The Hockey PDOcast - The Friday Mailbag featuring J-Fresh Hockey

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

Dimitri cracks open the Friday Mailbag and is joined by special guest Jack Fresh AKA JFresh Hockey. They answer your hockey questions and quandaries. 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 Filipo. Hockey Pee-Ocast, my name is Dimitri Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jack Razor, Jack. What's going on, pal? I'm okay. Congrats on the new digs. Thanks, yeah, a bit fancier of a setup than the podcast you and I have done previously.

But otherwise, the programming itself will be pretty much the same. So looking forward to chatting with you today. So here's on the agenda for today's show. We're going to open up the mailbag and answer as many of the listener questions as we can over the next hour that we received. I tweeted out the bad signal earlier today asking for the questions, and the listeners came through for us with some really good stuff. So if you're listening right now and you feel like you missed out on getting one in this time, I'm going to try to do these every Friday moving forward to mix in some listener interaction and slide into the weekend with a fun show. So you can get involved in future editions. So with that said, let's jump right into this.

batch of questions. And I've got a really good one here from from Samuel Fleming who asks, anecdotally, it seems like bad teams are really, really bad at successfully and cleanly passing the puck. Statistically, does that hold up? And Jack, I'll let you go first on this one, because my answer will be more anecdotal. I know that you experimented this past off season with kind of working on a passing metric that kind of helped combine the passing data we do have into one to get a better sense of who the best passers in the game are. You want to talk about that and then try to answer Samuel Fleming's question if there is some sort of statistical evidence behind it?

Yeah, so I mean, the only way for us in the public to answer that question at all statistically is to give a shout out to Corey Schneider's Altruy Zones Project, without which we'd be flying totally blind. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the team data, there is a pretty good lineup between teams that are not passing the puck very often, and when they are, they're not doing a very good job of it.

You look at teams that dump the puck into the zone a lot, you know, unless you're a, a freak team like the Carolina Hurricanes that has the skill to back that up. Oftentimes, that means you're not getting clean looks. And if you're passing the puck unsuccessfully, if you're turning the puck over on zone exits, especially, that's going to get you in a lot of trouble. And, you know, I think that there's pretty good reasons behind that.

I mean, I watched the Penguins' Coyote's game last night. The coyotes are really struggling to move the puck. And one of the reasons for it is you got a combination of, you know, these kind of grinder-type players that you often find on these worst teams who aren't really attempting passes. And then you got these younger type players who maybe are not as acclimated to the pace of the NHL game

who are maybe struggling to complete the passes. So I think that combination is exactly what he pointed at, and you definitely see that represented in the data. Yeah, I think we can also break it down even on a team level versus individual level, right? On the team level, I certainly think what Samuel is kind of hinting at here is true. Like, I think if you're constantly failing to string together,

passes cleanly, whether it's breaking out of your own zone or in the offensive zone, it's going to bleed into your results at both ends of the ice. And it's going to be kind of tough to work around that unless you just have kind of singular game-changing talents like a Connor McDavid who can just basically take the puck coast to coast himself and do it without passing. But I think the interesting follow-up question to that then is how much of that can be influenced by coaching? Because I think we've seen, you know, Daryl Sutter coming into Calgary in sort of the system he's put into place in Calgary with the way the flames play now. in terms of how he provides his players basically with closer outlets or safer options.

Like the entire system is based around puck support and sort of the connectivity of players where it feels like when they're at their best, it's five guys on the ice who are all moving together and it's not just kind of floating around and big spaces where you have to kind of hit these home run passes. And we've also seen, I think, you know, Mike Sullivan, as you're speaking of the penguins there, when he came in and took over the penguins, he made life so much easier on his defensemen by creating these kind of shorter outlets and not necessarily. having Crosby and Malk

can have to go back and do it all themselves every single time and it led to a much smoother process coming out of their own zone. So I kind of wonder, you know, at some point it is a talent-based game. Like if you don't have the horses, it's going to be tough to work around that no matter what. But I do think that coaching

ties into this in terms of like putting your players in a position to succeed by having them in the right places on the ice more often than not. Yep. Yeah. Watch I mean, watch the Panthers this year. I guess that'll be a good case study because they obviously lost quite a at passing talent in Hubert and Weger, but they also still have a lot of passion talent, but they have a different system. So it's obviously too early to tell, but it'll be interesting

to keep tabs on them and see how much what you're saying there really comes into effect with a big coaching change like they had. Yeah, I think on the individual level, the only point that I want to make, you mention Quay Schneider, I did want to give him love because, I mean, he's a hero for tirelessly tracking all this stuff and helping shed a light on it. But I think the truth is we're still relatively in the dark, even with that, just compared to what the access you have in basketball, football, you know, you name it soccer in terms of the data they have. I see sometimes of like, you know, where the passes are going, the success rate, obviously,

but then even kind of more granular stuff like proximity of defenders when you're passing into a certain player or kind of where it is in the field and so on and so forth. And so I hope, you know, one day we have access to play with that stuff more because right now we're currently mostly basing a lot of playmaking stuff. Anecdotally, either in terms of diet tests of seeing like, okay, this player makes really smooth passes time and time again. Or just using assist and being like, all right, the player who has the most assist is probably the best playmaker in the game. And that's clearly flawed because you're just, you're kind of reliant on the player receiving the past, actually putting it into the net. Otherwise, you don't get credit for it, which I guess is why we care so much about looking at stuff like shot and chance setups as opposed to actual like raw assist that lead the goals.

Yep. So if the NHL is listening right now, hint, it would be nice to have some of that extra data. I guess, I guess, okay, one final thing on this, and then we can move on to a next question. You know, the Blues last year are a classic example of this where they were 28th in attempts, 25th in shots, 17th and expected goals, and yet they were a top five offensive team and led the league in shooting percentage. And not necessarily that they're going to completely replicate that shooting percentage this season, even if they played the exact same way, but it was pretty clear watching them that those results were influenced by strategy,

where they were actively trying to get the goalie moving laterally as much as they could, and they were seeking out these passing sequences as opposed to just hammering the puck kind of blindly from the point. And we'll see if they're able to kind of carry that over this season and have that same success. But I guess that will help answer the question a little bit in terms of how much of it is sort of actually replicable

and how much of it is, okay, this game can be kind of random sometimes the puck is bouncing around and sometimes going for those passes just isn't going to work for you. Yeah, absolutely. Having Robert Thomas and Jordan Khyra is not going to hurt that strategy. Yeah. Okay. Second question here. From Tommy McDonny asks, with the skill level on the devil's roster, how much is Lindy Ruff holding them back?

And I think a related question that we need to tie into this is Mani Silverstein asking, how much should I overreact on McKenzie Blackwood's first game? Man, I mean, they have. a guy waiting in the wings who seemingly based on what he did last year would be perfectly happy to implement exactly the kind of system we were just talking about, you know, the strings of passes the fast transition game.

I mean, how many times can the devil's really get as high hopes coming into the season and then let us down? Way too early to say that that's going to happen. You know, McKenzie Blackwood, I mean, I would remind people that there was like, Desna Hype and Team Kans the Olympic starting goalie hype for him after a hot start in 2021. So I feel like we do have to apply the inverse here and maybe give him a little bit of rope. But, you know, I will say, seeing him and Phil Grubauer both allow goals in the first five minutes of their first games this year gave my, my predictive models a little bit of a shutter.

So I would like to see them, you know, maybe have a bit more of a bounce back than we see from them in the first game. But I wouldn't necessarily panic yet, but I would, you know, if I was. was a betting man and I was had put money on that coach firing line then you know lindy rough would not have been a terrible one and you know certainly that first game you're already hearing a lot of heat on him of the devil's fans yeah when I had Dom on the other day we we kind of shouted that one out it was a thing plus 75 750 and and I felt like there was a very good likelihood based on kind of limitations of his system and sort of expectations for this team for yet another year that that could lead to some some rumblings there. But yeah, with McKenzie Blackwood, you kind of mentioned that in his

first 75 games, which extended for like two and a half years out there, he had a 918 say percentage. And then over the past two plus years, he's had an 8, 92 say percentage in just 56 games, obviously missed a bunch of time with injuries there and still young. So I think we do need to give him a bit of the benefit of doubt. But I feel like watching him, I guess you mentioned Gruberauer there, like, yeah, him giving up goals in the first minute of the game. That's pretty backbreaking. just feel like no goalie gives up a larger percentage of just like soul crushing demoralizing goals than McKenzie Blackwood has. And we saw that last night against the flyers where they go up one nothing and literally 23 seconds later like a harmless point shot basically goes through him

and into the net and it's tied right away. And that must, if you're a player on the team, like we don't have a way to quantify that necessarily, but that must kind of suck like knowing that you have no faith that your goalie's going to stop the puck that it's like, what are we ultimately playing for? here. We just worked hard to score a goal and take the lead and then all of a sudden just gave it right back through no fault of our own. And so I don't know how much of that is Lindy Ruff, how much of that is McKinsey Blackwood? Like every goalie they used last year, there were seven of them and one of them was Blackwood was absolutely horrible. The public metrics defensively seemed to blame most of it on the goaltending. I think those seven guys combined for, you know, over 60 goals against more

than expected. And they had the devil somewhere as like a middle of the pack defensive team in terms of giving up high danger chances and expected goals against. I felt like watching that team last year that didn't pass the smell test for me. I mean, they played so much of their game through the rush and we know how much that can lead to giving backup chances the other way. And it felt like this is where a rough comes into play. The defensive zone breakdowns were time and time again, there'd just be a player wide open kind of standing in the middle of coverage for the other team. I feel like that is a coaching thing. And for whatever, reason the shot data didn't necessarily seem to reflect the fact that I thought the devils were

pretty bad defensively last year and gave most of the blame to their goalies. So I guess that kind of ties into this whole discussion of how much of it is rough, how much of his blackwood, and the answer is probably a bit of both. Yeah, I mean, I was trying to say, and, you know, I like their acquisition of Marino. I like Stigandthaler a lot, you know, Ryan Graves, I think, can pull his way defensively. So it's not like they don't have the soldiers. you know, again, we'll see if it truly is just a system thing, then maybe we snap our fingers at some point in November

when things are going south and suddenly it turns around. But, yeah, I mean, I think when I was writing about Seattle last year, I think there was a stat there that was that they were by far the league leaders in goals allowed within one or two minutes of scoring a goal themselves. And I don't think there's any doubt that that will contribute to a lack of confidence. So, you know, again, one game, and we're talking about goaltending, where if we had seen 82 games of Blackwood, we may not know what's coming next.

But, you know, there's not going to be a lot of rope on this New Jersey Devil's team because Jack Hughes is in his prime, Nico Heesher's in his prime, Dougie Hamilton's not getting younger. You know, the clock's not ticking, but they certainly do not want to end up another season in the basement looking at a high pick. Yeah, yeah, I think if it doesn't come together this year, at least show real signs. Like, I don't know what they'd have to do next off season

for me to buy into it again, but I feel like we've been burned so many times so far. But after one game, let's not get too carried away with all doom and gloom. Let's stick with the theme of kind of defense, though, and defensive metrics. Rory Sumner here asks, curious if you think the narrative on Burns' defensive play

will change it all this season. He's been extremely active, or he's always been extremely active on the defensive side, but it's prone elapses. Do you think the Carolina system slash playing with Slavin will change a lot of how people view him. I think that's a real interesting one. Burns is a guy who I think maybe gets a little too much hate for his defensive play,

especially lately. You know, he's an aggressive player. He doesn't have the mobility that he used to, but he is still, I think he has a very effective stick. His rush defense is still fairly solid as long as he kind of stops you when you're in front of him. I mean, like he alluded to, there are certainly lapses with him. And I think playing with Jacobs-Lavon will almost without a doubt clean up some of those

glasses, but I can't help but remember when Dougie Hamilton was with the Carolina hurricanes. I don't recall Slaven really giving him, at least among most fans, an improved defensive reputation. I think if Burns is having a great defensive year and maybe it's reflected in the metrics, that a lot of that is going to be attributed by most fans to Slaven anyway. So, you know, I mean, it would certainly be nice if Burns has a solid defensive season and it's his doing and he gets credit for it. But it also wouldn't surprise me if it just adds kind of another, you know, another pro-slaven and justifiably pro-slaven, notch in the Norris column.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think he's totally fine in terms of on-puck defense, and, you know, he uses his reach well, and he is very aggressive, and that's such a big part of the battle in terms of on-puck-D. I think sometimes he can kind of get lost a little bit or kind of just, you know, live up to that sort of like Romer title where you can just get himself out of position because he is trying to activate offensively. I think the hurricanes are going to certainly live with that. They know what they're getting from at this point of his career.

They are a very aggressive team that is completely committed to just chasing the puck and swarming. And the good thing about that is typically if he does get beat for whatever reason, there will probably be someone really close by to help out because that's how the hurricanes defend. In his debut for Carolina, he played 1752 at 5-on-5. 15 seconds total without Jacob Slavin. So I think he's in a pretty good position to succeed in that regard.

I'm not sure how much of that is going to change the narrative on what we think of him as a player. But in terms of his actual success and getting great results out of his minutes, I can't think of a better player than Slavin in terms of just like an eraser to be back there and make it fine regardless of what Burns kind of does in terms of his own defending. Yeah, I don't think you could design in a lot of better partner for Brent Burns than Jacob Slavent. So I think that that is hopefully going to be a great combo. And yeah, like you said, this is a nice spot for Burns. He's playing fewer minutes.

He's going to be attached to maybe the best kind of pure defensive defenseant in the NHL. I think it's a great matchup for him. So you and I did a show right after Burns was traded to the Hurricanes, the day off. And we talked about how the fit between him offensively in terms of his like, shooting volume historically and how the hurricanes like to attack in terms of a lot of point shots and then trying to retrieve it and go all over again. Now last year he had kind of, we noted, had toned down his shot volume and it seemed like maybe he was entering a different phase of his

career. He took 13 shot attempts in the debut. Now, I think they took almost 100 as a team against Columbus because they just had the puck the entire game. So I'm not sure that's going to continue game over game. But if you're, you know, one of those people that likes to bet on shot props, especially on individual games, I feel like hammering the burns over pretty much every single game is probably going to be a good bet for the rest of the season. Yeah, I would imagine Brindamore is basically looking to Brent Burns every morning and saying, just do the most Brent Burns stuff that you possibly can't. And at least game one, you seem to do that. Okay. Well, related to that then, Nick here asks, how do the capitals balance getting OV to 895?

goals while at the same time maximizing the team's odds of winning. The power play has deteriorated in large part to a stagnant setup designed to get Ovechkin shots, and he's no longer the 5-15 driver that he used to be. I think that point on the power play are sort of the motives of the team balancing individual accomplishments versus team motivation and team success is a really interesting one. I'm kind of curious for your take on that. Yeah, I think that's a great question. I've been kind of ringing the bell on the Washington Capitol's power play for

a little while now because, I mean, like you said, Ovechkin plays so much on it. Like, way, way, way more than any other player in the league. He basically is just standing in that circle for almost the full two minutes a lot of the time. And, you know, you look at the rate stats and, you know, they're not necessarily what you would expect either for him or for the team. And, you know, you look at the heat maps. The shots are coming from one place. They don't necessarily have prime Nicholas Baxter, you know, deceiving defensemen.

And at this point, the defense. would have to pretty much ignore 10 years of tape to not know where that puck is coming from. So I think it's a real interesting question. I mean, I've said for a while when people were saying that the capitals should, you know, blow it up and trade Ovechkin and all that, you know, the same thing happened with the penguins. When people were saying they should let Malkin and Lantango. Honestly, like, I do kind of think that, you know, you do want to go team first for the next couple of years. But I think once the rebuild does start, we are going to shift more into a let's get,

will be the record mode. That being said, I do think maybe some compromises are due to maybe balance things a little better because, like I said, going up, like leading up to the season, I actually think the Capitals have a pretty good team this year. I really like what they did in the off season. I like what they did with the goaltending. I think that they have a chance in a pretty, you know, a pretty uncertain metro, you could say.

And I think they can make a run at it. So I'm hoping that they don't fully cater to the 895 as fun. if that would be, because I think it would be swandering maybe a little little potential. Yeah, I think so. I mean, the power play, the signs of decline are clearly there, right? Like last year, it fell to 21st in terms of efficiency on a permanent scoring basis, and they haven't scored yet in 16 minutes so far this season. And no backs from there on the half wall is a big part of that.

The predictability, though, is huge. Like, I'm a big proponent of teams playing, especially when they have clearly defined star players playing their top unit power play for like closer to 75% of every two minute, two minute slot, as opposed to the sort of 50-50 split where, all right, you get the first minute, and then if you don't score, you come off the ice and the second unit comes on. It was always, it's always silly to me when teams quit just, you know, for no reason, it's a, kind of self-inflicted area, just taking your five best skaters off the ice after a minute in a great position to score.

Now, I think there is a point of diminishing returns, though, in terms of energy reserves and fatigue and last year, I betchkin played like 86% of the team's power play minutes or something like that. And it helps that a lot of it has spent kind of just standing in one spot and waiting for the puck. But it's probably not an ideal way to go about it when towards the back half of those two minutes, you're probably, you know, the legs are burning, especially at this point of his career and you probably don't have as much ability to kind of chase after the puck and retrieve it and do give the other team different looks. So I think this question is a really interesting one, not that the capitals are going to change their tactics.

I think at this point, I think it's pretty clear of what they're trying to do and they're going to keep doing it. But I think the listener here is on to a good thing. Yep, agreed. Okay, one more quick one here before we go to break. Josephine asks, how bad is J.T. Miller defensively? I don't know what the impetus for this question is, or if there's a dialogue about J.T. Miller's defensive acumen,

but it seems kind of in line with a lot of the themes of what we've been talking about here over the first 25 minutes about kind of defensive metrics and defensive play. Yeah, I don't know if I have a huge amount to say about how bad J.T. Miller's defensively. His defensive metrics certainly aren't good. They're about, you know, they're not uncommon for a player who plays the game the way that he does. You know, they're not kind of exceptionally bad. Like, we're not talking about a guy who's a total outlier. Yeah, you know, like the main issues with J.T. Miller for me are at least the ones that hold me back sometimes from considering it to be kind of that franchise, you know, level amazing player that would be reflected just by looking at the point totals from last season. It is more kind of the five-on-five play in production more so than it is the defense because I think there are certainly plenty of guys what we consider to be franchise level offensive players who have similar defensive profiles. So, yeah, you know, I guess the answer for me on J.T. Miller's defense, unless I was to kind of look at him for a whole lot of games focusing on it, is, yeah, you know, it's pretty part for the course for a player of his kind of style. Yeah, I don't really have much to say about Miller specifically here. I just kind of want to bring up this question because it raised the larger point of how much of our evaluations of, like, individual defensive play just comes down a sort of, you know, reputation that's already been established or the way we, we're,

for every reason we think about a player or, you know, in some cases, especially for forwards, like how much how much importance we place on faceoffs, like if someone's going to draw, for whatever reason, it's automatically associated with all right, this guy is a good two-way player. And it's like, it doesn't really have that much to do with it. I do wonder for a lot of these players, and you know, this does tie into Miller because of how many minutes he plays for the Canucks in all situations and how much they rely on him and how much responsibility he has on his plate. I think so much of defensive ability comes down to like just, effort and kind of being involved in that regard and awareness as opposed to actual, you know,

defensive strength. And I think for a lot of players, you know, they probably have better defensive metrics if they just played a little bit less and were able to just go, you know, full blast on 100% of their shifts as opposed to kind of sometimes coasting and picking their spots and trying to, you know, leak out and score offensively if their team really relies on them to do so in a scoring role. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, would I rather have dry saddle, his current defensive profile and his production and elite offense,

then a 50-point dry-siddle who back-checked his ass off on his butt-offs. I don't know what the rules are here. Back-checked hard on every single play. I think I'd rather have dry-sidal play his best. And, you know, I think it's probably the same thing for J.T. Miller. You might want him to approve his two-way play a little bit, but, you know, I think there may be a bigger fish to fry. Well, most players with good defensive metrics are the ones where it's usually winged.

is that nothing really happens while they're on the ice one way or another, right? And if you're being paid as such and being relied upon to actually create offensively, that's you might be able to get better defensive results, but it might ultimately be a net negative for your team based on where your position. Yeah, you know, there's kind of two classes. You're Zach Aston, Reese's, and Riley Nash's, so I don't think anybody is asking to pay, you know, $9.5 million a year. And then you do have some, you know, real kind of possession driving kind of players.

but usually what you see for those high-end offensive guys is somewhere between elite offensively and poor defensively or lead offensively and just okay defensively in terms of the on-ice impacts. So, yeah, I think that's really what it comes down to for me. All right, Jack, we're going to take a quick break here from the mailbag, and then we're going to come back with more questions in a few. So you are listening to the HockeyPDO cast on the SportsNet Radio Network.

All right, we're back with more mailback questions here on the HockeyPEDO cast. Jack, here's a question for us from Galktown. Ask everyone in Ottawa has tunnel vision focused on acquiring Jacob Chikrin. Are there any other dark horse acquisition targets you folks think would be a better fit? We can talk about that and we can also talk about Chikrin here as well to kind of tie it in together. Yeah, I like Chikrin a lot. You know, I think maybe the staff don't tell the full story with him last year. He really was kind of on an island.

I think he maybe took it upon himself to carry a larger load offensively than maybe he was ready for, which led him to taking way more shots than you would ever desire a defenseman to take on a team that didn't have the skill to track down those rebounds. I think that he could be a solid number two, maybe a really good number three on a contending team. I like the size. I like the defensive skill set. I think skating is solid even if the creativity isn't quite up there with a guy like Shabbat, for example. For Ottawa, I see what they're thinking. I see why he makes sense in terms of what he can bring to fiat.

defensively to really back up a guy like Shabbat or as Sanderson really pops off. The issue for me with him, aside from the cost, which of course seems to be pretty gargantuan. And we'll see, you know, in the end where it ends up, it's the handedness. You know, he has never played on the right side before. You often hear from a lot of fans in Ottawa, oh, he's played the right side. Craig Morgan, who covers the coyotes, told me he asked coaches, he said, this guy has never played the right side before in his career. If he has, it's been for like 30 seconds at a time at the end of games.

So you're talking about a huge price in terms of futures for a guy who I think is maybe a good supporting guy, which is certainly what they need, but you're also maybe asking him to play a position that he's not really used to, and you don't know necessarily whether he's going to be at his best. And you don't even really quite know what his best is because he's obviously been in that Arizona environment. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, the appeal is obvious, right? He turns 25 this spring fits kind of right in line with most of their core. And I think just as importantly, he's under contract for not only this year, but two further.

And I think that's probably quite appealing to Ottawa to not have to deal with, you know, upcoming contract negotiations and having to potentially, you know, pay a big price for him on the open market. I don't really see why, like everyone just wants to make this happen. and I would like to see Jacob Chikrin playing in a better environment where he can succeed and play with other good players. If you're Arizona, though, at this point, what is the real incentive to give in it all? Like, if you're them, you're just waiting this out and hoping that eventually someone's going to kind of panic and overpay. And like you have that term. It's not like a thing where, okay, we have to do this by this trade deadline or we're going to lose him.

I don't think he's such a difference maker that having him play for them when he does come back is going to all of a sudden get them extra wins and ruin their draft lottery odds. He's not that type of player. So if you're Arizona beyond, I guess, just doing him a solid or not having him kind of sulking around the team, I don't really see what the incentive is if someone's not going to pay like 110 cents on the dollar. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, you turn that around for the Ottawa Senators. You know, a lot of people obviously think that they are a strong team that's going to contend for a wild card spot.

Yeah, I don't think that's certainly don't think that's totally out of the question. Does getting Chikering right now and paying the massive premium for them launch them into the cup contenders tier? I'm not so sure about that, at least not in the short term. You know, I think a lot for me in terms of whether you want to spend like the real kind of huge return. that Arizona is supposedly looking for is, you know, if you're the Ottawa Senators, you're looking at Thomas Shabbat and you're looking at presumably they think of Jake Sanderson as a guy who is one of the top defensive prospects in hockey and is going to be like a number one or number two quality defenseman. You know, do you really need to sell the farm for a guy like

Chikrin who, you know, like I said, there's question marks about him whether, you know, some people cite the injury history or what I just said about is his handedness. You know, you might want to look at some maybe cheaper or maybe shorter term options to maybe fill in the blanks. And then you can kind of see where you are. You can see how Sanderson is coming along. So, Tim, I don't know if you came up with any answers for his question in terms of who else they might want to look at. I mean, I know it's kind of, you know, besides the point now because he got traded this offseason. But like John Marino was the absolute perfect player for them.

Yeah. Like in terms of the skill set, hand in his age. contract like it i don't know if those talks ever materialized whether they were interested whether it came along i don't think it's like what the devils gave up was necessarily such a godfather offer that ottawa couldn't have matched that like i it seemed like a pretty reasonable price to pay and i it's a real shame if they didn't you know see that through properly maybe maybe they did and pittsburgh just decided to to go with what new jersey offered instead but um he would have been like the ideal candidate for exactly what they need yeah

I mean, you can envision that trade happening with Eric Bransstrom going to Pittsburgh instead of Tith Smith. But again, who knows what Pittsburgh thinks about that player. Yeah, Marino, I mean, you know, obviously McKenzie Uighur is a guy who a lot of people are talking about. He has kind of a similar thing with Chikrin where he is, you know, he plays the other side. You know, obviously he's right-handed, so he can play the right side. But, you know, I think Calgary is kind of maximizing where he is in terms of he gets to play with Chris Tanef, who I think is maybe a more natural. fit for the kind of game he plays than a guy like Shabbat would be.

I mean, who knows about Sanders, then I guess we'll see what he develops into. You know, a guy who I was looking at, this was Matt Roy out of Los Angeles. Similar defensive player to John Marino doesn't make a lot of money. And, you know, well, you might say, well, if he's so good, why would L.A. want to move him? Purely just a factor of the amount of talent they have on the right side of that organization right now. Like they're already going to be struggling to get guys minutes. You know, they clearly believe in Sean Jersey. They believe in Spence.

They've given Walker an extended contract. And then there's a guy named Drew Dowdy on that team who I think they like to give a couple minutes too. And Brian Clark who made the team. And Brand Clark, who, yeah, he's made the team. He's also a right defenseman. You know, I mean, I like Roy a lot. I think he's done some really nice things. He's relatively cheap.

I think he only makes something like $3.1 million against the cap. he's young he's only locked in for kind of one more year after that you can kind of see how things fit because other than that i mean there are real short-term band-aid options like you could look at a guy like gillan de mellow back i i liked what he did in ottawa and i think he's maybe getting underutilized in winnipeg you know nick jensen uh obviously has a fairly large role in washington right now but he is a pending ufay maybe they can look at him for some short-term help down the line but Roy is the guy who stands out to me, given that they weren't able to capitalize on, I think, a solid market in the off season on that kind of right-handed defensive defense. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough to find a player who's, you know, 24 to 27 years old who's under contract at a reasonable price that plays the right side and is available. So I guess that kind of like hammers on the point. And that's exactly why the coyote should not be in a rush to trade away Jacob Jekkerun just for the same. of completing the trade. Okay, I got a couple questions here about Mason Marchment. Actually, the largest volume of questions I got was about Mason Marchment. And a friend of the podcast, Ian Tulloch asks in particular, he says, well, he says, I watch a lot of Mason Marchment, both in the H.O.

The Marleys and then in a short stain with the Leafs. Where did this, you know, skilled version of him come from? Is he just an outlier? Or can his journey and development teach us something about player evaluation? I mean, that's a great question. Honestly, I think Ian might be more well positioned to speak about that than me. I mean, Mason Martian was not even a guy who was on my radar until he popped up in Florida last year. You know, he kind of looked when he got signed by the Panthers, like he was like a pretty decent,

or when he popped off last year, I guess. You know, previously he had looked like a pretty decent, you know, bottom six player. Certainly nothing to complain about, kind of similar to a lot of those guys that the leads have let go and have been able to kind of find their niche in bottom sixes around the league. And then you scored at a 70-point pace as a fourth-liner, which you don't see very often, while putting up elite play-driving numbers, including some of the best defensive metrics in the league.

So if there was a development index that could lead you to believe that that would happen, then some GM would be winning their sixth straight Stanley Cup because I mean it really does seem to be almost like a one-off. And, you know, I mean, we saw kind of the Florida effect on a lot of players in the past couple years with the, with the Quenville Burnett system. We'll see how that pans out this year. But it really might have been just kind of the perfect player and the perfect place of the perfect time. And then, you know, we'll maybe see with the Dallas stars that he can settle in and be a legit top six player moving forward. And then maybe there was just something in his game that that, that, that,

allowed that to translate. Yeah, I mean, I think the league itself this summer didn't really know what to do with Mason Marchman, right? Like last year, he only Johnny Goodrow and Mitch Marner finished with higher points per 60 for like regularly playing forwards or any player at five on five. And yeah, sure, part of it was, you know, he didn't play the full season. He didn't play a major minutes and it was kind of fueled by a pretty high. on ice shooting percentage that didn't seem like something you should probably bank on.

But how often is a 27-year-old forward with size and speed who produces at that level available for 4.5 million over four years? Like that seems like, you know, it's a lot for a player that just kind of came out of nowhere, but it's not in the grand scheme of things, some sort of monumental commitment where, okay, if he just winds up being like a good third-line player for you, you've all of a sudden tied up your cap for the foreseeable future. And we'll see what he does in Dallas. He sure looked at in his debut, scored a beautiful goal off the rush,

had another tap in on the power play. Seems like a pretty good player. I think it could very well be a one-off. It could just be this is what happens sometimes. Like players develop at different trajectories. Sometimes it kind of just come out of nowhere and develop late. But I'm more and more buying into the fact that he's like legitimately a very good player as opposed to just kind of being this like one-hit wonder.

Yeah, no, I think the signs are there that he's a good player. You know, certainly not very many people fluken have any kinds of season that he had last year. And you lay out the physical characteristics, the speed, the strength, the excellent defensive numbers, the forechecking. You know, it does certainly sound a lot like Valerian and Chishkin, who's another guy who shocked a lot of people by breaking out a couple years ago and then obviously playing a huge role with the abs. So it may just be that some of these guys, they find themselves. maybe buried in systems or on fourth lines where they're not really suited. And then when they get a chance on a team that kind of plays the way that they're made to play, then suddenly you're talking about a real-life win contributor.

So, like you said, hopefully he keeps it up in Dallas because it is an excellent story. And also it seems to drive Lee stands crazy whenever he scores a goal. So as someone in Toronto, I don't exactly mind that either. Hey, Dennis Mulligan's looking pretty good too. So it could be a little bit in there. Yeah. Okay, Corey Berwick here asks, what negative to a player's skill set

would you be more willing to look at, look past and take a chance on smaller size or poor skating? And then he says, I'd still lean smaller players as a bigger market and efficiency, but, and then he kind of lists them,

the mog in Marchment trade. I think you can take this from a statistical angle in terms of what you'd be looking for in terms of like a player to kind of poach from someone, or we can also look at it from a sort of more eye test version of like when you watch them play what one thing that them being really good or bad at would give you hope that you could kind of take them, bring them into your situation and get more out of them than their current team is getting.

Yeah, it's a tricky one. I mean, Cam Sharon, who I think you had on your show this week, he had that piece for the athletic where he talked about, you know, he essentially argued that market inefficiencies are closing rapidly in the NHL and half of the past 10 years or so. So a lot more is happening kind of on the margins than he used to see. and, you know, I mean, anecdotally, you can think of plenty of examples of guys who got underrated because they weren't great skaters or guys who got underrated because they didn't have good size. We can also think of plenty of guys who didn't work out because they weren't good skaters and didn't work out because they were too small. It's a difficult one.

I mean, you know, to shout out someone else doing good work, Chance McCallum, or Chants or Chase, I think it might be Chase. I think it might be Chase. McCallum did a good analysis of, you know, draft biases and inefficiencies. this off season where he did find that there did seem to still be a little bit of inefficiency coming for smaller players, if maybe not as pronounced as it used to be. So there might be something still there, and there certainly are players who get underrated for that. But, you know, I will say, the general rule, I would rather have the average strong skating

NHL player than the average weaker skating one. And I think the success of teams like the ads and, you know, I mean, even the lightning with what they were able to do at the bottom parts of their line. in terms of skating would point you in that direction, even if there are exceptions who still manage to be major impact players while not being quite as fleet of foot. Yeah, yeah. Like when you see, you know, the story of someone like Mark Stone, for example, it's not supposed to show you that you can work around bad skating.

It only kind of reinforces, like, what, how remarkable he is and basically everything else that he's been able to be so effective despite, you know, his choppy skating stride and the fact that he can't really beat anyone in a foot race. I think there are players who, Osamaoto, Oliver Bjorks ran yesterday with Shana. Like, you know, he's not necessarily the fastest or the strongest or the most skilled player, but he's always able to get to where he needs to on the ice, especially in the offensive zone. Like, he just posts up in the slot and somehow is able to fire off shot after shot from there, despite the fact that I assume the other team has done pre-scouting and is aware of him trying to do so.

And so there's guys who just like find a way craftily to get to their spots even without necessarily blazing speed or anything like that. But I don't know. I think this is one of those questions where it actually does require a lot of sort of boots on the ground work in terms of actually getting to know the players in terms of their work ethic and whether they're actually going to get better at an individual weakness because otherwise they're probably going to be bad at that for a reason. And if they don't do something to fix it, then it seems like, you know, kind of foolish to expect that you're all of a sudden going to get more out of them. Yeah. I do disagree with Cam, though. I love Cam. He's been on the show.

He's going to be on the show plenty of this year. I disagree with him. Like, the league is getting smarter. I disagree with him that there are no more market in efficiencies, though. I think just seeing what transpires in the league and also how behind the scenes talking to people, like, teams are getting smarter and making more, like, statistical based decisions and informed ones. But at the end of the day, sometimes in certain organizations, there's a GM who just gets passionate. about something or irrationally dislikes a player and will trade them or we'll get rid of them for less than their worth despite what their staff around them is probably telling them.

And that still happens in the league. And so I certainly still think there are GMs you can take advantage of in today's NHL. Yep, I would agree with that. I mean, as someone who takes a lot of heat from fans for pointing out when I think maybe GMs did not make the most efficient decisions, they definitely still exist. It might be, I mean, the example he uses in his piece is that, you know, Maybe at least, maybe, you know, shooting percentage is something that might be looked at before giving a sudden 35-wheel score, you know, $7 million over eight years when they just turned 32 or something. Yeah. All right. I got a question here from Cabernet-Ferk, and he asks Suzuki and Five-on-Five, why are they great by the eye test, but apparently not by the numbers and what would be a better fit for both.

I talked a lot about Caulfield yesterday, so I don't necessarily want to spend too much time on this one. but it did generate some interest online from people jumping in. So I'm kind of curious for your take on that. I mean, they're certainly dynamic. There's no doubt about that. I think playing together really does open up their offense in a way that is not necessarily the case when they're separate. I think they have good passing chemistry. You know, like Suzuki's good at finding Caulfield.

Cawfield has obviously exploded in terms of his goal scoring ever since he, obviously, the coaching change happened. But he's had the chance to play Suzuki consistent. you know, I said it this summer, you know, I talked to people on Montreal radio who would talk about, you know, Suzuki is being ready to break out as this, you know, an elite two-way forward in this league. You know, the real question for me with them is just whether the defense can stay where you want it to when those guys are on the ice. Because, you know, I think the five-on-five results that he's pointing to, you know, they look great by the eye test, but, you know, the stats aren't so good. It really is mostly defensive. You kind of see the wheels fall off at Suzuki, who otherwise is a superb defensive player when he's separated from Coughfield.

And I think that really is just the way he's playing the game offensively changes. They're playing more high events. They're playing faster. They're playing, you know, again, a more dynamic game, which of the eye test is awesome, especially if you're watching a rebuilding team like the Havs, where maybe them giving up a goal is not going to break your heart quite as much as it would if they were one of the better teams in the league. but I mean the question for me of Suzuki's development is can he keep playing this game at this level offensively while maybe being able to bring back some of those more defensive elements in this game or are we just going to see you know that kind of go out the window a little bit

see these guys just start piling up points and maybe put a little bit more strain on their blue line uh mike k here asks as far as you guys know how much weight does management and coaching staff put into analytics while creating their lineup. I just wonder, because as a Ducks fan, I've watched the Lundstrom-Silverberg combo get stuck together for over a year now, and in no point have they been strong together. It drives me nuts. So I really wonder, do coaches

look at them and just get crushed in expected gold share and still decide to do nothing? I think it's, you know, this is a very sort of speculative question. I'm sure every organization is different. I, from what I gather at this point, every team

has someone or a group of individuals who are putting together reports before the game, at each intermission, throughout the game, and then after the game, and then prep before the next game on all of this stuff. And I guess ultimately it just comes down to how much your coach is willing to use it or if they're just receiving that report

quite literally just throwing it on the garbage right away. Yep, I would agree with that. I think your sources are probably a little better than mine, and that lines up with what I would imagine happens where I would, I would expect that coaches, especially ones who've been in the league quite a while, may not necessarily want a 20-year-thirty-something analyst telling them to split up a line that they've had swirling around in their head since, you know, an off-season trade. So I think that lines up.

I think people would be surprised by how much sort of the human nature element of, like, comfort level and risk tolerance comes into play here. Like I think it's fair to say that, you know, for us from the outside, you look at something, it's very easy to kind of just look at, look at the numbers or even watch the tape and be like, identify things that the coach probably sees themselves and be like, all right, this isn't working. You should change it. But they feel like from like a self-preservation perspective, they're just more comfortable with that and they're not willing to live with the results that could otherwise happen away from it if they feel like they break it up and it's going to get even worse. And so they just stick with something even though they probably like all of these coaches are aware of all this stuff and know it well. And even if they don't know the exact expected goal share rate, they're probably, like I imagine Dallas Eganz is probably pretty familiar with the fact that Lundstrom and Zilberg aren't doing that well together.

But I'm sure that it's also there's a reason for why it keeps rolling them out there beyond just not knowing any better. Yeah, that sounds right. Okay, one final one here. Let's end with one for the local Vancouver. Hoover a crowd. We got a question about Quinn Hughes and kind of where he ranks up with some of the other young defensemen and sort of how good he is. I know that I think it was two years ago now where his numbers, especially defensively, plummeted quite a bit and he was struggling.

And I feel like, you know, just from watching him, it's certainly rebounded. And I think he's ironed out a lot of the flaws in his game. At that size, it's always going to be, there's going to be certain limitations and certain challenges, but I think what he brings to the table is pretty clearly such a net positive. But how would you sort of answer that in terms of comparing him to some of the other young top defensemen in the game and his reputation and also his metrics? Yeah, I mean, Hughes is such a tough one because there are parts of his game where you could argue there's no one in the league better at that. I mean, his passing, you know, I think even guys like Yossi and McCar are maybe not quite on his level when it comes to how well he moves the puck.

and the sheer volume of passes that he sends in the offensive zone and in transition. I mean, that's what he makes his money on, and I think it's well-deserved. You know, the questions come. I mean, like you said, you know, even if the defense isn't totally catastrophic or even if he isn't getting completely pushed around in the defensive zone, I do think that there are pretty evident weaknesses in his defensive game, and I think, you know, maybe something is not necessarily connecting offensively as well, and, you know, that could really change on a dime, I mean, especially at his age.

So when I was doing kind of a ranking, the NHL defenseman article for elite prospects a couple weeks ago, I had to have him high up there just because, you know, his potential and his offensive skill set is just so high level. I would love for this season to be the year where it all kind of comes together for him. Because I really think that he has the potential to be one of the elite defensemen in the league. He just has things that he maybe needs to tidy up and maybe needs to work on making his size, not as much of a disadvantage defensively as maybe it has been in the past. Yeah. All right, Jack.

That is going to be it for today's episode of the PDOCast and this edition of the mailbag. I'll let you quickly plug some stuff and wherever you can check out your work. They can follow me at J. Fresh Hockey on Twitter. They can subscribe to the Patreon for hockey visualizations, J. Fresh Hockey on Patreon. And they can read my work at EPRinkside, Elite Prospects where I write about the NHL a couple times every month. Love it. Well, we'll certainly have you back on. The only thing I have to promote is this show.

So if you're listening, just keep coming back here every single weekday. We're going to be back on Monday with the watchability rankings, which is one of my favorite shows to do every season. So have a good weekend. Thank you for listening to the Hockeypedocast on the SportsNet Radio Network.