The Hockey PDOcast - The Great 8 reaches 800 career goals

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Dimitri welcomes Sean Shapiro back to the podcast as the guys talk about Alex Ovechkin's milestone 800th career goal and his quest for Gretzky's record. They highlight their biggest takeaways from the latest NHL Board of Governors meeting.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.

Meant since the Hockey PDOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipo. Welcome to the Hockey PDOCast. My name is Dimitri Philpovich. And joining me is my buddy Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, man? I'm kind of catching up on, I'm not sleep, I guess. I'm using coffee to try to catch up on the lack of sleep after early flight this morning. Connection through Baltimore, I think it was.

I don't know. Now I'm home. So got the coffee going and I'm excited to talk with you. Well, you just got back from the Board of Governors meetings in Florida. It would have been a lot cooler if we pretended that you were live on location, sipping a nice cold margarita at the beach or something while you were doing the correspondence here with us on the PDO guests. But regardless, I'm excited to have you on. We can still pretend that we're doing that.

We can. I'm going to think about that. I got really good tacos on Monday night. So I'm going to think about those tacos. So just get myself in the right mindset. Love it. Okay. Well, so we've got a lot of talk about today.

We're going to talk about those Board of Governor meetings and some topics that have come up probably in the back half. I want to first start off the show talking about Alex Ovechkin, who, as I'm sure people listening, no, hit the 800 goal mark on Tuesday night against the Blackhawks, putting him two away from passing, Gordy Howe, 95 away from passing Wayne Gretzky. And something that probably, as recently as a couple of years ago,

seemed unfathomable just because of the sheer volume of how many games he'd have to play and how many goals he'd have to keep scoring and are questions of whether the world would even exist long enough for him to get there during a certain stretch of that time. Kind of put all of that. It just made it seem like it was such like a distant kind of, you know,

thought that couldn't actually happen. And then now here we are. He's at 800 goals. He's going to get there. I feel very confident in that. It's just a matter of when. And it'll probably be even sooner than he has any reason to get there or any reason we have to believe he get there

because he's just an absolute goal scoring cyborg that's not from this planet. But I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to talk a bit about Ovechkin and his career and the arc of it and how he's gotten to this point. Because I think right now, the visual we all have of Alex Ovechkin is him, opportunistically hanging around that left circle and scoring on the power play, right? And I think that's what that's kind of this later career version that he's turned himself into. And that's what everyone thinks of. And especially if you're a newer fan of the sport or if you're a younger individual who hasn't

been watching the NHL since the mid to late 2000s, that's kind of what you know him as, right? And it's, it's remarkable to think that he's had basically these like two separate careers where he was the very best at very distinct skills. Yeah, it's, it's, it's funny. Like I always, every time I see Ovechkin play live, I love to always just take the picture of, because you'll get it. It will happen every game of just,

it looks like he's literally standing waiting for a bus. Like I love, like, I just like always like to take that picture from the press box with my phone. I probably have like eight, seven or eight different pictures of that just from various arenas from, I've just seen Ovechkin literally just, stand there and the puck's on the other side and it's just it's like he's literally the waiting for a bus that's what he's doing like it's and and just to see like that's the it would never be the

statue but like if the capitals build a statue that's the statue it should be just like it shouldn't be him lifting the cup it shouldn't be him teeing up the one time it should be just kind of that nonchalant just waiting just just so relaxed just doing nothing until like bang like it's Well, you know what it should be. It should be him, especially earlier in his career, celebrating a goal by jumping into the glass with like seemingly the intention of breaking through that glass and jumping into stands with every time,

like with the same amount of vigor. And that's one thing that I've loved so much about his career is like hockey. Well, I guess the NHL more so than let's not like generalize. At the NHL and its fans can be such Debbie Downer sometimes in terms of like this idea of like respect. and acting cool and stuff like that. And then there's this guy who has literally scored 800 goals now and will end his career as the most prolific goal scorer in NHL history.

By numbers and by just the fact that he probably already is there even if you never caught Wayne Gretzky's the best goal score ever. He is pretty much treated every single one of those, even to this day, as if it was the first and biggest goal he's ever scored his career. And to me, that's so cool. And like, yeah, you're playing a game. It should be fun. scoring a goal is the objective of the sport and doing so should be treated as a big deal.

And so I just love that so much. Like a guy that scores so often still loves scoring goals so much. And that's probably what's fueled his career, right? The fact that he is so driven to just score goals. Well, hockey's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. And I love that. I think it's great too because so much of hockey.

I think it's opened up. There's such a traditional like, act like you've been there before and everything like that. If the guy who ends up ends his career with more goals than anyone else celebrates like that, and that's the way you act like you've been there before, that's a great standard. That's the standard I want for everything. I want, I want guys to be happy. Like, you're watching the World Cup right now.

Like, people score a goal. Like, it's a big deal. Like, you want people to celebrate. It's like the whole leg up, well, you scored, go skate down the line and do that. like it's it's so it's so it's boring it's stifling like it's it you want people to enjoy it um I love the emotion that comes after it I love the fact when you get guys actually like getting a little bit more creative with the celebrate I mean Ovechkins got the uh hot stick yeah my pal Mike McKenna was a net for that one actually the goal against on that one

and uh it's Ovechkin's just he's been so fun for the game. And like it's wild to think about and look at right. Like we think about that face off circle and everything like that. But the fact that he's going to do this. I mean, he's got three years after this already

that he's signed for and he plans to play through the end of that contract by all counts. Like he's going to do this and he's going to do this with the way his bot, like the physical toll he put on the league. Like obviously you look at all the all the hits he through and the physical toll that he put on others. But got to remember, it's a two-way car crash, basically. He's like the fact that he is going to do this and he's been as durable as he has and he's

done this while going through multiple, like he missed his true rookie season because of the lockout, like the big lockout and then had a couple others and COVID. Like it's, it's bonkers. Well, he was one of those players that was so. ahead of the curve physically as well. And we saw as soon as he came into the NHL, he was like already just dominating, right? And I think it's fair to assume that he would have been able to step in

right after his draft year and pretty much do the same. So yeah, you wonder like how many goals of goals he was wrong by not getting to play those 82 games because of that 0-4-5 lockout. Yeah. Did you ever remember the story about the Panthers trying to draft him a year early? Yes. That's great. Yeah.

That's great. No. Well, I've got some. I knew we were going to do this. So I like put together just a bunch of stats. And I was like, all right, this is going to be a fun opportunity to do this. But the point of what I was going to make was, you know, I put out this like mix tape of like early career Alex Ovechkin. It was like basically like I limited it only his first four years or something like that.

And that version of him in the late 2000s where he was just like the most unstoppable force off the rush that I've ever seen even even to this day. right? It was just an unmatched combination of size and speed and watching him be able to, in basically a span of two seconds, dance around a defender at full speed, and then just barrel through the opposing goalie and score on route to doing so. It's just like, it's such a breathtaking combination to me. And so the fact that he has had, like I alluded to the two separate careers, right, you could make the case that he's like the best power forward for those first five or six. years or whatever in his career when he just came in and he had that full speed and then he's turned

himself into the best like spot up shooter from that left circle and he's had these like two distinct arcs where he'd be an all-time great if you literally just played out the course of one of those and he's put two together and those skills don't really have that much to do with each other like they're not that related other than the fact that he's a physical freak and he loves scoring goals and he just used both as a vessel to do so it's almost like and i just this pops into mind for me right now. It would be like if someone who's not hockey fan, I don't know why not hockey fan will be listened to this.

But the one person who's a basketball fan, it would be like saying like, oh, well, someone, you could combine Steph Curry's career and LeBron's career into one, basically. And you could have the best of both different parts of your career. Yeah, pretty much. It's, well, here's a two-year stretch for you. So 0708, he scores 68, five goals, and he has 101 primary points when you come out. on his primary assist as well. Then the following year, 0809,

he scores 56 goals, he has 54 assists. Now here's the kicker for you. He attempts 1,027 shots and he gets 528 of them on net. Now, to put that in perspective, Tage Thompson, who I am contractually obligated to mention

in some capacity on every single show this season, is just going absolutely nuts, just shooting every single time. He's in the offensive zone. His shot rate is crazy, right? he's on pace for 382 shots on goal and 645 attempts. So like 400 fewer than Ovechkin had that season. It's just absolutely insane.

And Capitals outsider.com, you mentioned the durability, which is a key component of this as well, has a tracker of every game he's missed in his NHL career, right? So they've got him in 18 seasons missing 27 games. games combined due to injury. And I think six of them were from like one fight that he had with Jason Chimera or something early in his career. Jason Chimera.

I know. Yeah. Speaking of remembering a guy. So natural statrix database goes back to the 2007 season. So it doesn't capture his first couple of years. But they've got him in that span from 2007 to this current season, throwing 3,11 hits and taking 1414.4.4.4. of them. Just because you're mentioning like the two-way nature of that, right?

It's like we talk about how many hits he's thrown and his hits were probably more like physically taxing on the other individual than the ones he's generally received. I can't remember too many times where he got completely bowled over or physically manhandled. But yeah, it's like the sheer volume of that is staggering in pretty much every single category. And the other component of this is like, you know, you start talking about. my kind of like rumors and and like all all all these things. I'd love to know like what playing weight he's actually played at in terms of pounds throughout his career because there's like like there's like legends right about like

whatever he's listed at is almost certainly not his actual playing weight. And like just because he's like just so like physically dense like he's like just a brick wall basically. And so like just lugging around all of that weight for these 18 seasons and especially for the first handful of them at the speed he was moving at. And you talk about these mini car crashes, which is pretty much every single one of these collisions that he's had, to miss 27 games due to injury in that time is just,

like you almost can't wrap your head around it. Right. And whenever I don't want to get into a whole, Ovechkin versus Crosby thing because both are just like such all-time greats and in totally different ways and we should appreciate them both. But like whenever you mention Ovecian stats, people mention like Crosby's on a per game basis and how, oh, he's done it so much more efficiently if you were a game.

and that's true, but the fact that Obechkin has played so many more games in that time, part of it is luck certainly with like the head injuries and stuff that they cross we suffered through early in his career. But that's like, that's a feature, not a bug to meet, right? Like the fact that Ovechkin has played that many games is actually to this credit. And durability is a trait of greatness too. Like it's, like that's, we should be like it's the whole thing that always comes in debate every single time, every single year the debate comes up on a more micro level.

you'll it'll be like the call their debate every year and you'll be like oh well this guy was the best rookie in X amount of games but they're like well this guy did it and then like well playing 82 games is an achievement 82 games is not easy that's also something to be accounted for like this so yeah the concept of the points per game and you're trying injuries and I know the head stuff is obviously a little bit different but durability durability and the ability to keep going out there and maintaining it and everything like that. Like that's, that's something that should be,

I mean, Rod Brandenor, 90% of Rod Rendemore's Hall of Fame case is made off of durability. Like anytime you talk to anyone about, and I'm not saying Rod Brenner, I don't want to get into that debate, but anytime anyone comes on about the Rodbrenomore stuff, they talk about,

oh, look at the durability. Look how well, how the shape he kept himself in, yada, yada, yada. It's interesting. So to kind of segue on one thing just on this, just we talked to a capital's owner Ted Leonis earlier this week and

we were talking about his durability and he was, it was interesting from Leonis's perspective. Leonis talked, brought up on kind of unprompted how he's seen Ovechkin over the past couple years not line up as big of the hits and take a step back where it was something. It was interesting to hear that come from the guy who's paying his checks and the guy who is the guy who is obviously highly invested for various reasons to see him get to a certain amount of goals and everything like that, just to kind of hear that from Leonis about what's what's been like to watch him see Alex go from this basically roving missile all the time to kind of more to the more silent assassin there. Yeah. And, you know, if you look at this season in particular, so the capitals have had. that 180 minutes and a half basically 180, 24 on the power play as a team, right?

Yeah. Oletchkin's been on the ice for 172 and a half of those minutes. Like he's out there every single time. They basically have an opportunity to score in a high leverage situation. And then obviously late in games when they pull the goalie and he's gotten a few empty, empty net goals here lately as well. Like they're doing, I think they're doing actually a pretty nice job all things considered. Like it's easy to be like, all right, they're not actually trying to win a Stanley Cup here.

they've already got it a couple years ago, and now everything is about getting him goals. And certainly, like, they're doing everything they possibly can to put him in a position to do so. And I think that's, you know, like a top-down mandate. Like, I think Deadly owns is pretty, pretty aware of the value of this guy to his franchise and this chase. And you see, like, how, like, ESPN and TNT are on board with all of this, like, in these games. And, like, it's a big deal, clearly, right? Historically. But they're still, like, relevant and winning games.

like competing and so it's not like it's not I don't think it's like you know some sort of travesty or anything like oh they're not you know this isn't good for the game all they're doing is trying to get this guy goals and in and it's costing the team it's like no like it's you know it's they're doing a nice job of kind of balancing both and in fact you could argue that like I mean he's on pace for 53 goals this season like he's still yeah incredibly valuable to them in terms of actually winning games in present day as well it's not some sort of like a comedic side show by any means. It's not it's it's not going to be the way it's going and the way the chase is going. It's not going to be one of those because everyone probably heard the story now about how like

Gretzky is going to try to do the probably going to do the thing that Howe did for him, right? Where how followed Gretzky around and until he scored the goal. It's not going to be he's not the way he's going to keep scoring, the way he's going to keep going. It's going to be one of those where he'll be like five goals away. And Gretzky will probably. we start following him around then. And it's not going to be one of those where it's going to be like, Wayne Gretzky's going to be like on a three month journey with the capitals for this to happen.

It's going to be like, all right, this will happen sometime in the next two weeks or something like that. Like it's, it's not, it's not, it's not, uh,

it's, we're not talking about a guy who's even going to be like eventually like, oh, he's going to be downgraded to like, well, just going to try to mound the power. He's still playing the rest of the game too. That's,

that's the other thing that's also impressive because that could have, have been an easy, uh, that could have been an easy solution for this. Like if the rest of his game had degraded and everything like that, you could have been like, oh, you know what?

He's the equivalent of the ECHL powerplay specialist where you got like one guy who basically you just roll them out eight, 12 minutes, eight to 10 minutes a game for the power play and only does it shoot shots like. Yeah. Well, I mean, so he's got the 800 goals. If you go on hockey references,

era does it because it's obviously like always the debate of, what could, what could this look like if he had, come into the league in an earlier era where the goalies were horrible and the skaters themselves weren't nearly the caliber of physical freak that he is. What could he have done in those games? Right. And so I think the era adjusted tries to kind of like adjust for that a little bit.

They've got him down for hockey reference sounds now for 968 goals for his career when you era just parade for the entire of his career. And then as we mentioned, it's been robbed of 160 games. games by lockouts, 45 by COVID. And then he had to play 60 games under Dale Hunter for that one season, which was a miserable experience that certainly didn't do have many favors in terms of scoring goals either. So it's, it's, I mean, on the one hand, like, if you play out his career a hundred times

or a thousand times, whatever, you simulate it. Like, this is on the higher end of the spectrum, I think, because he hasn't gotten some sort of freak injury that, you know, debilitated on physically or cost him a bunch of games over that span. but on the other hand, like, he's done it in situations as well where he probably could have even had an extra 50 to 75 goals at this point of his career if things had just gone a bit differently in the world. So it's it's kind of staggering to think about. But is there anything else on Ovechkin that you kind of wanted to get to here before, like we got five more minutes before

break. I want to talk about Yili Tovind and next speaking about goal score. Yeah. I do on Ovechkin, the one thing that's interesting to me that I, the number that I thought actually didn't get nearly enough play that's impressed. Like obviously 800's big and he's about to, he's about to pass how truly. But like there was, I thought it didn't get enough play about there's a couple weeks back when he was in Detroit and I was at the game and I saw him score this goal where he passed how for the most goals scored with one NHL team. Literally in Detroit, Mark Howe was in the building watching it, watching the game.

And like, I think that's something to that like, 800 is obviously, like, a nice fun round number. But the concept of this all with one team, that's something that I think is kind of gets, how many times do we have a guy? And I mean, obviously, there's still time in election's career, so in theory could have this weird thing. But like, how often do you get the,

you get the brooder in a St. Louis Blues jersey for nine games? Or you get like, like, how often do you get this weird thing where you look at like these all-time grates and they had to, and their final count at the end is always has like, well, they had 99.8% of their points or achievements with this one team. But we have to mention this one other random, like, the fact of action has done this with one team and I don't seem ever going anywhere else. Like, I think that's just even more impressive about all this.

I think it's such a great kind of building block thing for a franchise. And it's, I don't know if, uh, I, I, I think, in a time in a sport where player movement, I actually think we've talked about this before. Player movement in my view, there's times it should be, it should happen more often, but to see a guy do it this long with one team,

it's just so impressive. Like, and it doesn't really, it's. It's staggering. Yeah. It really is. All right. Well, I'm going to leave us with the Ely Tollivan and T's, because we're going to take a break here.

And then we come back, we're going to talk about Matthew Kachuk. We'll talk about the board of governor meetings. All sorts of other fun stuff. So looking forward to that. So Sean, let's go to break here. And then when we come back, we're going to pick the conversation back up.

You are listening to the Hockey PEOCast on the SportsNet Radio Network. All right. We're back on the Hockey Pee-Ocast here with Sean Javier. So, Sean, we teased the Ely Tollivan in conversation. I wanted to talk about this with you, not because I think it's necessarily such an important topic that we need to devote a serious amount of time here on the show. But you had a tweet after it happened that I wanted to

to discuss because you suggested that the National Predators were under the assumption or at least kept the door open for the possibility that they might be able to sneak him through waivers without anyone claiming it. And to me, that was stunning to think about. But then once the waivers process, it turns out the 22 teams in the league basically passed on Ely Tobin and then he made it all the way down to the Seattle Cracken at 23rd on the priority waiver order. So maybe it was close to to being a possibility than I gave a credit for initially. Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those for me.

It was one of those, don't shoot the messenger moments on Twitter where I had all of these, I had the Predators faithful yelling at me that there's no way this is true and all this stuff and everything. And it is, I stand by my reporting on that. The Predators internally for sure believed that they would be able to get 12 in and down two play with the Milwaukee Admirals.

that was the belief in the plan and uh... clearly did not happen he's in Seattle i think it's a i think it's a really smart move by Seattle um i actually i don't know for sure on this but i would imagine Seattle when they put the claim in weren't expecting to be actually get him knowing where they were in the order um and as much as people want to like a thing that i just kind of want to harp on right here. I even put this on Twitter as a follow-ups to my tweet, but I want to say it again out loud.

Like, as much as we want to rip on Nashville for thinking they could sneak him through, what are all these GMs doing of bad teams who basically let a free asset just go through for nothing? Like, this is, like, that's the one to me where it's like you have, so he passed through every single bad team. basically it's looking like a playoff bound team got him for free like how if you're the GM of a team even if you're trying to tank that's a guy like how do you not claim that guy I don't I don't I don't get how and

I guess David Poyle read the room well enough on the bad teams and maybe he overly overthought overly thought that a good team wasn't going to disrupt their team or something like that maybe that's where it maybe that's where the misread came where he forgot to account for Seattle or something like that. But like I still, the other teams, the other, the bottom five, ten teams in the league, I don't get how you, how do you let this happen? Well, I don't know what's worse. Some of those teams that you're mentioning passing on them or the Philadelphia Flyers who

technically are one of the 22 teams that let them pass were handcuffed because they are at the 50 contract maximum, which is just amazing for a team that is 27th and point percentage to have that lack of flexibility to jump at an opportunity like this, not that yeah, yeah, you know, not that Chuck Fletcher and his staff are some sort of brilliant talent evaluators that would have been all over this anyways, but they didn't even have the option to do so, which is worse in my opinion. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's tricky because it's also good too, because can you imagine the Tolvinen torts discourse? I would not, like, Yeah. I'm glad we kept them away from them. We got safe from that. So let's let's be happy about that much at least.

Well, the idea of Ily Tovren as well is such a nice fit in Seattle because over the past, however many months basically since the off season have clearly prioritized or realized one of the big shortcomings in terms of their inaugural season and their initial expansion approach was they just didn't have enough shooting talent. Right. And so they went out. We're good players. Well, good players, but specifically guys who can be expected to shoot it from the offensive zone and score consistently. Not that Ely Tolvinen has necessarily translated that throughout his short NHL careers so far, but we've seen him do it at previous levels, both in the KHL and then the HL recently. And whatever, two years ago in that shortened season, he scored 10 goals in 39 games. And if you go back and watch all 10 of those goals, it was. was not a lucky 10 goals. Like pretty much every single one of them was,

was full value him just absolutely obliterating a puck past the goalie who had no chance. And that's a legitimate weapon and a skill. And he hasn't been able to show it the past couple years, unfortunately, but still only 23 years old making what, 1.45 or whatever per season for this year next. Like that's, I understand for some teams, that's a lot because it's like, oh, if this guy's not a sure thing to be playing for us, we can't afford to risk that. But in the grand scheme of things, that's that's that's that's peanuts.

And it's I like also like Seattle because they have a guy in Daniel Sprong who reminds me of Tovinen, different players certainly. And I think Tolvinen actually has a bit more upside here just because of how young he is still. But a guy who like had a ton of scoring skill never could really find like a lockdown spot bounced around the league a little bit. And now you watch them in Seattle and they seem to just have fully embraced. what he does well as opposed to worrying about what he doesn't do well and it's like hey man when you get in the offensive zone just let it rip and uh and we're cool with that and and you're pretty

good at it and he's scoring a bunch of goals and having fun doing so and is very valuable piece for them and so it's like a good guy to to learn from basically it's like oh if you do if you just do what he's doing and you're going to have a nice long NHL career here yeah i i good for him ending up in a good team with a good team too like i think that's that's kind of i i when When he went on, like the team, like I circled, like, I thought he might end up. I thought he might end up with Columbus, just being the combination of Columbus, I think, it's like $9 million in cap space or something like that. And frankly, it's not, after we saw what Tage Thompson did to the blue jackets the other day,

it's not like you need, like, it's not like things are going in a certain way where you're going to disrupt the boat in anyway. So I, I like, I like the move for Seattle. And it's, I like the, one thing I like that Seattle's done, especially. in here or two here is they've been willing to be to be aggressive with these kind of mechanisms that just so often we just feel like you have like these GMs gentlemen agreements where it's like well I won't do this to you so you won't do this to me and it like like it just feels like

Seattle's been willing to kind of disrupt it a little bit not on a Carolina Hurricanes level of offer sheets but it's still a good but it's good for the league and like I know I know I was talking about I talked to someone from another team who had a player who was kind of in a similar like career arc told him in right now. And they were like, oh, well, they're like, thank God, we didn't waive our guy because we learned from that mistake of that. Wow.

I was just looking up here while you're talking. I can't believe Daniel Sprong is only 25 years old. I was like, God, he must be like 29 or something. He's been in my life for so long. But I guess he played real games for the penguins right at as a teenager right after his draft season. So maybe not that much younger, but yeah. You know what you know which one got me age wise the other day? Was when I was looking at stuff and I realized Dylan Larkin and Rope Hins are the same age.

Wow. And I was like, like, no, Dylan Larkin's like 35. There's no way. Yeah, he's been around for so. And also some some really like heavy, tough years that he's lost in Detroit. Certainly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think for the Prads not that I want to spend much more time on this, but.

They're 27th and 5-1-fire scoring as a team. 28th on the power play, 29th overall. Now, like I said, no, that Tolbinan was lighting the world on fire or scoring a ton of goals himself, but it's not like he's,

it's not like this is a team that's, it's like, oh, no, we're good. We're scoring so many goals here. We don't need this guy. And so I understand their frustration. And as you said, like not that they were necessarily

trying to get rid of them, they actually, I presume, we're hoping at least to, to retain him and work on his game. at a lower level and bring it back eventually. But yeah, it's, it goes to show you, it's like a really small thing. I don't think this necessarily moves the needle that much for either Nashville or Seattle in the grand scheme of things.

But it just goes to show you like how important maintaining flexibility, working on the margins, doing all this little stuff that certainly adds up, right? And you won't necessarily see the dividends of it based on one move here or there, but you get a number of these things right or you have an, a number of these paper cuts add up and eventually you will bleed out. And we see that time and time again. And so that's why we'll harp on this stuff because it is important. And so every little silly move where you're just like giving away a draft pick for no reason in a trade

or signing a guy to more money than he's probably worth, it doesn't necessarily matter in isolation. But if it prevents you from doing something else that could help your team, then that's where it becomes a real problem. This is one too where I wonder it's that I made this note in my column. I just wonder with Nashville, because obviously that ownership group is at the middle of changing. Haslam's going to be the owner there in 2025. But basically it's like a consortium faceless ownership group right now.

And there's teams I know with ownerships where their GM could not get away with waving a first round pick just because the owner would be like, there's no way we can do that. You made a first round pick with him. You make it work. And so it's one of those where like I like when an owner can delegate, but maybe this was, the case where you need someone on that other side to be like, no, make it work. Yeah, yeah, it's very true. All right.

Do you want to do, I got Matthew Kachukh here next on my list? We just said, you just did get back from Florida. You watched the Panthers Blue Jackets game last night. And I think a lot of the stuff that I'm writing about Matthew Kuch this week for for us at E.P. Ringside. So I'm, I'm knee deep in. chuck tape and thinking about this. I'm kind of curious for your take just watching that because, yeah, he was,

I think you got like the full full package last night in terms of like how good he's been. And, you know, that was like a, that was a pretty standard night for him this season where he's just been remarkably good. And I was going to make the point of like, I, for my money, he's been one of the best playmakers in the league this season. Like his passing has been once again exquisite. And he's never going to get the credit for it because, of all the shenan against because he's such a pest because of the reputation. And, you know, part of it is deserved, certainly. Like the play he had earlier this season on Jonathan Quick,

where he's sticking his stick into his helmet, basically, and trying to, like, gouge his eye out. Like, that stuff's dumb, and he should not do that. And he was rightfully punished for it. And not nearly long enough by the NHL to ever really prevent him from doing something like that again. I'm sure it's going to come up down the road. But that's kind of part of the deal with him. and just focusing on like what he does with the puck in the offense zone in particular and the

element he's added to this Panthers team like I've been I've been blown away watching him he was obviously fantastic last year on that top line with Elias Lindholm and johnny goddrae and they were the best first line in the league pretty much in the regular season but somehow I think he's even been even better this season which I honestly wasn't expecting he's like taking like if you're looking at like kind of the guy who's the guy who's so good but then you sometimes wonder why the hell did you do that? Like, he kind of took like, it's like, it's actually kind of fitting that the other, that the guy who used to have his mantles in Florida and Tampa, it's like, he's kind of become taken what Corey Perry used to be, where you're like, Perry used to be, like, if you only watch the

hockey, you'd be like, oh, this guy's amazing. He won a, like, I think he went a heart trophy in 2007. Undeservedly, yes. Yeah, yeah, but, you know, but he was still should have been, from, from my beloved city and yeah. But Chuck's kind of taken on, on that mantle. And it's, he, he should have had another point last night too actually. He made the feed to Reinhardt who had the, who completely missed the empty net and then went back and got his own unassisted empty netter. The way he drives, like, it's kind of,

it's interesting watching him. This is the first time I've seen him play in person in Florida. And so something I noticed about his game in Florida. And this is not an attendance joke. I want to clarify that with Benastris right now. This is not an attendance joke. This is just a true. observation. That building is so big and it's when you don't have a lot of people in it,

the energy feels really weird. Like it feels really weird in that building. And he's actually like, you almost can just watching that setting. You can actually almost see some of the energy he brings to a team a little bit more organically from outside the ice. So it's actually kind of a cool place to watch and see what he brings. Obviously, um, you'd like to see more people in that building, but you get, you get a good idea. On the one hand, it's like a Tuesday night against Columbus. I understand. On the other hand, this Panthers team is really fun to watch, even though they're not

necessarily achieving what they did last year, like when they were like, literally the best offensive team, regulation team we've pretty much ever seen. But I think there's still so fun to watch. And so, yeah, it's always a shame when you see that because it just should be a full rink every night to appreciate and enjoy this team. but yeah, I mean, listen, he's third and five-on-five points. He's on pace for 41 goals and 114 points. You mentioned could have had another one there.

He could have many more assists this season. Man, but a number of times he's passed it out directly into a slot from behind the goal line to Sam Bennett or Sam Ryanhart, and they've just whiffed Rashad right into the goalie chest. Like, he could very easily have another 10-15 assists this season. His playmaking has been remarkable. He's eighth in high-dangered chances generated. fifth in rebounds created just one behind Brady Kachuk, funnily enough. And yeah, I mean, all the stats are just through the roof.

And so I've been, I've been so impressed. That's why I decided to give them the full deep dive treatment in terms of watching all his tape and writing about it today. And so I wanted to talk about that with you because you were in attendance. And it's cool because also the team itself has, I mentioned, like, how entertaining they are, they've so fundamentally with that trade changed their identity in terms of the way they attack offensively where they're not as much of a rush team as they were last year. But the element strike has provided in terms of deep in the offensive zone being able to

create as a playmaker has like immediately paid dividends and just like fundamentally it's, it's wild how so quickly he's just entirely changed how that team approaches like their their offensive game. I like looking how they break things down. Like we talk, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of fun to watch that Florida team. Obviously, they were such a rush team last year. But it's fun to kind of watch and see the play develop and see. And it's, it's, it's kind of one of those games where like you watch Florida play.

And I was doing it a little bit last night in person, but even when I'm here to just watching the game on TV, you're watching, you just kind of start to, you can almost kind of watch them like you watch an NFL football game. Like, where it's like, you're like, okay, I'm going to try. try to predict what's going to happen on this play. Like, it's almost methodical in how they break teams down sometimes. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, and I mean, the other thing that's just, I think, full credit on a personal level for what, what, what he's done, like, like, he and I, and I, not that I ever expected barcoff to, like, feel animosity or anything like that.

Yeah, yeah, but, he'd traded for, and, and, he got traded for, he's, he's, he's, he's like, basically the guy who had been there, who had been for Rubido, who had been thick and thin through the ups and downs and everything like that. Like, like, it's, it's, there's some, there's, there's a build there to kind of, there's a bit of a weirdness there. And, and you get over that quick, they got over that pretty pretty quickly, obviously, but it's, well, I was going to say, first off, I think Barkov's a pretty smart player and he realizes oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

grand scheme of things that's probably a net positive for his. Oh, yeah, I agree. Yeah. But also you hear some of these interviews. I was watching the sportsnet put out these like, I guess they were,

you know, at the start of the season, they like get all the players together or whatever. And then they like, they like record these interviews or ask a bunch of questions or whatever. Yeah. And there was the one where Austin Matthews was saying that Tage Thompson was his most under underrated player or whatever because he was training with him

the off season. This was before he went off this year. He did score 30 goals or whatever last year. So it's not like he came out of nowhere, but certainly has taken another. step in the right direction as a, as a, you know, a real star in this league. But then there was like the Kachak one where he's like, yeah, Barcov's the like the most skilled player I've ever played with before, right? And so part of it is like, it's like, oh, like ingratiating

yourself right out of the game. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, probably true. Like Barcov's pure skill is right up there with literally anyone in this world. So there's some truth to it, but also I'm sure stuff like that, like, you know, pretty quickly, uh, endears yourself to a, to a new teammate. Yeah, for sure it does. Um, okay. Do you want to do quickly here? We got some board of governor stuff. What would stuck out to you from, from being there because, you know, we could talk a

little bit about the cap. I don't, I don't think it's necessarily that interesting. Like, it's a big story, but. It's, it's, it's, it's not a new story. That's the thing with the cap thing. Like, it would have been, it would have been more of a story if they were going to be like, if they came out and said, oh, you know what? we're going to make $150 million more this year than we expected.

So it will go up by $4 million or whatever. And that's not what happened. So it's not really like it's a story for the record keeping part of it, but it's not really a big story. We kind of know it's still going to be flat cap and all that stuff. I mean, for me, the one that's just like lunacy, and I pushed back on this. And I don't know if anyone, I'm the person asking the question about this.

If anyone sees the interview of where. So Gary Bettman says that. they've pulled people and the digitally enhanced dashboards are they're getting all the great reviews yeah more and more people are saying that they actually love it yeah and um and i was the person who asked um who where are these people coming from who are you pulling and i got the well they're from all fan bases and i also got the uh the it's like well if you're if you're reporting on and looking at it, I guess I could see why they're distracting. But if you actually watch the game, like I got a, if you actually watch,

they didn't say my name, but I got like from Gary Bettman, like if you actually watch the game, Sean, like, like I got one of those for pushing back on this. Well, that's very ironic because I, I joked on Twitter as well. This is a good bit by us, us, us talking about tweets. I made the point of like, the NHL's decision making generally makes a lot more sense. if you just operate under their premise that they don't actually watch hockey. Like they're just like making these decisions and then just like they decide some, the rule is going to happen or the offside reviews or whatever, this and that.

And then they just like let the games happen and they just like turn off their phones for the night and go out for dinner and then come back the next day and they're like, oh, what happened last night? Like they're not actually sitting down and watching these games and understanding the effect it has on it. And that applies here perfectly because there's no possible way that you could be sitting at home watching these games in a regular basis and feel that way. and I refuse to believe that I'm sure there's some people and I've seen some some some people trying to be overly cool that are like oh like I my attention my attention and focus is so good that I'm not even bothered by this like I'm surprised people care about it's like no I I'm I'm focusing on these games too and it's it's it's ruining my viewing experience it's it's not great yeah it's uh the the full blown it is great and that you even even hear

you try to push on the like, well, okay, you say when you're polling people, is, are you pulling, is it the concept or is, or do you actually think this application is great? Because it's one thing if you're, if you, if you wanted to stand by and be like, okay, conceptually it works, we have to do this for revenue. A lot of blah, blah, blah. Okay. I could, I could respect that answer. But to say, like, it's going great, this is like, how many times do you look on Twitter now

and you see like a clip of like an enterprise truck like driving through a place? or like mid like mid rush. But it's not even, I mean, yeah, that's horrible. Yeah. Like players literally disappearing in the boards. Yeah. The puck just disappearing and you're being like, oh, where'd the puck go? And then all of a sudden it pops up like some other region on the ice.

Like it's, yeah, the idea of it, I understand completely. And I am all for the league making money. So the cap can go up and everyone can get compensated barely and everything. That makes total sense. The execution application of this is just absurd. horrible and I will hear no difference. So yeah, I'm pretty sure you just made that up. I, I find it hard to believe that anyone with a real opinion here was actually pulled on it beyond. Yeah, it's it's it's staggering to me. So it was a very classic one. I didn't know that you were the

one responsible for. I like that. I like that thought. That's pretty funny. Um, okay, so there was there anything else from the border governors or? I mean, like obviously we mentioned the cap is just news nugget. I mean, the other for when I look at kind of from down there, one story that I reported on that it wasn't necessarily like breaking, but it's a story that I've been kind of just curious and interest in from my time in Dallas, but a little bit more legwork on a little more legs to the NHL as they grow this international brand. Right. Like right now, it's eventually we're going to expand this international series to Mexico as well. Obviously, the, the, He started the season this year with the games and preseason game was in Switzerland.

And then the actual regular season games were in Czech. But eventually we're going to see a regular season game in Mexico, probably Mexico City. Don't know for sure, but probably Mexico City. And it's going to be interesting to see how the NHL tries to leverage that because I'm really curious if that is a regional push where it's like, okay, hey, L.A., Arizona. Dallas. You can even include Florida. The Florida teams just because of the Spanish-speaking population. But like, do we just push that?

Or does the league actually try to be like, okay, we're going to try to bring in some revenue from like a dosakis or like things like that. Where you see like you see kind of because you've seen, we've seen that more and more in the United States where we've seen some Spanish facing Spanish speaking brands jumping to college football advertisement. And like is that something where eventually the NHL could jump in on that? Um, that's, that's something that that was just kind of interesting for me, um, to see as we're going on that. I mean, the stars, for example, um, they hired, uh, Al Montoya one of the, they have like 15 next NHO goalies working for them, but the one who actually didn't play for them, uh, to kind of help with that effort. And then the other thing that was just obviously big out of this was, there's the predator's ownership change, which is kind of, we know what's going to happen with that. And then there's the senators ownership change. And I'm sure. I know lots of people have talked about the Ryan Reynolds factor and everything like that.

And the way this is talked about, the NHL refuses to go as far as saying like Ryan Reynolds must be involved in the sale. But when he's already met with Gary Bettman and Bill Daley and they're shaking hands and doing all this stuff, like if he's not, I don't, it's like having Ryan Reynolds as part of the senator's ownership group is going to become like the next Arizona Coyotes and Mughey's. stay in Arizona Hill to die on, I think. Like, I feel like that's going to be kind of the space where it's going to be like someone, like they've got like 12, at least a dozen ownership groups of potential owners, no bids have been placed yet, at least a dozen. That they give an access to the books to and stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They signed the NDA and everything like that. And, uh, and they, uh, I wonder if they give like a poison pill page in there. Like, I wonder if they put like a wrong page so that like if all of a sudden like, Pierre LeBron or Elliott Freeman to report like something, they're like, Like, okay, we only gave that number to these guys. Like, like, I'd love to, I would, I would love to see if there's like some sort of mechanism in there to catch the, to catch the leaker. Yeah, suss out who the rat is. That's good.

All right, man. Well, yeah, no, that'll be a story to follow. And I'm sure there's going to be more coming out from that. So maybe next time, next time we have you on for our biweekly correspondence or whatever, we'll get into that. I'll let you plug some stuff here before we sign out. Let the people know where they can check you out and kind of what you've worked on recently. Yeah, for sure. We got the over at our stop at a EPRink side.

I've got covered some of it today in this chat, but got the biweekly column over there, kind of going through a bunch of things. Some of the stuff from the board of governors, some of the stuff from my time in Florida as well as with the Panthers. I've also got, you can always, in addition to what we do at EPRRRRR, I'm doing some work over my own substack, shapshots where kind of, kind of waiting for Maddie Blumel to get called up to Dallas and play because Dallas has been so healthy. It's kind of crazy how healthy they've been.

This kid is legitimately super interesting. And his dad is a former NHL as a former Olympic referee and got a really interesting story. That's like kind of like you just kind of sit on and wait for something interesting to happen. And then I also occasionally help out the folks over at D.D. Magazine and I have a fair but harsh commentary on the Ryan Souter season coming later this week. So look forward to that. Nice. I like that. All right, man. Well, this is a blast. I'm glad we got to do this. If the listeners enjoyed it, they can always, as always, help us out by smashing that five-star button wherever they listen. Go check out our work on EPIR ringside. I'll have a lot more. I'm at the cat that you could chuck there this week. And my one plug is go check out, starting this like YouTube page. It's just at the Hockey P.Docast. I'm basically just posting the mixtapes that I post on Twitter that you probably see, except blowing them out and doing much, a bunch of longer versions. And especially if I'm doing some of these tape studies for articles that I'm writing free period inside,

I've got a bunch of clips there. So I just put it all together and there's posted there. So if you're interested in that stuff, go check that out. And we'll be back tomorrow with more. So thank you for listening to the HockeyPedocast here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.