The Hockey PDOcast - The Canucks are a mess, 3v3 OT improvements, and iPad usage in the NHL

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Sean Shapiro joins Dimitri to talk about how and why the Canucks have become the laughingstock of the NHL, potential adjustments to the 3-on-3 overtime format, and players using iPads to their advantage 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.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to our HockeyPedocast. My name's Dmitra Filipovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Sean Schabiro, Sean. What's going on, man? It's a quiet day here compared to some other places in the world. So, well, it's a good day, though. We got some, looking on my window right now, we got some nice snow last night. So it's kind of peaceful, which is, I'm sure, the perfect setting for,

What could be a wonderful topic today? Yeah, yeah, I'm just going to say here in Vancouver, I can't share the same sentiments, although the weather is quite nice, no snow. It's warming up a little bit here. But that sunny disposition outside should not mask what's going on with the local team here, where I guess I don't need to leave us in with like an introduction of, oh, in case you may stay, because I feel like if you're listening to the show, you're probably aware of what we're talking about.

But we're going to do, in block one today, we're going to talk about Bruce Boudreau and how the Canucks handled or mishandled the situation. You know, now, I did a show kind of mid to late last week, hinting at it and talking about Talk It and all that. Now we finally, mercifully, I've reached the conclusion of a story that I would consider to be truly bewildering. they finally let Brudrae go on Sunday after weeks of basically publicly shaming him talking about his successor and the person who's going to come take his job while leaving him just hanging in the wind coaching this completely listless and quite frankly talentless for the most part team and so you know this is we're going to get into the details of all this and this is the most recent example for this Kinnats organization and it's certainly

certainly like optically reprehensible. But I will say it shouldn't be remotely surprising because pretty much everything they've done over the past like decade or so now should make it entirely believable that they're capable of fumbling a decision and the execution of it in this manner, if you know what I mean. Yeah, it's a mess. That's a, it's still a pretty way to put it right now. It's a mess. The looking, the more you examine it, the more you think each time you try to find like the redeeming like I can get that part like you can't find the even when you try to play the devil's advocate you struggleable to find it well no it's one of those things where where like the the tunics have become a loud stock of the league right

like it's i don't know if you if you've had this experience um you know just being here locally in Vancouver i guess maybe this plays into it but you see publicly like people like Andrew Coagliano and even Pete DeBurre yesterday coming out and commented on the situation, which is, quite frankly, like, surreal for the NHL because so often everyone just, you know, stays tight-lipped and, you know, you know, toes the company line, even if it's about a different team, like you're just not messing whether you're not saying anything. You're trying to deflect as much as you can. So, like, you know, the fact that we're hearing comments like that publicly is one thing.

And then privately, just getting messages from. players from, from, you know, front office, uh, executives, like just in, in utter disbelief at what's going on and, and just poking complete fun at this organization. And it's all that is deserved. Like, it's not, yeah, I don't think any of it is unjust, any of it is unfair. It's all of their own doing. And I don't know, it's, it's crazy. I don't know. If you've experienced that in terms of just, you know, people kind of chiming in and just trying to, like, figure out what on earth they're doing. Yeah. The fact that there was, willing to take it on the record, it shows how much.

Like, these, there's, I talked to players, like early, late last season, early this season, there's times I talked to players about, like, the arena situation in Arizona. And you would have kind of like the off the record catch up conversation. And you could definitely get the, no one, you could never actually, you would definitely get to the feeling of like, man, that's what they're doing there. but the Canucks situation has been basically has gone past the

turn off the microphone we're ready to throw stones because that glass house is not even going to we don't have to worry about breaking that glass house like that's kind of what it's become with the Canucks situation it's I mean it is

they it's it's hard to find a silver lining it's hard to find a place that something that works and it's I know that it's one of only 32 NHL head coaching jobs, but it's still amazing to me

that you found someone willing to leave something else to take this job. It's still, like, I get it. There's only 32 NHL head coaching jobs, and everyone thinks they're a genius on their coach and everything like that. But at the end of the day, why would you want to willingly go

to Vancouver right now? I don't know why. I was talking to a former a guy who's not in the coaching business anymore retired coach earlier today about something and he brought up he's like I don't know I was like why would I ever if I was if I was someone

in his the age where they were still coaching and everything like that why would I why would I ever go to the Canucks willingly that's like I don't that's the part that's still kind of the fact that there's a quote quote big name hire and we can I'm not

I'm using their quotes on the quote big name but the fact that there's a name hire on this and it's not a, oh, well, we just promoted our NHL guy to an interim role or something like that. Like, that's almost even more surprising to me without all this played out. Yeah. Oh, there's, yeah, you're right. There's only 32 jobs and a $2.75 million annual salary will do a lot of convincing. You know, I said this on the recent Kinnock show that I did last week. And I think Jim Rutherford said as much actually in his press conference last week where he acknowledged that it was a, he kind of didn't know what he was getting himself into in terms of like how big of an undertaking or how big of a job it would be. And I mentioned that and then I had someone message to be like, how is this acceptable to like hear someone say this that that, that, you know, isn't you to the league that's been around that presumably has like their finger on the pulses away?

of everything has connections to like use that as an excuse. And I do not to make an excuse for them, but you know, similar to I'm sure what Rick Tocke is thinking here. Like there's, for a lot of these people in the game, there's a lot of, you know, hubris involved in terms of them truly believing that, oh, I know it's bad and people are saying it's bad, but when I step in there and once I get my hands on it, once I start, you know, doing my job, everything's going to turn around and then I'm going to be like, I'm going to be the hero. And I think there is that kind of line of thinking involved in taking on a job like this? 100%.

I mean, it's, there's, uh, everyone thinks all of a sudden they can be the guy that fixes a problem. You think like, well, it doesn't matter how many other people have tried or whatever. I, I, I can fix this problem and I can do that. And I know with Tocut, it's interesting. I've, I've doing some digging myself on kind of the TV side of things since I still have a couple people will talk to me on that world. This past week, it was kind of the informal,

this past last Wednesday on TNT, they kind of knew that was his last show going in. That was something where, from my understanding, talking to people who kind of know what's happening at TNT, inside those studios, it was everything like that. Everyone on the set kind of knew that this was Rick's last show with Turner. Everyone knew it.

no one really could say it properly, but both sides, both Tocke and Turner, both knew that, okay, at some point whether it's, even if he hadn't been named the coach of Vancouver that following weekend, he probably wasn't going to be back next week. It was going to be something where eventually it reached the point of, uh, this is,

he's been angling to get back into coaching. He had, he took the Turner job, actually. He had a couple, like, assistant, assistant or assistant coach offers, I believe. He may have been an associate coach offer. I don't know for sure on that,

but I know we got a couple assistant coach offers that he turned down to take the Turner job. And we could see almost the public, like, angling that he's been doing. And I know in Vancouver, I don't know if you guys get the TN, do you guys get the TNT game over the border in Turner? Or is that a,

over, do you get the Turner game over the border in Vancouver? We do, unless it involves a Canadian team and that it's on sports stuff. Okay, okay. But yeah, we've seen the, we've seen him asking Eric Carver, Relson rather odd prying questions about his roles in running a power play. We've seen the host's recent show Liam McHugh, who did a really good job of basically doing,

I really loved the pull the glasses on and like, oh, Rick Tocket, what are you doing here? Like, he has been publicly angling for this job for a while. And it's, you know what, he's, and at the end of the day, you talk about like, Jim Brotherford being like, oh, I didn't know what type of trouble. This was Rick Tocket, of all people, cannot clavey does it. When, if this doesn't go well six months from now, there's no way Rick Tocket can go and Rick Tocket can go and be like, oh, I didn't know this was this big of a trouble. I didn't realize, no, you literally were paid to talk about these type of troubles for last year and a half.

So he's painted himself into pride has gotten the best of him to take the job. He wants to coach more power to him on that. But at the end of the day, there's no. No excuse for, you can't, if the Canucks are in the same spot a year from now, and Rick Tockets hold the breast conferences where it's like, I didn't know we had this issue, but now that's BS. Well, I'm going to give you a little spoiler here. That's exactly what's going to happen.

Like, it's not going to get better anytime soon for a variety of reasons. And that's why I would have, if I were advising him, if he had message being asked, hey, what do you think about this? That would have been like, you have a. pretty good right now. If I are you, I just wait for another opportunity. But you're right. I mean, just like every coach that goes into media and goes on TV, the whole purpose of it is to keep, keep their name relevant and in conversations and have people watching them talking about hockey. And it's basically all sort of like a cameo or an audition for a future gig, right? That's the whole,

and that's the end game. It's not, I'm going to become a media superstar. And so that's why I also, like, I know you mentioned this as well. I want to clarify, like, there's been some, of speculation about the timeline in terms of like the four week clause or whatever. I just, without any inside knowledge of his contract details, I find it hard to believe. I do have some experience with signing media deals with NHL out clauses to a different degree, obviously than Rick talking here. But the idea that you would sign, like that his agent would get him to sign a contract that prevents him, that makes him wait four weeks to take an NHL job.

I do think that's fair. I do think that's fair. And I pointed it out yesterday that that had been reported that it's out there. But with the more context of a conversation here between you and I and not the Twitter, to the Twitter context, I do think your point is fair where even if you were Turner at the end of the day, you're not going to hold a guy there. There may have been some dollars that change hands. There may have been some. something here or there. I don't know what his contract is. The interesting thing about all of the one interesting thing about that entire scenario is I kept looking for just and it's just in a reporting element. I couldn't find anyone to deny the existence of that clause. That was the one thing. Like I kept waiting for like throughout all of this. I kept waiting for someone to either his agent, talking himself or even someone from within turn just come to me and be like, as I, as I've asked around. to be like, oh, well, no, that was someone reporting something that's not true.

And it's something where no one actually denied it. No one said it was, it could neither confirmed or didn't deny it. Now, it's, maybe it'll come in a problem, but now the minute I'm saying this, of course, what it'll be like in an hour, he'll be like, he'll say like F Sean Shapiro, here's what we're going to do. But Rick doesn't have Twitter anymore, so he doesn't see,

so he deleted his Twitter. so he doesn't, he won't see any of this anyway. The thing about him and Turner, that was really interesting, and this is just a small tangent, it's going to be really interesting to see the shake-up of what this does with the Turner Studio, because one of the reasons, and Greske has gone on record talking about this, one of the reasons Greske has had the success he's had on broadcast television in the United States right now is because of his comfort with Tocke.

and it will be interesting to see how they replace him in that role because he was used in a lot of ways to make Wayne be the more comfortable version of Wayne. So it's going to be interesting to see this outside thing. You know, Keith Yandel and Enric Lindquist are going to get some more reps on TV. It will be interesting to see you with that. But I don't know. He also made from a media perspective, and this is another thing. I also have been told that because we know the Canucks aren't making the playoffs, that Turner is looking at potentially the role of having him back on the desk,

potentially for the playoffs. You know, like, but just actually as a, just think of for Canucks coach Rick's Tockett, because how many times you see that more often in a lot of other sports where a coach or player that's out of the playoffs actually joins the panel and everything like that in the playoffs, but Turner may look into that with Tocket too, I've been told. Yeah, well, if only there was a, um,

an available coach who had a great personality and was beloved that could come on and replace him. I can't think of anyone in particular. But yeah, I mean, my final point on the four week notice thing is it just seems like bad business for everyone involved, right? Like in normal circumstances for a normal organization, waiting four weeks in season for a coach to become available would just be a complete non-starter and they would just look in another direction, essentially disqualified as a candidate. So from his purpose, that's why signing a contract like that would be a disaster. And from TNT's perspective or returners perspective, that's bad business as well because they want to become a place where it's like, oh, you're a coach looking to get your name back out there. Yeah, come on here, have some fun, show your personality, show your chops in terms of X's and O's and breaking plays down during intermission segments. And then once you get a better offer, you can go elsewhere.

And it's kind of a mutually beneficial partnership. So I think it's much more likely, but financially that the Canucks simply were trying to solve. the blow by limiting the amount of time they had to have three coaches on their books. So yeah, I want to mention, do I talk about Boudreau here or the Canucks? Because I kind of got points on both and I want to get to both of them equals. Let's get to Bruce first. Okay. Let's go Bruce first.

Well, here's the thing. Like, it's so, like, I can't even really express how cruel it was to see the situation. he was put in behind the bench, especially for these past two games over the weekend. I put on my capital J journalism hat and went to the Canucks game and sat in the press box on the Friday game against the avalanche. And it really felt like I was the only person there who actually cared about the game because I went there to watch the avalanche and to get a better sense of the level they're playing at. Everyone else there was like so preoccupied about just talking about what a clown show it was

and everything. It's like almost like the game was, the game was an original. relevant sort of, it was an excuse to bring people together and as opposed to actually being a meaningful product. Actually, the other person who I think was actually watching the game there was Edmonton Oilers head coach Jay, J. Woodcroft, who they played in Vancouver the following night. And in classic coach fashion was using his night off a rarity in the NHL schedule to do some scouting. So that was good to see that. But it was just like all of it was just such a surreal sort of situation

and to see Bruce who I actually don't even know personally but by all accounts anyone that's cross-baths to them just speaks so highly of like how like just energetic and kind-hearted and jovial of a character he is

he gets hired 13 months ago he comes in they win some games the whole Bruce there it is phenomenon takes over like the vibe around the organization even though they don't wind up making the playoffs just takes such a 180 and a condensi period of time compared to where they were at when they hired him and how miserable everyone was under Travis Green. Then in the offseason, you have him at the draft in that viral moment

where he has like childlike amazement hanging out with Kevin Owens and just talking about wrestling to him crying on the bench is just like the fact that they were able to to break him down to that capacity and it got to that point is just astounding to me honestly and just so unacceptable. for so many, so many different reasons. Yeah, it is. Even if I didn't know, Bruce, it would be. I don't accept. I don't know him super well.

I've talked to him, I talked to him a couple times in my career and crossing paths from, and even when he wasn't, I remember there was, he once gave me a pretty great answer. It was when it was, we were talking about, I was doing a story about the, like, about coaches and line-ups. and reveal the goalies, and there's, like, like, a gambling angle, like, should, should, should, should, should, coach is, if the NHL wants to get serious about gambling, how can you have these line-up decisions, whatever.

And Bruce was, had not been tired yet. And I remember, I called him, and we chatted, and I asked him about, uh, kind of his decision to, uh, just like, how coach's view naming a starting goalie. And he was, he was great. One of the lines I never forgot to use in his story, but I just remember, like, him saved him. He's like, like, honestly, if I just, like, like it was a day I wanted to F with the media guys.

I didn't end my starting goalie. It was great. I loved his personality. I loved the way he remembered it. This was a game. Like this is hockey's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. And Bruce was willing to embrace fun.

And it was just, it's so sad to see someone who has lived this game for being a game to be broken down the way he was broken down and dragged along. And just treat it that way. Yeah, it really wasn't. And I think, you know, tying this into the Knucks then as like a bigger picture sort of deal, like for full disclosure, I really wanted to write this up at our shared place of work. Keep your inside. And I reached out of the editors and JD told me that he already had something cooking. And so I backed off and let him handle it.

And it's good that I did because his write up of it was something that I highly recommend everyone reads. And I think even for people who aren't subscribed to the site, it's unlocked. So it is. Yeah. Still go check that out. But the reason why it's important here, and I think this part might get lost in the shuffle a little bit, is just that the demise of this franchise, like, cannot be overstated. Like I said, it's become, they've become a laughing sock and a joke right now,

and that doesn't happen overnight, and it's been a long time brewing. But here's the thing, Sean, like, around the turn of the 2010s, the Canucks were right up there at the top of the sport. Like, they never won the cup. They fell one game short. And that would have put a final stamp on all the accomplishments of that era. And because they fell short to the Bruins and at home and got bullied for a number of those games, you know, it's for whatever reason, like, it's viewed as like a disappointment or like, oh, you know, this isn't the goal standard.

This isn't the model that you should be striving to replicate yourself. And I just pushed back against that so much because like by any other measurement other than winning the Stanley Cup, they were right up there as a model franchise, right? Like under Mike Gillis and Lawrence Gilman, they were at the cutting edge of so many areas as an organization from talent acquisition to contract negotiations and retention of those players to how, like, they were deploying players.

I remember, like, they were one of the first teams that they really caught my eye when they had Mani Malhotra, and they were just exclusively using him for defensive zone draws and trying to get the Cidines out every time in the offensive zone. And, you know, such an extreme way of deploying their players, based on role and skill, you know, to being ahead of the curve in performance optimization where they, like, had all these, like, sleep doctors and they were really managing player fatigue and trying to get the most out of them back when load management wasn't really a thing

and we didn't really talk about it as much. They really weren't leaving any stones unturned in the pursuit of, like, finding that little competitive edge. And for me personally, like, all that stuff played a large role in me doing what I do today because I was at this age of Vancouver, where I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting, and then just diving into it and learning more of what they were doing really made me kind of like fall in love with it and capture my attention, intriguing me the possibilities. I was like, well, everyone in this league seems to do things one certain way. What if you do it differently and you try new kind of more progressive, innovative stuff? Could you get results? And then that was reflected in their results, both individually in terms of their top players and the team results. And so to see them now where in a pretty short period of time, They've found themselves at the bottom of the league in every one of those respects and are falling so far behind competitively is just staggering to me. And I think that is the overarching takeaway here beyond this like individual. I don't even want to say isolated incident because it clearly isn't. But like this is the extreme example, but it ties into so many other things that they've just completely failed on.

I think it's also the slow burn into what's next to, right? Like it's the whole thing where there's you have the immediate aftermath of the coaching change and everything like that. but then you're going to have, you're going to have Horvett leave. You start moving into the question of, what does this mean for Pedersen? Like, I think just kind of you add all of the past and the present and then you start looking at kind of the slow burn

and the way this is going to continue to impact the franchise. Like, I think that just helps, that elevates the pressure points on everything, where I don't see, like, I don't see, like I don't see a happy ending for anyone currently involved with the team right now like it's just it's frustrating when you look at it and it's frustrating I'm not a Canucks van or anything like that

but it's frustrating when you see a franchise like that where at least there's teams where they're bad and the but you at least can kind of see I can see where the light at the end of the tunnel can be and for some teams right now in this year of for Chicago or in Arizona, clearly it is through winning a draft lottery and stuff like that. And obviously it's still taking a chance. But there's still the feasibility of I can see that silver lining, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of this.

For Vancouver, you try to find that. I just, I struggle. I struggle. And it's just frustrating to see a team kind of in that spot when you don't want to see teams in that spot. You want to be able to see the path forward for at least everyone. And even if the bat forward is yet to be defined, but at least I don't even see where it is here. Well, and the discouraging part is like, you're right. I think it's an important distinction.

Like winning a championship is hard, right? And not everyone gets to do it. But running a competent organization that makes reasonable decisions and treats people fairly should be more manageable. I don't think that should be as elusive. Like, I think that's a pretty low bar to clear. and to reach this level of dysfunction, like, can you remember a franchise that was springing more leaks, like quite literally in terms of like information trickling out like this? Like for this, for everyone to know the Rick Tocket was the Vancouver Canucks head coach

weeks in advance of him being hired. And then for them to have the lack of respect for everyone involved to come out in his introductory press conference and say, oh, that way I had this morning, we just, decided to make a coaching change. It's like, come on. Like, let's be real. It's 2023. Everyone has access to the internet. I think, I think you're well past that. Yeah. I, it's hard

to, like, um, the, uh, when, uh, when Florida left, um, the, uh, Gerard Glenn. Yeah, when Gerard Garland got left, but just got left on the side of the road. Now, that wasn't, there wasn't the leaks in anything like that. But that's kind of, like, those are the things, those are kind of like the coaching ousters in my mind of, like, embarrassment where it's like, of like, this is how you don't treat a person.

This is how you. And the Bruce one's worse because of how it got drawn out and the way the intelligence, everyone's, it insulted everyone's intelligence publicly throughout the process. It's so much worse. But to try to think of anything close is, I think of, it's a one-off instance with that. But then maybe it's not a one-off instance. off that error because they treated, they didn't really give Brunette a fair shake and

they then brought in Paul Maurice and now they, and I mean, whatever, but that's but, well, no, Sean, I actually think it's the opposite. That's an extreme example. But if you think about it, the reason why that got so much attention was the, the Panthers of the time

had quote unquote the computer boys running the team. Yeah, it's true. They were not buddy buddy with a lot of the big name insiders. And so they actually weren't leaking as much information to them. And that's why there was so much hand-wringing and fake outrage of people being like, can you believe they did this to a hockey life for injurred Glant? Whereas in this case, the Canucks are leaking everything to every one of these insiders. And so for years, it was a sparse strategy, actually, because that's why they were treated with kid gloves for the

most part. Like, everyone's like, oh, Vancouver is such a tough market. You got to, you know, I feel for them. There's a lot of pressure involved. It's like, well, you're sitting now because your friend is leaking you all this information. And now, obviously, this situation with Bruce was so deplorable and everyone was united in it that it was a, it was an easy thing for people to be like, all right, like, yeah, this has gone too far. Like, the Canucks are in trouble here. Yeah, it's, it's, I don't expect insiders to not do their job. But it's also kind of, uh, kind of funny to look at the, um, no one is like,

we talked about how we get upset with the Canucks and you get people penning there, angry columns at him and everything like that, but there hasn't been enough put up a focus where it's like, oh, we know that Bruce Boudreau had a 9.30 a.m. meeting. Like, we know that he had a 9.30

meeting with the coaches. Like, we know that was put out there, like, right away. Like, I think as we look at this and as we, the thing that's going to continue to evolve as we look at this will be the fact, to the matter is we'll see, we'll start to have more of those stop and realize like, how did this much get out? Like, there's a line. Like, there is like, and I say this as a media person, like, there's certain spots where what the Detroit Red Wings and Steve Eisenman do is ridiculous,

where you don't even let assistant coaches talk to the media. That's ridiculous. But on the flip side, there's a line that you need, that teams need to keep in mind. And Vancouver just broke it completely. Like it's... Yeah, I mean, just think about... The reason why I say this isn't an isolated incident is because think about how many people at pretty much every level of the organization

have left in what I describe as contentious and ugly terms over the past couple years, right? And so this isn't a one-off. This is obviously an extreme, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, the reason why I'm skeptical anything is going to change regardless of where the coaches is it comes from the top down, right? and it crystallizes an important life lesson here.

And this is a good part to end on where the reason why the Canucks have gotten themselves into so much trouble over the past handful of years is because they've tried to take a shortcut and to cut corners, right? And that involved, all right, our goal is to try everything we possibly can to just make the playoffs. Once you make the playoffs, anything can happen, right? And so we want to get some home game revenue from that. And we don't want to take the loss of being really bad intentionally for years. And so that's what we're going to do.

And then in that misguided kind of perpetual pursuit of just trying to do the bare minimum, the situation they've walked themselves into is they have $85 million in player salary this year. They have $7.25 million in coaching salary of three names, as I said. And in the long run, because they tried the cheap out and got quarters, they are going to pay more now. right and so it's it's a good reminder of like you know doing the right thing and investing in long-term health and having a plan and executing it first the team-building approach that they've had and i think that is that is what's at play here ultimately yeah i mean you're obviously in vancouver you've lived this and breath this more every day and i can't imagine what's that what i can't imagine what that's like to actually have this as the day-to-day as opposed to the distraction for everyone else and i'm sitting here in the Detroit area for everyone else, this has been the distraction and the bad car crash that you could look at as you go as you drive along. You're like, oh, well, at least it's not that. Like, I can't imagine what it's like to be just like, you're in that, what it's just like to be in that every single day. It's

like you're in the car crash. And instead of it getting cleaned up, we're like, ah, we're just going to sit in it for three months. Yeah, it's, it's been bleak. It's been as, it's been as, uh, it's been as, uh, you could, uh, you could probably imagine. All right, Sean, Let's take our quick break here and then when we come back, we'll finish up with a variety of other topics that'll hopefully be more encouraging and uplifting. So you're listening to the Hockey P.D.O. cast streaming on the SportsNam Radio Network. All right. We're back here in the Hockey P.D.O.cast with Sean Shapiro. Let's get into some more kind of loosey-goosey fun stuff here. Let's talk about, ooh, the 3-on-3 overtime format. You wrote about this recently. I actually got a listener question or or a call. comment about it that ties into it. So you essentially wrote about this recently and you had a pitch

on sort of how the ECHL has chosen to run their overtimes in terms of increasing the length, but to a reasonable amount, not necessarily doubling it so that you kind of check a lot of boxes. Let the listeners know kind of about that and sort of what the proposal is. Then we can get into more of the details. Yeah. So I've always been someone who has been anti-shootout. more in the past. I've been, oh, let's just go 10 minutes of three on three. I love three on three.

I love overtime. Great. But that's not feasible. It's not awesome. And so I had someone who's got some connections with the ECHL who, and these numbers, if I could have, to be 100% honest, I could have probably, these numbers are all public. So I'm going to go find them, but I had somebody who would access to the ECHL's numbers and

was able to get them to share them with me. But essentially, the ECHL, I'll. is three-on-three overtime, but it's a seven-minute format instead of five minutes and seven months. And the numbers on that have shown since the 2018-19 season, the last year of five minutes of three-on-three overtime. There was, of the overtime games, there were, I want to make sure I have this right here, 61% of games that went to overtime ended at overtime, which meant 39% of all overtime games went into a shootout,

which is not really ideal. You don't really, you don't want four in every 10, three on three sessions going to a shootout. And it's this season in the NHL, just to give you an example, this season, the NHL this season, if you do see an NHL game go to overtime, there's a one and three chance, basically.

It's 31.2% when I did. Is this, is this? Shapiro's Math Corner again? This is someone else doing the math for me, Sean Shapiro Presidenting it. But ECHL goes from 61% of overtime games ending in overtime and only 39% of show. This year in the ECHL, 83.5% of overtime games end in overtime.

You have meaning, meaning, that I can do the map, meaning smaller percentage go to a shoot out. And part, and, and, you look at of the 79 games that have gone to overtime 76 sorry 66 were one in the traditional

five minutes and 10 were won in that additional two minutes between you know and so your and last season and the numbers have pretty been pretty strong across the board for this at the least issue it's always in the not 73 to 77% of now gamester ending in overtime so we basically take

taken away, over the past four years we've had 81 shootouts eliminated from the CHL by adding two minutes to the clock and overtime. And I personally feel that this should be the NHL policy going forward. I think it's something that like all things, it would probably have to be test driven in the AHL for a year because the NHL, as much as the AHL likes to say it's its own entity, they test drives so many things for the NHL, they test drive to, like they were the test drivers for no touch idioscine, for the

initial, the current three on three four men in general, there's a bunch of things that have been tested and storyboarded in the HL before they came to the NHL. This is one where the H.HL should,

the H.L should adopt this, frankly, immediately, from the ECHL, and it should be the long-term solution. And when I look at it, obviously, it's not, it is, it can be as simple as, hey, two more minutes of three-on-three

more chance to score or gold. The other thing about it, and I talked to, before I published this story, I talked to the coach that Idaho Steelheads ever sheen about just kind of his thoughts on it and ran my theories by him. I've since spoken to another ECD jail coach as well just to make sure I wasn't completely off. And basically, with the additional two minutes, it changes things from the beginning. It takes away the conservative nature of you're not playing. It's not realistic to think you can survive seven minutes of three on three. You're going to go for it right away. More depth gets tested.

And even though there can be some sloppy finishes at the end, because you get some more depth guys out there, then you want at least it leads to finishes and some chances. So I think adding a minute amount of the minutes to the NHL schedule over this grand scheme of things, I think it's worth it. But I'll throw out to you. What are your thoughts on this?

Wow, I like it. Let's get even wackier, though. Here's a comment from Daniel Hubert, who writes to us all the way from Germany, by the way, shout out to our international listeners, asks, wouldn't it be great if once teams go to overtime, they play the full five-odd-minute's three, regardless of if someone scores, which I guess, you know, if you play it out from a game to your perspective, probably increases the likelihood of more shootouts because it gives you a chance. to if you, instead of, you know, the golden goal instead of someone scoring the game's over,

it gives you theoretically, whatever, how much time's left on the clock to come back and score yourself. From a game strategy perspective, though, I love it because he leads some really interesting scenarios where a team scores early and all of a sudden, I would love to see how aggressive the other team gets in the pursuit of tying in and potentially taking the lead in those final four minutes, let's say, in terms of pulling the goalie, going four on three, trying out some new stuff, how they use their players, the way they choose to play, how much they go for broke or whether they're just comfortable losing by one. You know, it would theoretically create more scoring as well, and not that that's a big problem for the league anymore, but certainly I

think you'd see more goals, and it would make goal differential matter quite a bit, right? Like, imagine you go to overtime and all of a sudden you lose by three. And then it's, yeah, that's not that it's going to be. make a raker season, but I think it creates all sorts of different scenarios that would provide much more intrigue to overtime than

already exist in my opinion. It's crazy, and they would never do it, but it's not, I like it. It would actually give us the intensity required that we want from the three on three format in the All-Star game. It would actually give the

actual intensity to that because it's game on the you're actually playing for games that matter. So we would actually bring some of that to play. We'd have to... My brain can't get it off the factory. You said, like, oh, what would happen to the team pulled the goal? We'd have to change the NHO rule

because if you pull the goalie in overtime and let up a goal, you lose the loser. Wait, did you know that? I did know that. I mean, it's... I don't think it's ever... It's never happened in the NHL, right? Yeah.

But in the KHL. Yeah, it's so you're not... in the NH Shell, it's, it's, uh, it's actually the, it's a,

it's a lot, it was a long time ago, and it was actually a time that, uh, before he was smashing iPads and banning them from benches, that John Tortorello was actually the guy who pulled the goal in overtime. And realized that he would get a point no matter to what. He was forward thinking at the time in the age cell,

a long time. And it's, so, this is good. I mean, I'm all for any scenario that creates more considerations and options, right, as opposed to you being backed into a corner

where it's like, all right, this one thing happens no matter what. And that's kind of the issue with the current format where it's like, all right, you play it. And then at some point, you generally see them kind of reach like a gentleman in the agreement, like, all right, this is just going to go to a shootout. And then you have a couple shootout times, and that's it. And everyone goes home relatively dissatisfied.

And so. I did see a theory someone throughout the idea of doing having a rule where if you take a penalty in overtime, you play until the end of the penalty. Like, if you're on a breakaway, right, or breakaway, bad example, just be a penalty shot out, but I slash you, right, with 30 seconds left in overtime because I know that it's, whatever, it's 30 seconds to kill, and I have just to kill 30 seconds to get to the shootout. What if we put a rule in place when, if you commit a penalty with under two minutes left in overtime, overtime then gets extended through the length of that penalty. That was another theory that someone threw out to me, which I'm not opposed to

too. Yeah, I like that. I know this is a big Jeff Merrick thing. I was watching the game the other day. I forget who it was, so apologies to that, but someone got in a fight. Oh, it was, it was Thomas Satara. So, okay, so the devils were playing the sharks. And then with like 10 seconds left in overtime,

there's like a post whistle scrub, and Thomas Satara basically gets in a fight, which is a shocking sentence to say, I know. And then he comes out and he scores the shootout winner. Yeah. And after. And it was like, okay, he probably should not have been eligible to compete in the shootout.

He just got ejected from the game. So it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's like the shootout really like operates in its own universe completely respect of every other thing that happens over the course of an HL game. So it is ridiculous. Okay, let's end on this. So from your unnumbered thoughts that you publish every other week on the appearing side, I believe you had a note in there about iPads and.

You know, you mentioned sort of torterella and talk it and kind of these grumpy grumpy coaches pulling the old man yelling at cloud routine about how ridiculous iPads are and how they're ruining the game and how we used to be just fine without them and all the stuff that you'd expect to hear from them. And then you brought up how Jason Robertson, who is a pretty good player who's having a pretty nice little season here, loves using them and uses them to great effect. And so I'm going to talk about that a little bit and sort of not even the pros and cons, because I really just don't say it. It's just the pros of it and sort of how the possibilities,

I guess, it's provided players to really kind of optimize their game. Yeah, I think he's just to continue on the Robertson story. And I apologize because I can't remember the name of his personal skills coach. But before every single game, Jason watches, he watches every single one of his prior shifts with his personal skills coach. They go over it right before every single game. They break down the individual shifts. And it is, it's a tool he uses to better himself, to better how he gels with his linemates. And obviously when Robay hints is healthy, him and Joe Pavelski and Jason Robertson are one of the best lines of the hockey.

And there's, and it's, he's not as big of any look at the iPad during the game. Guy he does, still. It's hard to find a player that it doesn't now. but it's still a such a tool that allows, you're talking about a guy whose game is built on hockey IQ and Intel and everything like that. I just found it fascinating to see how he continues to add to that. How do you keep adding more intel?

How do you add those other little elements where, you know what? It's a game of, it's terribly coaching cliche thing, but it truly is a game of interest. How do you find and add those little intel pieces? And if you can find, find that in the game. If you can, if it's, if you're a coach and if you're a coach and you've got a, it's an emotional moment, a guy comes off the ice, he messes up or whatever, right?

Like, if you start yelling at him and you start drawing something, pour on a whiteboard and stuff like that, how many times do you think in history of hockey that message has been completely lost where it's like, oh damn, the coach is mad, I'm just going to, as opposed to, well, hey, you did that. this wrong and here it is and you can see that right away. Like it's it's a tool that makes the it's a tool that makes the game better. And I know people don't some old taki curmudgins are going to be like oh well can't have the iPads on the method. Like it makes the game better. It's not it's not if we if you if the end of the day this is entertainment right that's that's that's something

that we often forget. The end of this is entertainment the game is supposed to be as best as possible. turn it on and say, like, hey, I want to watch this again. And if the hockey players are better, I'm more likely to want to watch this again. And therefore, and therefore I have an actual motivation to want players to get better. And if iPads are making them better, I'm good with it. Like, it's... Yeah, well, here's a... Something that all the best players, I would say, have in common, regardless of their respective

skill set is this like superhuman part of their brain that allows them to recognize patterns in incredibly fast sequences and then leverage it to their advantage, right? And so you see that with Roberts and I was talking about this with last week about Nathan McKinnon where an undertold part of his intensity, we all joke about the diet, but his

ability or his willingness to like absorb just unconscionable amounts of tape uh not necessarily during the game as you're saying sitting on the bench you're in the iPad but like in preparation for looking for every single little edge you can get on someone and on himself in terms of stuff he's doing right or wrong and looking for positioning for coverage for mechanics right like something as trivial or unimportantly seeming as like where the defenseman has their stick down on the and then how you can kind of exploit that and ways you can make them uncomfortable, but where you put the puck. And so little things like that, like, I'm all for incorporating that and using it to your

full advantage. And if that happens over the course of the game where you have an extended break or you're sitting there and you can have a chance to do so, like, I'm all for it. It's similar to what you see in the NFL where, like, the quarterback after the drive is sitting on the bench and they're looking at screen grabs of the defensive formation and kind of what went right or what went wrong. Like, yes, that should be something that. improves the quality of the product because the players are in theory learning from their

mistakes on the fly and making sure they don't make them again. And so that's going to create a better, more enjoyable viewer-friendly product. 100%. And it's not just the players who are using them. I know that there's the occasional, we get the comments from Tortorello make it sound like coaches versus players on the iPad. And that's not the case. I mean, most coaches are using them, are using the data, and using that just as much as the players are. It's, you have, and I know some things, like, some things will still be on a feel or whatever,

but do you know how many coaches make their face-off dot decisions now based off data from an iPad where it'll be like, because other team is the buck, other team is the buck, you get to pick the side for the draw. You could just go with your gut, or you're just going to go quickly off. You get out of your guy with the iPad right there, like, okay, right side, right side because of this scenario.

Like, code, it's not a player's version. coaches thing. I think that the Tortoralla comment is something that sometimes makes it sound like he's speaking for the populace, which is not the case. I mean, the Maple Leafs, for example, like, you go into the Maple Leafs locker,

every single player has the iPad sitting right on the bench, like, even in the visiting room. Like, it is very prevalent of how much the players are encouraged to use the iPad. Like, it makes the game better. The guys are picking up more information on the fly as they go.

and at the same time, it leads to some funny screen grabs for us at home. Like, I mean, I remember one time there's, like, I took a picture of like, I think it was a Jep's game. Kyle Connor was holding the iPad and there's a hit in front of the bench and he's like, like, leaning back, leaning back and it looks like he's like trying to take a picture of an animal at the zoo. Like, I mean, it's comical. Like, we enjoy some comedy too. Like, why not? Yeah.

All right, Sean. Well, I was going to say this is the part of the show where you promote your work, but I feel like we just talked about like, like you're doing most recent articles. But I do, like I do have one thing to say it actually. So our conversation and I'm working on, I got another call to make on it, but I'm going to do something on it for likely over at the sub-sac.

But doing something on the, because using this show as to my accountability meter, I talked about going into the New Year 1 to do something on the Michigan and everything like that. And I actually had someone to reach out to me. And that person had some really interesting insight and some really interesting looks at things and had a wonderful conversation with that person

and going to you have more about kind of the Michigan and looking at it from a goalie perspective and I'll have something on that later this week. And honestly, it all comes down to as a PDO cast listener who heard our conversation and sending you a DM on Twitter.

So thanks to you. Well, no, thanks to the listener. That's the part. That's the beauty and the power of the PDOcast and the great community we've built here. So, Sean, thank you for doing your part and helping cultivate the community with what's becoming a staple on this show. I feel like we're doing like every second Monday or something.

So let's keep that up. This is a blast man. Highly recommend people check out of your work. Looking forward to reading that piece of both of Michigan. We'll be back here tomorrow with more. I'm having Jack Han on. We're going to answer your questions. And so if you have anything you want to hear us talk about,

feel free to send that in. In the meantime, thank you for listening to the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.