The Hockey PDOcast - Teams Opening Up Cap Space, and Teams on Tilt

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Thomas Drance to talk about the Jacob Trouba trade, the Stars putting Tyler Seguin on LTIR, the Kevyn Adams press conference, and the top stories from this past week in the NHL. 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.

It's the Hockey PDOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Dmitra Filipovich and joining me in studio for our Sunday special, my good buddy, Thomas Trans. Tom, what's going on, man? Dmitri, I'm doing well. It's been an interesting weekend in Vancouver, you know, walking to and from the rink covering Canucks games over the course of the weekend. It's like there's, you know, the well-to-do, well-dressed people seeing Cirque to Saleh,

which is me today, which is you. We'll get your Cirque review shortly. I'm a big Cirque to Sele-Slappy for anyone who's curious. But yeah, so you see the well-dressed people go into Cirque to Salae. You see the Jersey and denim-clad people going to Canucks games. And then it's just a sea of glitter as the world descends upon BC Place for Taylor Swift over the course of the weekend. I heard like, you know, I caught bad blood and styles. Were you standing outside of the stadium?

No, on my walk home. On my walk home, I could hear it all the way to say. science world. And not only can you hear it, but you can hear like the pitch of screams. And yeah, the vibe in Vancouver, I think, has been exceptional over the course of this weekend. Um, you know, and the hockey obviously being played around the continent has been pretty fun too. Lots of juicy storylines. It was. I've got the energy. I think today's going to be a really jam packed energetic show with great vibes. As we said, right before this, I went and watched the echo rendition of Circus Lai. It was phenomenal. The theatrics.

Everything on display was athleticism was through the roof. Oh, yeah. And then I came here, I'm hanging out my best buddy. We're going to recap the week that was in our Sunday special. Life is good. It was, I thought like from a play perspective, there was some fine games. We're going to talk about various teams here. I thought almost this week, especially compared to the previous ones we've done,

was more of the off-the-ice-centric storyline perspective for me, especially on that Friday afternoon. It felt like it was peak drama. We had all the Jacob Truva stuff. We had Brady Kachuk in the rumors linked to the Rangers as well because the Rangers were kind of throwing out feelers everywhere. And then the senators just emphatically in unison just shot it down pretty much from every voice related to the organization. The Sabres had a truly inexplicable interview, in my opinion, with Kevin Adams holding a presser. We're going to get into all of that.

But it really felt like it was a throwback hockey Twitter day where it was just so eventful and we have a lot to talk about. Let's start with the Truva trade. And we're going to talk, I want to cover it from the player, I want to cover it from both teams involved, because I think each of those outlets present a really interesting conversation. The big story here for me is the ducks fully absorbing the contract, right? And this is sort of the second time now in what, within six months that we've seen Chris Jury-pull a bit of a Houdini act, in my opinion, where anyone would have looked at it and said, all right, they have this player who might be still well regarded in NHL circles, but clearly, his production and his contributions don't sync up with the contract they have. And so for the Rangers to get off of this with everyone around the league knowing that they're in a tough bind financially moving forward because they have so many expenditures and already so many big contracts at play, they're going to have to, they don't have leverage, they're going to have to

pay something to get out of this. Last summer, we saw them put Barkley-go-drawing waivers. The sharks claim them. They get out of that contract for free. This time, not only do they get the ducks to take on Jacob Trubah's 8 million A-AV for the rest of this season and into next year, but they also get a fourth-round pick on top of that in 2025. And I think, I don't know, where do you want to start with this conversation? Do you want to talk about Truba? Do you want to talk? Let's save the Ducks part for later, but I think the Rangers, obviously, last week,

you and I did a big segment on how much they were struggling defensively. We don't need to rehash that. But I do think this opens so many doors for them. Not only right now, because all of a sudden they have a million dollars. and salary to add and improve their team, and I think they're desperate to do so, but also with the summer they have, right, with Shisterikins' extension kicking in and the pay raise there, the RFA statuses they have for guys like Kako, Will Cooley, Kendrii, Kendrii Miller, all of a sudden now, I think a lot of that stuff becomes much more manageable and feasible for

them, and it's incredible that within just one little move like this, all of a sudden, the entire dynamic, I think, shifted for them. So I find Chris Durry pretty fascinating. He is largely invisible. personality-wise, right? Like, this is not a guy who seeks the spotlight. In fact, he shuns it. There's, there's, there's some Lamerillo, but new age Lamellarillo to Chris Durry. And when you think about who he was as a player, right? And you think about, you know, the face-off winning hard scrabble, right? Like went from being the bottom six guy on those Aves teams to being a superstar level player, let's be real, with the Buffalo Sabres when they couldn't get it done. And he's

accomplished everything and on and on. And yet, I think there's a element to which, because he has this Lamarillo Jr. Sort of aversion to self-promotion. I feel like there's been an awful lot of noise and criticism directed at him that I almost find surprising for someone with his resume. I feel like the way he's being criticized

feels like the... feels almost more like the sorts of criticism that guys like Dubus historically right more kind of new it was a non-hockey right

as opposed to someone with the hockey bona fides of Drury that was one of the things that I found so fascinating I think not just

about Friday not just about the reaction to the trade but I think like going back two weeks as you know this entire story is percolated

and the Crider rumors and the Trouber rumors and on and on and you know I think quietly when when we consider what Drury is done there there's certainly

things that you can backseat driver second guess but for the most part, I think the work's been pretty good. I mean, the Lavillette hire certainly was excellent. The Lefrenier extension, I'm pretty convinced, is going to be a massive steel. Looks like they're getting Shasturkin done. The trade deadline when they acquired both Frank Vitrono and Andrew Cobble, I'd help them get to the conference final.

Right. And then even last year, Roselvic, right? Like, he's eschewed the big paydays at the deadline and sort of just quietly gone about improving this team. I think there's sharpness there that maybe isn't being recognized. And it just felt like the conversation instead of wanting to discuss anything, it was like, felt personal almost. Like there was a lot of personal sort of attacks about the way the Rangers are doing business that failed, I think, to recognize the scope of what he's accomplished. As much as making good moves is the most important part of being a general manager. fixing your errors matters too or fixing other people's errors and you know in in godreau and

uh truba getting off of those deals getting off of the entirety of the last two years 11.5 million in commitments combined significant like that's a massive yeah well and and for multiple years so i mean double that amount right so no i i liked the i liked the outcome a ton for the rangers and i was sort of mystified by the level of criticism why do you think there's a dynamic obviously you know we've seen this sort of phenomenon of kind of like the player impoverant era, right? And some players are taking more control of the situation. I think everyone certainly favoring them a little bit more there.

I think also there's like a hidden personal element as well where maybe not necessarily if you're a talking head on TV, but I feel like anyone can sort of experience this dynamic of employee versus employer, right? And especially from the player perspective, I think can't help or feel like everyone is thinking it from a selfish perspective of like this could happen to me next, right? Like the way a player can sort of just be moved on a dime here

and how that could affect my own life. If I were in that situation, I feel like that's what's happening here. I just feel like there's so much misinformation with contracts and the way teams operate around it within the CBA's confines that I think needs to be centered here. And a lot of the conversations I've seen, especially on TV, just have conveniently overlooked that, right? like there's this people are up in arms about how can you do this to a guy like jackin truba he has a no trade clause in his deal and you using the threat of waivers similar to what they did with barclay good drill when they couldn't work out a deal last year

similar to what the lightning did with ryan mcdonough to reach the objective you want how could you do that and the difference lies just very plainly within a no move clause versus no trade clause and all of these things those two term salary are all bargaining chips or assets right, for both team and player. And when you sign a contract, if you want full command and full security and insurance over not being moved in this case, or not having this as an avenue for the team to explore, you're more than welcome to just take less salary to get what you want. The team might not want to ultimately do that, but I'm sure the Rangers would have much rather paid Jacob Truba six, six point five million per year and given him this as an accommodation. Instead, I think he was very happy to get paid $8 million a year, and this is the situation you get into. The thing is, like, why do you think it was talked about like it was new?

Like, this wasn't something that the league... I mean, it's because it's going with the Rangers twice now. Right. So I think people are viewing it as like a trend, I guess, whereas maybe if a different team had done it that didn't have a recent example of doing so, maybe it wouldn't have been like, oh, this is becoming a problematic characteristic by this team. Teams are going to treat the Rangers as, oh, I don't want to go there anymore, which just is simply not true. You've seen the Vegas Golden Knights execute the strategy time and time again. And I bet if you did up one of those athletic player polls, every single player in the league would be like, yeah, I would love designed with the Golden Knights. Well, I also think one thing we should note here is there's also been a lot of criticism of like bad, a lot of defenses of bad, a lot of defense of bad hockey management over the years, hinging on like, well, they inherited a bunch of no move clause or no trade clauses. And it's like, first of all, you can work around them.

Like, this is another example of how ingenuity and ruthlessness can be brought to the fore in those contract talks. The other part of this is, like, this is something that's happened regularly. The Canucks talked and sort of certainly bandied about the threat of this with Roberto Luongo back in the day. McDonough. During expansion, this was a discussion between the league and the PA, right? Do only no move clogs clause players have the ability to, you know, decline to be exempted or exposed? in the expansion process or does it apply to to no trade clauses? I mean, this has been an ongoing

conversation between teams and the PA for a decade plus between players and teams. So, you know, my view of it anyway is if the no move clause, is it that important to you? Like, you got to get it ironclad, you know, if you're going to, especially if you're leaving money in term, because all of these things are ultimately even make negotiations, you got to get it. And in Truba's case, I do think, like, there's a, there's a thing To be said where it's like, I don't like the way that this person was treated.

And I think in this specific example, knowing Truba's family situation, the way that he drove the trade to New York originally, and was criticized for that somewhat in Winnipeg until he sort of opened up to Ken Weeb about the reasoning and like really went into sorting his partner's career and on and on. You know, I think you can look at all of that and say that sucks for that individual. And I'm sure that, you know, they could have handled that better. and maybe they even think that they could have handled it better as it pertains to just Truba.

But the idea that teams shouldn't utilize absolutely every weapon at their disposal to improve their team or fix their issues. To me, that doesn't pass muster. Of course they should. Yeah, I think ultimately it's a business.

And every team's objectives, their sole objective, really, in my opinion, is exploring and exhausting every avenue possible to improve their team as much as they can, and improve their odds of competing for and winning the Stanley Cup as much as they can, right? And I think ultimately,

if you're a player and you enter a situation where your contract exceeds your contributions or value to the organization, then I think the team is well within their rights to explore improving their team. Yes. And I feel like that's kind of what you're seeing here, ultimately. And so I don't really have it just a general concept, regardless of the Trupa situation.

I never have an issue with this, even when the Golden Knights do it time and time again and exesged their perfection and keep improving their team and ultimately winning a Stanley Cup, this is the name of the game for teams, right? And so I'm fine with what Elliott Friedman was talking about on Hockey Night in Canada where there's been so much talk about this now that maybe in the next CBA they'll explore uniting and unifying. There's no trade clause and no move clause. They're making it the same thing because I do get that technically the theory behind it is having that security if you're demanded it with your play and your contract status to have say over where you play. And so this obviously is a loophole. I think people

are misplacing their frustration with the Rangers here where maybe your frustration, if you, if you have an issue with this, is more so rooted in the CBA they're exploiting and they're well within their rights to do so. Yeah. And look, if the players do decide to push for something like that, you know, it's not rev share. It's not tying draft pick compensation to free agent decisions. It's not you know, all of the many things that teams are likely to prioritize. I feel like that's an area where teams would be willing to give. But, you know, right now we have all these different gradients, right? It's not just no trade, no move. It's, you know, 18 team, 12 teams, 16, 5 team no trades, right? There's there's different gradients of player protection and control. And if you unify it so that any player who gets just like the clause, right, they're going to be an awfully lot, an awful lot more difficult to get from tips, right? I mean, teams are going to get much more protective. There's a world, I'd say, where you negotiate something like that in a collectively bargained environment. And the result is less player control on aggregate,

even if those players that do get it, those star level players that are still able to receive it from teams ultimately have more control than they currently do. And I do think it was fitting that on the same day that's played out, part of Eagle's strict as I guess it was the details of the Tranias part. We're more strictly defined the next day when we found out all the signing bonus and everything but him having a full move clause

for all eight years of his deal. Right. It's like, yeah. He added this. He clearly prioritized it and I think that's fine. Maybe if you're a player dealing with one of these teams in the future, you are going to put more stock into that as opposed to being like, oh, I'm not worried about it now because I'm in my prime. This isn't going to be an issue for me and then four

years into your contract having this happen to you. Yeah, I'd add this. The notion that this is going to prevent players from wanting to play Oh, it's nonsense. For MSG is nonsense. The stories that get told about the way that players are treated, you know, I'm talking not just private jets when you're acquired in a trade, but like the private helicopter

that takes you directly to MSG, the amenities being second and on, the ability to live in Manhattan, the ability to play for an original six franchise. I mean, this is one of the most appealing markets for players to play for that's been true my entire adult life. That's going to be true for the next 50 years, provided, you know, something, provided they don't sort of enter a scorched earth rebuild. I mean, this was a team that blew up their nucleus in the, in the middle of a playoff hunt. And it had almost zero impact. Like within two years, Artemi Panarin was leaving money on the table because he wanted to play on Broadway. and a lot of people want to play on Broadway.

So, you know, the, the language of this trade tells you everything, right? There is one team heavily valuing opening up $7 million in cap flexibility because they're the New York Rangers. They're going to be able to land college free agents. They're going to be able to land unrestricted free agents. Everyone's going to be willing to waive their no trade clause to join their team. And an Anaheim Ducks club that quietly, by the way, is playing better hockey of late. I know you hate to hand it to them. Quote your favorite drill tweet here,

but given their lack of success over the past few years and the baggage that's attached to that from a player's perspective, even though you get to live in like Newport Beach if you're willing to drive 20 minutes to the rank, you know, them landing the Truba contract has less opportunity cost because they're going to have fewer avenues to recruit players than the Rangers. Like the language of this very deal tells you that anyone talking about the like impact on rangers player recruitment is

probably missing the point. Yeah, well, you said seven. It's eight, eight, but even more so, right?

And I think obviously within this year, you just look and it's like all of Truba's minutes were incredibly problematic for all of their issues because I think a stat we cited yesterday was with him on the ice at five on five. They were giving up over 36 shots on goal against per hour, right? And that's just not and playable at that point. They still,

even if you just completely subtract as minutes I think are going to need to add somewhere. But all of a sudden now you could theoretically bump up Brayden Schneider to play with Kendriy Miller actually get both Zach Jones and Manitini in at all times. It just gives you more avenues. So I think from there it's a no-brainer. And who would have thought they would miss Nico Mikola so much? Yes, I mean, a modern Marvel. Like, I wasn't kidding.

Please go listen to our Stanley Cup final previews that we were doing every day from Palm Springs last summer because we spent so truly deranged amount of time breaking down Nico Mikola's game. I had a harrowing experience. I just as a quick sidebar. On Friday night, I'm watching an entertaining, really close game between the Capitals and the Leafs. I'm watching the Devils just do their Devils act of flying around the ice with Jack Hughes and Jasper Brat against the Cracken. Both those games go to intermission. I'm like, all right, I'm going to put on Rangers Penguins on this ESPN broadcast, and I'm just sitting on the couch, wind up falling asleep. because I'm getting old.

Maybe that's telling on the state of both of those teams right now, I just wake up, I snap to, and Jacob Troopa's face is just zoomed in on my TV because he's doing this first admission interview with ESPN, and I was like, it was genuinely a nightmare fuel experience. And it took me a few minutes, so just shake it off. So I just wanted to add that. Okay, next step of this.

Do you want to talk ducks while we're still on this, just their lens of this? I know you kind of briefly touched on it with what this, how like the contract and this entire situation being telling up where they're at. I just, I do want to know that the ducks have suddenly started playing in like a lot more two goal game or one goal games. They're, they've had a,

they had a tough run Wednesday and Friday this week. I know they got blown out a couple times and looked more like they did earlier in the year. But there was like a solid 15 to 20 game segment where the ducks were looking more like the, you know, plucky team that might have an actual chance to climb out of the cellar, maybe not into the playoffs, but be, you know, in that like 70 point range, like make a, make, take a step forward in terms of their seriousness. Obviously, I left them for dead with just their incredibly dull, negative play style over the first 15 games.

But there's been enough signs of life until they took that big step back Wednesday and Friday, where, where at least was interested again. And I do think Truba is an upgrade over a vacanin. And I don't think it's a good allocation of their resources. I don't like this trade for them. I don't know what they're doing exactly. I mean, the logic is, I think, beyond just bringing you and established veteran, which they're clearly prioritizing is at least theoretically at some point next year, true by either 50% retain or potentially 75, if you get a third-party broker,

as a right shot, veteran defenseman will probably get you back some sort of asset at the deadline. And so I get that from the perspective. I just, the reason why I want to lump them in here. They should be past the short selling phase. They've got all this potentially elite talent. Like you've got to start building the environment to nurture it and help those guys level up now. And maybe Trub is part of that. I mean, I know there have been a lot of whispers about the sort of tone around that team around the league this season.

But and certainly Trouva will help. I mean, Trub is a very popular guy around the league in terms of, well, not among fans because of the hits that he throws, but among players as being a good person. So maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's, you know, you're short selling, but you're also getting a bit of an environmental or like veteran good guy lift in the interim. And what? I mean, maybe they just want to have Trubon Goudis on the same blue line to make everybody keep their head up. But again, it feels a little too conventional to me for a team that has the cap flexibility. And honestly, is in a spot generally where it feels like they should be taking some big swings and trying to become, you know, a closer. approximation of like what the blue jackets are right now or the or the sharks are right now where

hey like you have the talent now go have some fun let it let it shine a bit and and this just feels discordant with what I feel like their goal should be organizationally over the balance I think it's also a continuing trend of me being sort of left either lukewarm or genuinely frustrated by the way they've leveraged the combination of being bad and having a men's cap space and chosen to sort of spend that both in the pre-agrant market and how little they've actually done it in terms of like interesting creative moves to try to poach or steal like actual young players that become disgruntled or become available, which would constitute a bigger home run swing as you're alluding to there. I just find a lot of it has been too conventional

and too easy there. And you look, despite the fact that they had that bit of an improved stretch, still in totality for the year, they're inarguably the worst defense. team in the league. They're a bottom three offensive team two. And so it just hasn't really been a lot of strides. A lot of the young players have either regressed or sort of stagnated in their development as well. And I just find the entire situation to be kind of frustrating, honestly.

I want and I expect better. Me too. I agree. At least they don't have that same look of ill preparation, ill preparation the way that they did in the first month and a half of the season. That was brutal. It was. let's talk about another sort of thing that ties into this, obviously not these two teams,

but I think the idea of Capspace opening up. And this week we saw Tyler say again, go to LTIR as well, right, with the stars announcing that he was going to have his hip surgery. The timeline is four to six months. I think if you're doing the math and we do a lot of analytics here, that equates to playoffs, which means that that opens up, what, 9.85 million in CalfSpace for them to work with an ad, which especially based on how close they've been through precipice the past couple of years, they added Chris Tanna of course last year to deadline. I think they're going to be very aggressive at doing. So maybe not immediately, but certainly by the deadline,

I just want to kind of know, like, it's remarkable to me that say again, what, 48 to 72 hours before this was like playing meaningful minutes in a game for them against the Jets. And this is obviously something. I'm not saying there's any shenanigans because like he was clearly, this is something he's going to have to manage for the rest of his life beyond his playing career, right? Like his body is beaten up and in very rough. shape. I think has been managing. I mean, I think there was that

multi-year process where he basically had to work one leg and being as strong as the other and on and on. I mean, I think you do, there are guys, I think, and I think this has been one of the things that's so misunderstood about Mark Stone. It's like, yeah, Mark Stone is actually that hurt. There's not shenanigans going on. It's just this is a high-level player whose pain tolerance allows him to play heard enough that the line between him being out long term and being in the lineup is thinner than it is for anybody else. And not that Sagan's, I think, to that level necessarily,

but I think he's close. And so, yeah, I mean, he's, that Dushain line. Here's 20. I mean, Sagan himself at 20 point or 19 games, they were their most just consistent and dominant 5-1-5 line all season. And really why, yeah, dating back to last year as well, I think them opening up that money, obviously, I think the next question is going to be like, how do they choose to add? Where do they prioritize? Obviously, they have a rare side of riches in terms of their personnel. The obvious one, and I get why people went this route with rumors,

was like, oh, well, they need to add a big name center because they just lost their second line center. And I just think that if you're going that out, they might ultimately do so because they just might identify that's the best player available. And they're just trying to load up on as many good hockey players as they are. It just shows an misunderstanding to me of their personnel, because no team has more. functional center options than them. Like they have guys playing throughout the lineup on the wing just because they have the

luxury to do so, right? I mean, you've got out of the line. Four guys. Like, how many teams around the league do you think Sam Steele would be a perfectly fine third line center on? Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's more than 10. I mean, they have hints to Shane, Y. Johnson, Sam Steele, Maverick Bork, and Jamie

Ben, who I didn't even list there, takes all the draws for them anyways. Yeah. And we just saw essentially Dushin on board of them. at all. They promoted Stancovin in that line. They've played a couple games. They've looked incredible to my eye, just generating tons of chances, maybe even better than they were previous, because Logan Stankovin is just a phenomenal player. And so I'm not worried about it at all. I think the, you're right, hit the nail on the head. Like the right shot D for me is something that I think they are going to have to add. They tried to do so this summer. They spent

misguidedly, in my opinion, seven million combined on Matt Dunba and Ilya Lubbushkin. I don't think that addressed that need. I think they certainly need to add like not only a good right-shot defenseman, but I think a legitimate game changer possible, easier said than done. We know how tough those players are to find. But Dumbulli Bushkin and Lundquist are the only right shots on this blue line right now, right? And we've talked about how Mero Hayskin and often has to play on his offside just to accommodate. Yeah, partners. They're playing him more on his strong side now. I'm very curious to see what they do. So I think all of us think very highly. I'm not only the stars from like a scouting and evaluation perspective, but also Jim Nell as a decision maker. And so I think they're going to

be calculated about this, but I almost can't wait to see how they choose to address this. And if they take just a massive home run cut, which is indicative of like, I don't want to say desperation, but I think an acknowledgement of how close they've been and how you can't take these years for granted. Like, I think they certainly view their timeline with a lot of these guys as years down the road, but you also, when you're constantly just getting to final four Western Conference finals, all of that, it's like at some point you need to actually not take for granted that it's going to keep happening every year and push all your chips in the middle of the table to actually try and achieve the ultimate goal. The market forces that we're seeing play out are so seller friendly

right now. And everything that we're seeing play out, both of the storylines that we've hit on in the first half of this podcast, you know, the Rangers and the Dallas stars, right, to like conference final regulars, right? Cup final regulars, frankly, over the last five, six years, right? Have cleared out, I mean, have gained 17 to 18 million in combined flexibility over the course of this week, just sort of further enhancing the sort of demand side of adding to teams short term. And yet, I mean, we're still all looking at these unrestricted free agent lists and going, like, who's going to spend on what exactly, right? Like, where are these players who are going to demand this sort of prices,

these sorts of prices? but they are ultimately going to demand, like at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're a top pair defenseman. If you're the best defenseman on the market a month ahead of the trade deadline, you know, you can be Marcus Pedersen or Noah Dobson. You're going to be the best defenseman that teams can add. And so I'm really curious to see how this works exactly and how much Dallas and New York and teams like Winnipeg and Vancouver and on and on teams that we know are aggressive and we know we're going to buy or are strongly going to consider it. you know, how much do they save their bullets to try and almost get out ahead of salary cap growth and look to, you know, instead of buying a rental defender for 65 cents, even if they're a 45 cent player, really going out and paying the dollar 50 for a guy who's, you know, a multi-year fit. That that, to me, is going to be the demand that's going to be or that's going to be the dimension that's going to be so fascinating to track between now and trade deadline season. And I think this does apply to a lot of the Canucks' existing needs and what they would ideally like to add as well. But from the stars, it's so well defined for me because they play this very aggressive approach at 5-1-5 in terms of like getting their wingers to leak out and fly the zone and try to attack off the rush there and manufacture those opportunities. They also, if they added someone who could legitimately handle the brunt of a lot of the puck movement, would allow them and then just play that Hayeskin and Harley pair together and then play. And then play.

that player they acquired with SL and Dell on a reliable second pair and I feel like that would just let so many things fall into place, it's going to be incredibly difficult to find from their perspective, especially if they don't want to take on a bunch of future salary and they want to kind of keep an eye on that as well. But I'm really, I'm really curious to see what they do here. And I think if there's anyone, like we can talk more about teams most likely to make some sort of a big swing here, but they would probably just because of the money they opened up and where they're at in terms of their arc would have to be number one or one A, one B with Rangers in terms of like, this is the year you just take a massive push. The reason I'd argue. I don't think Winnipeg

needs to go. Probably. But they're more obviously tempered, I think, in terms of, I guess, their risk profile for acquisitions. But I wonder how much the business realities of a $95 million cap ultimately impact, you know, the sense of pressure, the wind now pressure that's on that organization. I know they've hit some regression lately and their results haven't been as sterling as they were earlier in the season. But I think we look at that as a very complete team with a credible shot at making serious noise in the Stanley Cup playoffs. At some point, they've been aggressive when they've had opportunities. So we know that they have that history anyway, but at some point with the economic realities of their market and the likely expansion,

maybe significant expansion in player personnel costs that teams are staring down the barrel at now on the other side of the pandemic. I mean, do you hit some now or never pressure, some push from those realities in terms of how they consider their options here? Let's take our break here. We way overshot our mark.

We usually try to go 25 and 20-half for 31 minutes in. I just felt like that was- Plus when you're having fun. Exactly. That's what we're doing here. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Hockey-Ocast streaming

on the SportsNet Radio Network. All right, we're back here in the Hockey P.Docast doing our Sunday special with my pal Thomas Drans, as always. Tom, we were talking about the market that we're at right now, right? With buyers and sellers and the rising cap and all of this stuff, it doesn't necessarily, I wouldn't put this team certainly in that tier of the Rangers and the stars we mentioned in terms of their aggressiveness. But I did in just thinking about this holistically, do you feel like there's more teams

on full tilt right now in terms of both publicly what they're saying but also in watching their games and seeing like how their seasons are unfolding then we generally have less than 30 games into most seasons maybe this is just reasons you bias on my part because this is the season we're currently experiencing and so everything feels like it's the best or the worst or the most traumatic and then next season comes and we're going to rehash this and do it all over again but it does feel like generally teams are a bit more sort of even tempered or even killed at this point And then as we start approaching that trade deadline, then you really start to see a delineation in teams start to push in one direction. Right now, there's a couple teams up top.

There's a couple teams all the way to bottom. And then it feels like there's probably 12 to 15 teams that are within some range of like absolute misery, but not wanting to accept their fate and like actually not tanking and wanting to improve or teams that are still doing well. But for whatever reason are just completely disenchanted with everything. are very public and vocal about it. I don't know. Do you get that sense? I mean, obviously this team you cover on a day-to-day basis the Canucks has had a very interesting season in that regard as well

in terms of a lot of the public commentary and sort of expectations after their strong season last year. And despite the fact their point percentage is totally fine, like you wouldn't know it just based on following the discourse and a dialogue on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, you know, it's a fascinating question. Here's one for you, though. is it tied at all to the higher degree of volatility we're seeing in terms of results?

Like the fact that there aren't by and large great teams. Yes. It feels very open for sure. It feels very open. So, you know, you are never more than like, to take the Canucks as an example, this team is never more than three consecutive wins away from being, you know, right in the race for top spot in the division and never more than three losses away from being behind the Calgary Flames. Right. And I mean, there's a pressure cooker that I think amps up. And it's not just the volatility in terms of we don't have an 800 point percentage team. You know, we don't have seven, 700 point percentage teams the way we have in previous seasons or did, especially during some of those years early in the flat cap era. But also the game itself, right? The, you know, the two goal leads, the worst lead in hockey. It's like now four goal lead can be the worst lead in duration pretty quick. You don't even hear the worst lead in hockey thing very often. because we're seeing NBA style swings from teams. We are seeing teams go up 3-0 in the first period

and you kind of have a sense that it's going to be interesting by the end of the game. You see teams fall behind 2-0 and far from feeling like it's over, barring a miracle. You know, it's almost nothing. Shots are so much more valuable, right? Goals are so much more frequent. And, you know, teams are scoring more.

Does that place additional emotional stress on everything? because it's not as if there's like more media coverage, in fact, quite the opposite. It's not like there's, you know, more like I wonder is this, how much is this being driven by something a little more fundamental in terms of what we're seeing in the evolution of the game and how much of it is just the times we live in and the fact that everything feels like it's got a veneer of mania on it these days. I feel like it's also a reflection of a lot of these teams being in a bit of a frustrating holding pattern, right? It feels like we keep anticipating this changing of the guard, especially in the Atlantic Division, for example, right? And I guess that's a neat segue into talking about the Sabres and Kevin Adams' press compressor on Friday.

But it's just been this like steady stream for year to year of like, this is the year that the lightning and the Bruins in particular age out and fall off. And teams like the Red Wing senators and Sabres step up and take that mantle and start being consistent playoff teams and eventually Stanley Cup contenders. And then once again, you look at the point percentage, and the senators have certainly won a couple games here. And I think we're both generally pretty high on them, especially compared to years past, but we're still not even there yet. So the Kevin Adams presser. It was insane. It was he was catastrophically down bad. And I know I said the team, I had our pal Matt Porter said that he loved my description of teams losing to the sharks a couple episodes ago or maybe even last episode as just being like catatonicly down bad.

I feel like you could say the same about Kevin Adams and his general demeanor and also the gist of what he was saying, right? It was nothing new. It was a lot of regurgitating a lot of the same excuses we've heard in the past. But he had to lie in about we don't have palm trees, we have taxes. He there were, I saw a great meme of them hanging a banner, almost acquired Nikola Eelers and and Marty Natchez is in the offseason. You look now they're down to 26th in point percentage. they got absolutely walloped on Saturday afternoon at home by our guy, to be fair, Michael Kesslerang, and also not the best situation to find yourself in as a team as much as I do

love the player. And you watch them all season. And even when they've been winning games, it just doesn't resemble the team that had as much juice as they did two years ago. And I think part of that is a lot of the young players that were helped driving that success either fell off and took massive steps back. more have gotten hurt and then don't really physically resemble the same players, especially Jack Quinn I'm thinking of, Dylan Cousin, certainly one of the players they did invest in.

Yeah, with the mega deal just doesn't look at all. It looks like a shell of the player he was two, three years ago. And so, I don't know, that's part of it, but man, just I get the frustration and I get the fact that, like, you should be ahead of this timeline at this point. So I do understand it from that perspective. But a lot of what he was saying also felt like such copouts to me. And I just feel like if I was a fan of the Sabres, listening to that would not be reassuring at all. I wouldn't be like, oh, well, we're on the right path. We've just been unlucky.

I'd feel like, all right, I'm just stuck in this maddening, endless loop. They're just never going to end. Invoking Josh Allen the way he did and the Buffalo Bill's experience, which, you know, I'm all four. As a general rule, the more people talking about Josh Allen, the happier I am. Right.

But I always wonder when the Sabers explicitly do that. Is that, is their audience, the sports fans of of, you know, New York State, upstate New York, or ownership, given, you know, the fact that the Pugula is also on the bills.

What do you think? I think the latter. You think it's the ladder? You think it's... I think everything to do with the Sabres, unfortunately, and generally bad has to do with the fact that Pagula's own them. Right. And the reason why I say that is,

and I think a lot of smart people were looking at this previously, but certainly this offseason in the way they acted. And I get that. they're trying to keep their hands free for hopefully their young players playing really well and then them compensated them long term, right? The issue, though, is once again, they enter the season just not using enough money. And I appreciate flexibility, but then you look at like the one player they did go out and

actually give a meaningful contractor, even though it was a one-year deal, Jason Zucker, is fourth on the team in scoring and has been one of the, few bright spots on the team pretty much all year. And you can't help but feel like, man, if they actually were using their full amount of money to improve their team, this team would just look better and this wouldn't be an issue. And this has been a recurring theme for years now. It's easier to justify and swallow when you are intentionally bad. When you're actually trying to be good and competitive the way they have been the past couple years and still acting that way, you reach a bit of an impasse. I still think this team has some ceiling, much, much like when I

think about what the Boudreau bump season meant for the Canucks, and it didn't mean a lot the next year, but it was still like a hint that this core group could level up pretty significantly, pretty quickly. I still think of that end to the season in 2022, I guess it is a long time ago now, as potential signal about what this Sabre's group can do, like what they do have in them. but I was thinking about this a lot on Friday when I was watching Columbus in town against the Canucks. So Columbus came into town

was their third game in four nights and they were playing the second legway back to back, but they'd been walloped pretty good by the Oilers the night before. So they'd actually, you know, Zach Wrenski had played fewer than 25 minutes and on and on. So they came out and blitzed the Canucks

like nothing else in the first period. And I was, you know, watching Marchenko. He had this unbelievable touch with his skate through the neutral zone. Kent Johnson did like four incredible things. Honestly, it's, it's a miracle that he didn't come out of the first period with three points. Is he call him the wizard of poor moody?

The wizard of poor moody, yeah. Is that an actual nickname? No, I'm just trying to say. The, uh, the, the, but you know, there's some wizardry in his scores in his game. He's going to, you know, since he came back from injury. Yeah, he's sick. And it's, it's really, it's just that he tries things that no one else does. So that's why I'm trying to put some magic.

into the atmosphere with him. But with, you know, so I'm watching them play. And then the Canucks come out and just like cynical, veteran savvy, bring some fight to the game, right? Get the power play that you need to tie it up. And then by the end of the game, there was no question that the Canucks weren't just going to win, but we're going to win by multiple goals.

Partly that's that Columbus didn't have their legs and on and on. But it was also this reminder where, like, there's a world already, I think, where Columbus has like above average juice, relative to most teams in this league. But there's still that step from having juice and being fun and being skilled, having engines like they have and actually like operating that machinery in a way that wins you games.

And, and, you know, it's just little things. So you're up to nothing. You're all over the Canucks. You need to bear down in the last four or five minutes or early in the second and like bury them, right? You know you're going to get a push. they didn't manage the game the way that a winning team would. And so there's that extra sort of layer to learn just feels like that's where Buffalo's running up against a wall.

Columbus, I think, has already made strides there. Like, I think Everson's been great for them. But there's still that next level up, which mature teams have and which I think is sort of the step where you get teams that get stuck without sort of breaking through here, whether it's Ottawa, whether it's Columbus, whether it's Buffalo, where where there's like just still a distinction between winning teams and teams that, you know, haven't been there in an awfully long time. And in the Sabres case, I think it's been, what, 17 years?

Yeah, winning teams, final way to win. Losing teams, find a way to lose. Certainly. Well, on the Kinex example, though, wasn't, at the time, a lot of the frustration beyond on-ice play and everything was like ownership involvement and like how serious are you about actually spending what it takes to be a winning an organization both on and off the ice purse just doing the bare minimum to get by or cutting corners especially right and I think that's what I keep coming back to here because a lot of those sort of warning signs that you look at are blinking furiously here and that's what I couldn't help but think in watching that presser and obviously Kevin Adams is standing out there

and taking the brunt of it as sort of the front facing member of organization but I just think like in today's game especially and this has become even more incumbent with the cap rising I don't think spending a bunch of money as a team ensures anything like we see a bunch of teams spend money foolishly a bunch of teams spending a ton of resources and not winning anything but I feel like if you don't spend it pretty much ensures that your ceiling is going to be capped that ceiling exactly you're talking about right and so I just feel like that's a common recurring thing here and something that I think think is going to need to change for that for us to feel differently about the sabres, right? Obviously,

some of these young players that they already had invested in playing better would have go a long way towards that and maybe incentivizes them to do so. But I don't know. Okay. Well, and just the last thing is I do think that that's the fundamental, the fundamental difference is as much as you can hire the right coach and I don't know if Buffalo has. Yeah. As much as you can better support those players with resources and veteran savvy and, you know, on and on. Like, at the end of the day, if Buffalo is going to be a winning team, especially in this league environment, Tage Thompson, you know, they need someone from their group, Rosmonds Dahl,

and they need someone from their group to emerge as one of, a guy we're talking about is, you know, one of the 10 best players in hockey, one of the five best players in hockey. And if that doesn't happen, you can ultimately, like, not that the Buffalo Sabers have succeeded at giving these guys their, absolute best chance to win. But if it doesn't come from the stars you've committed to themselves, it's pretty hard to manufacture. We got five minutes left here on my list of our agenda of topics. I wanted to talk world junior players to watch. I think maybe we can save that one,

even though this was the week that, yes, the rosters for camps were announced and we can get more into that. I feel like we'll have time to do so maybe next week. Yeah. I want to to use it as an opportunity to talk about Ryan Leonard because I actually didn't really have any Caps notes here. And as the founding members of Caps talk here on the Sports Night Radio Network, I feel I wanted to talk about him and what a dog he is and all that. Maybe we can save that. Actually, we can do that next week and we'll talk about Spencer Carpere as well because I have some notes on that. Let's quickly talk about the Hawksfire and Luke Richardson. Yes. Because we saw coaching change this week and that's more topical, I think. I know that you

wanted to talk especially above Bard because that's especially in this same week, right? we found out that Conrad didn't make team Canada. Yeah. And I don't think that should have come as a shock to anyone based on his level of play this year and level of production and the options Canada had available to them upfront certainly. Um, but that in combination with the coaching change made it a pretty tough week, I think, for the, uh, for the Hawks. And so you got any notes on that, um, before we sign out? Well, just that, uh, I mean, that last game before the firing, the blue line turnover that Badard had.

Yeah. He is so much more dynamic and dominant than the way he's performed this season. And to have that, to have the guy for whom it's all about for the Chicago Blackhawks sort of flatline, this season, I think, was something that Richardson wasn't going to be able to overcome. They need the right guy in there. Like, they need, I think, someone who's going to come in and really, support a team that plays, you know, not like low-key defensive hockey. I'm not talking about the Greg Cronin of the Chicago Blackhawks.

But you don't want someone coming in and doing story time every day or anything? No, I want someone who's going to make sure that the pressure on a player like Badard is to do some of the little things that will lead to winning as opposed to just trying to just putting it on him to try and do it all and put on a show every night. Because so much of what is good offense, so much of what is going to, I'm very confident make Bedard like a 140 point guy and one of the top five hockey playing humans on planet earth down the line, it's going to come from not freelancing necessarily, but playing you know, with his body between the puck and the net, playing as a center, being a responsible

two-way guy and he's got the strength and I think the profile to do all of that. It's just, it just feels watching him play right now that he's gotten so far away from that. How can that not be a reflection of the job of your head coach? Change needed to happen. And, you know, I hope they find the right guy to work with and get the most out of honestly one of the most unique raw talents we've seen enter the league and not just unique raw talent. It's not just physical talent. It's also the talent and the drive to work as hard as he has to be who he is already. Yeah, I just want to see it go well because there's no reason why this guy's not going to be one of the most special players in the league. And he obviously hasn't been in the first quarter of this campaign.

Yeah, that's the most important thing for them this season. I mean, beyond the fact they are now down to 32nd out of 32 teams in point percentage. They're also 31st in goals, 30 first and expected goals, generated 30 second in ozone time, and that's obviously unacceptable. And Bernardard himself has only the five goals in 27 games, just nine five-on-five points. And so, yeah, it just needs to get better there. And I get it, especially it's such a death knell for a coach, right? We've seen this in two instances now this year, in different circumstances. But being the coach in the third year of your, third and final year of your deal with no extension, it's like, one of those, just that's a really tough spot to be in, certainly. And so I think

the writing was on the wall there. I don't have too many more things to note on that, but I just felt like as a coaching change, I did want to talk about a little bit. What do you want to plug? Check out Canucks talk. Well, on SportsSense 650, Monday to Friday, noon to 2pm or across the SportsNet radio network. Also, I cover

the Canucks at the Athletic. You certainly do, and you cover the capitals here on the Hockey Ptideot. And occasionally the Crack? No, you moved on from covering the Cracken. Although they added a couple of a couple of inspiring performances using it. It's trying to score a bunch of goals. So I want to be clear.

I'm not selling my crack in stock. Good. Their average backup goaltending away from being absolutely in the mind. I know, I know. My plugs. Please go give us a five-star review wherever you listen to a show. Also pop into the P.D.O. Guad Discord. You can chat with us there and send in future questions.

That's all we got for this week. Drans and I will be back next Sunday night. potentially, I don't want to I don't want to plant my flag here because it's still up in the air, but we might have our first potential guest for these specials here in studio with us. So

check back next week for that. I'll be back Wednesday myself with another episode of the show here. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.