther's and coolies and really kind of, you know, solidify that front of the net.

And I think he's going to help us take that next step. And both those two players, Lee and Trochequer, unbelievable leaders. I think they made us a lot stronger in the dressing room. I think they give us, you know, just a different higher-end leadership coming through the door. So we were truly excited about adding them to our team. And right away when those guys arrived here, you know, you can just feel the impact that they have. So we've been talking sort of off and on in this conversation about the Liel Carlson effect in terms of how it's impacted the league. You guys were part of the other offer sheet this season. And I wonder, like, and I'm sure

people listening would be interested in knowing, like, what's it like to be on the receiving end of an offer sheet in the sense that like, okay, the devil sign them to an offer sheet on July 1. You eventually match on July 8th. What happens in between there? Do you hear from the league initially, or does the agent call you? Does the other team call you? What's that initial conversation like? And how do you, how quickly are you getting your hockey ops group together to really like plot things out? and develop a plan. Well, you get your hockey ops group right away. And, you know, usually it's from the other gym giving you a heads up that they're going

to make that. And I think this is going to be more frequent. It's part of the rules. It's there. I think it's going to happen more often in the landscape of the new NHL. So, you know, for us, you know, that wasn't an issue. We could always match that. And it's just, for us, it's, you know, you can have negotiations with the other team on

stuff too, kind of like what they did in the Broberg deal and the Holloway deal. deal. So you can have negotiations and you go through that process of going through and then you're weighing in, hey, what's more valuable for us to sign the player? And this particular player with Barrett Hayden, you know, he's a big part of our team. You know, he's the guy that does the grunt work on the faceoffs. He's a left-handed draw. He can kill penalties, play a third line, can play the second line. He has a lot of value to our team. And the other thing, too, is we've, we've put a lot of time in the club has to develop Barrett Hayden to where he's at. You know, and I think he's the one thing that's been, you know, whether he's been an up or down season for him, his defense is always the same.

He's unreal at, you know, shutting teams, some of the best players in the other team down, and he's taking a good step in that role. So we didn't want to let him go. We thought he was going to be a big part of our club this year. And, you know, and there was no hard feelings between the player or the opposing club that issued it. So that's just part of doing business, and we did business, and, you know, and here we go. I'm curious about the sort of sequencing as the year goes along, especially now that you guys are in this contention window. We saw at last year's trade deadline, you make the McKenzie Weger trade,

trying to help bolster your team. In the offseason, I think fans typically want their favorite team to be incredibly active, right? Like, you want to get that press release that we either signed or traded for this player, and then you look in spending all off season looking at the depth chart on daily faceoff and kind of plotting what the team is going to look like. And you certainly want to put your best foot forward as soon as the season. starts to bank all those valuable points. But we've also seen that it's important to have a certain level of

malleability or flexibility with your roster, both financially and assets-wise, but also spots in the lineup that when you get to March and the trade-ed-line comes around, like you could address needs or pivot. And you don't necessarily need to be a fully formed product on September 29th this season with the early start. It's really going to matter what your team looks like when you get into crunch time mode for the push for the playoffs. How do you sort of feel about that in terms of,

I guess looking for those immediate rewards, but also understanding that you're going to be judged on stuff later on now. And it is a bit of a annual process, not just kind of offseason set it and forget it and move on. Like you're continuing to add to this team and need different means to do so. Well, it's always nice when you're walking through the door with Vinich Rocheck and Handerstley in the middle of summer. Let's be honest. That's a good thing for your organization. But at the same time, you just always have to weigh that, you know, some of the success that can look like success isn't really long-term success. And sometimes, you know, you see that where teams win the summer and, you know, they're not very good in the winter.

And you don't want that, you know, and there's always a, you know, as a point as a GM where you have to take heat for not making a deal that you don't feel inside your heart is worth it. And that's part of the business. That's why you sign up for the job. And you've got to have thick skin at times to make sure that you always do the right. thing for your club. And I think, you know, we've, we've shown that here in Utah. We've made some deals to improve the club, you know, whether that be Surgich, or Weir, or Marino, you know, we've gone out and made a lot of trades and over the years and try to do the right thing and help this club slowly and surely get better and better, along with keeping our prospects in the mix, too.

So it's something that you just have to do inside your heart where you think's right, and you've got to stand by it. That that's part of the gig. And I think we've got a tremendous hockey ops department here that believes in analytics, information, scouting. And I think when you have really good, my whole thought process is when I came through the door was to work on building a championship hockey ops office and making sure we were up to speed in one of the best teams with analytics and modern technology of training and everything. And we've been able to do that. And I feel like we're a championship organization off the field, off the ice, which usually leads to a championship on the ice. And we're pushing hard. So I think you got to have some belief in the hockey

ops and make good smart decisions. Are you sizing up the central, Bill? I mean, it's a bit of a murderers row. If you include you guys, that's, that's four like really substantially talented teams. I do have to say, Bill. And I'm not saying that just because you're here, but John and I were doing a show recently and he was talking about he's like oh the central's tough those three teams up up and i literally specifically cut him off and i was like four if you include the utah mammoth so i'm not buttering you up here that's i appreciate people people have heard that um i look at it in two ways one way it's going to make us better because we play those guys and it's every single night it's a bloodbath it's a punch in the face competition of just great teams there's no nights off for us

it's harder to make it it's harder to get out but if you can and you can go through Murder's Row, as you guys call it, you know, you get a chance on the other side. And it's a great challenge when you're building an organization and you go in and play the Colorado's of the world and the Dallases of the world and Minnesota's and all the great teams that are, you know, up against. And, you know, and you can see the San Jose's what they've done and the Anaheims too. So it's really, it's kind of like a great thing when you're out here applying, you get excited about how many great teams are out here and how hard it's going to be. Some teams aren't great yet, but you know they're going to be.

I wanted to revisit a quick thing you said earlier about defensemen and sort of the development arc for them and how it takes longer and the NHL is so unforgiving for them. And I think your sort of process has shown that belief, right? You've drafted all of these young defensemen along the way, but you've also gone out and acquired Sergichib and Uyghur and Marino and brought in Nate Schmidt and some of these more established defenders that could eat up bigger minutes reliably and buy time for those younger defensemen to kind of pick it up. What, especially as a former defense, and I'm curious for your take on what particularly

in today's game makes it so challenging for a younger defenseman to, I guess, get up to speed and feel more comfortable playing those 20 plus minutes on any given night against one of the better teams in the world. Yeah, I think, to be honest with you, it's the rules, the rule changes. You just can't mug and hold people. And so you have to have such a great process without the puck. And the elite players are just getting better in it. The game is so fast now.

And the decision making with or without the puck is so crucial when you're back there. And I just feel like the speed of the game for the defenseman has changed. It's just so fast back there. And it takes a long time to learn to play against the best of the best and not take penalties. That's the biggest thing I find. with the demon when you bring the young demon in there is like they get teed off on because they can't handle the speed and when they as soon as they go to reach with their stick or their hands it's a penalty and they then they you know that leads one mistake leads to another mistake and

it's it's a hard growth pattern for a defenseman i mean there are the shafers of the world uh that come in and dominate but they're very few and far between um and most times it's uh it takes you a while to kind of get in there being elite defense minutes And then their arc of where they play their best hockey sometimes for me, it doesn't start to their 27. You've done a pretty good job, too, as an organization of clearly wanting big defensemen, but not forgetting about this guy's got to skate. This guy's got to think the game well.

Like Lamaroo and Simachev are these two gigantic guys coming through your system who are going to be presumably staples on the back end for a number of years. And it's like the skating is super important. one guy's more physical than the other, but they both kill plays. And, you know, they have that baseline of a big frame. That, you know, again, in terms of patience, you eventually fill it out. It doesn't, you know, the start of their development isn't, you know, they're not filled out. They might be six, six, six, six, four, but they're, they're bean pulls.

Can you speak to that a little bit in terms of like selecting specific people and then, and then having to sort of like take your hands off and letting them develop? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really wild. sitting down and forming a philosophy with your scouting group, you know, from the prone amateur and sticking to it and just having an understanding of what you want back there. And, you know, the amateur group and the program, they've done an amazing job. And, you know, obviously we're not a team that, you know, like we're not opposed to having D that are smaller, but they have to be thick and powerful.

And, you know, it takes a while to accumulate some defensemen with some size and the ability to think quick, but also good skaters. That's the hard thing. And, you know, we've got a young kid, Bieber, played in the Swedish League last year. He's a big man, too. He can move. He's played some great games for us, Simashev, Lamarou. They're all coming.

And it's, you know, it takes a while to do that. But I think that's what you have to hunt for. You have to know what you're looking for and you have to go after it in the draft. And also with your pro group. Well, Bell, this was awesome. Thank you for coming on and making the time for us, especially, you know, I think the jokes are warranted it at this point. This show really does moonlight as a Utah.

Mammoth podcast, and so it's very on brand for us to close all the summer series with having you on. And this is a great chat, and I'm looking forward to. We've got to make it a trilogy next summer and get you back on. Oh, thanks, Dimitri and John for having me on. It's always a pleasure to be on your show. And I know deep down inside that you have to cover 32 teams, but I know deep down inside you guys are both huge mammoth fans, and we appreciate that. Awesome, Bill. Well, best of luck this season, and we'll chat soon. Thanks, boys. Well, there you have it. Part two of Bill Armstrong on the Pio cast. I'm going to hold them to part three in the trilogy for next year's summer series. John, that was awesome. I know that you're familiar with Bill and I have some run-ins with him in the past. I love him. I find him hilarious. I think he's obviously good at his job. He's done a heck of a job with this mammoth team and building it up along the way. And I think their future is really bright. But it's always nice. I feel like in particular, you know, we had to get some of like the logistical questions out of the way. But then at the end when we started talking about, about like rule changes and the craft of being a defenseman in today's game.

You could tell like he was, he was really getting into it. So that was a fun one with him. Yeah, the, him mentioning the rule changes in terms of the role of the defenseman in this era, I thought was pretty insightful. I hadn't really connected the dots on there.

Obviously, if you think about it, okay, yeah, that's going to make a big difference in terms of what you can do in front of the net or the types of defensemen that you're drafting. And one thing I didn't get to ask him about, but that I wish I did was,

in the 2023 draft he takes Simashev 6th and was you know kind of criticized for it in terms of like reaching and then he takes Denel Bu shortly after and these are two Russians at a time when you know

Russians just weren't being drafted Super I think that was the Demadov draft if I remember correctly and that was the Michkov draft I believe Michkov I knew there was one Russian that you know was a big topic of a conversation but

it's just interesting when like that night happens and you think oh Utah really put their neck out here and then you fast forward a couple years later and neither of these guys are like established on a gelers or like necessarily going to become like superstars but they could easily be building blocks and it'd be it just turned out to be one of those things where they took a chance and they've been you know patient with their development and i mean simishev was almost a point per game last year as a defenseman in the hl i didn't even think he had that much offense in him to be completely honest. We'll see if it translates. But if he can be a minute munching guy in their top four,

that's also power play two quarterback, you know, as of maybe not this season, but next season, that's pretty good value for a sixth overall pick. Yeah, I'm really high on them. I love the skills. So, you know, in particular, they had this era. And I guess you could argue they still did at this year's draft where they really were one of the organizations that valued like tools and like functional size as well, right? Not just like tall guys for the sake of being tall. but leveraging those physical tools and gifts into all nice value as well. And so I find that really interesting. I think we kicked off the conversation talking about the market and the extensions

that he got done the past two years. But I feel like we could have probably done even more on that because I do genuinely believe like that's such a competitive advantage as we've seen this offseason with like the ducks. For example, the blue jackets coming up next where I think the concept is great that the cap's going to go up every year and everyone's going to have more money. But if you mistime it or you don't act proactively, you're just giving redistributing all that money to your current team. So you're not actually improving beyond, I guess,

those young players developing and entering their prime. You're not equipped to have, I guess, more disposable income to play with to like bring in free agents and acquire established players via trade the way Utah did. And that's, you know, they've got Keller coming up in a couple of years. But beyond that, they're pretty well. set up, I think, to keep adding players to this group as their young players develop as they integrate some more of these guys on ELCs as well. They have like 25 plus million, I think, in cast space as soon as next offseason. So it's a pretty intriguing proposition. And that even

undersells the fact that you look at it, Cooley, a 10 million. Gunther, it's 7.14 for the next seven years, which is the rest of his 20s. So pretty much his entire prime, you already scored 40 goals last year. You could fairly argue despite being a winger that Gunther's right up there on any list you're constructing of like the best non-ELC values of any player in the league already and he just finished his first year

of that contract. Yeah, I mean, he's going to score 50 at some point. So at that number that's incredible value. It's going to be David Pasternak-esque at some point here as the cap continues to rise. And I mean, if you think about it, Utah is part of a really

small group of teams. Let's just say five for, you know, for argument's sake, where you've got a young core locked up, a young good core, I should say. You've got enough draft capital still to do some damage on the trade market. And obviously they use some of the summer. And you have a pretty good prospect pool with some high-end talent. And you're actually winning right now. Like they made the playoffs. Obviously, the rubber hits the road here in terms of what kind of damage can they do moving forward,

especially in the central division. but they just have so much going for them that if one of those things go sideways, they can course correct a little bit. Whereas you look at a lot of teams, they either have a young core that's locked up, but then like nothing else, or they have an older core, but they have no picks.

And anyways, it's like them, Montreal, Carolina, to some extent, although they're older, Buffalo. And then it's like, you know, you can make an argument for a couple others, but it's a really small group and Utah is one of them. Yeah, that's why, you know, running the joke into the ground, but that's why this is a mammoth podcast. And incredibly exciting times ahead.

Yeah, I do genuinely feel like you can make a fair argument that what Cooley and Gunther did in those first four games of that round one series. It feels like forever ago now. Yeah. The start of the playoffs happened last postseason. But like they put a level of fear, I think, into the Golden Knights in terms of what their like speed and ability to like instantly take a change of possession

into a high danger opportunity did. They threatened them to a level that the Golden Knights really just didn't experience until they got to like the latter stages of that cup final against Carolina and they wound up beating an Anaheim team in round two and sweeping a Colorado Avalanche team that wasn't even able to replicate that themselves.

So considering that was their first taste of postseason hockey, I think very encouraging. One thing I do wish we spent a bit more time on was I believe you asked the question about like, you know, balancing the immediate results with the team that's good now versus integrating more players and just having that runway, right? And in particular, this summer, I know that JJ Petrica is out the door, but they bring in Vinic, they bring in Andrews Lee, both guys either in or approaching their mid-30s.

And they help in the short term, certainly at those particular skills. We talked about, but I think that makes an even bigger logjam up front. You could include the Nick Schultz eight-year extension last summer, last season as well. in terms of like accounting for premium positions up front. And now you have Tejiginla, Caleb NWA, Daniel Bout, as you talked about, like guys that with a lot of draft capital that are going to get seasoning in the HL

and I'm sure we're going to see opportunities for them at various points. Indiana HL and injuries happen in this league, you know, and foreseen stuff happens all the time. It's good to have depth. But it remains a bit, I think, the picture a bit cloudy for them

in terms of like what that pathway is to immediate contribution. for this team just because there's so many names ahead of them that they have to battle through right now. And I guess that's one of the blessings and curse of being a competitive team that's making the playoffs is you typically have a lot of guys who are NHL players that they need to play. And it's sometimes tough for a young player to kind of separate from them. Well, give Armstrong credit where he has pivoted when things have not worked out. Like JJ Peturka, saying it didn't work out might be a little strong in terms of like there

was a long runway to figure this out. And I mean, I don't know of any sort of a, the scenes problems. I think they probably just got a package they couldn't refuse. But it was clear the coach didn't trust him based on his playoff usage. And, you know, I think the only reason why it didn't work out is because Josh Stone had the season he had, right? Like if he didn't and he just was like a good player in a third line role, you'd be like, you know what?

You took a shot. Maybe it didn't work out, but you pivot and you get these two first. Like, that's not necessarily the end of the world. It's just, I think, a tougher pill to swallow because of what Josh Stone became in Buffalo. So do you think it's related? It's like, oh, look at Josh Stone popping off. Maybe we'll sort of recycle this asset and get two first. No, I think it's pretty clear that Petrica just was not going to play a top six role in this team.

You saw him in the playoffs. He was very unproductive. And I think they saw it as an opportunity to clear that 7.7 of cap space, get a couple first, turn one of them into COSA, bank that other one, which I believe is a panther's first down the line, and then have a spot in the lineup now. you bring in maybe players who are a bit later in their career and so it won't be as big of a deal if Anders Lee is playing 13 minutes tonight in the regular season as long as he's on PP1 and like out there in late game situations you can manage that a bit more whereas Patrick goes in his prime and has these expectations and it's like when he's playing 13 minutes a night it's a bit of a problem

because that's not what you acquired him for and that's not what he signed up for and that's not the stage of his career he's in good point and i mean armstrong has acquired surrogachev weager like he's taking his swings maybe he has acquired a say Matthew Cichick-Level player, but I do appreciate the, I guess, habit of getting bold at certain moments of the season if the sort of moment is right. And I mean, you could even point to the COSA deal as a pretty big swing. I mean, I think the 30 other GMs that weren't involved in that acquisition would have gladly done that if they were Utah.

I think it was pretty smart, especially when you've got Steve Eiserman on his way out. making that trade. But nevertheless, like to bring COSA in with that draft predileggy and his development sure hasn't been linear, but I think we're all pretty high on him still across the industry to bring him in for a first to help Vamilka especially, seems like a no-brainer. I'm sure there were GMs across the league going, I would have liked to be in on COSA. You'd be surprised. I think he was available for a while. And I think there's like a lot of differing opinions. I talked about with Kevin Woodley actually in a recent show in terms of what the projections like because he's got the size and he's got the pedigree in terms of

draft capital when he was taken. But it's been five years since then. And even if you acknowledge that it takes longer for goalies, like there is some skepticism in the industry in terms of what he's going to look like. But I think it's a worthwhile upside gamble with all of the assets they do have. And they are probably, you know, as they transition here, going from accumulating assets. And it's always great regardless of how good or bad you are to have more assets than not. But because of how few spots available are in the lineup, they're going to get into this consolidation phase, I think, where you're trying to turn three assets you like into one that actually makes a significant difference,

like the Matthew Kachukh trade. You describe like I think they're going to be looking for one of those. And they've still, despite all these additions, held pretty firm on all these guys they've taken high. Right. Like they haven't really come available. they've been using either draft picks or prospects they took later in the draft to facilitate a lot of these trades. They have not really made a Gindla or DENWA or DENWA or even a boot or Sibbachev like available. Otherwise, they probably would have accomplished a trade of a higher magnitude.

So I'm just fascinated to see, I guess, what over, let's say, the next two or three years that looks like for a lot of those players in terms of where they're playing, what their developments look like and whether they're helping a team like the mammoth. have even more money to spend because all of a sudden their NHL players making the only minimum or whatever the ELC is going to be moving forward. Yeah, it's such a chess game when you're a GM in terms of if you've drafted well, if you've managed your books well, if you've kept the right assets, you know, got ridden of the right assets at the right time. There's still that that sort of timeline that everything needs to lock in together. Like the job is kind of never done.

And I guess we're seeing it, you know, in some ways in Carol. lineup where it's like this team that just won the cup still has a bunch of cap space you know still poking around on big names and you know just because they won the cup doesn't mean that they're going to they're going to rest on their hands so yeah it's fascinating i mean to be in bill armstrong's shoes um coming into this season there's as much as there's a ton of hope and a ton of runway like there's still probably he's probably still he's feeling a little bit of pressure i would assume uh to sort of push these guys past the first round and kind of get some more momentum as far as wins and losses and getting to that sort of Montreal Buffalo level of I suppose

hype across the league in terms of doing some real damage in the playoffs. Yeah, well with Boone and Simashev in particular, and I had as we close the loop here on the summer series, we kicked it off with Todd Diamond, who is the agent for Denel Boudin. We talked about it at the time with him. but I think this season will be very enlightening, I guess, on a player like his future in this organization and how they feel about them because you're quickly coming up to extension eligibility talks. And we just talked about how, you know, players of different magnitude in Cooley and Gunther, but they were pretty proactive and look smart doing so, signing those guys as soon as they were able to.

And they're going to be in some interesting spots with some of these players pretty soon here, despite the fact that we haven't really seen much of them yet at the NHL level. You know, I'd love to go through every single team and, and figure out if there is a spot for, for, like, I don't know, like, the thing with the prospects that Utah has is that I feel like, I think, and then you kind of mentioned this earlier, like, is there a spot for all of them high in the lineup by the end of this cycle, if you will? So you got, you put sort of an idea in my head in terms of like, Aginla, Simashev, boo, and probably a couple other guys I'm not remembering right now. Den Way.

Like if you think of the top six, especially with Schmaltz locked in on that long-term deal. Is there even a spot for those guys in the top six and the top four? Probably some of them, but probably not all of them, right? So then it becomes a matter of, okay, how do you monetize that asset? And that's why every time a star player comes available,

they'll be atop my list of teams I'm watching for to make that move. All right, that's it for the summer. series, Rusion 2.0 this offseason. We're in the fall already. This was a blast, man. Thank you for joining me for a bunch of these. You and I did what, four of them. We did Bill Armstrong today. We did Kyle Raftus before that. We did Dan Mews and Scott Wedgwood. I had Brennan and Todd Diamond on. It was a nice mix, which was the whole intention, right? Two players, two GMs, one coach, one agent. Already got the wheels in motion. We'll do more of these interviews

and stuff throughout the year, certainly. But in terms of who I want to, who my white whales are, I guess, for next season. And without giving up too much away, John Cooper just narrowly slipped through our grasp this time. So maybe we can get them back on when we do version 3.0 next summer. But this was a lot of fun. Thank you for joining me for them.

I don't know if you have any parting shots on either today's show or just the summer series in general and sort of this venture that we took on the past, let's say, six weeks. Yeah, I would just encourage people to go back in the archives a few haven't listened. If I were to pick one, probably the Scott Wedgwood one in terms of if you haven't listened yet, which I'm sure is a small percentage of people tuned in right now. But if you haven't, go back in the archives and give that a listen. We pretty much just T Scott up with, you know, I'll give us some credit with some smart questions. And then he

went on some nice insight maugging in terms of really just peeling back the layers of what it's like to be a goalie. I don't know if you've seen this, but he's really like. like he kind of dropped some nuggets as part of that show. And he's really blown out his little book club since then. So a lot more people are talking about it now. So you heard it here first on the PDOCass. What do you want to promote on the way out? Because as you said last time I had you on,

you're going to get back in the writing game. We can expect some bylines from John Mattis. I'll let you promote some of those and get people excited for checking out more your content. Yeah, sure. are doing some stories for Puckpedia and Sportsnet.com. I don't have any particulars on exactly when they will run, but just keep it locked on my Twitter handle.

That's Mattis John, M-A-T-I-S-Ed, J-O-H-N. And I would just encourage people to head to the Discord for the P-D-O-Cast because it's a good place to hang. It sure is. Well, thank you for doing one of my plugs. The other ones are, if you're listening to this, you probably at this point already still are subscribed, but join us on the Patreon.

If you're not there already, we will be making some of these shows throughout the season available, at least one per week on the free feed as usual. But everything is going to be available for our subscribers on Patreon. And we're going to post them as soon as we're done recording. So you get the ad-free version right away and can listen in a timely manner. Check us out on YouTube as well where we've been posting some of these interviews. You can watch full shows there and help us grow the channel. Pick up some merge for yourself as well. As you can see, I'm wearing the PEOCAS shirt here.

Despite the logo change recently, we've got a lot of. stuff available, some discount codes for our subscribers as well. So rock some of that merch this season. And that is all for the summer series. That is all from us for today. We're back on Wednesday. I will tease this. We've got Jack Fraser on. We're doing our guys for the 26, 27 season, a cult classic for the PDO cast. So we'll be talking about some big name players. We'll also be talking about some fringe players. You might not even get to see play this year. We're going to get really deep in our bag. It's going to be a fun one. Looking forward to that. Watch a rankings coming later in the week as well.

So we're in full preview mode. We're getting ready for the season. It starts next week. And this was a fun way to wrap up our summer series. We'll have you back on again soon. John, thank you to everyone for subscribing and for listening to the HockeyPedio cast.