The Hockey PDOcast - Teams to Watch This Summer, Teams Relying on Goalies, and Evan Bouchard's Value

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Ryan Lambert to answer your mailbag questions about the rising cap this offseason and the most interesting teams to watch this summer as a result of it, how we view teams that rely on their goalie's for success, and Evan Bouchard's value to the Oilers. 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 PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name is Dimitra Filippovich and joining me as my good buddy Ryan Lambert. R.L. What's going on, man? Not a lot. Just a little tired after last night's game. I don't know. I don't know what's different about it, but I'm just dragging a little bit this morning. How she goes? Yeah. Well, listen. It was a fun game.

It was very exciting, particularly the first period. very high event. We're getting into the later stage of the postseason here. We've got to power through some ailments. It's not just limited to the players themselves, right? It's the people watching these games as well. It's the playoffs are a grind. So everyone that's been sticking around for the ride

and listening to the PDOCAS along the way. Kudos to you. You're back on the program. It's been a while since we had you on. I heard some reports that you were recently gallivanting around Hawaii. Is that correct? That's correct. Yep.

My sister lives down there. She was graduating from grad school. So we went out, me and my parents and my girlfriend and all that. We all went and we had a very nice time. Never been before. Awesome. Yeah, Hawaii's the best. Particularly the time zone, right?

Like you actually get to just watch all the games. And then if you want, you can still go out for dinner after and just live a normal life and still maintain some semblance of a social life. Whereas not to complain about it because I love my job and this is the best and getting to watch. sports for a living is awesome, but it, a lot of sacrifices along the way in terms of skipping out on events and nights out because there's a random game on, especially during the regular season. So it is what it is, but that is one of the perks of that times one in particular.

Yeah, 1 p.m. start times if you're, if you're out in Honolulu for the 7 o'clock game. So like 1 in 4.30, that's like, like you said, perfect timing because it's like, okay, I just had lunch. I can settle down, watch a game. And then, you know, the second game ends around 7. I can go get dinner. That's the perfect time to do it, you know? Yeah, I don't know how you do it on the Eastern time zone. Because even for me here on the Pacific time, like now that we're in the conference finals and all these games are pretty much starting at 5 Pacific or whatever or 530 for the West

games. Even then, I'm like, I'm so programmed by now for games to be just starting at 4 o'clock for me that like I get to 4. I'm almost like, I'm turning on the TV. I'm like, what there's no game on. And I start just, I don't know what to do with myself for the next 90 minutes. And then it feels like the night's just kind of gone by the time the game is over. and that's obviously even more extreme on these times zone

where these games are starting at like 8 or 8.30 p.m. but yeah, it's an interesting schedule in quirk. There was a certain time zone, especially watching these games. I love when people start complaining about overtime is and whatnot. I'm like, please, give me four overtimes. I could stay up until 10 p.m. watching this. Yeah, I mean, you know, if my game's starting at 1 p.m. I'm on Honolulu time, and I'm sitting down.

I'm like, you know what? Let's have like nine overtime. I don't care. Have the game at at 10 p.m. It doesn't make any difference to me. All right. Here's a plan for today. We're going to take the listener and mailbag questions.

Got a bunch from the PDOCast Discord. If you're not in there, invite link is in the show notes. Jump in there. You can contribute with questions for future mailbags. Got a wide variety of stuff. Some applicable to the post season we're watching right now. Some to the upcoming off season. Other sort of big picture things.

It's going to be a fun grab bag of topics. And let's start with this. So Adili says, interesting thought with the cap rising. Are we about to see some contracts that will look ugly at face value, but ultimately will age fine or line up with the percentage of the cap more palitably for the team signing them as the years go on? So this is an interesting one, right? Because the cap's going to go up about, what, four, four and a half million or so this summer. And it's projected to pretty much keep going up each year by these segments. And hopefully within four or five years from now, it will actually be a pretty dramatic rise.

And the entire landscape is going to change. Now, obviously, the timing of the deals is interesting for teams, right? Because if you've gotten someone locked up for seven, eight years, recently, you're kind of set with that. Whereas I assume players, and we've heard that certain agents have sort of been guiding, I guess, their players and their clients to, you know, bet on themselves, take shorter term deals, set themselves up for this sort of projected cap rise. And so part of that is according to plan from their perspective. But how do you feel about this in terms of some of this, particularly this summer? because I imagine we will see a certain spending spree from teams right now that just there's more money available. And we know the GMs typically treat the stuff as as the money just burning a hole in their pocket whenever they have it to spend.

Yeah, I'm kind of two minds on it because there are actually like a decent number of teams that once they resign all their RFAs like Vancouver or whatever will have no cap space again, you know. So I wonder about it from the UFO perspective. but what I think is interesting is that there are two teams in particular, maybe three if you want to include Chicago, that like want to improve rapidly. But the number one team that I'm like, I think is going to kind of drive the market is what Utah does. Because they're going from a situation where I don't think they have a single

defenseman sign for next year right now, for example. And this is a franchise that just typically doesn't sign a lot of players for a lot of money, right? But now Ryan Smith takes over the team, he's going to be highly motivated to do just that. And so, like, are we saying, like, come on down $9 million for Stephen Stamco's? I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility. I'll put it that way, you know.

And so I guess my point is I wonder whether that will be kind of the rising tide that lifts all boats or more what my podcast co-host. Sean McIndoo always talks about with certain contracts where, like Mitch, Mitch, Arner's contractor, Sergei Bavrovsky's, where it's like all the GMs get together and kind of say, well, that one actually isn't a precedent at all. That doesn't count. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm interested in Utah is, I was thinking about this. So what are the teams that are kind of of most intrigue as a follow up to this question for this summer, right? And I think Utah was on the top of my list. I had three. I'll get into them in a second here. But not only the fact that they obviously just switched destinations, right, and I have a new owner. And I think we know the new owners

typically like to come in and sort of make a statement and a splash, particularly in the new market here, right? And especially with all the baggage coming from everything that plagued Arizona the past handful of years in terms of like them not really treating this as an actual NHL organization, but more so like a shell company where they were just like, all right, yeah, we'll take on your dead money that's already insured and we won't actually be paying just to get to the cap floor. All of a sudden now, I think just to send a message to the fans, but also to the league, there's going to be a certain level of like, all right, we're going to spend a bunch of money here to show you how much things have changed right now. And so they're very incentivized to do so.

I'm curious because the UFA market has some interesting players, but like in most years, I wouldn't say is necessarily the best in terms of, it's not great. It's like, are a lot of guys who you probably could help you, certainly, but are probably not going to be in good investments because of their age and kind of declining skill sets, they have 10 second round picks the next three years to go along with all their first and then like another handful of thirds as well and a deep prospect pool. I wonder if they're going to be very in the trade market instead, right?

They might just want to keep those picks and keep kind of replenishing and getting cost-controlled assets. But if they want to make a splash, they can pretty much facilitate any single trade they want. And so I think from that perspective, it's easier said than done because you have to convince the other team to give you, one of their good players that's already in your contract.

But they just have so many assets that that would probably be the more kind of pragmatic way, I guess to go about adding talent to this group. Yeah. And they are in a position where they can also, because they're, I'm looking here, they are 20 million under the cap floor right now. They're in a position to be like, hey, you have a good player who you're paying $1.5 million too much.

We don't mind taking on that contract. So that you can say, again, like if you're talking to Tampa, you can maybe get an Eric Chernak out of the deal, right? And Tampa is going to be motivated to do that because they want to keep Stamco's or whoever. And that's just like one example. But there are numerous examples of like, you know, the Canucks have a couple of guys where it's like, yeah, yeah, that's a good player, but he's making $2 million too much or whatever. Yep. And Utah could target those guys if they think they're as close to, remember a couple. Was it two years ago?

Everybody's like, look out for these guys. I mean, you know, they were losing a lot of one goal games the last few years. So they actually could, like, if they think they could find enough guys to just get them to tying a lot of one goal games, getting to overtime a lot more, that could be enough that that, like, feels worth it to them for the time being. Well, especially since they already have some of that high-end talent, it's easier to find, that's harder to find in place, right? with Keller and Schmaltz and Machelli and they've got good goal tending.

I think there certainly is already a foundation there and now just adding more good players is the way to go about it and they have the means to do so. What else was on your list of kind of high leverage teams this off season that could really sort of determine one way

or another how exciting both free agency but also like the draft and trade season is the summer. I think San Jose and Chicago stand out as you know we can't keep losing forever. And I was still very much of the mind that San Jose would be kind of in tank mode, but then they signed Will Smith this week.

And I don't think that's something you do if you're intending to be as uncompetitive as they were this past season, let's say. In all likelihood, I read this as we'll also be signing Macklin Celebrini on, you know, June 2nd or July 2nd or whatever. So I just think they're going to be kind of motivated to, if not, Try to be competitive and therefore spend at least a little bit of money to get some, you know, good in the room veterans around all the kids that are going to be, you know, taking over the team. And Chicago kind of the same idea. Like, they wanted, they wanted to be better than they were this year.

But then every single player on their team got hurt, you know, and missed at least 20 games or whatever. So I think, again, they're going to be a team that they have a ton of cap room and they'll be motivated to actually make. make use of it in a way that, you know, they're trying to take a step, if not, you know, actually be in the playoffs. They don't want to be as bad as they were the last two years. That's all. Yeah. I think you and I had this conversation about the ducks in a mailbag a while ago, right?

Where it was like they have so much cap space. What are they going to do with it? And we sort of talked about how like tempering your expectations because teams generally don't very like aggressively and creatively weaponize it for the most part. You wind up getting what Chicago did last summer, right? Where it's like, all right, yeah, well, I guess we'll take Taylor Hall. but then we're going to spend the rest of our money on overpaying Nick Falino and Corey Perry

and bringing in Ryan Donato and it's like you look at the end of the day and it's not really moving the needle that much in the grand scheme of things. This isn't a star player that's going to move the needle for you. I am curious to see what San Jose does because both with Smith and Celebrini they also just like have

such a shell of an NHL lineup around them to begin with. And so they just need to bring in good players I think to give them a chance to succeed and sort of avoid some of the struggles of Connor Bernard felt this year just because there was so little talent around him. So I'm curious to see what they do.

I had two or three good teams or playoff teams on my list here, which is kind of surprising because generally those teams are pretty set in stone and don't have a lot of flexibility. But I have the National Predators because they have a bunch of caps base and they opened up even more with the Ryan McNunner trade last week or whenever it was. Yep, absolutely. They have a treasure chest of draft picks on the way.

and they have a very successful NHL team that's in the semifinals, I believe, right now in the Milwaukee Admirals, and it's pretty much led entirely by young prospects who look like they're ready to be promoted to the NHL team next year,

and they were already a playoff team this year. Plus, they've got UC Soros as a trade asset, so they could pretty much do whatever they want this summer, which is interesting, considering how competitive they already were, and then I had the Boston Bruins, which is kind of surprising because last summer they were essentially the opposite of this.

They probably would have been 30 seconds, on my teams of intrigue because it was like they have no space whatsoever and they wound up just bringing in a bunch of veterans on like one on like minimum deals essentially and a lot of them wind up being good value for them but this summer they have significantly more cap space with a lot of contracts expiring they have the all mark trade asset and i don't know it might not be as exciting because they might just wind up spending all of their money on a last land home or something like that this summer but it feels like they're a team that's going to be sort of jonesing I guess to add at least one or two impact pieces to a team that, you know, went to six games

against Florida in round two. Yeah, I'm really curious just because like I, when I did my like, where do they go from here article about the ruins, I was like you. I'm like, oh, they have so much money to spend blah, blah, blah. And then I was like, well, maybe not because Jeremy Swamen feels like he's going to make a ton of money next season, right? Like just they have to pay him a lot of money. Yeah, but he's a, I mean, he's an RFA goalie, though.

I mean, realistically, what is that, like, seven million? Yeah, and I think, I think that's like a good number for him, for sure. But like, okay, so they have 20 million in cab space. There goes seven million. There goes a third of it, right? Yeah. And then their UFA is like Jake DeBrusk. Either they bring him back, which I'm not sure they're going to do,

or they find a Jake DeBrusk replacement who probably costs as much as Jake Debrusk. You know what I mean? Matt Grislyck, same thing. Like, I think he maybe had one of the worst contract years for a defenseman in recent memory. He just wasn't that good this year. But there's a guy who has had value at a number of points in his career. He's a good player. And again, you've got to replace him.

And what is a replacement for a good middle-pairing defenseman cost? I don't, you know what I mean? Like, I just think it's, they're going to burn through a lot more. the cap space than, then, uh, then I think a lot of people are giving them credit for whatever you want to say. True. You're right. Okay, well, how about this one then?

So let's try to tie this to the playoff games we're watching right now. I think regardless of when and how their season ends, I'm fascinated to see what the Panthers do this summer because they strike me as a team that, I mean, he's obviously in a high leverage spot kind of at this crossroads moment because they're a contender, but they also have very valuable players on their roster that are either expiring. or do for a pay raise or are going to have to make a decision on them soon at a weird point of their careers where they're like in that awkward late 20s range. But they also are generally under Bill Zito have been very forward thinking and aggressive in their approach as well. Right. And so

they already got Gus Forsling done at $5.75 million for eight years, which immediately is like the best deal in the league essentially. I've seen Reinhardt projections at $11.3 million over an eight year term. I think people will be very upset when the, when the Reinhardt resigning with Florida terms come out. It's seven and a half million dollars. Yeah, absolutely. I think it'll be like in the mid-age, but listen,

like Barkaw was making 10 and he's clearly not going to be making more than that to stay there. And so I think you just got to get used to that. Chuck's nine and a half, same thing, right? Yes. I think they're going to let Montour walk. I haven't really seen anything this postseason right now that makes me think that's even a bad idea.

Like he's going to be a 30-year-old UFA defenseman who relies a lot on his physical skills. And so I think that's okay. The leverage one for me, though, is Eklad. Because I'm curious for your take on how you think he's viewed and regarded around the league because he's got one year left at $7.5 million. But it's after they pay the signing bonus, it's only $4 million in actual salary. He's a right shot defenseman who was a first overall pick, I think has been highly regarded, has a good reputation, plays a big physical style. right, the team's value. And I think there's a lot of teams around the league that will look at him and be like,

yeah, we'd love to bring him in for a variety of reasons and would value him as a needle mover. Yet I watch these games. And he's so clearly the weak link, in my opinion, where Gus Foresling is so good that he like covers for him and does a lot of the heavy lifting for him to kind of allow him to get by. But in a different situation, I just think he would be so deeply exposed because he can't move anymore to the point where I made a joke of like preferring to his skating his glacial the other day and a a discord member of the PDA guest discord server pointed out that there actually is an Ekblad glacier in in Antarctica so that kind of rocks. So I'm curious because I think they could

actually get quite a bit for him in a trade despite the fact that it only has one year left because of all the things I cited. And I don't even know if removing him from this team and replacing him with whatever defensemen would actually make them that much worse. So I have no idea how they themselves internally view them, but that's kind of a crossroads moment for me in terms of what they could do this summer and kind of how that plays out will determine, I guess, the next however many years for them. Yeah, it's really interesting because I don't think he's like bad or anything, you know.

Sounds like maybe you're a little bit lower on him than I am in terms of how you perceive him. He just can't move anymore. Yeah, no, I agree. Like he, if it weren't for his draft status and, you know, his, his place on the team is so cemented and, you know, the money he gets paid. Like, I think that he could really excel in a lower role, but they're just not going to use him that way, you know? But at the same time, I'm not saying he's worth $7.5 million, right? And so, yeah, I think that there's a lot of opportunity there because, I think if you ask the hockey men, you know, capital H, capital M, they would tell you,

oh, you got to have a guy like Aranaq Bled to win. And maybe you do, you know. But as you say, getting out in front of it and making that decision, like, I think that's a good way to maximize your, your opportunity there. But I don't think you get a defenseman back for him. So then how do you get another defenseman in? You know what I mean? Like, that's the tricky part.

And I don't know that there's a good answer for it. I just don't look at the trade board or whatever you want to say and see a defenseman that I'm like, oh, you would just target that guy, you know? The other thing along those lines that I'm thinking about here is like Sam Bennett and Cardover Hage are both on both have one year left as well. And so, yeah, they could spend a bunch of money, but maybe, you know, you, you, you, you get to kind of keep some in reserve to keep Cardver Hagee around just because he's going to score a lot of goals for you. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I feel like if they made Ekbald available in trade, there'd be a lot of teams lining up to pay quite a bit for them. I think they could certainly improve on them. For sure. The name I keep going back to is, you know, we'll save this for the off season. But I think Jacob Chickert makes a lot of sense for them if they're going to be adding a defenseman for a variety of reasons. So we'll see on that. You know, back to the original question here about sort of the changing cap landscape, I guess,

and the contracts we're going to see. I do think, you know, from like a reporting perspective, this happens a lot in the NFL where like a quarterback signs an extension and there's like a sticker price that gets tweeted out, which is like, this quarterback is going to make $150 million over the next five years. And then you look and the actual figure is like a seventh of that or whatever in terms of guaranteed money, they probably will never actually see those dollars. that's not going to happen here, of course, and the scale is much smaller. But just as a percentage of the cap, which the listener was pointing out in the question

here, I think that's notable here, right? Because from a team perspective, whatever you sign that player to now in three or four years, if the projections are actually wind up materializing, is just going to be so team friendly because it's going to represent such a smaller percentage of the pie, right? And so there's that. But I also think the NBA provider, a bit of a cautionary tale would this where the cap spiked dramatically more so than it will here. But there were certain teams, whenever you missed out on the big name free agents or whoever was actually worthy of the money, we saw teams sort of be like, well, we have money to spend. So, you know, let's just overpay for

whoever's left on the board. And then they wound up immediately regretting it and then having to like pay in picks or whatever to just get rid of those contracts down the road. And I imagine we probably will see that here as well, right? Where we will. I know you made a good point of the top about how the market might be limited because a lot of teams might just wind up spending all that money on their own players. But there will be a handful that will probably sign and wound up spending some crazy amounts of money just because they have it available. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's the NHL. That's what they do every year. You got to have some sort of press release and someone to unveil with like a Jersey press conference where it's like, look at this new player we got.

And then immediately wind up regretting in it and not mattering at all. I think the, The value here is for teams that are actually going to be able to use this money to add to their rosters because they've already taken care of their business as opposed to some of these teams like you mentioned where it's like, we have a bunch of money available now, but we're just going to wind up reallocating it for paying our players to retain them as opposed to the handful of teams that have contracts signed long term and are going to be able to spend it elsewhere. The list of those teams is pretty short, but that's going to be a massive value, not just for this summer, but I think for the next couple summers as well. So I'm going to keep an eye on. Any other notes here on kind of the cap or the offseason or stuff you're excited about to kind of see unfold? Yeah, I mean, just again, like it just there are so many possibilities because the cap's going up very sharply. And a lot of teams are tight against it. So it feels like, you know, maybe this is just me wishful thinking or like, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't think people maybe realize this.

But like, when I go to the draft, I am there to break. try to get to the bottom of like, why did this team make this big trade at the draft? And then last year in Nashville, there was, I think, one trade at the draft. So I was there for basically no reason. I could have stayed home or whatever. And but I think hopefully with the cap going up so sharply, you know, there will be more action for me to to actually cover in Vegas. But, you know, that's all I'm keeping an eye on for self-interested reason.

Well, there was one trade, and I imagined Rob Blake, which there was zero, right? 100. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No two ways about it. There was, I mean, it wasn't actual, so maybe part of it was the reason why, but there was so much smoke about Barry Trots looking to make a splash trade, right? And so now that they have this summer, I feel like they're even more likely to do so. So that's something I keep hearing about.

So looking forward to that. All right, Ryan, let's take a break here. And then we come back. We will jump back into the mailbag. We'll keep answering your list. questions you are listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio network. Okay, we're back here on the Hockey P.D.O.Cast joined by Ryan Lambert today. We are taking your listener questions from the, we got a couple here from the PDOCs Discord server.

Hopefully we'll get through a few here. In typical PDOCS fashion, in particular, when you and I get together, we answered one, I repeat, one mailbag question in part one of today's episode. So we'll try to get through a few more here. Okay. El Justiceero says, there's been a lot of talk on the pod recently about goals for slash against at 515 as a metric for player performance. Isn't that just plus minus by a different name? I've always heard the plus minus was a pretty useless stat. I'm sure you've heard that on this particular program. There's a few things that I got to say to this.

And then I'm curious about your take on it as well in terms of particular describing what's going on in the postseason because the difference between the two, of course, is it removes kind of fluff and noise like empty net stats and also like shorthanded goals against two categories that sort of typically wind up penalizing more skilled players because they're more likely to be out on the ice in those situations and wind up receiving minuses. I think particular in a regular season, I remember last year, Eric Carlson was the best example of this because his plus minus kept being cited as being particularly bad, especially considering that he won the Norris.

And then you looked in his 5-15 performance was actually quite good, particularly in relation to the rest of his team. He was just, they kept losing because they sucked. And he was on the ice at the end of games. And so he was just eating so many minuses in terms of empty net goals they were getting up against. And I'm not going to really hold that against the player. Am I wrong that he was just like, um, like minus two at five on five and then like minus

30 something overall, something like that? It was something egregious like that. And then the rest of the team at five on five was like catastrophically bad. And so the fact that he was minus anything that low was like a testament to just how dominant he was. So that's correct. I think there's like we need to distinguish between descriptive and predictive here as well, right? And I think that's where I get into it and using it in the postseason to describe what's happening because like when you're writing articles or when I'm doing this show or doing podcasts on what's going on in these series and we're breaking it down, you're trying to kind of capture the theme of the series, right? And so much of it for me is particular head-to-head to head to top the lineup where it's like,

all right, this team is using their best shutdown line or shutdown pair against the other team's top line. Who wins that matchup and how much they win it by will probably determine how this series plays out. And for me, it's very interesting to look at the end result of who won that at 5-15 when they went to head-to-head, right? doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to carry over to the next game or the next series because we know that you can still keep playing the same way and your goalie might just give up some goals behind you and all of a sudden you're going to be a minus something and it won't really matter what happened previously. But I think in terms of like telling a story and capturing what happened in a playoff series,

I like 5-1-5 goal differential because it sort of helps neatly tell that story that we're trying to tell. Yeah, I think that's right. And I'll give you a good example. I just pulled up a 5-on-5 plus. minus for the playoffs here. And you know how everybody's like, whoa,

Evan Bouchard's having this insane breakout playoff? He's got all these points and everything. When he's on the ice at five on five, the Oilers are plus 15, which is a lot. It's the most in the playoffs. When Darnell nurses are on the ice, the Oilers are minus 11 at five on five.

And, you know, you're just saying you're, looking at it and you're saying, well, he's been the worst player on the team maybe. And I think that if you, if you look at the numbers, like, that's pretty hard to argue. He's the worst player in the playoffs at five on five goal difference, minus 11 on a team that scores a lot of goals. So think about how bad he would have to be, you know?

No, I think that's a great example. And I think what's kind of tough to sort of wrap your head around or I guess, reconcile is we spend so much of the regular season preaching process over results, right? Especially from like a predictive sense early in the year. It's like, this team's playing like this. They might not be getting the results that reflect it. But if you stick with this process, it will turn around. And then we get to the postseason and it entirely flips where just process matters.

I don't want to say it doesn't. But the sample size is so much smaller. And it's such like a finite number of games that you're playing to in each game in particular. is sort of contained within itself where you can see like a team goes up and they're like, all right, I'm just going to hang on for dear life here. And all the matters is we get this win because it brings us 25% closer to finishing this series. And then we'll deal with the next game after. And it might look entirely different as a result.

And so you don't want to throw process out the window because I'd still like to believe that it will be at least something of a meritocracy and playing better than your opponent will result in more wins than losses. but at the end of the day, if you're on the ice for more goals than against, your team's more likely to win, and that is ultimately the only thing that matters in the NHL postseason, right?

And so it can be frustrating at times because players might be punished or rewarded unfairly, but that's the nature of it. And I think acting like otherwise, you're kind of sort of missing the forest for the trees a little bit. Yeah, it's funny that this comes up because we actually had a question. I just pulled this up here on the Puck Soup mailbag

earlier this week that was has hockey culture over corrected from prioritizing outcomes this is from a guy named Nick where he said prioritizing outcomes i.e. winning is all that matters to process i.e. generating chances is all

that matters asking in the context of the last two Rangers series it seems like if they somehow win the cup people will insist it's a fluke and the way I've put it on when we address this on the puck soup mailbag over at patreon.com slash puck soup.

I got to get my plugs in. You're getting your plugs in before the end of the show. You're a podcast professional. That's right. The way I put it was basically like, you know, the Rangers gave up 104 shot attempts in this game and got like 43 or whatever the numbers were, right? That is not a way to win a lot of hockey games.

I think we can all agree with that, right? Like even if we're saying, oh, you know, the goal tending is the difference in the series. absolutely. But just as a general rule, if I said, how many games do you think out of the,

let's say the next five, if your team gave up 104 shot attempts, how many of those do you think your team is winning? And the answer can't, like even if you're saying, you know,

process doesn't matter or whatever, you would have to say you're not winning too many games where you're getting out attempted by 60, right? And that's ultimately what that boils down to. Now, the thing about like,

how that relates to five-on-five goals is, is the puck going in the net for the Rangers? Yes, I guess more to the point, is it staying out of the net for the Panthers for the most part? Yes, absolutely. And you'd much rather win playing badly, if you want to call it that, then lose playing well,

obviously at this time of year. Because as you say, Dimitri, we're not looking at like, how many wins is this going to result in at the end of the season, which is four months from now, which is how we'd be talking about it in like November. At this point,

it's just like, just win. Who cares how you do it? But I think if you, if the Rangers get to a Stanley Cup at the end of all this, which is extremely within the realm of possibility, you would look at it and you say, well, they played the worst team

to make the playoffs in like 40 years in the first, in the first round. They played in the second round a goalie who was giving up one bad goal a game on average, let's say, right? Like just one goal that a normal goalie wouldn't be giving up.

In the third round, they beat the Panthers, assuming they beat the Panthers by, you know, getting out shot by 40 a game or whatever. And then whatever happens in the Dallas slash Edmonton series, you know,

maybe that's the one like non-fluk series they have or whatever where should they have won maybe not you know but they want it and that's all that's all you can say at the end of the day is like they're just this is the joke we kept saying that I invented the phrase they don't ask how they ask how many just way I personally came up with that yeah I have heard you say that it's just win yeah I mean I would say my counter is they won the president trophy they were the best team in the regular season and so they earned the right to play the worst team in the playoffs right million percent it's like that's like That's generally how it goes.

Yeah, I wonder if the person who posted that in the Puck Soup Discord is also a member of the PDOCAST Discord, because we've been having this running joke in there about how similar on that vein about how a lot of the talk in hockey now is almost framed through this weird lens of succeeding on the power play and on the back of your goaltending is like unethical in a way compared to dominating at 5-1-5. It's like there's a noble way to win. And then there's this unethical way. And it's like, no, that's not a thing, particularly in the post season. It's like, all that matters is winning 16 games before losing four out of seven. And so for me, especially like the Rangers are a great example. And I didn't have a question about this. I had one of my own sort of ones that I was going to rephrase here.

But let's just get into it now. Do we need to change the way we view or talk about teams who are maybe a bit more over-reliant relatively on their goalie for success, right? Because we view it as kind of flimsy, I guess, compared to just having a dominant process from controlling the puck and possessional play and territory and scoring chances and all that. But also, if your goalies, Igor Shusirkin, for example, I think it eliminates part of my concern with the goalie position and relying on it too much where it's like, all right, totally. Their performance is kind of volatile. For most goalies, that's true. For one of the best goalies in the league who's been doing

this for a number of years now, I feel pretty confident that Igor Shusrican will probably play it pretty well, especially relative to whatever the goalie on the other end of the net does. And so for me, it removes a bit of that concern. And so in this case, he's a member of the team as much as a star four or a star defense minar. And so we kind of view or treat it differently than we would the alternative, if that makes sense. No, for sure. But I think, I think obviously what the concern there is, is if I can, you know, compare

to a different sports quote unquote advanced stats. It's like Babib in baseball, which study, you know, statistical analysis or whatever you want to say has shown, like pitchers simply have no control over if they get, if the other team is putting the ball in play where that ball goes. Just, you know, you can be a ground ball pitcher, you can be a pop-up pitcher or whatever you want to say.

But generally speaking, from one year to the next, pitchers don't have control over that. And because of that, there can be years where the most dominant pitcher in baseball looks like the eighth most dominant pitcher in baseball because they just have a weirdly high batting average on balls in play against. And there are other years where the sixth most dominant pitcher in baseball looks like the most dominant pitcher in baseball because their bab-ip is low. And it's the same thing with goaltending. You know, like when the Islanders made two straight conference finals, it was kind of the same way the Rangers are doing it right now, right? Where they just have an elite, like a world-class goaltender who stood on his head in the first two rounds.

And then I think, you know, anybody would have said the way the, and I certainly came around to this like kind of, this isn't a fluke with the Islanders necessarily, but they are a team with a high floor and a low ceiling relative to, what we would consider true cup contending teams, you know? And it's the same thing with the power play. You're allowed, it's funny, Ray Ferraro said it on the broadcast the other day, where he was like, you're just allowed to have a good goal. Like the way it gets talked about is, is maybe overstated. But again, this is as a result of us looking at all these teams where it's like,

oh, this bad goalie was 930 for three months, you know? And again, especially, especially in like, you know, the late 2000s, early 2010s, this came up a lot. And, you know, team shooting percentages is that I always say a better measure of whether it's kind of a fluke, you know, because you can reliably get good gold. You know, Connor Hallibuck is going to be a good goalie, no matter how many games he plays, you know. So that's kind of how I look at it at this point. I don't know if you would say like my view of it has evolved or whatever. but that's certainly my my perspective on it.

No, I think overcorrecting is the right way to describe it, right? Because I think there was so much pushback initially to the value of goalies and paying them an exorbitant amount. And then now we've gotten to the point where it's kind of viewed as a cookie cutter position in a way, right? Where it's like one size fits all. Everyone's kind of the same and replaceable. And I don't think that's necessarily true, particularly in a postseason setting. I'm not saying that year to year, there's certainly going to be, you see it with goalies all the time. Where like the Vesna list and individual performance, yo-yo is like crazy for one season to the next.

But within a season or within a playoff series or a playoff run like this, I don't think that's necessarily the case. And, you know, what's interesting is I was looking at like the salaries for next year, for example, right? And Ewers and Ewers and Sterkin is the sixth highest paid goalie, even more so than Bobrovsky, actually, because his salary comes down quite a bit, although his AAB will still. still be amongst the league leaders. But so he's the sixth highest paid goalie. Stuart Skinner is the 33rd highest paid goalie, right? Alexander Georgiev is the 28th highest paid goalie or whatever. I would expect Igor Shisterkin to outperform those guys.

And so when Stuart Skinner struggles in one of these games and people are like, oh, I can't believe like all the Oilers need is better goaltending. It's like, well, you kind of get what you pay for in a way, right? Like it makes sense that Igor Shastirkin is playing really well. one of the highest paid goalies and he's been this for a long time, whereas someone, if you're paying them to basically be a backup and you wind up getting backup type performance or numbers, you can't turn around and be like, oh, well, all this team needs is a better performance from this guy. They're not paying to really do that. Yeah, I think that's all. You know, I guess the thing

is you don't want to get into a situation where you're overpaying for a Stewart Skinner, for example, or like with Vegas last year, what did they give Aden Hill, like four million bucks or something? for winning them the cup, basically. And it's like, I'm sure in terms of actual dollars, the amount of revenue they generated because Aiden Hill got them a cup. Now, I would say he personally didn't do it. I would say the system did it there. But, you know, I think you can make the argument that he quote unquote earned that money,

but that he would not be a $4 million dollar gold tender or $5 million or whatever he got going forward, right? and I think there's something to be said for being confident that like even if you're overpaying your goalie slightly, being confident that your goalie is going to be above average in the league is super, super important. And, you know, goaltending is a position where I kind of feel like we haven't nailed down just how valuable a good goalie is, at least in terms of like what they're paid versus what they deliver. If they, you know, if Igor Shusirkin can consistently be one of the four or five best goalies in the league, shouldn't he be getting like $12 million? And the answer, according to NHLGMs, is of course not, you know. But I think the answer is yes, if you actually had 100% confidence that that would be the case for every year of that deal, which I think we, for a variety of reasons we don't necessarily, right? Yeah, but I mean, I'm just saying like,

on it this year for example in terms of like you know goals above replacement or whatever you want to say he was probably worth like 15 16 million dollars right like he's one of the best goalies in the league conor halibuck same idea right like what is he worth to the n h to the to the to the to the winnipeg jets relative to a goalie who makes two three million dollars less than him it's just like a huge gap between the four or five reliably best goalies in the league and the rest of the field, I guess is my point. Like, as you said, like there's a lot of, oh, you know, goalies can kind of be hot and cold, goaltending is voodoo, all this kind of stuff.

But if you can be at least, let's say, 85, 87% confident that a goalie is going to be in the running for the Vesna, the value on that is like insane relative to, again, like, whatever Connor Hellebuck's AAB is. I guess part of the pushback, though, is we're seeing just goaly workloads drop so much where a lot of these guys are playing like 50 out of 82 games or something. And Hellebuck is one of the exceptions to that where he keeps playing 60 plus, but then keeps struggling in the postseason. So maybe he should actually be playing less if they want to compete in the playoffs. So that's kind of an interesting dilemma and part of why I think teams aren't paying them as much. But all right, let's do one more question here.

That was a fun topic. But let's do one more question. Relating to Evan Bouchard, actually, you brought him up there in the plus minus or 515 gold differential conversation. And Kay Churny says, since Evan Bouchard joined the Oilers, he has done nothing but produced at an extremely high level. And yet the majority of success is attributed to playing with McDavid and Dreisidal, the power play, his defense partners, the environment in general, the era.

What makes him so successful? He's obviously having an unbelievable postseason and an outsized impact. And yet I completely agree with the premise of this question where I think from I think Oilers fans and even some of them probably don't seem to really appreciate him, right? Because whenever things go south, his defensive player or whatever seems to get brought up as an issue. And he's just viewed differently because I think of his playing style where he's not this prototypical physical, rugged defenseman that some people value. But he's been so good this postseason. Any number you look at paints him in a very glowing light. and yet he doesn't really get sort of the respect that I think the performance,

like if you stripped away the name and everything, that it would get otherwise. Yeah, it's just one of those things. I remember back when like everybody was saying like, you know, Connor McDavie, he's not the, it wasn't the best player in the world yet, you know? And the idea was that I put forward was that like the Oilers had no defenseman who could get him the puck, basically. So if he needed to do something, Kar-McDavid had to go all the way back,

get the puck, and go all the way up the ice, right? And so what makes Evan Bouchard valuable is that Connerick-David doesn't have to do that anymore. Finally, there's a guy who is, you know, Darnell Nurse is a guy who could get him the puck, but not so reliable defensively, as we were kind of pointing out earlier.

Evan Bouchard is a guy who's not going to, like, kill you in his own end, although when he makes a mistake, it is glaring because, you know, you expect the puck to be at the other end of the ice, right? But he's not going to kill you in his own end. And he's so good at getting the puck up the ice that that's what his value is. His value is he gets the puck to McDavid. And he's not, I mean, we've seen a lot of guys have success as a defenseman on that Edmonton power play. Darnell Nurse, Tyson Barry. and like the oilers recognize we can cut we can cut Tyson Barry loose they what they didn't realize is we don't have to pay darnel nurse nine and a half or not is it nine and a quarter nine and a quarter million dollars they didn't realize that they didn't have to do that but Bushard is finally the guy who is pretty good defensively and elite at moving the puck through the neutral zone and that allows McDavid to be just you know

McDavid, I guess. Yeah, I mean, his skill set is just the perfect for that situation, right? Which is exactly what you described there, where he effectively and efficiently moves the puck up the ice quickly. And that's an important distinction from someone like Nurse as well, who, when he does at his best, is more so skating it up himself, which kind of neutralizes the value of having Connor McDavid, whereas Boojard can go back, make someone to miss, and then quickly pass it up.

And all of a sudden, McDavid's flying through the neutral zone. So there's that. In the offensive zone, he's so good at those pinches along the wall. and keeping Pucks alive, and then that's why they're one of the best cycle teams in the league. And then he joins the rush like he did last night, his shot, all that stuff put together.

I view it as like, of course, in a different situation, I don't think he would be having these numbers and being effective, but that also doesn't make what he's doing any less impressive to me because they kind of like accentuate each other, right? I keep describing it as a force multiplier. And that's the way I think should be viewed.

Yeah, no, I agree. And again, it's the, it's the thing of, Well, like, we don't have to sit here and say Evan Bouchard can do this with anybody. It's the same thing with Zach Hyman, right? Like, Zach Hyman's not a 50 goal guy if he doesn't play with Connor McDavid.

But guess what? He plays with Connor McDavid and we'll be doing so for the foreseeable future. So it's actually fine. You know, that's kind of my thing with it is it's like, I can't hold against Evan Bouchard the fact that his coach feels like I got to be playing this guy with Connor McDavid 100% of the time. Like, he's put him. himself in the position where his coach is like, this is a, like him and McDavid married to each other,

you know, locked in, not not negotiable. And, you know, he's unlike Darnell Nurse or Tyson Barry before him, really making the most of it on a very consistent basis in a way that other Royler's defensemen over the years have not. And like, I think that's a credit to the player personally. So, you know, again, is he a perfect player? Absolutely not. You know, he's not the Connor McDavid.

of defensemen, but like you said, what he does well is so complimentary of the McDavid game that why, if you were a coach, would you ever separate? It just doesn't make sense that you would do it that way. Yeah, we don't have to consider this hypothetical of, whoa, what would he look like in Arizona because he's just going to be on the Oilers playing with Connor McDavid and doing really well based on everything we've seen. So that is worth a lot of the Edmonton Oilers. All right.

Well, this is a blast, man. I'm glad we got to do this. some fun questions from the listeners. If you were listening today and you're like, oh, man, I want to get involved. I want to get my questions read and be part of the conversation. You can do so. Get into the PDO guest discord as well while you're there

because apparently they're posting great questions in there that we're using on today's show and future mailbags here as well. So who knew that was going to happen. R. I'll let you plug some stuff here. Let the listeners know what you got going on and where they can check out. Yeah, I'd mentioned already the Puck Soup podcast. it's me and Sean McIndoo from the athletic

and we do a ton of bonus episodes over on the Patreon Patreon.com slash puck soup where certain guys like Greg Wasinski, Shunj and Tilly, these guys are getting involved as well. And then, yeah, check out EP Ringsside, I believe within the next four or five days, the draft guide is coming out,

which I have nothing to do with, but obviously it's a big selling point for elite prospects where they've just, I think, written profiles on like more than 350 players. So the odds that your team is going to draft multiple guys who, you know, four, five, six guys who have kind of, you know, big writeups by people who are much better at scouting than me. That should be a big selling point to you.

If you want to be a draft sicko, there's no better way to do it than with the elite prospects draft guide. Oh, it's so good. I mean, obviously, I'm a little bit biased here. But seriously, it is just an unbelievable resource. Whether your team is picking Macklin's Celebrating first or whether they don't even have a pick in the first round or two, it doesn't matter because you're just going to want to familiarize yourself and there's no better resource for it.

It's the best because like you, I mean, you follow a bit more closely from like watching these NCAA games and being there and all that. For me, I basically get to just like parachute in at the end of the playoffs, just absorb everything in that draft guide for like a week straight and then get to start doing draft podcast and pretending like I'm an expert on it. and being like, oh, I don't know.

Like, do you see the skating mechanics on the 64th best prospect? And then people are like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. And so that could be you with your friends if you just read the, the EP ringside draft guide. R.L, this is a blast. Thank you for coming on. We'll have you on again. Thank you to the listeners for listening to us. We're going to let Lambert go here.

We're going to be back ourselves with one more episode to close out the week here of the Hockey P.D. Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.