The Hockey PDOcast - Tape Study of Crosby, Robertson, and How to Break Out in 2022

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Penguins Analyst Jesse Marshall joins Dimitri as the pair conduct a tape Study of Crosby, Robertson, and discuss how to break out in 2022.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Lessing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovin. Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name is Dimitri Velpovich, and joining me is my buddy, Jesse Marshall. Jesse. What's going on, man? Not much, but it's good to be back on the show with you. Oh, well, I'm glad I could finally have you on.

I figured it might be tough to book you after you were deservedly highlighted as a must-follow Twitter account on the athletics list this week. The last one on the list. I don't think it was in order. I don't think it was in order of entertainment value, though. No, I hope not. They certainly weren't saving the best for last. That was really great.

I was happy to see that. This year has been unique in the sense. I've been doing some work for some other outlets, and it's allowed me to write about things that aren't just specific to Pittsburgh. So it's kind of cool to get some shoutouts for that. Yeah, I love your videos, man. So I'm happy to see you get the love. It's a much deserved, as I said, and I'm excited to do the show with you.

So we've got a couple topics that we've planned that I'm sure we're going to have a good time really sinking our teeth into and having fun with. So let's start with one near and dear to both our hearts. I think yours may be a bit more so than mine, but Cindy Crosby, who is having one heck of a season. And it really feels like for hockey fans, I feel like it's been such a rewarding season so far because we're seeing what, Cindy Crosby, Patrice Bergeron, Eric Carlson,

like all these guys who are greats in their 30s still not only being effective, but doing it in a way that's kind of held true to form for their entire careers, right? Like they've obviously made adjustments and tinkered here and they're and added new stuff to their game. But for the most part, these guys are just like still dominating the league

into their 30s in ways that is like true to their skill set and what they've been doing for so long now. Yeah. Father time. I've said on Twitter a couple of times, Ametri's losing the wrestling match with Sidney Crosby badly where he's just a couple rounds in

and he's beating the living hell out of father time. You know, it's a couple things for me. So I think on one hand, the elements that have always made him, and you and I have both agreed about this. And you've made many a montage of this. He's one of the best grinders this game's ever seen, right?

And he's got that low center of gravity, strong thighs I remember him taking Jason Spetso for a run right around the net for a minute and 30 seconds years ago back in that cup run that element

his game still there and he's still very difficult to handle in the battle area is still very difficult to handle down low but he's also got this now I call it the Lemieux

post retirement Lemieux thing going on where you know he's not dominating the game physically like he used to he's not going up ice and cutting through four defenders, you know, for these highlight real goals like he was, he was 18, 19, 20 years old.

What he's doing now is playing, you know, chess against everybody else's checkers. No look, backhanders, you know, tape to Jake Gensel, slow in the game down and manipulating skaters and drawing attention to him so he can get to the teammates open. And he's your 5v5 points leader going into December. That's crazy, you know, for him being at 35. It's just nuts to think about. And you know, you have the marriage with Gensel, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but it's been really good. But then, like, you've got this Rickel thing now, too, Dimitri, where it's like a lot of people would tell you that prior to Gensel's arrival, you know, Chris Kunitz was Crosby's greatest partner, right?

They made music together for years. And Ricard Raquel is just so much of a Chris Kunitz. They are so much of the same player. And that the fruit of his presence has been so good. for Gensel and Crosby has opened up space for them. And you've sort of seen this new evolution of that old Coonitz partnership that said, I think giving him a little bit more life. So he's healthy wrist issues behind him.

And I'm looking forward to what he could do with a full year, hopefully knock on Woodright with health pending. But, you know, everything seems right now to be as it's been for years. I mean, it's just, it's status quo. The song and dance continues. Well, in preparation for this discussion, I went back and watched all of his shot attempts so far this season. And then you look at his shot map on Micah's website.

And I think you can count on your two hands the number of times. He's like attempted a shot from above the dots basically at 5-on-5 in the offensive zone. Like he, you know, we joke that he's like the game's best grinder. He's like almost like the game's best like low post player as like a basketball analogy, right? Where like he's just grinding it down, but it's like deep in the offensive zone. And he's getting to the net. will and he's attempting like all of his shots are essentially high danger attempt. And he still has that element.

I think he kind of, because of how fast the penguins play at 5-1-5 when they're well-oiled and really in sync as a team and how quickly they move the puck up the ice, he still has these kind of dashes in transition where he gets lost a little bit or he gets leverage on whoever's assigned to him. And then he drives the middle lane. Like we saw that against the hurricanes right out of the gate where he scores the penguin's first goal. where it's vintage Crosby in the sense that he receives kind of like a tricky pass off his skate,

kicks it to himself, and in one swift motion, it's in the back of the net off of his stick. And he makes it look so easy that we don't really even think twice about it. But in reality, when you go back and rewatch it, there's so many moving parts to it that are so cool to kind of dissect and analyze. And so he's able to beat you in still a number of different ways, even though it has really like kind of centralized closer and closer to the net over the years. all of the particulars he had. And like you talk about the goal he scored last night. And when you were talking about in transition, you know,

he killed that puck with his foot like Maradona. You look like it. It looked like messy out there. Just killed it. And then before it even hit the ice, he'd one-timed it in. And it still has that flat blade. So we have to talk about that because like it's,

it's modified over the years and it's become less extreme and it's flatness. But I think probably still one of the flattest. blades in the league and that that enables him to do i think do so much with killing pucks and letting them die is that if if you saucer something to him and it's off the mark and he's got a he's got to settle it and it hits that that flat blade it just drops right and he's got those that that soft grip that enables it to just die right there and and like those little things whether it be a foot or a stick blade or whatever it is he knows how to just make that puck settle and it's it just always seemed so magnetized to him.

And again, as time goes on as he gets older, you know, you mentioned it perfectly, his controlled bursts of speed, right? It's not that, you know, I think back to the goal he scored, if you remember, Demetri, Mark Recky threw him that pass against Tampa where he had to extend and go down on one knee and just got the tip of his blade on the puck. You don't see that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't happen.

Now it's more of this like otherworldly, you know, he's got a third eye on the back of his head somewhere that's enabling him to to see the game and operate at a high level one step really ahead of where everybody else is and all great players over time have all had that remote control right um where the breakout starts they come into the zone 150 miles an hour and then they coast at you right and they're they're just given that puck a little dangle with the wrist and they've frozen everyone and all five eyes all five sets of eyes go to them um and then from there you know, they start touring, they toy with you. Yeah.

And that's, that's kind of where he is right now. Well, I will say he had this one play. I remember a couple weeks ago was the home game against the Cracken where he actually had one of those sort of solo dashes where it was more than just a quick burst. Like there wasn't really an opening. He almost parted the Cs. And I don't think it made many highlight reels because it didn't wind up going in and they lost that game.

But he kind of like put it under the defender and then leverage to get inside position and basically went on one knee and like shot it and still got like a bow. it off from just one knee down and that would have been like such a sickle but um you know it was just kind of a one lost to time but like we've seen him dip into his full bag of tricks right like the kind of the typical stuff of the tips the flexions redirections around the net rebounds um you know the back angle he scored against the leaves i send you this clip that he had against the flames recently where it was the full sydney crosbie experienced to me in 2022 in 10 seconds he wins an offensive his own draw, but he doesn't win it cleanly necessarily. He kind of like wins the initial

battle. He hits it back to his defenseman at the point. And then while that defenseman's taking the shot, the center he took the draw against. You can tell is like, oh man, I'm, I'm at the head against Cindy Crosby. I got to get a body on this guy because I know he's going to try to make himself available for a tip. And instead of allowing him to do that, Crosby absorbs the contact, spins off of him, goes to the net. He gets a rebound chance. It doesn't go in. But Dan Vallard makes a great save. He kicks it to himself behind the net. and then in one motion hits it back out into the slot to Rick Archer Kell for like a great A scoring chance. From an angle, from an angle that no one should have been able to pass that puck.

No, I didn't think the puck could physically make it out into the slot. Yeah. It looks like it went under the net. It really does. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was like you see everything. You see like kind of like it was clearly sort of like a set play in terms of like this is what I'm going to try to do.

I'm going to win this draw. Get it back there to do this. And like the rebound, the second effort, the third effort, the past, the instincts, everything. and it was just so beautiful. And it was like, I should repost it on Twitter just because it's like, I want everyone to see what it is because it's so, it's very nerdy and niche. And it wasn't even a goal, but it was like everything that's beautiful about Seneke Rosby in 2022. When you sent me the clip, the first thing I noticed was the spin move. That was my favorite part of the whole thing.

And just like that, he, I have a lot of fun watching he and Jake Gensel do that. Because Jake Gensel, he's really good at Demetri's putting a hand on someone. So Jake Gensel will intentionally make contact with you as sort of like a sensory thing to let you know he's there. And then after he does that, he'll move away and he'll back off or he'll sneak around you. And you know, you've just felt him there. You know, you know, if you're not looking, you know, Crosby works from behind the goal line so much. Right. And if you're a defenseman, that's where your eye is going to go, right?

You're going to be watching him. So if you've got Gensel behind you, you know, he's going to give you that nudge to let you know he's there and then kind of push off and get it. open and the two of them work off each other in just such a beautiful way you could see like gansels like really got that coach's son instinct right like where his dad has done so much i think for him and his development and taught him how to find these pockets and these soft spots in the ice um the two of them do to do it so well uh but the spin move was my that was my favorite part is this you know this is this is this is sydney craws we're talking about everyone knows he's out there right everyone knows that um they've actually set him up a lot dmitri i don't know if you've

notice this in the tape where he's not taking in the draw now. So they'll move him to Jake Gensel's spot, put Gensel at center. And then they set, they're setting Crosby up for a one timer on the far side of the ice and trying to sneak him through traffic. So they'll win the draw up to the far, to near boards. Crosby's in the wing spot kind of just sneaks all the way off in no man's land and then comes back in. They've been doing a lot with him to try to, I think, you know, free him up and get him more shots and stuff. So it's been fun to watch some of the creativity. see him out there in a different position other than center for the first time in a while. Well, I mentioned Bergeron easier.

And, like, you can tie the parallels between the two in the sense that, you know, Bergeron's in year 19 now, Crosby's in the year 18. They're both still remarkably productive and like two of the best five-on-five players in the game. And they both have found that chemistry with a partner, right? Like Bergeron's founded with Marsha and Pasternak to an extent, but they don't really play five-on-five full-time anymore this season. But Crosby and Gensel in that regard of being able to find each other, that off-puck movement, the ability for just the under,

of where the other's going to be, it allows them to not only play a step ahead, but like specifically go into some of these sequences, I believe, of draws with the understanding that they're going to run a specific play. And often we say, oh, hockey's too fast, especially at the NHL level. Like you can't break it down like other sports and, you know, it's kind of chaotic and the puck just bouncing around everywhere. But these great players have such like an innate understanding and ability to slow the game down and know what's going to happen that I really do feel like watching those two guys.

they go into some of these sequences, like, all right, I'm going to be here, you go over there, this is when the puck's going to come, and then we're going to act accordingly after that. And when it works out, it's so beautiful to watch. Well, you're 100, you're 100% correct. I go back to what, you know, Chris Kuntz used to say about playing with Krosby, Demetri's. It was information overload. And there would be these micro transactions and a shift, tiny, you know, interactions you'd have

with the puck that were fleeting to you. But when you went back to the bench, Krosby grabbed the iPad and showed you, no, no, no, no, like, you need to do this here. And Krohnitz was like, I'm just like, okay. Like, I'm not even thinking about these things. How do I even, how am I going to correct my behavior? I don't even know they're happening. Now, Jesse, do they, they have iPads?

Was that a thing when Chris Kuhnitz was still around? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, you know, the penguins were really like kind of the first team to really get into that. And Andy Petrie, or not Andy Petrie, Andy Sosier, who's their video analyst guy. Crosby, when he had the injury and Brooks Orpick came in the head with that puck, he was up in the booth feeding information back down to the bench.

They sort of turned Crosby into an assistant at that point. And then that sort of, when he went back downstairs and started playing again, that run against the Bruins, he was like, I want to have the ability to have that same viewpoint here. because he found it so helpful that that's how they did it. So imagine just being Chris Kudas sitting there, be like, I don't want you to step over this puck. I want you to tip it and be like, oh my God, how do I handle that? But it's a lot, you know, Gensel is very much the same kind of player. And he processes, I think, those micro transactions, you know, at the same speed and in the same way.

And I think, you know, your argument that you made is true. People say that all the time about hockey. Well, it's not nuanced enough. It's too fast. It's chaotic. But I think back years ago, 2014, 13 maybe, somewhere in there. Merrick Zedlitschki was playing really good hockey for the devils at the time. And Sidney Crosby, you know, I reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park where the dinosaur wrangler talks about how the Velociraptors test the fence for weaknesses.

Crosby kept getting these one-on-one opportunities against Zidlichky, and Zedlichke kept stick-checking him. and stick checking him from his offhand, like coming across his body to knock the puck away. So later on in the game, Crosby gets another one-on-one opportunity with him fakes that way for Zedlitski to bite on the maneuver and just dangles him backhand, goes right around him and walks in for a goal. So it's he knows. I mean, you know, these guys know they watch tape. They have nuance given to them. And they 100% are formulating, you know, plays in circumstances that are, you know, unique and aren't going to. to present themselves all the time.

But it's like, you know, it's like having a fake punt in your in your backpack, right? You still have it. It's still there. They have any manner of that stuff, you know, I think that they go through on a regular basis. Well, the remarkable thing is, so he's got the 31 points so far in 23 games, which is a 110 point pace for the year. 21 of them are 515, right?

Which is tops in the league, I believe you mentioned at the start. And it's remarkable because the Penguins as a team are 27th, I believe, in terms of power play efficiency in terms of goals per hour, scoring at like under six per 60, which is not good. And I feel like that's probably not even fully representative of where they've been at for most of the year because they started out hot, as you remember,

they kind of like blitzed Arizona and Columbus and their first three or four games just right out of the gate. They scored a bunch of power play goals, and that inflates it a little bit to a degree. I think they're 31st. Only Philly's been worse than them in the past 20 games. and I mean, Philly has like Zach McEwen on their power play right now. So, you know, that tells you the state of affairs there.

And it just, it's so strangely because you look at the personnel and you still got so many of these pieces and you're like, okay, this should be at least a league average or above league average unit. And then you watch them in actual, you know, on ice play. And it's just not matching up with what it should be right now. And that's, you know, both a testament to how productive crosbie's been that he's still has so many points because he hasn't. unable to get some of those freebies, but it's also concerning moving forward because it's like,

why is this, why is this continuing to happen? They've run, they've run the same power play set up really basically for the entirety of Mike Sullivan's tenure and he borrowed it from Mike Johnston. So they've had it even longer than that. And it's really, it's like that weird one three one umbrella, which if you think about it, Dimitri, the idea is you want to get the puck into the center of the slot, right? You want to exploit that middle of the ice. But that's such an easy lane to defend.

You know, any good penalty killing unit, that's the first place they're looking to take away from you. And, you know, what you end up with is, you know, the power kill is really popular now and to have like a super aggressive penalty kill that tries to get turnovers and attacks. And that bullies them. It really does. It bullies them to the perimeter of the ice. And now that you've got this presence in the slot, you've got this presence in front of the net, but you've everyone else up by the blue line. And you just can't create from that. You know, you don't, you know, I think a lot of people in Pittsburgh have said,

Demetri, let's just put Malkin on the wall and just let them bomb them, you know, put them over there, just let them rip them, you know, take the Ovechkin approach with it, you know. Let, let Gensel do that, walk off the wall with it. You know, they did so much success when Phil Kessel was there doing that. But it's just stale. It's stale. The talent is conflicting with itself. You know, I don't think there's, there's no quarterback.

There's no one player on that. unit that you look at and says, like, this is the player that's responsible for the puck movement, the breakout, the entry, the sticks, the puck's coming off their stick to set up the chance. We don't really know who that is. So it is remarkable that it's happened as much as it has at five on five. It's also remarkable that the power play is as bad as it is and continues to show really no sign of making any, any level of improvement at all.

I don't understand why that is happening because, like, why aren't they, um, Why aren't they trying to run that set through Crosby by bumping him off of the goal line as opposed to being like purely net-up? You get that accordion motion there, right? You can go high, low, and you can open and close the penalty killing unit up. They haven't done that. They haven't done that. I think it's frankly, I think they've struggled just establishing routine possession and cleaning up their breakouts. They seem to defer sometimes to the drop pass a lot, which is not something I'm a huge fan of for that group.

Well, they don't have that one guy who can just carve up the other team through the neutral zone and get it in there all by himself, right? Like a lot of these top power plays that are built. Like, their star players are the types of players that can do that, whereas, you know, you're not necessarily at this point of their career is going to be asking Crosbyr Malkin to be consistently doing that as like your one true threat. And frankly, I think the goal, Demetri, and this is not a knock on Malkin, but the goal has been to get him to do it less. Right. Even an even strength. You know, if you look at whose wingers have been this year, and, you know, Zucker and either Rust or Raquel, you know, have taken some of that burden off of him to not have to feel like he's the one that has to do

that all the time, but you're 100% right. I just, again, I don't think they have any one person that's really in charge of what's going on. And I think what you end up was is a reticence to shoot, right? And I know that I don't want to be that guy in the stands. It's just yelling that as a cure-all, but it does create chaos, right? Shots force a reaction out of the penalty-killing group and make them go chase a puck. It's like a controlled in-zone dump if you miss the next. in some sense.

You know, so I just, I feel like there's no unpredictability with this group that you kind of know what to expect. It's on tape. Everyone's watching the same thing. Every, all these coaching staffs around the league, they're absorbing the same information, seeing no adjustments. And frankly, if you have even a moderately aggressive penalty kill, you can kind of, like I said, bully them up to the perimeter and open that umbrella up and keep them there.

That's kind of just how you do it. And then two minutes later, you're safe and you're back to work. Well, I think Jeff Petrie recently had like a Cody CC-esque shot from the point on, I think it was like a four on three power player or something because it was in overtime. And it was like, it was like, it was so the unintentional comedy always gets me, right? Because there's like drama building up. You're passing up around the zone. The clock's winding down. Such a high leverage moment with the game on the line.

It's at home too. So the crowd is like, you know, slowly building up energy and sound. And it's like, oh, let's see it happen here. And then the guy just rips one. and it's like the lowest percentage possible shot you could take and it misses the net by like a hundred feet and unfortunately the commentator wasn't like wow he missed by a mile like jim houston did on on the on the infamous cecy shot but it was still uh it still had me cackling pretty good yeah um well the whole the whole uh petri experience has been a real roller coaster this

year so i think like you've gotten uh really recently i think it's been a lot better i think the settling in is sort of like you know the fizz is off the top of the drinks so to speak. And initially, it was like a lot more pre-Martan-St. Louis Marjorie than it was anything after that. So it's definitely leveled out. Obviously, the ask is going to be on him to play the top pairing now, right? Yes.

With the curse of Tang situation being what it is and everything. So we're going to see. But I know I know you're a big John Marino guy. And so am I. So it's been a, you know, it's been an interesting experience for Pittsburghers. So I don't, I don't think all of them, they're probably. sick of hearing about it from me. I don't think everyone's fully appreciative of how good John Marino has been and how good his two-way game is. But that's been a bit of a tough

pill to swallow. I think that's a move that Ron Hextall might want to have back a little bit, you know, given the way things have worked out. Yeah. Well, I'm going to curious about your take on Marino because I think there has been some revisionist history. Now, clearly I think like his offensive game was pretty limited. Yeah. Especially towards the end of his of his penguin's tenure and there's no doubt that being put into a situation like the devils, which is like this absolute adrenaline rush of a team where you have just so many skilled forwards who are constantly flying up the ice. I have personally been pretty surprised by like that long stretch past that he's shown a lot this season because I didn't see that much of it during his time in Pittsburgh

and they don't really ask their defensemen to do so. So it's kind of like an entirely different skill set that he never really got a chance to show. And I didn't know he had. And he's passed all the test so far in that regard. But every time I tweet about him, it's undoubtedly met with Pittsburgh Penguins fans who are like, oh, well, where was this in Pittsburgh? Like, we never got to see this. And I'm like, oh, I don't know. I like John Marino when I saw him in Pittsburgh. I think it's revisionist history to pretend like this came out of nowhere. Like, it's clearly taken a step up and it's partly environment part, like this is the stage of his career where he's at. But let's not pretend like this is just completely out of nowhere either. Correct. Entries were something he was always

really proficient at. What happened was once you got the puck into the zone, you saw a complete falloff from the offense there. Like, I wrote an article for the athletic last year where I showed a ton of video examples of him peeling off. And there's instances where he should have pinched. He should have taken a chance. He should have gone after a puck and he was just either late or didn't do it at all. And I think the frustration for Todd Reardon was like getting him to buy into that 100% of the time consistently. So skating it in, passing it in, all these things were routine. areas of success for him, but he would drive down shot rates on whatever forward group he was playing with because he wasn't taking these chances. And he's playing with Marcus Pedersen,

who also wasn't taking those chances because he's really good at what he does, but it's just one thing. And then all of a sudden in the Rangers series, you sort of saw like the light bulb go off. And I thought he had, that was the zenith of his career, was his performance against the Rangers. You know, the Penguins lose. They trade him. Especially with the Game 7 turnover, right? Yeah. Oh, that, you're sure. That's what people remember, right? That's what they talk about in the car on the way home. They don't talk about the fifth, you know, the 28 minutes you played that was really strong outside of that. So the question I say, devil's fans, I told them this, was I thought that consistency. Can he continue sort of that Eureka moment and have that continue

on to the season? The answer has been resoundingly yes, because now I'm looking at him pinch deep and keep plays alive in the offensive zone and do all those things that he wasn't doing in Pittsburgh. And to be frank, he's still young. Defense is very hard to learn. It's a long runway sometimes to success. And those light bulbs do sometimes take a really long time to go off. So I just question, you know, the interest was we got to get tougher. We hear GMs make this mistake all the time.

We got to get tougher on the defensive core. We got to get, but it's tougher better, right? I would not disagree that Jeff Petrie is tougher. No argument, but to what benefit has that been? Like how has that benefited your group? Is your team better for that? Like, because John Marino is cutting people apart up there. So it's, you know, it's a conversation, I think, worth having because there's a lot of players in this roster, Dimitri.

Ty Smith down in the American Hockey League. Casperi Capon, who's just found his way back into the lineup again. after posting a game score of sub.5 for most of his first half of the year. There's a lot of fair questions that you could ask about this team in the way it's set up right now to say like, hey,

some of these decisions don't make a whole lot of sense. And perhaps that's one of them. All right, Jesse. We're going to take a break here. And then when we come back, we're going to pick things up with a variety of other topics. So looking forward to that,

you are listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. And we're back on the HockeyPedio, here with Jesse Marshall. Jesse, we talked about Cindy Crosby. Let's talk a little bit about Jason Robertson, because I know you did kind of like a deep dive on him, writing about him recently with some really good video work to illustrate how he's been so effective. You know, it's funny. I write for EPI Rinkside, and part of one of the perks is we have this chat with all my, myself and all my colleagues, like kind of pitching ideas of what we want to write about,

talking about players, this and that. And there's so many, really smart hockey minds in that chat, especially in terms of like scouting, right, who watch all these players at lower levels and try to project them and what they're going to be at the H.L. level. And no one like befuddles and confuses the chat more than Jason Roberts. And not that like any of them disliked him as a player,

but it's clear to see with some of the choppy skating and the lack of like one purely like raw supernova of a skill, I guess other than maybe his release you'd say in tight. But beyond that, it's like there was. no reason watching this tape to suspect that he'd be this version, regardless of how high you were on him. And now he's not only one of the best scores in the league, but, you know, from my mind, he's like one of the most valuable players in the league. If you see what he means to this Dallas Star's offense and how fundamental he is to all of it. So let's kind of unpack all that in terms

of what you see on the tape from Robertson, how he does it because it is so unique, especially for a young player. Like, right, we talk about Crosby or Bergeron and how they dissect teams in these really like cerebral sneaky subtle ways those guys are in their mid 30s and they've been around for a long time and they're physically declining they have to pick their spots a bit more this is a guy who's like 23 years old and he's coming into the league and he's already doing it yeah yeah uh and i think you're 100% correct in that like there's no overarching like you know you mentioned the release which is really strong but like there's no overarching skill that he leans on i think it's just like a what i what i focused on in my piece demetri's his

spatial awareness, right? And like understanding how to get into a scoring lane. And we like hear the phrase lane all the time. But like I tried to parse out video that shows what that looks like and how he can identify. Okay, I have a defenseman here. I have a forward here. You know, I can I can work myself down this center drive lane, get my stick down and favorable body position on the defenseman and have a scoring chance. And this is all stuff that's like processing for him before the pass is made, right? Like, he's pre-reading here. Like, he's seeing what's happening with the game.

He's seeing what's happening with the breakout. One of the clips I posted, like, he's breakouts on the far side. He skates as far near side as you could go, completely out of the line of sight to everybody else, just to remove himself from the play and find a new scoring lane. And I just don't, there aren't a lot of forwards in the league, maybe Austin Matthews, who do this with a level of success at Jason Robertson. It's just crazy to watch it.

And it's so much of like hot, hot reads. Like the plays developing in front of me right now, and I am analyzing it right now to figure out where my preferable position is. And it doesn't take him long. You know, when he gets that preferable position and it sticks down, it's, puck's gone. I mean, boom. It's really, you know, that's his, it's not so much the velocity or the accuracy,

as much as it is the quickness because the goal is has a little time. to prepare, right? They don't even know what's going on by the time he's taking the shot. But that's it, he's a hard person to move. Let's add that here too. He's got a size. Like, you get him into those lanes. And if he gets, you know, preferable position on a smaller defenseman, you can't move him. You know, you're not going to be able to do anything about that. You could try to lift the stick. But he's a nuisance style player. And the other thing I'm going to say is before I get carried away. I'm not here to tell you checking is useless in hospital. hockey, right? Like, I'm not one of those guys that believes that. It's, it's super useful. But I think what

Jason Robertson's good at is providing pressure on people without actually hitting them, Demetri. He goes in on defenders hard on the fork check with the intention of walking away with the puck. So he's got that active stick, lifting, getting an elbow in on you, and just look in to just strip you and move, strip you and move. And I like seeing that. I know I think that it's, there's no wasted movement there. There's no wasted physicality. The intention is to get the puck. And I hope there's a lesson in that, I think, for a lot of NHL talents. They could all take a little something from that.

You know what the lesson is there? That's a great point. And you see it a lot with what the devils are thriving with this season and what that line in particular thrives with off the forchick and how many turnovers they create. They take advantage of the NHL's general conservative breakout strategy, right? They're banking on the fact that you as a defenseman are going to make the safe play along the wall or off the glass and out. And him and Pavelsky do such a remarkable job of jumping on that and closing that off and either knocking that puck down or preventing you from even doing so to begin with. And that creates so many of these opportunities.

I point that all the time because Rupa Haynes is one of the most dazzling transition players we have in the sport. And the one issue with being that type of player is if you're constantly one and done because you have this rush and then if you don't follow it up and have second and third opportunities and keep the puck in the offensive zone, you're going to have bad defensive metrics. The puck's coming back the other way for a counter. And that doesn't, that's really not an issue for them because he has that rush. And even if he doesn't score, the other team tries to kind of get the puck and clear it. And then all of a sudden Robertson knocks it out and they're still in the offensive zone for another 35 seconds after that. And so they kind of get the best of both worlds. So I do want to give Roberts and credit specifically because he's been such a phenomenal

player, but he's also in this great environment where the three of them play off of each other so well and complement each other's skills. And so it's kind of been the best of both worlds in that regard. What's going to happen to when Stankovins goes up there and is playing with that group? I mean, that could potentially be absolutely ridiculous, right? That could be insane. So, no, you're 100% right. And what's the first thing most everybody's, what is the first thing?

Pretty much every breakout in the league does, Dimitri, D to D pass, right? That's how every single breakout starts. Like, it's like if you're baking, it's an instructor, turn on the oven. Like, make it D to D pass. And now you have a lot of teams, too, that don't want certain defense in making a pass. Like, you know, they'll force feed the puck to someone to try to like lean on. them for the breakout, which is super predictable and allows you to create even more different angular attacks. Because if you know the puck's not going one direction, well, now you can

you can just avoid down the ice. Yeah. Here you go. Yeah. You just divide it up. So yeah, that's, I have thoughts. I know we talked about the one of the questions you had. I've, I'm going to rail on NHL coaching later on the show. So we'll save that. We'll get to that. Well, one final point on Robertson here that I wanted to make was, you know, you talk about kind of that ability to read the ice and then get to his spot, one of the knocks on him coming in was the skating stride and his speed and kind of what we think of, you know, an offensive player that needs to,

how they need to look, especially as a young player coming into the league in this modern game in terms of how they have to skate and how they have to play. And for him, what I really appreciate is he's aware of his limitations. So what you see with him is he almost never carries the podcast. up the ice. Like he's never, his skating is never really an issue because he's never trying to necessarily beat you with speed up the ice. He gets it to players like hints, for example, or passes it off and then is allowed to

skate into that open space, which speeds him up in turn, right? Or he can be the delayed trailer. He doesn't necessarily need to be the first one up the ice. And so it's magnificent because it's a young player who understands his own strengths and weaknesses. And then he's been put in a position to succeed. and the result is 19 goals in 23 games, 36 points, 19 to 5 on 5 points. He's like top 5 in basically every offensive category.

And really, ever since he's coming to the league, dating back to that shortened 2021 season, once they bumped him up to this top line, they're scoring like four five on five goals per hour with them on the ice. And they're more aggressive offensively this season after the coaching change. But that even carried over to those Rick bonus years where, when they weren't on the ice, they were like sub two goals per 60, and they were one of the worst offensive teams in the league. And then you'd get this line out, and they'd be, they were the absolute best.

And so his impact in terms of the 5-1-5 scoring metric is just, is just through the roof. And I thought he deserved like a full segment here because he's been that good. Anytime somebody says to you, a player has skating issues, your response should always be what kind? Don't just tell me that, like, what is the issue? Because for Jason Robertson, his issue is he does not have a very high top gear. his top speed is very limited and sometimes his turning radiuses are wide right however he can get to his top speed really quickly acceleration is not his problem and his first few pumps are so good that he can beat you to lose puck races he can close on lanes and all the things that he kind of like needs to do to have the success that he's having he can do that's not a problem for him and just like you said he's not going to try to be somebody he's not

and take on skills that he can't handle on the breakout. So what he has available to him on a skating tool set is just fine for the kind of player he is and the way he uses his feet, which is really just in short, controlled bursts, point A to point B to fork check, point A to point B to a lane, get to the front of the net, drive the front of the net, and then that's it. He doesn't need anything more than he doesn't need to keep up with Connor McDavid. He just needs to be able to get short distances quickly, and that's a fine thing for him. He doesn't have a problem with that.

Yep, I love that. Okay, let's close out with a listener question here that's going to tie into something we already hinted at and can lead into any number of ways. So it's a question from Daniel, who's a listener of the show and he asks, most goals come off high danger of rush chances during the regular season. But the space gets taken away in the playoffs because teams are more disciplined and well-structured. How does a GM construct a roster to address this? I'm specifically thinking of when the Panthers played the lightning last year in the playoffs,

were the leaves of old versus anybody, which made me laugh that it was so open in terms of... Generalized, yeah. Any number of opponents and any number of years you could point to. I'm curious for your take on this, because I think it's a very important question, one that I think we don't necessarily have a full answer to. Like you, I think we can speculate on a few things that you could do

or a few things that are really important, but at the end of the day, it's something that a lot of teams and a lot of smart people have been trying to reconcile and get to the bottom of and have come up short. And so I'm really curious for your take on it. So I don't know that it's entirely a roster construction question, though. I think that coaching in the National Hockey League is like eating mashed potatoes that don't have any salt butter or gravy on them at all. Right. It's just bland potatoes. It's disgusting. There's no creativity. We have like four systems in this league. Yeah. Four. And when somebody tried

to bring in a new one in a one three one they laughed at him and refused to play the Philadelphia flyers refused to play against that system at one point in the not so distant past so when people ask questions like why don't we see like torpedo passing come over to North America and is it's got to be an ice surface issue no it's not an ice it's a desire issue it's a lack of innovation issue coaching in North America stinks it's super bland and I think what happens is and it's any number of people will tell you this. Coaches go into a season, Demetri, and they grind the same system

over and over and over again. And most of the film study isn't about the other team. It's about the way your system didn't work. And every coach believes their system is perfect. And if they just execute it the right way, the way that the coach wants,

it can't lose. Right? That's crazy to think about. Think about football, European football, the Premier League. And think about how teams see Pep Guardiola, who's like the greatest football manager will come to town and change the way that they play because they know if they try to do things the way they usually do, Pep's going to cut them up, right? We've got coaches in the league like Mike Sullivan, all these guys that can do the same thing

to you. They can cut you up, but we don't see coaches adapt to that. We see them dig their foxhole, sit in it and say, well, this is where we're not moving. This is exactly the way it's going to work. And if we go up against another team that has a system that is going to potentially exploit ours, maybe we'll make a change to our adjustment here or there. But for the most part, the overall structure is going to be the same. If we run a one-two-two in preseason, we're running a one-two until the general manager fires me.

And I would love to see a world where, and maybe the key to this is through analytics, Demetri, if we had access, I know a lot of people are working on this, if we had access to like this system against this system head-to-head data here's how it performs maybe that would like make some coaches uncomfortable um i don't know but i i i just think that right now we're not welcoming new things um coaches aren't working off of they're they're afraid to try anything different um and this is that's been a problem for a long time you know going back to the 90s 90s like mary o'am you had to corner scotty bowman in a room and threaten him to change the system against the capitals in order to win and they did and they won and they won on to win a

cup. But they had to literally lock the coach in a room and argue with him for an hour to get them to agree with that. You could go, it's a tale as old as time. So I just look, Rockster construction is something that I think for the most part is like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic if your team's not playing the game the right way, right? You do have to have the foresight on that and the foresight to say like as a coach, I know that the game's going to be tighter in the postseason and I'm going to have to make adjustments to that and et cetera, et cetera. I just would like to see more variety. I'd like to see more in the break.

I'd like to see more power plays and have some fresh blood come in and try some new things because it's getting stale, you know, systems wise. It is. If you're the kind of person who writes about systems all the time, you can quickly run out of topics because people are generally doing the same four things every single year over and over again. Yeah, it is very cookie cutter. Yeah, I had it written out here, diversity of skill and approach, which I guess kind of ties into that and I guess like philosophy.

You could add that as a third one. You know, I have two specific examples here. One, what we're talking about in the most recent topic with Jason Robertson and how, you know, these good forechecking teams are banking on the fact that you're going to make that safe play up the wall on the breakout. Part of it is talent based in the sense that you need the horses to be able to play a certain way. But I think in today's game, you have to have defensemen who can.

beat the four checker by that F1 basically by himself and and carry the puck out of the zone and make a play in transition like that's basically not to oversimplify it but that is how the Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup last year because they had players that could do that against the lightning forecheck and the lightning as great as Victor Headman is and as much as as people like Mikhail Sergachev and Eric Chernak and Ryan McDone at the time none of those guys could stare down Valor and Etchuskin coming at them one on one and get around him and get the puck out of the zone.

So they kept trying to hammer the puck up the wall and the abs were just sitting on that and because they couldn't attack the middle of the ice, they were basically toothless in terms of their transition attack. And so that slowed everything down, gave the Colorado Avalanche opportunities and it was a wrap after that. And so you need to have players who can actually do that

and that requires talent. But I think it also requires coaching in terms of empowering them and enabling them to do so, acknowledging that when they do it and it leads to a horrible turnover and a mistake, you live with it because in the grand scheme of things you have to play that way. You can't settle for this off the glass and out anymore.

Yeah, it's a game of grand sums in that sense. You know, the mistakes are going to happen. I also think just another thing I'll mention just real quick here, play the same way between your American League team and your NHL team. The fact that that's not like a uniform thing is crazy to me because you've got really talented young players in your American League club that are like quad A in the sense that like, Like, you know, we can argue about whether or not the HL is a developmental league or not until the cows come home.

But if you're keeping someone down there for the intent of quote unquote developing them, you know, you're, it's crazy to me that you have these coaches that want to play one way in the American Hockey League. But then you call the player up and you ask them to play a completely different system the next night. One thing I think the Penguins have always been lockstep on is we're going to play the same way organizationally. And that way, if we have to make a call up and a young player has got to come up, it's just so much easier for them to know what to do because we've created this as a song. is like a second nature, as like an organizational system, if you have that continuity between your general manager and your coach, you should be drafting with a like-mindedness, right, that enables you to do that kind of thing.

So it requires a lot of synergy, but I think it's a nice thing to see when it's pulled off correctly. Yeah, I was going to actually say, I feel like Wilkesbury and Pittsburgh are a good example of that based on the success we see. I know it's like the running joke about Mark Duncan and BuzzWourble, but the reality is a lot of these players have been able to have the careers they have. Not to take anything away from them, but because they've been put in that position where it was a pretty seamless transition so that when they came up, they could immediately, it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

They come up. They get to play with Siddy Crosby, but they know exactly what they expect because they've been playing the system. So they score and produce right away. And so they get to stick around in that role. And then they themselves develop and get more confidence and all that, I'm sure. But they actually get the chance to see it through, whereas you get some young player who's playing one way in the HL gets called up. plays fourth line with guys who aren't nearly as talented as they are. They don't even know what the team's really supposed to do.

They're out there for 35 seconds every seven minutes. They dump and chase, throw a check, get off the ice, watch the rest of the players play. And then they don't score. And then they're like, oh, well, this player clearly isn't good. See, we were right. And then they trade them away or send them down. And then they're playing in a different league in a couple of years. And so they never, we never got to see what they were actually capable of because

they were never put into that position succeed by the organization. Yep. 100% yeah um and i think to um like if you know if you're and i think about like pier olivier joseph i think is like a really good example of this there are situations where you need to have somebody down there like iron things out and work on kinks but you know i think if you're not giving specific directions you're not saying like this is the reason why you're here this is what's holding you back individually like this is the one element to your game that needs to be improved on and you just think you need to be better um you know i don't i don't know the communication doesn't seem airtight on a lot of that around the league sometimes to me as I think that young players, to your point, your square peg round, a whole discussion, why are we asking talented, skilled guys with great shots and stick handling ability to play shutdown checking roles?

You know, like this is not what the ask is here. So, yeah, the top-down cohesion is something I think the Penguins have all the way down even to the ECHL, which makes those organizational call-up so much easier. And, you know, it's so much of what that is, it's like adrenaline, right? Like, you have somebody who's running off of, like, the biggest moment of their life. They're running off of total adrenaline. You want to remove as much of the thinking from that scenario as you possibly can and just allow them to sort of feast on second nature.

So, yeah. All right, man. Well, this was a blast. I'm glad we got to catch up and talk about a variety of topics here. It was fun. We're going to have to make this, I was telling you, we have to make this a regular thing,

especially that I'm now on daily. So I'll let you plug some stuff. What have you been working on? Let the listeners know where they can check you out and all the good stuff that you're doing these days. Yeah, on the Twitter machine at J. Marsh, F-O-F. I last, so we talked about Jason Robertson last week. I got to get into this card Raquel thing.

We're going to talk about that on the athletic. That'll be my next piece. Nice. And just some of like the micro things that he does that are really helping. wherever he's gone, Dimitra has been through. So you'll see him go down on the Malkin line. The Malkin line scores like crazy.

You see him go up to the Crosby line. Crossline scores like crazy. And it's almost like wherever he is, there's this explosion of goals. And I think you could tie it back directly to some of the behavior he engages in and forechecking and opening space up. Nice. So you're writing road, Ricardo, Rekyllnix. I was going to ask you what you're working on out to give away any spoilers.

But I'm really curious about what deep that. I'm going to let this is what we're going to do. This is going to be our plan of. of action. I'm going to give you a couple weeks, bang out some deep dives, get in some tape, and then we're just going to have you on as a recurring guest, and we're going to just, like, unpack all that tape and talk it out in audio form for the people who don't want to read articles, although everyone should be reading what you're writing, but give them a little taste of that. And this allows us also to expand on those thoughts, right? You can get into some of the nuances

where you might not necessarily want to be bogging down your article with like random anecdotes or stuff that you haven't necessarily flushed out, but you're kind of, you're at least thinking about. Yeah. I love peeling that onion. back on like how the game is being played. So count me in any time I'm going to watch tape or break down tape. That's right up my alley. So that's something I'm always happy to do. All right.

I love the man. Well, thank you for taking the time to come and chat. We're going to have you on again soon for the listeners. If you enjoyed today's PDOCAST, you can help us out by going and smash in that five-star button wherever you listen to the show. And we're going to be back tomorrow with more. So thank you for listening to the Hockey PEOcast streaming here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.