The Hockey PDOcast - The '22-'23 rookie race

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Dimitri is joined in studio by The Athletic Vancouver's Harman Dayal. The duo dives into the 2022-23 NHL rookie race. Dimitri and Harman admit just how hotly contested this year's Calder race has been.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovin. Welcome to the Hockey PEDOcast. My name is Dimitra Villepovich and joining me here in the SportsNet Studio. It's my buddy Harmon Dile. Harmon, what's good on, man? Nothing much. Thanks for having me.

This is exciting. I'm glad we finally got to do this. It's been a while since we chatted. I think the last one was over Zoom. The last time I had you on the PEDO cast, it was the night of the 2021, I don't know, all the years. It was 2020 draft. It was the night of the, uh, it was the night of the, uh, infamous OEL trade, of course.

Yeah. And so we waited a couple hours after the draft happened. After all, the draft night trades came through just to kind of let it all sink in. And then we sat down and we talked about OEL and the trade that connects the side to make. It was a fateful night. I feel like, you know, this organization has done a lot of short-sighted, kind of trying to take a shortcut to get ahead quickly and paying for it in the long run. But I feel like if you go back to that move in particular, it's like a, it's a real crossroads moment. moment because right now, if they just hadn't done that, not only would they have that

picked amount of being Dylan Gunther, but they'd have so much more caps-based to, not that they've inspired any reason to believe that they would have used that more wisely, but at least they would have had the option to actually get good players with it. I know, and it was, I remember we ripped into the trade pretty hard, and it's turned into one of the worst, and probably in franchise history the way OEL's play has trended this season. Yes. And the interesting thing about that trade, the other side that, I don't think it's talked about enough is when the Canucks let Tyler to fully walk, that

created the lineup hole that because in that trade, the Canucks essentially they were giving up that pick because they were, they were getting Garland, right? Like, O'EL, obviously, they valued him on the back end and they wanted him, but in terms of why they were giving up a top 10 pick, it was primarily because Garland had more positive value as a trade asset. Yeah, especially with the money that was already, like the contract you already had, right? And so it's like, even if you go back and to that offseason prior and you just like don't screw up on the to Foley decision, which made no sense considering how cheaply he signed with Montreal, you wouldn't have been in a position to make that trade.

I, man, I, you know, I'm thinking back to that conversation now because a big topic for us there was like we acknowledged how poor OEL's numbers were recently in Arizona at the time and like how bad he looked physically, especially in a lot of that. elements where you need a modern day defenseman to thrive in, like basically just moving around and skating backwards and dealing with speed and all of that. And we like acknowledge that when you talk to people, they'd be like, oh, like, I think motivation was a factor. Yeah. Because it was such like a soul crushing experience playing for that team. And he'd be motivated coming to a more competitive market and, you know, playing with better players. And we left the door open for that, right? And then I feel

like the first 15, 20, whatever games to start last year in his Kinex tenure, you actually look better physically to my eye at least. I was like, yeah, he's moving around better like, oh, maybe there's something to this and the numbers were better. And then it's been like a slow decline from there to the point where you've gotten this year where I don't think like people around the league necessarily realize how bad of an asset OEL is right now. Yeah. Like I've seen a lot of people like, oh, like, you know, you can attach him to this or that and someone else will take him on. It's like he's making 10.5 million in actual dollars next year and his base salary. Like that's what team is inheriting that? Like it's, yeah,

It's an unmovable deal, basically, unless like everything, all the stars aligned and that's just not happening. And not to this, not to this Canucks team, the way it's shape right now could be affording to part with futures to get off of any money to begin with. I know they gave up a second or whatever to get to get off of Dickens's deal to start of the year. But it's, it's so miserable. We weren't even planning on talking about the Canucks to start the show. I don't know why I went down that, done this rabbit hole. But it's just like, it's something that I don't see talked about enough. Maybe it is by other Connox outlets.

It's just really interesting too because kind of like you mentioned, I don't even think it was necessarily just the first 15, 20 games. The entire last season as a whole was pretty solid from kind of playing matchup minutes instead of having Quinn Hughes in that sort of role. And him and Tyler Myers together drove pretty solid two-year results, kind of played top lines and did it to a break-even point, which I was like, okay, that's pretty easy. The interesting thing about that was it required OEL putting up the best defensive numbers of his career

because he's always been more of an offensive guy. And so there was part of you that maybe wondered in the back of your mind that, okay, he's put up the best defensive season of his career. So even though, like, you look at his overall play and go, that's not his peak or that's not the best he's played, but in the absence of offense, like in his own end, that's the best he's ever played. So there was a potential risk for regression, I guess.

Yeah. And we've seen that so far where he just looks like he can't move at all on defensive zone retrievals. and he, I mean, I think he's been a little bit better of late, but that's kind of, that's a really low bar considering how he started the year. Yeah. Well, you know, related to that, I think it's an interesting thought exercise for us to talk about here because I haven't really fleshed out this idea. This is kind of like a half-baked theory or something I've been kicking around in my head.

I haven't written about anything. I haven't talked about it necessarily much with people yet. But, you know, I think the general theme around the league is, you know, scoring is up again. Like every team, like you're even looking at some of these. teams that were so starved for offense in the past, like we were talking off air, like the Islanders or, you know, the Bruins beyond their top line or the Dallas stars under Rick Bonus. And all these teams are just playing a different brand of hockey and kind of thriving offensively and playing more aggressively and focusing on quantity over quality with their

shot approach and everything. And it seems like everyone can can almost score these days, right? Which makes you think that in a way, a player who can drive defensive results would become an even more valuable asset moving forward, right? Because you'd think, like, all right, pretty much everyone can score these days. You can find players who can step right in, and if you put them in the right situation,

they're going to score 20, 25 goals. If they're shooting from the slot constantly, which most teams are trying to focus on doing now, they're going to score a lot of goals. And it's easier to find those players. So prioritizing skilled defensive players who can actually drive defensive results would be more valuable.

But I think we know that it's way less sticky year over a year, right? Like, it's almost situation-based. There's very few. players in this league that from one year to the next consistently are driving results based on their defensive play. And so it's becoming more valuable, but I feel like that's going to lead to either a lot of bad decisions or like people valuing one year aberrations with defensive metrics and paying for them and then realizing that it doesn't necessarily carry over to the next season. Definitely. And I agree, first of all, there 100% is a shortage. Like I've, you know, in the past

talk to coaches or executives around the league. And I'm sure they love the. offensive side of the game, but what drives them nuts a lot of the times is they feel that they miss that the sort of player that can shut down the opposition's best players and play it reliably in their own end. You know what I'll say to that? Something that constant theme when you dog to people is someone you feel comfortable with in those situations where like every time they're on ice, you're not scared as someone invested in the team's success that, oh my God, we're in trouble here. Literally. And the other thing too is, which makes it more even which sort of compounds the issue is it's so hard to evaluate defense.

Yes. It's like whether it's by the eye, whether it's, I mean, we know by the numbers, it's way easier to evaluate offense than it is defense. There's just no easy way. It's kind of like goaltenders where not only are, not only is there a shortage of high in goaltenders, but they're really hard to evaluate. And so you end up in a sort of environment where it's tough to acquire

that sort of skill set around the league right now. Yeah, it is. So what do you think is driving that? Do you think it is just our inability to properly evaluate it? Do you think it, I think part of it is, I'm a big believer that being good defensively at that HL level is so, like, effort-driven or like if it's your responsibility to do just that, you can do it,

but then you're taking away offensively, right? It's always this, like, kind of like, see-saw of how much you're giving away versus how much you're putting up yourself. And so I'm really curious about why that is, why, like, because it's true in different sports as well. Like, I know in football, this is, like, a big, thing in the NFL where like the players who drive offensive results are generally like the quarterbacks and those guys we can better evaluate who's good and who's not and so if your success

is based off of that it'll probably carry over to the next season whereas these teams that like are dominating because their defense is really good we see them fall off the next year for whatever reason and so it becomes much more precarious to bank all of your team's identity or success around that but I know that people around the league are like are very concerned about it's like oh this is great our team scoring but then like every time they're in a situation where they have to defend they're like they're literally holding onto their butts they're like oh my god what's going to happen next well the one thing I would say is I think for starters the minimum threshold for being a competent NHL defenseman in terms of how well-rounded you need to be in

the tools that you have to succeed is so high that I think it's created a barrier of entry for like a tougher barrier of entry for players who otherwise would be considered defensive stalwart. Like you look at a player like Luke Shen, right? And obviously he's kind of resurrected his career in Vancouver. But he's the classic sort of example of a player who 15 years ago would have been looked at as,

okay, he defends the front of the net really well, clears out rebounds, defends the cycle and below the hash marks really effectively. He's someone that you can sort of trust defensively, as the game has gotten so much faster, his foot speed and all the other elements, like what he can do with the puck,

those started being exposed early in his career. And obviously, like, even for a player like that who Shen on a good team is a third pair guy, he isn't even someone you could point to as you can really lean on him in a top four role. Even for him, he had to put so much work

into the past handful of seasons working on his poise with the puck, working on his short outlet pass. is working on his skating. So I think that's a big part of it is the players that would typically be your shutdown guys, like whether it's skating, whether it's what they can do with the puck. They need to be able to do so much more that it's kind of caused them to be a dying breed, if that kind of makes sense.

Right, yeah, totally. And then I also just think, like, defending is harder just in general because obviously defensemen are more involved offensively, but you also see, like, in terms of offensive's own strategy, teams are way more fluid, they move way more off the puck. And so there are way more switches involved in playing defense. And for example, Winger's responsibilities are way higher than just standing at the point like they maybe used to be. And so I think just in general that creates a tougher environment to defend in, especially because you don't have that many high-end goalies to bail you out anyway. So like whether it's, you know, it may not necessarily be just about,

shutdown defensemen, but there are just a ton of factors at play here to where, I think that's why we have so many multi-go-blown leads this season, for example. Yeah, no, that's true. And you didn't, you didn't even throw in the fact that, you know, more, like, the game is generally being played faster. You said that, but that leads to more, like, rush opportunities back and forth and you're just having to defend in space as well, right? So it's, it's gone under the days where you could just literally stand in front of your net and basically just do one thing. One more thing, too, is I think the tools that a lot of defensive defensemen used to shut down players have been taken away in part by the rulebook.

Good. Right. The way, I mean, 100%. I agree. Yes. But back of the, like, year by year, it seems like they've been cracking down on obstruction-based infractions, like whether it was a few numbers ago, a few years ago, the slashes, anything touched, any stick touching on the hands was now all of a sudden being called, the cross-checks

in front of the net. the hook hooking the the the the barrier for you can't obstruct guys anymore yeah is the point so it's made it harder to defend in that aspect too so that's that's kind of working against these sort of like shutdown type defenseman too yeah I love that yeah I was talking to um I'm sure he won't mind me sharing this I was talking a while back with Calvin Dehan who plays uh this exact position in the n-h-huh and and you know I think he sees the the bigger picture in the grand scheme of things like he's like a fan of the sport. And like when I post a video of like a cool skilled play, he like he likes it.

He's like, this is great for, you know, I play in the NHL. I want the NHL to succeed and thrive. And so this is good for its long term help. But he also like laments. He's like, man, like defending right now is is so difficult. And like he's like much more about, like he's got decent puck skills as well. But he's like kind of you're more conventional. Yeah.

I want to sit back and block a shot. Exactly. You know, like I think Calvin DeHahn would have loved playing like 15 years ago. Yeah. And then now like he's still, he's still good and he's still got value and he's still provides positive value to his team, but it's such an entirely different set of responsibilities and such a higher barrier of entry. And he's like, it's just like, it's almost impossible to deal with some of these guys. Like you see Connor McDavid flying at you and you're not

allowed to hook or slash them. And it's like, you almost can't protect yourself in that way, right? And I know that people take their people like still hook and slash Connor McGahn and get away with it because they know that the refs can't call every single infraction. Like it happens. But yeah, you're right. The barrier to entry, I think that's a good way to put it is just so much higher. And the quintessential defensive defensemen, or I shouldn't say defensive defensemen, the best shut down defensemen, like whether you look at Jacobs-Lavin or Amir Haskinen, they're kind of everything. Or Chris Tanev, they have a decent size to them so they can win battles. They have the skating ability to defend the rush really well. they have really smart defensive sort of traits and have that instinctual awareness of being able to,

in a scramble situation, immediately identify the most dangerous offensive threat and be able to shut that down right away, take away that passing lane or whatever. So it like requires everything. It requires the strength. It requires the mobility. It requires the reads and the intelligence. So it's, it requires everything. I mean, the best defensive team in the NHL this season is the New Jersey Devils.

Yeah. They're three best defensemen, or in whatever order you want to rank them. Dougie Hamilton, Jonas Seganthalor, and John Marino. And I think that perfectly captures exactly what you're saying. Like, they give up the fewest high danger chances, shots against, expected goals against any single metric you could possibly think of. They're the best at it. And they do it based off speed off of having the puck, off of pressuring you.

as opposed to whatever defense used to look like back in the day. And so I think I would point to that as a picture of perfect example of, because like guys, like Amiro Heskinin is like, that guy's amazing and he's going to do well in any era. Like we saw, we saw Niedermeier do just fine playing that way or Nicholas Lidstrom, right? But these guys who, like, you just have to be able to do so many things to just stick around, especially in the top four role where you're not just a specialist, right? And so it's tricky. And I think, do you have another point on this?

Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I love that you brought up, the pressure point was because I think when you watch a team like the Carolina Hurricanes that defend well I think you're at a point now where it's just like you can't give like you can't sit back and give teams time and space anymore

and be like all right we're just going to sit in our defensive structure and protect the middle like that doesn't work anymore right the way to defend in today's NHL is you have to be really aggressive about closing your gaps in the neutral zone off the rush and and playing this sort of style where even on a lot of penalty kills, it's like you're constantly on top of guys

and you're not giving them any sort of leeway to breathe. You're not giving them any time, which, of course, is a higher risk, higher reward sort of offensive strategy in the sense that if you get beat, then, well, you're going to get exposed to a certain extent. But if you have enough players with the speed, the work rate and the overall intelligence of defensive reads and being able to understand and pick their spots of when to pressure and when not to,

I think that's the strategy that you almost have to employ is you have to apply pressure back on other teams' offensive attacks. Well, this is a good segue for us because what we wanted to talk about here is something that you wrote about recently, as I love, as you're branching out and you're dipping your toes into doing more national coverage as opposed to just focusing on the Canucks with your written work at the athletic, is I want to talk about some of the best rookies we've seen so far this season. Now, especially we're getting into like the 25 game or so mark, we're getting a pretty good sample of what these guys are capable of,

what they look like, what their numbers are suggesting they're like. And we're going to talk about Maddie Baneers in a second, certainly, and I have a lot to say about him as well. I really want to talk about Owen Power because I feel like this is a very natural segue. We just spent the first 15 minutes of the show discussing exactly this concept. And now he is, he's six foot six or whatever, right? Like physically, he certainly passes the eye test of what your ideal of a defensive defenseman looks like. But actually the way that he gets his result is in such a modern way, like just the way he plays, how he chooses to play what he does out there.

And so he's been remarkably successful out of the gate. But despite being so big and that being kind of like still the defining trait that I feel like people describe him with, right? It's like, oh, like, look at this guy. is six foot six young defense. This is exactly what every team wants to build their blue line around. The way he does it is so modern and so cool to see.

And it's exactly what the future of this game is going to look like. Exactly. And what I really like is that Don Gronado hasn't tried to change Owen power into playing a specific kind of style. Like you look at what under Ralph Kruger with Rasmus Dahlian, for example,

they're almost botched his development by telling him to sort of play a different style, be more conservative defensively. And I think a lot of coaching staffs would have a tendency to look at a player like power. And I mean, maybe not a lot, but still some coaching staffs would look at his frame and sort of have this tendency to be left wanting more in terms of, oh, he's got to be more physical. And we want him to really grow into a defensive beast. But I feel like the Sabres have really looked at power skill set and realized that, okay, this guy drives his results. with how well he plays with the puck on a stick, really.

With the outlet passes in the defensive zone, in the offensive end, it's so cool watching him sort of move with and without the puck. So smart, so patient, the way that he's able to pinch to keep plays alive in the offensive zone, you're seeing a player that's just so smooth, so confident, so poised. And I really like that Don Granado and the Sabres have just let him be

and not try to, you know, take a square peg and fit it into a round hole, if that could make sense. Yeah, and I think, you know, we should say, like, with his reach and with his skating ability and stuff, I think he's going to be able to provide a bunch of defensive value in board in terms of the traditional sense of, like, defending against zone entries and with his frame doing all the stuff around the net that he's going to need to, right? Especially as he gets older and he gets stronger.

For my money, I still, if I was like, like if I was if I was a betting man, I would still. If you were Thomas Drans. If I was Thomas, if I was Thomas, if I was Thomas, if I was Thomas Drans, I would be looking at today's Division III college basketball lines and putting money in the know. If I was a betting man, I would still favor Maddie Baneers, I think, in this Calder race. Agreed.

Just because I think we know that voters like points. Yeah. It's like a very easy thing to latch onto. This guy scored a bunch of goals. He has a lot of points. And especially with the way of the Crackener are playing. these days, like it seems like they're going to be at least sticking around in this playoff race. Everyone's excited about how many goals are scoring and how much better they look

this season in general compared to last, right? So I think like from a storytelling perspective, you can easily talk yourself into what a difference he's made for them this year compared to, compared to last. And we're going to talk more about him in a second. I just want to stick with power here because I think for my money, I think he's been the most impressive rookie I've seen so far this season. And I say that because I think the degree of difficulty of what Owen Power is doing right now is really unmatched, right? Like I would say that for everything we just discussed, defending successfully and playing big minutes effectively at the NHL level at this

position is so difficult to do, especially for young players because the set of responsibilities is so different probably from what you had to deal with from a quality of competition perspective at whatever lower level you played at, where if you're all in power, regardless of where you're playing before you come to the NHL, like you're almost playing a different sport than all of your peers, right? Like, you can just, you can just dominate them in any way you want to. You come into the NHL all of a sudden, I think you do need to learn the intricacies of the position, knowing when to pick your spots, knowing where to be what to do, dealing with some of these one-on-one physical battles where,

I mean, he just turned 20 now, but basically a teenager where you're playing up against grown men and you have to box out in front of your net and deal with, like, you're having to play down low against Sidney Crosby who's got like the, the, the most old man strength of all time and can just, and knows every single little crafty trick. And to do so without taking a lot of penalties, for example, which is something he's been able to do,

is just so impressive to me. I think playing defense at this level in the role that he's played is the hardest thing to do. I guess like consistently being a good goalie is another thing, but I almost view that as like, that's not even like a skill, really. That's like an environment slash voodoo slash luck thing as opposed to something I attribute.

just pure skill to so like what he's doing right now is the most impressive thing to me i don't know if that's fair or not to say because of the degree of difficulty because it's it's not like we should be punishing maddie baneers for not being a defenseman necessarily but i just i just can't like i'm so wowed by this guy every time i watch him play yeah it's the responsibilities that he was kind of thrust into when samuelson went down and he was forced onto the top pair he didn't skip a beat it was so fun to watch um downing and power together i don't think the Sabres necessarily wanted power and a top parol right away and being being able and being, being in a spot to have to chew up all these minutes right away. But he more than passed the test.

And you look at the two underlying numbers and how well the Sabres have been able to control play when he's been on the ice, the time that they spent in the offensive zone, how little they've allowed defensively. It's been remarkably impressive. And you're right that when you look at the call to race, powers in a position, especially especially with Dalline quarterbacking the first unit power play, where he's just not going to put up Calder like points. He's not 10 assists only. Exactly.

Like that's why going into this season, Power was such a favorite for the Calder, but I kind of looked at it and went, he's not going to play on the top unit power play, and it's so hard for defensemen to otherwise put up a ton of points. Like, Moritz-Sider at least had the benefit of playing on the top Powerplay unit and being deployed in a lot of these offensive scenarios, whereas Power is kind of playing second fiddle to Dahlene,

who's been incredible. from an offensive standpoint, so he's not going to get the same kinds of opportunities, but you're right in the sense of overall impact that he's been basically right up there with Baneers. Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's got zero goals, 10 assists, right? It's going to be tough to capture people's imagination with those numbers, especially if someone's not watching him every single night.

Because the subtleties of his game, especially, right? Like, you're not, if you watch any highlight reel, for the most part, like he had that one highlight real assist against the Penguins earlier this year where he basically froze the defense and then got it over for like an easy tap into someone on his team. And like that was like a national TV game. And it was like in a crucial moment laid in it.

And so that makes the highlight real. But for the most part, a lot of Owen Powers plays are going to be, you know, me posting a YouTube mixtape of what he does as opposed to you turning on sports night and seeing it the next night. Literally. And that's the other thing about defensemen as a whole is I think, you know, maybe we have a greater appreciation for it of little things like,

oh, he retrieved a defensive zone puck, puck beat one four checker and made a nice outlet pass. And in our minds, we're going, oh, that's, that's, that's amazing. We're just like, this is the sport. It's absolute best. Literally, whereas other people, like, that doesn't, you know, doesn't register, you know, to the casual fan. Not that they don't appreciate it, but sort of as exciting as, you know,

a barred on snipe or pretty passing play off the rush, and it doesn't seem like it has as significant of an impact. But those little subtle plays when you're able to compound them and consistently make them every shift when you're on the ice. It creates such a, like it's not easy to, I think the problem is a lot of times when those plays are made, you can't see the end result product of it where it's like it may lead to an offense his own possession, but maybe that doesn't lead to a goal right away. But once you consistently do that, it like tilts the ice in the long run.

So the effect isn't as immediately pronounced and I guess obvious, which is, which is why I kind of flies into the radar, but that's what you need to be able to control play in the modern NHL. And it's why you have a team like the Canucks, for example, where they have a lot of these exciting forwards, but they don't have enough defensemen who can do the sorts of things that, whether it's a power or Jake Sanderson, what those guys can do to help drive the bus and get the puck in their forwards his hands. Yeah.

All right, Haram, we're going to take a quick break here. And then when we come back, we're going to keep talking about power, Benares, the rookie race. So stick around for that. You're listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the SportsNet Radio Network. With me to meet with Bill Povich, we're in studio. We're talking about the rookie race. So I have a few more points on power here. That 15-minute OEL tangent at the start threw off our timing here.

Because I was like, oh, we're going to talk a bit about O in power, then we're going to get into other stuff. And like I have this long checklist of things I want us to discuss. And we're going to hit like 25% of it. So we're going to have to have you back on in studio here soon to get into all that. But let me give you a few stats here. I know that you had one in your piece about this rookie race that blew me away, which was that powers third in terms of entry passes per game behind Roman Yossi and Eric Carlson, two guys who are known for being pretty good at moving the puck.

I have a few other stats for you here, though. He's fifth in the entire league in 5-1-5 usage. Wow. In terms of 5-15 minutes per game, he's 27th overall because he's not getting all those power play minutes. But with him on the ice of 5-1-5, they're outscoring teams 28 to 21, which is actually, I made this point on yesterday's show when talking about Rosmast Dali, and I know this is becoming like a Buffalo Sabres podcast here, but I think it's really important to know because if you just look at their win-loss record, they just lost eight straight games. It's like, oh, man,

this team is so far away. It's just another year of the Sabers being the same old, same old disappointment. When they have one of those two guys on the ice, they're doing really well. Yeah. Like they're outscoring teams. They're controlling territorial play. Like they're one of better teams in the league. And then whenever they don't have them on, which is basically third pair of minutes, they're getting crushed. And to me, that's like a very easily fixable thing in the grand scheme of things. Like, of all the things that you need to work on, if you have these building blocks in place, you can, especially with their analytic staff now that they have in Buffalo, you'll be able to identify some undervalued third pairing guys that

can give you minutes where they're at least breaking even. And if they were getting that right now, like they'd be, they'd be winning much more than they're losing. And I think everyone would be talking about like, oh, the sabers, they finally are where we want them to be. And so I think maybe it's a bit aggressive to say that they're going to be, like next year, they're going to be the New Jersey Devils of this year because I don't think like it's fair to expect anyone to make that type of leap. But really, like with slightly better goaltending and slightly better play on the margins with like their bottom six upfront and their third pair on the blue line, like I think this team can get good

really quickly. And maybe they shouldn't be sacrificing the future to try to accomplish that, like take the long view with the ages of these guys, but I really think the number of moves they need to make to get good is probably pretty surprising to people who are just looking at their win-loss record. For sure. And they have so many talented young forwards that those guys are only going to get better, whether it's, I mean, seeing a line with Dylan Cousins, J.J. Praterica and Quinn is, you're like, man, you can keep those guys together for the next 10 years and they're going to terrorize opponents. So those guys are going to only become a more formidable force, and especially when

you have that top line rolling the way it has been this season with Tash Thompson, who at this point right now, I think he's my third favorite player to watch in the NHL behind. And that's two rankings too low, in my opinion. It might be actually the reason. What he's doing every night is just, it's comical. It's like, Tage, please, just take one night off from embarrassing the other team. Literally, like he belongs in Cirque du Soleil, the way that he's pulling out these bag of tricks in the offensive zone.

But, yeah, like when you have that top line in place, and you have two massive building blocks where those guys can separate, or those guys in Dallien and Power can anchor top four pairings each. And you've got young forwards coming through the rest of the middle six who are only going to get better.

You've got infrastructure there to where if you are able to, in the off season, add around the margins, fix around the edges, if you will, that they can next season take, hopefully a bigger step. Because, man, they deserve the vibes there involved. in Buffalo.

They do. Well, and here's one final stat on him. So there's been 630 players in NHL this year that have played 105-15 minutes. He's 615th out of 630 in shot attempts per minute, in his own, how often he himself is shooting the puck, right? With him on the ice, the Sabres are generating the 52nd most high danger chances out of that 630. Yeah.

And 59th most expected goals per minute. And the reason why I bring that up is because I feel like this player was created in a lab for what I want my defenseman to do. Yeah. In that it perfectly illustrates, just watching him, I feel like in the offensive zone, he makes the correct decision 99% of the time. And some of the times, I think it's the wrong one as I'm watching it live. I'm like, no, no, he should have done this. And then he waits two seconds and he makes an even better play that he like saw materializing and he had the patience to wait for. it. And that's what I love about him, right? Like, and it's very stylistically different because

Rasmus Dahlin is just like firing away whenever he's out there. And that's fine. I think he's got more finishing ability than knowing power necessarily at this point. But what I love about him is, is he's driving these offensive results, right? Like I just said, they're producing a lot when he's out there. They're an elite offensive team with him on the ice. But it's not because he's just hammering away from the point. He's not forcing the issue. He's distributing the puck to where it needs to be, right? He's funneling the puck into the slot. He is, he's moving down. They're playing that avalanche style, like five-man formation where sometimes you'll just see him pop up at the goal line, and then he'll come back up and he'll fill another position. Like, he's comfortable playing

all over the ice. And so it's exactly what I want from my defenseman, not to mention that, as I said, he's playing the fifth most minutes. He's breaking even in terms of penalty differential. So, like, he's not getting in trouble in his own zone and taking down penalties. Like, really, this player was created in a lab for what I want a defenseman to look like in 2022. And so I just love watching him so much. Well, that's the scary thing about power is he has a size and he has a skating, but it's rare to have those two plus the vision and the high-end smarts where a guy's always making the right read, always making the correct decision.

Because sometimes I think we see a player like whether it's Tyler Myers or Colton Pereko where they're gifted with the physical traits, but they're not necessarily the smartest players otherwise, whereas power has those traits and he's already, as a rookie, the way he processes the game is like he's a 10-year vet with his decision-making, especially in the offensive zone. It's just like he's so patient. He's so. His processing speed is just insane.

And like you said, when the Buffalo came and played against the Canucks, there were a lot of plays similar to what you were kind of saying where I was like, is he hanging? I was like, you know, you watch him and watch him with the puck on the blue and I'm like, I think he hung on to that puck for too long. And then it's just like, he was waiting for the perfect passing lane to open to hit a guy in the back door or something. And it's just like, oh, like, he's just built different.

So that's why he's so exciting. I should say it for the listeners because I, one of the great parts about doing this in studio with you is we're looking at each other where we're hanging out. It's much more comfortable setting. When you said the sentence, you know, when you watch some of these guys play, whether it's a Tyler Myers,

and I actually see the pain in your eyes. So I'm not sure if that was reflected through the audio medium, but visually I definitely saw it. Yeah, it's, that's, well, that's why Tyler Myers is, no, I wouldn't spend too much time. That's why he's a little bit frustrating is because you watch his, like, by the eye, and you understand why then NHLGM sort of overvalue this type of players, because with his size and with his skating, the way he moves,

around the ice sometimes you're like holy cow what can't he do like what can't he do and he a lot of times he's like jumping into the play offensively but then you look at all the other subtleties of his game which aren't obvious super obvious to the eye until you watch him a lot and like pay attention to the details it's like you watch him but then you look at the results at the end of the day and you're like oh man they've been torched when he's been on the ice and despite how active he looks offensively he's got like four points the whole season right so um yeah it's uh it's painful because like you see the potential and he was obviously called her winner in the past too so there clearly was that potential for him to uh be a really really high end potential top pair type defenseman and

he unfortunately hasn't been able to hit that uh hit that ceiling well and i think the key point there is i think offensive zone decision making yes is such a um It's really important, but almost like it's tougher to see how negatively impactful bad decision making can be compared to like, you know, a guy in his own zone. If he has bad decision making, it's like, all right, he turns it over and it winds up in a goal against within three seconds. And it's much easier to point to that and be like, all right, well, see, this is a problem for us. Whereas like a guy gets the puck at the point and if he just waits a second or if he decides to pass it down the wall to a open forward who can do something better with it, as opposed to just passing that up and then just hammering it to someone's shin pads,

it'll just lead to whatever. The puck gets out of the zone or nothing happens in the next 30 seconds and it's tough to point to that and be like, see, this is where they really messed up. But that keeps happening over and over again and it's like, yeah, this drives negative results and this really hurts.

It's death by a thousand paper cuts. It really is what it is. Okay, enough about power there, although I really could do the full show on them and I recommend everyone watches them. Let's talk about Maddie Baneers, who I always, would say is probably leading most people's power poles or projections for for rookies.

He leads the Cracken in 5-15 points. He's got 15 of them so far. He's on pace for 36 goals and 75 points, which has been fueled by a recent six-game point streak in which he has five goals, seven assists, and was most recently punctuated emphatically by an overtime winner seven seconds into a game against the Capitals. I didn't want to like frame it from the lens of like I love Owen Power and that means Maddie Baneer sucks because it's almost like you have to take one side or the other especially two guys who are in the same draft class and went one two right it's always like one or the other

and I wanted to make the point that I think I like appreciate both guys because the top of this year's class is so dynamic and so cool like these are guys who are 19 at the start of the season who are playing meaningful roles for their teams and not only surviving and like hanging around but like meaningfully driving results and thriving and doing so in very sustainable ways and so that's really cool to see. And Baneer is, I mean, playing a different position clearly, is doing it a different way. But his resume right now is almost equally unassailable, right? Like, he's producing offensively

what you want to see. He's doing a lot of stuff defensively, which is unique for a young player. He's really kind of been the total package for this cracking team. For sure. And I've been surprised to how quickly the offense has come, to be totally honest with you. I know he was second an overall pick and you expected that he would become a high in top six producer at some point, but I just didn't think it would be this immediate. And obviously we saw it even when he finished his NCAA campaign was kind of airdropped into the crack and lineup. And at such a miserable point in their season, he kind of gave them a little bit of hope in life. I've been, I think, most impressed by his playmaking off the rush.

Because I think knowing his resume coming up as a prospect, I'm not surprised at how effective his North-South game has been and how quickly he closed his guys, the speed, the assertiveness and being able to drive two-way results, how he wins pock battles, how he steals pox from opponents. That part of it I expected to be prevalent right away. I just didn't think the offensive production would pop that much. And of course, like, it was a couple times watching the preseason highlights.

I was like, holy crap, the way this guy shot. Like, I didn't know he had that type of shot. And then seeing some of the creativity with his vision in the offensive zone, the way he's able to delay some times or cut back. I didn't know that he would have that right away. Well, it's interesting you bring that up because, like, and I think it was just maybe recency bias based on the preseason. But coming into the year, I was like, wow, this guy's going to be an elite shooter right away.

And I think he's going to score a lot of goal. I didn't know, and then he's going to be a great forechecker. He's going to just like with his motor, he's going to annoy the living hell and everyone he plays against. I'm not sure about his playmaking chops necessarily. Also, we didn't really know, like, the system they played last year, like how point shot heavy their entire offensive approach was. I just didn't know what type of offensive environment it would be. And I've been blown away by his playmaking chops, like what he's shown as a distributor, like finding guys in space, especially doing it very quickly has been really impressive, right? I think for me, it's actually gone to the point where I made this point a couple weeks ago,

I mean, we did a Cracken deep dive here on the Piedocast, but I kind of want to see him, like, shoot more in a way. I believe so the Cracken have had 19 players play 10 plus games this year. He's 19th on the team in individual five-on-five shot rate. Wow. I don't have guessed that. He's taking less shots than Will Borgon than Alexander Wenberg, who's been like one of the most, like, unselfish, like, unwilling. to shoot shooters of his generation. Forever, yeah.

Right? And so not that I'm saying, like, I actually, I think a big reason for Seattle's offensive success so far this year. Part of it is just like shooting percentage inflated. I believe they lead the league and that'll come down a little bit. But they're clearly like being more selective, right? Like they're trying to get the puck into these areas of the ice that lead to higher efficiency. And so that's been part of their success.

So I know it's kind of talking out of both sides of my mouth where you acknowledge that and then say, oh, I wish she would just be more selfish and shoot more. Yeah. But because of his shot, I really believe it is such a plus weapon for him that I feel like there's even more, there's even more like meat in the bone or whatever for him to score more as he gets more assertive in that regard and starts taking on more responsibility himself. It doesn't necessarily need to sacrifice the playmaking to do that. I feel like he'll find a happy medium between the two. But I feel like there's another level for him to hit offensively in that regard. I agree.

And it's kind of like what you mentioned is just in the preseason, I got to sort of like, watch crack in a lot. I don't know why, but that was what stood out to me. Like, kind of like what you mentioned, I thought he was going to be

an electric goal score, and he has found the, yeah, I mean, he's on base for 36 goals. Exactly. It's good, yeah. But that's definitely an area

where I look at him and I'm like, I did not expect that a shot rate was going to be that low. So you look at a player like that, dual threats in this, in this league where it's like, if you can,

shoot the puck that well and also set up that well. That's a really rare skill set to have out of a young, a player, young top six setterman. So that bodes really well for his future. And obviously in my recent times, part of the reason I think he's been able to distribute is because he's had someone like Jared McHan to play with who has an absolute weapon of a shot himself. So he's going to find that happy medium.

And it's really impressive that he's at least even found the playmaking chops too because going into the season i would have figured like if you're going to i would have thought the fit would have been really important in terms of maybe you got to have a guy have more of a set up guy with him on the wing who can give him opportunities to get that shot off in the slot whereas it's like no he can create on his own yes set guys up he can score on his own so that makes him a really versatile player as well which is important because you're inevitably going to run into injuries and sometimes chemistry doesn't work on other lines and you need to mix things up. And that's where the value of Benneers'

is offensive versatility, I think, can be a real asset for the Cracket. Yeah. And we often say, like, oh, you know, you have to put your young players in a position to succeed, like, cater around their skills. His skills are so diverse that it doesn't, I honestly can't really see a situation where, like, you put it with anyone and, like, if you want him to just be like a checker and just like a grinder who just four checks and keeps the puck in the other, deep in the other team's own, he can do that. If you need him to be the setup man, he's shown he can do that. If you need him to be the tricker man, I think he's got that in his range of outcomes as well. It's really cool to see such a young player do so well in so many different ways. And another stat I've got for you

here, he's played 33 games so far last year, compared to, like combined last year and this year, 560 total minutes. He's taken one penalty in that time, or he's been whistled for one penalty. Yeah, I'm sure he's taking a few more. But I find that impressive. He's drawn 12 with him himself because not only is penalty differential, another way to provide surplus value, but he does play such like an involved tenacious game. It's not like he's just kind of skating on there waiting for the puck. Like he's going in there quickly. He's like poking away.

He's trying to retrieve the puck. He's trying to just make your life hell, as I said. And he's only taken one penalty so far. Like that's, that's to me remarkable. It shows discipline. It shows, I think, skill as well off the puck and that he's able to kind of get away with stuff and provide value that way. And so, yeah, I think that's, he's such a well-rounded,

player as well that if you want to take him overpower in this conversation, I'm not holding it against you. I would. Just because of the two-way impact on top of how much offense he's driven and of course how like for me when I looked at Seattle going into the season, I didn't think that they'd be in the playoff conversation because I looked at their goaltending situation. I went, don't believe in that. And I looked at their offensive group and I'm like, they're a deep team.

I can trust on a lot of guys to produce, but I don't know if they have that apex sort of player at the top of their lineup to really be a really, really high-end true top-line caliber producer. And that's exactly what Benares has been. So that's why, even though I love what power has brought to the table and Thompson and Thompson as well, Benares is number one for me so far in the culture. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

Wow. Yeah, we were running out of time. I was going to like, all right, we should talk about Jake Anderson. I've got, you know, Stuart Skinnarver's slogan. I've got, I want to give Fabian Zetterlin some love, Y. Johnson, like the cold perfetti. There's so many, like, this is like a really good rookie class, right? So I know every team wants, or every fan base wants to hear us talk about their, like, favorite young player and they deserve more respect.

And I like all those guys. Like, I just want to make that clear. But I guess we just, we got sidetracked. You know, when you can talk about OAL for 15 minutes at the top, you just got to. You just have to. No, I think, I hope that we did a good job of, of spinning it into, like, a kind of more game theory conversation about defending at that NHL level and what it takes and all that. So, all right, let's, do you want to do a quick thing on Sanderson? We do have a few minutes here.

I think he's almost, I'm sure, probably Logan Thompson, because I think he's going to win a lot of games. Yeah. Behind that team, I think he'll probably sneak into this, like, trifecta at the end of the year. I do think, like, for me, like, I think the three skaters have pretty clearly been power beeneers in some order, and then Jake's Anderson third. And honestly, it's not even, I wouldn't say it's Jake Anderson's fault. It's just purely usage base. he's just been playing so much less than no one power that it's it's not his fault but you need to account for that it is interesting though because when i did the research for this piece that he's

played a lot less than power but his matchups have been a lot more difficult in terms of how often he's had to play against top lines i was looking at hockey viz's um data there so that is an interesting at least wrinkle in terms of his usage where um the you know quantity and volume wise he isn't chewing up as much but he is playing a higher degree of difficulty minutes. Overall, he's been on it as best defenseman this year. I think we all expected it to be Tomas Shabbat, but he hasn't quite looked himself,

and obviously he missed a few games where Sanderson was elevated up the lineup, and we got a glimpse into him essentially being thrown into the fire, where all of a sudden he was logging 25 minutes a night, he was quarterbacking the power play, killing penalties, defending top lines, blocking shots. And I was a little bit worried because sometimes when you put, put a player in that sort of position before they're necessarily ready, whether it can impact their confidence level,

but he has not, he did not skip a beat. That was arguably, like he played a couple of his best games of the season under that duress. Yep. So that's been really impressive and also to spend most of your next Travis Hammondick in a top four role. Like you're not getting a lot of help in that spot either.

Well, I was going to say he's played roughly 85% of his five-on-five minutes with Travis Hammondick as partner. And he's been on the ice for more. more defensive zone draws than the offensive zone. So those two kind of run counterintuitive to what your expectation would have been of like they're going to really use this guy in and shelter him and play him in like a very offensively slanted role. And yeah,

I think purely for me, and we've seen it grow, right? I think that he had a stretch there while he was out. And then even when he came back where he was logging like in the low to mid 20s in terms of minutes. And I just like want to see more of that before I feel comfortable adding him into the power conversation.

But like from an eye test perspective when you watch him, like his transition ability both on and off the puck is is so. smooth like so smooth like he just covers so much ground that um like he's a one man for trick theater right and and and he can and i've been impressed with how he's defending speed as well so yeah he's checking all the boxes just a matter of like i just need to see like more more minutes and more responsibility in that regard but one thing i also wanted to mention because you you did allude to his ability to defend speed uh our buddy corey schneider uh with his data set he's been sanderson has been ottawa's best defender this season um at deny

controlled entries, which to me I'm like, is a rookie when you're when you're doing that. And obviously, it's not like the center's blue line is, is an art. It's a piece of art in terms of how they defend the blue line as a whole. But for him to kind of rise and be that effective at denying that part of offense,

it's really impressive to see in addition to his transition and what he can do with the park. I love it. All right. Well, Harm, this was a blast. I'm glad we got to do this. I'll give you a minute here to plug some stuff where can people check you out and you can tell them about what you've been working on, including this piece that we just talked about basically for an entirety of the show. Yeah, you can find me at the athletic.

I obviously covered the Canucks, unfortunately. For more Tyler Myers coverage, yeah. Never ending tire fire, but I also write pretty regularly nationally, wrote obviously about the top rookies about a week and a half ago, and just a couple days ago wrote a piece on sort of doing an NHL panic meter. looking at teams that many expected to be in the playoff race or even in some cases, Cup contenders when you talk about the Panthers,

the Flames, the Rangers who are below the playoff bar right now and trying to analyze what's gone wrong and how worried their respective fan bases should be about their playoff odds. All right, well, certainly check that out. I was hoping we were going to get to that as well today, but we'll have to say that for next time. This is a blast, man.

We're going to certainly have you back on. Thank you to everyone for listening to today's show. and hopefully enjoyed it if you did smash that five-star button wherever you listen and yeah that concludes another week here in the pediocast so we'll be back on monday with more thank you for listening to the hockey pedocas here on the sports night radio network