The Hockey PDOcast - The future of player contracts in the NHL & hockey business

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Dimitri is joined by Sean Shapiro from EP Rinkside. Sean is a staff writer specializing in NHL Business. The guys discuss player contracts and where they're headed in the future.  The show also dives into hockey media.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 Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich, and joining me on today's show is my good buddy, Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? I'm pretty good. Good.

It's actually my son's, my son's second birthday today. Oh, there we go. Congratulations to you and your son. That's exciting. So it's, yeah, it was, he's, I'll pick them up from daycare a little bit later today, but earlier today he got like a, we get him like a hot wheels like track thing, which I may, me and his older sister may have, may or may not have had more fun with this morning than he did. So it's a good day in the Shapiro household.

There we go. Well, hopefully we can make that day even better with this, what this podcast may do here. I'm going to read you a line that I read on someone's substack recently. There are too many hockey podcasts. It's an oversaturated market. And if you don't have an established podcast in 2022, it's probably too late. Most podcasts are too long. When a podcast is an hour long, I start to worry about being able to commit to it, to listening to it. So I just rarely even start.

Sean, who would say something like that? That person, that person clearly is misguided and lost and doesn't have an established hockey podcast. Well, here's a thing. We don't have to worry about that in the HockeyoCadio cast because this is a 50-minute show these days. So 50 minutes falls under the hour long mark. So I think it's not too long for anyone to commit.

It's just the right amount. No, this will be a blast man. I'm excited to catch up with you. It's been a while since we did a show together. I think the last time we did a show, you know, you had moved on from covering the stars, but I feel like we still did a Star's Deep Dye. You're still my go-to stars guy.

It's funny. Like, in that market, it's Matthew DeFranx who's leaving to cover the blues. soon. I had him on recently. I love the way he covers the team. You know, you go on down the line, Bob Sterram, I check in with him all the time. He's kind of a go-toe for me. There's so much good stars content. And then I do like shows about the stars and people ask me like, why are you, why are you so obsessed with this team? And for a couple of years there, especially under Rick bonus, it was a very fair question. This year, they've been much more exciting to watch.

And we documented that when I did a Stars Deepa recently. But I'm still, I'm still obsessed with the Dallas stars. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's a team that has always been fascinating off the ice, even when the play on the ice sometimes was not, was not so entertaining. And it's, that's, no, it's, it's, it's funny to see, like, obviously Matt, that's a good, good buddy of mine and good to see him. I'm happy for him to be going, he's moving, doing a geographic move for family reasons so happy for him but he's going from one uh one team that's a little that's that's be honest a little less entertaining to cover just at the end of the day well well well i don't think it's a coincidence that the san louis blues have i think won a four in a row

oh yeah almost ever almost dating back to uh to matt's uh it's this it's it's it's it's the it's the it's the de frank's bump it's the you know how everyone they they won the the blues the blues win the in 2019 and you couldn't and you couldn't read a single story about the, read a story without seeing something about all they were in last place and an interim coach. And so when they're in the playoffs this year, I expect every single major media outlet to look back to the DeFrank's bump as the, the reason the blues are turned everything around.

I love that. I love that. Let's talk a bit about Jason Robertson. I did want to, want to discuss him because oftentimes, like I've written a bunch about him in the past. And I, I, the stats that that line puts up with him, Rupert Hins, and Joe Pavelski is, is so hilarious, both compared to the rest of the team. Yeah. So just pretty much every other top line, like their, their on-off splits are just continuously through the roof.

And the rest of the team has played better this season, but they're still carrying so much of the weight. And whenever I tweet about Jason Robertson, he has a very big passionate following, which is great. you love to see it. But then there's also this contingent that's like, man, no one, like this guy doesn't get talked about nearly enough. And it's interesting because I guess that's fair to say because if, you know, he's so fun to watch. He does it in such a unique, different way compared to a lot of the traditional, you know,

pun intended stars in today's game where it's such a speed oriented game. And so when you watch Connor McDavid or you watch Nathan McKinnon, it's very easy for someone who doesn't even know anything about hockey to watch them and say, oh, I get it. This guy is really good. You can see that he moves faster than everyone else. He takes the puck on his end from his end of the ice,

goes coast to coast, goes through everyone, scores. Yeah, that makes sense. When you watch Jason Robertson, his game is so much more nuanced in terms of moving off of the puck and kind of using his instincts and veteran savvy, despite the fact that he's so young and hasn't been in the league that long

to kind of get to the right spots and make it happen. And he plays off of Rupéhant's speed so well. But his stats are so good that I think people might be right. Like maybe we should be talking more about Jason Robertson. It hasn't quite gotten to the Alexander Barkov type of he's under underrated yet. He probably still is because he's a bona fide superstar and he's posting stats that are right up there with everyone. I'll give you a few. He's fifth in five on five points per 60.

He's first in all situations point per 60 ahead of Connor McDi. David. He's got 11 goals and 14 assists in his 16 games so far. And he's doing all of that after essentially hunting training camp, right? Like he was waiting for a new contract and he wasn't participating in all of the regular kind of gearing up to the season. And he's still doing this. So yeah, maybe we should be talking more about Jason Robert. Yeah. It's good that you brought up Barkoff because I was thinking about that myself as you were laying that out. It's like, at what point does he become, does he take over Markov's throne as the mantle of, we'll have for four straight years will have NHL players voting who the most underrated guy is, and it'll be

Robertson all of a sudden are people talking about that. I mean, Robertson's game to me, the one thing that I love so much about his game, and I've written about this a little bit, and I've talked about him, to me, and it's the reason that I feel like he's had so much success, kind of, even without training camp, is his game, he found success in Rick Bonas's system. He scored four. 40 goals with Rick Bonas as his head coach. And I saw Dallas fans kind of freaking out. Like, oh, no, Jason's not signed. Is he going to, what's going to happen with in his system?

He scored 40 goals in that system. Like, it's, you're not. And he's such a, like, I'm a big soccer guy. And so to me, he's kind of, Robertson has always been kind of like that guy who, like, the pro number nine type in the number nine center forward in soccer, the guy who you can who can disappear and just kind of float around the game and kind of do nothing for a while. And then there'll be that subtle moment where it's either it could be a shot, it could be the way he moves to make space, where all of a sudden it changes the game. And that's something that lives up in his brain.

It's a complete brain-based thing. And this is a guy who when he was getting drafted, everyone in his draft here, myself included. one's writing and saying like, oh, will he be able to skate in the NHL? Will he be, well, is the skating good enough? The skating, the skating, the skating, the skating. Like, well, you know what? Joe Povsky's not a great skater. Yeah.

He's at 38. He's still going. And it's, I love the, like, I was watching the, uh, watching the Dallas game against Tampa the other night. I was, uh, one of the things I really liked about the, it was a goal by Marchment, but so often, Robert, one of the thing that, one of the thing that one, on the Marchman goal, I really like something Robertson did, where you and I have both been John Klingberg defenders in the past,

and the way he shoots the puck, and the way he shoots the very typical area shot. And obviously, Bloomberg's not having the greatest year of Anaheim. But Robertson's shot to set up Marshman's goal was very similar to that. Instead of being, a lot of times you get the forward in that space, right? And you get the guy who's ripping and gripping and aim. And instead of doing that, Robertson just kind of adjusted and took like that kind of defenseman floating shot that it was able to tip in. And that's the type of thing where it's going to look like if you don't watch Jason Robert every night, you're like, oh, that's a flubbed shot.

That's intentional. And that's what I love about his game. Like it's it's all up here. I mean, this is a podcast, so I'm pointing at my head everyone. but like and it's and it's and it's funny too to see kind of it i love that he has a brother in the league who has to play a completely different way like it's it's because nick is a chaos on skates and jason is the complete opposite yeah well and i think part of why um he's almost inextricable at this point from his line mates first off i think the three of them compliment

each other so well i've discussed on this podcast in the past kind of how they almost like create this runway through the middle of the ice for for rupe hins to use his speed to just skate through and um pavelski and robertson are so good at kind of working off the wall and extending possessions and giving them multiple opportunities so it's not just purely a one and done rush attack for them but i you know i mentioned robertson's fifth and five-on-five point rate well pavelski's fourth and hints the seventh so i mean yeah they're in a pretty pretty good standing all three of those guys get it done and so i think that kind of ties into it i think i think i I think you hit the nail in the head, though. When you watch him, you could think, okay, this was a fluke or, oh, that was unimpressive. But then if you watch enough reps of them, you realize that there's kind of a method to the madness and there's a technique that he's repeating.

And I think his feel for the game is almost unmatched, right? Like you talk about a Mark Stone, for example, who does similar things, especially like defensively despite not having great foot speed. Robertson's very similar kind of of that ilk of his ability to get to where he needs to be despite looking like so lumbering and awkward sometimes when he's moving is truly impressive on a sight to behold. Yeah.

And the other thing that he does so well that I really love about his game is that like obviously he feeds off that Pavelski and Hintzline are, the three of them work together tremendously well. the one unfortunate flaw with that line is one member of the line is 38 so we won't be able to see like there's not like a there's not a massive runway for how long this line will be able to to go beyond this season um but the other thing that i really like about robertson is you see with him it's not obviously pevelski and hints elevated his game but he can do it in times when you put when he has been on a different line or he has been with someone else it's not it's not it's not built off, it's not completely built off who he's playing with. He can adjust and play well with

anyone. And that's something that is not, as much as anyone like to say, oh, they're NHL players. They can do that. That's not the case. Not everyone can seamlessly move around like that. Obviously, Robertson is playing better with Pelsky and Hans, but you see him play with Ben, you see him play with anyone else, whether it's at five on five or another situation, he still fits. He still makes everything work and understands what needs to be done. And that's something we saw last year under Rick Bonas. It's something that we haven't seen had to see as much this year because of how the stars have been clicking and that line's been healthy. But in general, like his adept adaptability, my word is right there. His adaptability on everything is great. Just like I mentioned,

the Marchman goal before, where it's like, that's, him and Marchment are never, they're never around the ice together except for that power play situation, but it's still a area of hockey's version of an alley-up that he throws up to him that he knows what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, well, there you go.

We, we're talking about Jason Robertson and we're giving him the love that his game deserves. You know, he's playing on this four-year, $31 million deal, which I don't want to necessarily call a bridge because I think we generally associate that more with like two or three year deals where the money is incredibly low to make it work. Like he's getting paid 7.75, which is a bargain still based on his production. But, you know,

it covers his age 23 through 26 seasons. He'll still have the one more RFA year when it expires. And on the one hand, I imagine for the stars, it would have been nice to just get him locked up for eight years because I feel pretty confident that he's only going to keep getting better and going to cost more. at the same time, I think where this dialogue falls short is, would the player have wanted to take that contract, right? Like if I was advising Jason Roberts, I'd say, probably should not be signing an eight-year deal at this point. If I were I would wait and kind of take this towards our restricted free agency.

And also, you should mention the stars were kind of up against it financially. And when that contract expires, they'll have a ton of money that's going to come off the books with Sagan and Ben and Souter and so on and so forth. But it's interesting they went that route with both him and Ottinger where they went three to four years on guys where it's going to cost them more on the back end of it. But they'll probably, like it doesn't, it's not an indictment on them or like their place in the franchise's plans, if you know what I mean. Yeah. And knowing, obviously, knowing a bit more about this negotiation. And from my understanding of it, isn't this long, frankly, was Robertson wanted the eight years.

years. He wanted, he, he, he definitely, he was some, he wanted, his camp wanted things locked in. They wanted to be able to, but they wanted the, they wanted a level of money that they weren't going to get for eight years. And so it became a, it became a push and pull and, and it's, it's, it's, it's something where like with RFA stuff, I always kind of, I always kind of, I always kind of laugh. And I know the, the, the Canadians and the hurricanes. have made offer sheets or a real thing. But in general, people will always be like, oh, this GM's being slow on this or this guy. It's, at the end of the day, like, deadlines always make things happen, right? Like, that's the, that's always the case where Robertson basically missed off training camp.

And at the end of the day, you know what, he's still assigned. Like, Nill probably, Jim Nill got him for the deal that Jim Nill probably would have wanted, probably would have signed him to five weeks earlier, but it's kind of the staring match in the game of how this goes. And I think, I think Dallas was more, Jim Nill, I think, was a little more conservative

with both Robertson and Dottinger in his thinking on this. Like, and it's something where he was thinking that, obviously, he's thrilled with what they're doing. doing. But I think with how the stars were looking at this, he was being a little more conservative of like, I can't make eight-year bets that don't work out after how the Ben and Sagan contract have aged or how the Lindell contract. Do you really think that was part of the rationale for Jim Nell? I mean, what are the realistic odds that he's going to be around eight years from now covering this? I think it's the rationale for the man who signs Jim Nils checks. Right. Yeah. That's fair. Well, I think that person would probably want Jason Robertson here for as long as humanly possible. And he would have, but he also didn't want to, but he also, Tom Galardi, we can just say his name.

And Tom, Tom Galardi has gone on the radio in Dallas before and kind of spoken out loud before about how he feels like, oh, these guys, these young players want to get paid before they've earned it. Like he said stuff like that before. And so I think it's a space where every GM, I, I always think the fans need to remember this. Every GM's job is not necessarily to win the Stanley Cup. The GM's job is to try to win the Stanley Cup with the roster that makes their owner feel like they're happy. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's a... Yeah, that is fair. I mean, I wonder, you know, there's been a lot of speculation. I don't know if you heard anything about this from the chatter you had of like how much we should reasonably expect the cap to go up as soon as next season. Like the reports seem pretty, pretty varied. I keep hearing like, general optimism, but I wonder if that's just partly kind of like, I, like, I would perspective. I feel like it's more general optimism. Honestly, I think I would, I would not,

if I was advising a player or an agent or whatever, there's a reason you hear this more from the league perspective talking about the side. You don't, you don't hear the, you don't hear the agents coming out and saying, oh, the numbers are going to get, like, agents aren't all of a sudden thinking that the cap increase is going to pop next year. It's something where we're talking in the three, still, I think, two, three years. It's, maybe I'm wrong. I mean, but even the NHL has been rather honest, like these digital dasher boards, right, which conceptually fine, conceptually it's fine, but obviously the application of them has been, has left a lot to be desired. talk about them.

Yes, we do. Oh my God. The player is just disappeared. Like, limb is just disappearing. Yes. Into the boards throughout play is,

is, it's wild that in 2020, it's this difficult to sit down and enjoy a hockey game on TV or on your laptop or your phone or hire where you're streaming it. It's, it's very upsetting. And I understand why it's happening. But acting like it's okay is like,

it's, it's not. Oh, no. It's, The application is terrible. It is absolutely awful. And that's why even conceptual, that's why I say, like, conceptually it was an okay idea, but conceptually was an okay idea if the technology was working.

And they ran this by test groups and everything like that. And I can only imagine the test groups were people that random advertisers brought in to look at things, as opposed to, I didn't get a call to be a part of this test group. so I don't know how many people were actually hockey fans that were looking at this. So it's, yeah, they are, but on that note where I was going with that was like, the NHL has even admitted like, well, those are only, those aren't going to be a massive boom for the finances of the league. Like, there will be some more money in the Stanley Cup final because you'll have Canadian advertisers be able to actually get on the boards. Like right now, like, you watch,

you're sitting in Canada and you watch the Stanley Cup final between, you watch between Colorado and Tampa, you're just getting all the American ad board ads, right? And you have big, big advertisers in Canada that basically were, because a Canadian team didn't reach the final, didn't get board ads. And so that's going to be a little bit of a bump. But the NHL hasn't even admitted to me, like, this is not a huge financial jump this year.

And I see the league as far as how this. goes and finances and jumping and everything like that. Like I think Gary Bettman does a really good job of spinning things. So his 32 bosses, remember he works for the 32 owners, his 32 bosses feel pretty happy about themselves. And that's what he's doing. And that's kind of how I look at it because I have yet to see the real, a real strong, believable statement from the PA or from a player's perspective where it's like, yeah,

we're going to start see a $4 million cap jump next year. I don't see it. Yeah. Well, the reason why I brought that up is because, you know, there's this, this, an interesting push pull, which isn't necessarily new,

but I think it's going to become, um, heightened as cap dollars potentially go up. And as teams get smarter about aging curves and realizing that you want to be buying up UFA years ahead of time and taking that risk because if it, if it pops for you, it's like the biggest luxury you can have is a player who, who's either on an ELC or playing on like that second deal

where they're producing much above the tax bracket they're actually in, right? The worst thing you want to do is being on the hook for a player in their 30s and paying them for their most productive years when they're not at that level anymore. And I think from a player perspective, we've seen this happen in the NBA, for example, where there were a couple of massive cap spikes because of TV deals, right? And what happened was you'd have star players who had previously signed long-term deals that all of a sudden were watching their peers who they feel like are inferior talents signing contracts that significantly exceed theirs because they're coming up for new deals and because they've timed it out better as opposed to them where they just kind of took the first paycheck they could and then all of a sudden are locked into this. And they kind of like resented it in a way, right?

for a long time for Nathan McKinnon it worked out great for him. He won a Stanley Cup now he's been paid accordingly. But for a long time, we'd always talk like, oh, look at this avalanche model of getting Nathan McKinnon signed to this contract and what a team value it is. And I think like after a while,

he actually started showing this in his interviews where he was like, this isn't a good thing. Like, this is actually kind of annoying to me. And it's understandable that he would feel that way from a human element. So there's that interesting sort of balance between, you know, signing a player and the player realizing, hey, I should probably, like, try to work this

so that I can time it accordingly to get paid what I think I deserve. It won't happen with the McDavid. It won't happen with McDavid because McDavid learned how to be, McDavid modeled his personality and hockey persona after Crosby, and so Crosby wouldn't do that. But I would love, I would be fascinated to see when some superstar player

breaks the mold of this because right now it's like, oh, you're a superstar you're going to sign for eight years and it's always because people are like, well, longevity and everything like that. Like, I want to see the, I want to see a,

the NHL, the big player. I wanted to see, like, I would have loved to see for hockey for McKinnon to say, oh, I'll sign for one year. Like, just, like, because that's such an NBA thing where it's like, hey,

I'll sign for one year. if it doesn't work, I can, like, hockey players are so overly loyal. It's so overly committed to, like, oh, let's get a long-term deal with this contract, and get this. And they're, frankly, signing with a GM

and a coach who they will outlive. Like, at some point, I think we're eventually going to get a spot where maybe it's a, I don't even know who it's going to be, but it's not going to be McDavid, obviously, because he's got the long-term deal. But eventually, we're going to have a,

big name players say like, I'm going to sign a one-year deal off my ELC. My first UFA year, I'm going to sign a one-year deal and see what works. And then that's going to open up the door for others to do it. Whoever does it the first time will do it. And there will be 50,000 columns all over the United States and all over the northern United States and southern Canada about how they're not putting the team first and how they're selfish. but it'll be great for hockey because it will open up it'll set a better market for how these things go it's

didn't that kind of happen a little bit with austin matthews his five-year deal coming off as e-lc i remember at the time there was a bit of blowback of people being like wow yeah but not really no no no no yeah but by hockey by yes yes that was but but like i want to see austin matthews when his yales when his five-year deal and sign a one-year deal it'll be like okay right i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna do what I'm going to go here, try to win a cup here. If it doesn't work, I'm open to do whatever another next year. Like, I think that's something where there's, I'd like to see that become at least part of the thing. I'm not against guys signing long term.

I'm not against it at all. But I think the sport in the market becomes better when superstars realize what they're worth and are realized to push it. Because it's the same thing where when you have McDavid signed for as much as he does for as long as he is, it becomes a natural thing where anyone who makes even close to that. You're like, well, Connor McDavid makes that. Who do you think you are? That's just hockey ethos that comes into play. And I want that gone. Right.

Well, think about, yeah, with, it'll be very interesting to see. Like, I think David Pasternak is going to get paid what he deserves. But for the longest time for the Bruins, it was like, well, Patrice Bergeron makes this amount. He and, you know, he's our captain. Or I guess he wasn't, I think he was Dan Ochar for a while. But like, he's our best forward. You can't, you can't go into that room and be making more than him. So you have to take less.

And it's like, I mean, I understand why. the team would want to push that agenda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a pretty tricky one. And also it's like, that's not how real life economics work. Like, right? Like a contract you sign today cannot be compared to something that's signed next year because inflation and all that.

But all right, Sean, yeah. Let's take a break here. Yeah. And we can pick it back up and we can talk about a variety of other things as well. So yeah, we're going to take that break here and then pick it back up. You are listening to the HockeyPedio guest streaming live on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right. with more of the Hockey-O-Cadio cast here with Sean Shapiro, Sean, before we went to break

and I cut you off so rudely, you were making the smartest point that we ever heard, so please continue. Well, that's a big build-up there. Now, where I was going with where we were talking about the space where players are going to start realizing that they need to get paid earlier in their careers, because they're going to realize it before teams realize it. Because players and agents are going to be like, we have to get paid now because teams are going to start being on the cheap in that second that that deal if you're 26 27

why are you going to pay for that now and I think where it's going to become the interesting thing that it's going to become and it's kind of started to happen but we still have too many contracts left it just starts to change the construction of what uh of the in the financial stature of what a roster is right like forever it was like okay spend we can go spend for a veteran for a third line center. That used to be a thing. And it still is because of, but I think it just,

this kind of keeps pushing things even further where you're going to build around four or five guys, probably of those key positions, that top defensemen, that top defenseman, that top center your goalie, you're probably going to have those guys.

And then the rest, it's going to just become in more and more of a league where the market, for your third line center, it's either going to be some guy in an ELC, or it's going to be, or you're going to be the veteran who's like, okay, you got to accept. This is just where it becomes. You're no longer going to be making $3 million to be a third line center. It's going to be, that's a million dollar job now.

And that it just becomes something where it's like, we've been talking about Dallas, like the Radic Foxa contract. Like that is aged incredibly poorly, like him making $3.25 million per year for his role. is you look at that and you're like, this is, this is a mistake. And I think examples like that and with players realizing, I think players are going to realize this before teams do. It's kind of like a chicken or the egg thing. And I think the players are going to start demanding more money earlier,

which is going to lead the teams reacting. It's going to happen one way or the other. But I think it's going to be player driven more so than team driven as far as when you kind of the trickle down economics to use big terms here, I guess. Yeah, well, the strange thing for me is, you know, something we don't consider very often is the ownership element of like actually signing off on a lot of these transactions or what the motivations are. And then occasionally, as you mentioned, with the star is like, the owner does like a podcast or a radio interview and speaks his mind. And you're like, oh, all right. Well, maybe it's good that we don't, don't hear from these guys all that often.

Yes. But, you know, here in Vancouver for a long time. And I think deservedly so, especially in terms of the way they acted around and during the pandemic. there was a big issue or people were concerned with how the Aqualini's were running the team from like a cost-cutting perspective and whether they were being cheap and all this. But then at the same time, they were entrusting Jim Benning to just light money on fire. Every free agency. And trying to like put those two thoughts together where it's understandable that even a very

rich person would not want to be wasting money and would want to be involved with like how how their team is spending their money, but then trusting like a former player or whatever that doesn't actually have like business acumen to be just doing wild stuff with that money. It just seems so so wild to me to kind of put those two thoughts that are so divergent together. And that's what happens with a lot of these teams.

I mean, what other, it's not just a hockey problem. It's a pro sports problem in general, but we see it obviously a ton of hockey. like what other business model would you allow someone who has zero business experience to step into making vital decisions about how your things are going to run day to day? Like, and some, you know what? Some GMs, some former players have done great. Yeah.

And some have. But there's also, there's also so many, there's so many examples where you're like, did we really do our due diligence here? did we was this this was the this was the best option and it's it's it's it's a thing where just because you played the game doesn't mean you're the most qualified person to coach the game or manage a team and and it's and i don't know if that will i don't that's the thing where like i that's that's one of those where you're always like i hope that will change something I don't know how well that will change because it's someone being, taking someone, an owner being

brave and treating their team like their primary business. And too many owners treat them like it's their rich person hobby as opposed to their primary business. Right. And I think that's one of the, that's one of the biggest things. And so many, so many of these teams are owned by someone who made money doing something so much doing money doing something else and they're like okay well now i own a sports team and this is cool and i can kind of just kind of let it be and owners don't treat their teams like their primary they treat it like their their hobby and they try to and and they wouldn't run their hotel chain or their their catering business or whatever or uh hedge fund managing or whatever.

They wouldn't run it this way. They wouldn't run their primary business that way, but they run their sports team that way. And it's, I wonder if eventually that starts, the one person, the one owner who you think about who actually runs his team like his primary business,

and he gets a lot of flack for it as Tom Dundon. Tom Dundon runs the hurricanes in a similar way to he runs any other business. And he gets flack for that. And that, that's well here's the thing John

I think for running an NHL team from like a a GM perspective there's so many specialized skills that you need to effectively

do the job that I think it's almost unrealistic to expect one person to be able to do all of those things right so what winds up happening

is everyone needs to check their ego at the door and you need to acknowledge your limitations and then the owner needs to shell out enough money to hire three, four, five, six people to combine to do that job, which seems much less palatable than entrusting just one person

and paying one paycheck out to do everything. And then you wind up running into these mistakes. I was like, oh, well, of course this person messed up and it's like, yeah, we probably could have seen this coming. And maybe we should change the way the model that we use. Yeah, and I wonder if maybe we're seeing the seeds of that with the rise of the director of hockey operations, right?

Because, like, we now have like president of hockey operations is essentially, so they did a Vegas, as they did in Colorado, where they basically made someone a president of hockey operations who's technically above the GM, even though the GM is technically the person who makes decisions. And I wonder if maybe that's the groundwork and the field. foundation that maybe leads to more of this larger brain.

You see in places here and there. Like you see teams now have, I was down at, last week, I was down at the Five Nations tournament in Plymouth. And I ran into a, I want to make sure I got the right siglet, right? There's two brothers, Jordan and Jonathan. I think it's Jordan is the goalie coach for that. Just Jay. Let's just go with you.

Yeah. Yeah. But for the Calgary Flames. And he used to be the Flames goal. coach and now he's just the director of their goaltending department. And the fact they have a full goaltending department is great because that means all of a sudden you have more people focusing on one position and everything like that. And that's great. And I think kind of it can start with goaltending. It can start like Florida has their whole goaltending division. Yeah,

Goaltending excellence. Yeah, department of goaltending excellence. I believe. I think it starts there. And then eventually it comes down to some, major ego checks at the top when some team's going to do, hey, we need this to be a full interest as opposed to the guy who's sitting in the GM meeting or whatever. Yeah. All right. On my notes here of stuff that I wanted to talk to you about, I mean, I had a bunch of random stuff.

I learned to talk about broadcast. I want to talk about watching games in 2022, reverse retro jerseys. I think we should get into the idea of creating new content. because that's something I think you're you're exploring with quite a bit on your substack, right, kind of trying new ways to provide information that's new and interesting and fun and easy to consume, right? And that's something I think a lot about now, you know, I do this show Monday to Friday, daily. It's much provided. I mean, it's been a very rewarding experience and the listeners have been great and all that. But it's coming up with new ways to talk about

stuff or bring up new material as opposed to just regurgitating the same thing over and over again. That's something I'm really interested in. And I've wanted to explore getting more tapping into the brains of players. That's something I'm very interested in, right? So you used to cover the stars on a daily basis. You're around the team. You're building relationships with them. I've started to do so myself.

I don't cover any team, but players sometimes reach out asking about this or that or want to learn more about analytics and then that's kind of like a good entry point to building this stuff and I understand that for most players there's no real reward in going on a podcast or sitting down and doing a video show where you're kind of giving away your tricks of the trade or you're giving away secrets in terms of what you see on the ice or how you prep or how you do this or that but I do wonder as we as we move along here it's 2022 it'll almost be 2023 as players start to see other forms. former players having success on broadcast or jumping into media and kind of, you know,

creating a whole new shelf life of their career for themselves doing so. If you're a player towards like getting into your 30s and you kind of see the ticking clock for your playing career and you're wondering what am I going to do next with my career, it feels like it would be a pretty nice like little entryway there. I say that selfishly. I would love to be a vessel for that. But I do wonder like if we'll see players start to kind of embrace that more and not be so

rigid or not be so like secretive about everything as it relates to the game and I don't know how do you feel about all that? Yeah it's actually I had a really interesting conversation with an interesting conversation earlier this week with

with someone from a more traditional media outlet about potentially doing some work with them on something here or there and one of the things that this this person lamented to me was the whole fact of like, well, we used to be, we used to be big capital M media, right? We used to be the only line to the players, right?

Like it used to be like, and now it's become this space where even if the players don't do it, it's the teams have started to channel that that way, where it's like the whole, I don't know who the first social media person is that came up with the little silly little microphone thing. Like every single team does it now where it's like guys guys walk off the ice and they got one question like like the fact of the matter is like that used to be that little like TikTok length video of like what's your favorite Christmas holiday right? Like what's your favorite Christmas holiday? Holy crap. That's a terrible question. But what the little tip? Yeah, what's your favorite Christmas movie? Yeah. What's your favorite Christmas movie or whatever? And that used to be like all of a sudden that right there used to be.

a reporter's notebook, right? That's a whole reporter's notebook where you're like, oh, I talked to the entire team and got their favorite Christmas movie. And all of a sudden now the team is just giving it out on 30 seconds. Right. And it's becoming more and more of a space where this is a weird, this is a weird industry we're in that we're figuring this out. And it's something where,

personally, I'm trying to figure out some things too that, like, some things that work and some things that don't. it's one of the things that I've noticed that you have with players now. Players are, I think players are controlling more of what they share and everything like that. But I think one place where I've noticed

that I've really still continue to find a way to connect players to fans is players have grown up and lived in this insulated hockey player environment for so long. And so, like I did something. something on the substack last week on just on on most siders game day routine just because like I was I was watching from the press box and every single pregame during the warmups near the end cider basically takes in his from his knees just starts juggling two pucks just kind of like

by himself near the blot line and I was like that's interesting I'm curiously well you talked about that is routine we talked about pasta game and and that's the type of thing where Moe doesn't realize Mo Saider doesn't realize that's interesting to anyone else. I think that's kind of the space where we start to go further as while players

will continue to be more media savvy and share things and everything. I still think there's kind of that gap and it's kind of a place I plan and try to live with my career for extended period of time, hopefully where there's a space where they don't realize

what's interesting to them. They don't realize that they don't realize their status as someone who is a celebrity or person of interest. Like I had like for example in Detroit here so

Matt Luff takes the 16 gets the stick up gets the puck up onto his chin and has eight stitches inside, eight stitches outside and literally leaves an intent on the mouth guard. Like Matt Luff is a hockey player. Everyone else in that locker room is like okay you took a puck to the teeth.

That's literally, that's literally not a big deal. Yeah. To anyone else in that locker room. But to all of a sudden people who don't take pucks to the teeth every day, like you and I, and all of a sudden you're like, wow, that's, that's got to hurt. And the fact that then just though the fact that I don't know if players, maybe in some day, but I don't know if players will ever really truly realize the power they have of how interesting their life is.

And as long as, as long as they don't realize. that. I think there's still a good for someone like me. The other thing when you talk about content that I think is just that's changing every day. And it's just kind of, I think it's more and more a key question of what do we want to consume from games anymore? I think other thing. Just like, like if, and that's the challenge that I've tried to figure. Like when I was on the Starsbeat, I had, I was very, I had my game day 2020, which I was I was very proud of it out went and everything like that. And it was really thorough and everything like that.

But at the end of the day, all sports fans are fairweather fans in a way. Like you would see like, oh, they won a game and you'd see the numbers and people would read. And you'd be like, oh, yeah, this is a great idea. Do it every game. They lose three, two, and even great game. And the amount of people reading would be about half that. And so you start to look at and figure out this space of what do people actually want from a game? If the team loses, do you even write anything?

And luckily, I'm not in a spot where I'm a beatwriter that has to cover it that the way I used to anymore. So luckily, I don't have a newspaper deadline to worry about that. But like, that's why, for example, I did try something on the substack this week where I don't we'll see if it works. I don't know. But where I did the whole like, okay, I took the game from, I took the Detroit, the Detroit Anaheim game and the Dallas Tampa game from Tuesday night and just basically kind of went Monday

morning quarterback. I actually texted our pal Bob Stern just about it because he does a little bit some of the stuff football wise where I basically just took a look at all the goals and just asked a simple question. Why did that go win? And it's something where it's like, okay, that's the type of thing where I didn't write a game recap. I didn't write this is what this means. It was just taking a simple question of like, okay, why did that puck go on the net? And why did that puck go on that? And it seems that that's what people wanted and I'll be done with that maybe it works maybe it doesn't it's the whole content versus story is the line is getting so blurred and I know I've rambled but no here's here's the thing like I think the post game post gamers are a great entry point in this

conversation because they sort of summarize my my thoughts on this where for the longest time it kind of used to be this cookie cutter cookie cutter thing that would just the question you're trying to answer is what right it was would be like what happened in this game and you would just like give facts of like this player scored and then you know this was the this was the score line at that point and then someone took a penalty and then this and that it's like just giving a summary right and i think right now there are a lot of fans that are interested i'm sure a large percentage listening to this show because that's why they listen to the bdocas because i'd like to think we provide a bit more

thoughtful outside the box content that are interested in the how and the the why, especially from like a schematic perspective because we get so little of that. We always talk about how hockey is such a fast, chaotic sport. The puck is bouncing around, going back and forth, people are running into each other, like this and that. But there is an underlying X's and O's component of like the play broke down here. And if you can identify that and show someone who might not be able to capture it in real time because it is moving so fast, that can all of a sudden help explain so much of what happened

in the game and it almost answers the what in a much better way than just giving a straight-up synopsis of the final result basically yeah i feel like the box score is completely replaced the recap like it used to be something where i think people would be like okay well i'll still read the recap because it would give me something but now i think people have just accepted i'm smart enough to like i can write it's if you put an n-n-s score in front of me i could write you a 500 word recap like literally right now it'd be like i could literally be like oh uh so-and-sum-sorex score in front of me i could write you a scored at 520 of the third period and team A beat team B two to one to extend a five game win streak. X name goalie made X amount of saves, including 12 in a third period. Like I could

literally write that right now based off just looking at a box score. And that's so many box scores you read. You could look at it and you're like, I got nothing from someone actually watching the game. I just basically got someone reciting stats to me for 500 words. Yeah, like, if you were an outlet, why would you send someone to a a game to do that when like you could probably put together some sort of program some sort of a bot that could just regurgitate from the box score what actually happened i don't know it's it's ridiculous um all right sean let's um let's talk a bit about your substack then and plug some stuff because we got uh we got to put a bow on this and uh bring it home so um let the listeners know kind of

what you've been working on you already mentioned a bunch of the pieces but where they can find it and all that good stuff yeah so the substack's name is shapshots the lovely alliteration there. The site itself is just shan shapiro.substack.com at some point, probably if things go financially well enough, maybe we buy an actual domain, but that's steps down the line. Essentially what it is. And so I'm based in the Detroit area. And I have a season credential for the wings. And I'll be at most, I'm at most wings games. But I kind of look at it as a space where it's kind of like my sandbox to have some fun and right about hockey and obviously we uh i've got another gig now where you and i are working together

and the uh with the fine folks at e p rink side and definitely don't definitely want to give them some love but kind of the sub stack is kind of it's my sandbox to have some fun it's where there's going to be it's there's a lot of there's going to be a lot of stars stuff there's going to be a lot just because of my history covering that team and i've got a lot of readers from there there's definitely some there's going to be some red wings adjacent things because of my location. As I tell people, I'm not a stars or wings beat writer.

I'm just a writer that happens to write about those teams quite a bit. And then it's also a space where I'm still doing a little bit of the, I cover in some of the things that, from my old gig, that some of the parts that I still enjoyed. Like I think, like on Monday this week, I wrote about the whole P.K. Suban and ESPN thing. And it's called it Medium Monday. And we'll see if that's, once again, more alliteration.

Well, like, we'll see and we'll see. And I think there's an inch, there tends to be interest, I realize from hockey fans to understand a little bit more about how this game is covered. And it's something that just doesn't really, not many other people talk about it. Like you and I have had these conversations, but in general, it's kind of one of those spaces where it's like, anyone who's covering media in the United States is looking at football and basketball. Right. And I think there's a space there where we have some fun that, like, for example, just kind of looking at the whole Suban hire. Like, I think Suban hire is great for ESPN. I think it's also something that they need to learn lessons from it because there's some talent, some of their talent is clearly miscast.

And being able to write about that and having some freedom to do that. And the other thing that I love about the kind of just that's been fun about that format is, we've been able to kind of just jump into some things that I find interesting that I really before when I was when I was working somewhere else before and I kind of had a defined job and everything like that like I got to write about I got to talk to Olimata about Apollo okay right like like so anyone who doesn't pass Apollo is finished baseball and that's the only reason baseballs because that's the closest possible thing. Anyone wants to YouTube Pesipalo.

It is basically a ball gets tossed in the air. There's a bat. But instead of running a diamond, like you imagine, you're running left and then right. There's multiple designated hitters, and there's a river in play sometimes. And Oli Mata's dad played professional Pesopalo, and I got Oli Mado, and I got Oli Mada to explain

to Apollo to me. And I'm like, that is, that's cool. It's interesting. And that's the type of stuff we do at the substack, where it's just, we have some fun. We write about what's interesting. And it's also always open to the other thing I like about it. And I think it's something that, I think this is something that you personally would understand really well on this stuff is it's not as much about appealing to, it's not

as much as appealing to what should be done. And this is how things have been done. It's more about appealing to what does readership want. and what did they find interesting? And I think that's something where I think imagine you personally, I kind of understand that where it's like this is not, it can evolve and that's okay. Yep.

Yeah, well, Sean, you've been killing it. I definitely recommend everyone goes to check that out. And we're going to have you back on the show plenty. As this season goes along here, you're going to become our media slash business correspondent. How about that? There you go. Good time.

All right. So this is awesome, man. Be well. and we'll check in with you soon. Thank you to the listeners for listening to the HockeyPedocast. If you enjoyed it, as always, you can help us out by smashing that five-star button, leaving us a nice little review wherever you listen to the show. All that's greatly appreciated.

And we're going to be back tomorrow with a Friday mailbag as we do every week. So looking forward to that. So thank you for listening to the Hockey PDO cast here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.