The Hockey PDOcast - The Islanders Bringing in Pete DeBoer, and The Red Wings Struggles in March and April

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to unpack all of the most interesting components of Pete DeBoer taking over behind the bench for the Islanders, and the tough weekend the Red Wings had to continue their theme of struggling from March 1st on over the past couple of seasons. 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 Filipovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name's Dimitri Philpovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Sean Shapiro. Sean, what's going on, men? Dimitri, a lot's going on. It's, as I was just telling you before we hit record, getting excited to head out to Las Vegas in a couple days for the Frozen Four to cover that.

We got NHL Playoff stuff in full swing and spent the past weekend. at some OHL cup stuff. So seeing hockey at all levels, it's been fun and busy. And I love how this is a field where we think of ice and frozen stuff, but the busiest time of year always ends up being the spring. It's true. That's a good point. Yeah, you can be doing a lot of boots on the ground reporting and scouting.

And it's looking forward to that. And then the Memorial Cup in Clona, as we were talking about after as well, maybe we'll be able to reunite for that. We got a fun, busy show ahead because something else has. happen that's a topic very near and dear to our hearts. And, you know, it's very fitting that on Easter weekend, our old pal Pete DeBurr is risen once again. He makes his return to the NHL after the Islanders become the second team in consecutive weekends to make a coaching change very late in the season. I'm curious to see if, especially if there's some success for these organizations,

whether this becomes more of a trend moving forward. It's a coach that you are personally very familiar with from your time covering the Dallas stars over the years. I think in fact, the day he was let go by the stars early last June, you and I did an emergency reaction show right after reacting to the decision to move off him, kind of where things went wrong towards the end in Dallas between the two. And so I'm curious to break it all down with you. He's clearly been lurking all year, especially the first couple months were quiet, but I think you and I discussed this at the time he popped up in the lead up to the Olympics with his role on Dean Canada's coaching staff getting his name back out there doing various media hits and appearances and kind of just getting

back in the news cycle. And I think that's probably the most interesting part of this for me and the best place for us to start in terms of the timing of why now, because obviously people are going to kind of draw the common through line between the Golden Knights bringing in Tororella last weekend and now the Islanders doing the same here with DeBur. And I think the two are, despite the similar timing, very different circumstances, especially with, you know, Tortorella's being much more sort of defined in terms of just the rest of season thing. And then the Golden Knights will reevaluate in the offseason as opposed to the

islanders here committing a four-year term to DeBurr beyond this season and this, you know, very clearly being a longer term move with that in mind as opposed to just trying to salvage the rest of this season. but let's unpack all of it and go through our most interesting kind of takeaways and what we expect from this fit and just him being back in our lives. Yeah, I think it's the parallels between him and John Tortorella are interesting because there's some things that I think do connect and some things that don't at the same time. And to an extent for obviously not this late in the year, but to an extent our pal Rick bonus getting the job in Columbus under the same kind of terminology that Tortorella got the job in Vegas where this is through the end of this. season thing. Not a, like, Tortorella and Bonus are basically interim coaches with, not without an

interim title is kind of how those teams treated that. And obviously, Pete's got the term and everything like that. I do think in the short term, it is super interesting from a level of, well, the islanders are obviously committed to Pete building after this season. It is interesting for both Tortorella and DeBore, two guys that were assistants at the Olympics. Obviously, Torturell an assistant for Team USA, Pete, an assistant for Team Canada. And it is interesting in the immediacy, in the short-term bump thought of this, I can't help but wonder how much both of those organizations, and I think the Islanders

is a deeper one, but for the remainder of this season, for the 26 regular season and postseason, I can't help but wonder how much of those organizations looked at those guys and said, you know what, part of this is also, we're almost treating these guys like tournament coaches, right? Like we're treating like it's almost like a short tournament. Obviously, the team's got more history and background together. I've been played together for 76 games or whatever it is before they arrive. But I can't help but wonder for those two teams if you look at it and be like, all right, well, these were guys that were part of various varying levels of success in a short tournament form back in February. Maybe that can translate to something a little bit

more and help what in Vegas' case, obviously, try to get them over the hump in a wide open Pacific division, or in the Islanders case, obviously, why the Eastern Conference kind of make a little more noise than they probably should this year, even with the long-term plan. I think those parallels are important, and then obviously, with for the Islanders, I think Bruce Cassidy being available in looming probably certainly didn't hurt the timing of the, the, if Bruce Cassidy isn't fired by Vegas, I think there's probably a good chance that Patrick Gwambis probably still the coach in New York.

That's just my own theory, not reporting that, but I think that's another important part where all these things connect. Yeah, I think the timing in terms of why it happened on Sunday, it makes a lot of sense from the perspective of dialers are off till Thursday, so that gives Pete four full days off here. And then when he comes back in, they're going to only have four games left on their regular season schedule,

all four of those will be at home. And so I think that'll give them the best chance possible, given the circumstances to kind of familiarize himself and acclimate, get some practice time in, and then hopefully see some of those adjustments on the ice. I think in general, my belief is that I'm very dubious or skeptical that a coach, especially one who's as detail-oriented,

as Pete DeBore is, as we know, is going to be able to come in and make any sort of meaningful, widespread changes from a tactical perspective in terms of getting different coverages and understanding assignments and all that sort of stuff. It'll mostly be, I think, just a new voice with maybe a couple, especially usage wrinkles here or there. And so that's kind of why I'm separating these two, largely because the key difference for me is, you know, I think from the Vegas Golden Knights perspective, it was much more of a kind of reactionary tilting to recent results

and trying to salvage this season with a veteran group that has inflated. expectations based on their historical runs where they bring in Chorderella. They're really hoping to kind of get some of their veterans going and then they're going to figure things out this offseason. From the Islanders perspective, while they're technically, like when they made this move, they were sitting in a playoff spot since then the Flyers beat the Bruins in overtime, leapfrog them for third place in the metro. They're still technically live.

Hockeystats.com has about 21% playoff probability and what's working against. them is how convoluted that Eastern Conference playoff picture is they don't have the margin for air that the Golden Knights have enjoyed this season in the Pacific where they're battling Philly but they're also battling Ottawa, Columbus, Detroit, even the caps, although that loss at MSG on Sunday certainly hurt their outlook for these last remaining playoff spots in the East and all those teams,

they're all pretty much separated by one or two points but all those teams have a game in hand and a couple of them have the regulation wins tiebreaker. And so I think they're alive for a playoff spot. I think it's unlikely at this point. And I think that's ultimately fine because of that four-year term, right? Like I think I saw a lot of takes after this where people were like, oh, man, that's pretty harsh on Patrick Waugh because you look at the talent of this team on paper and you could argue he squeezed better results out of them than they they had any reason to expect heading into the season, especially where they were last year. And I think that's true. And that's why I don't think this move necessarily correlates with any sort of

indictment on necessarily him, although I certainly have bones to pick with some of their decision making and the way they've played in their underlying profile and the skepticism within that. I think this more so represents a belief that Peter Burr, and I think correctly so, represents an upgrade of the coaching position. And they're essentially getting ahead of the market where I think they viewed this as their window to pull off this type of a move because if you wait till off season, some of the spots that aren't currently open, whether it's, let's say, Edmonton as a disappointing playoffs, you know, Vegas obviously wouldn't have been a fit because of the past connection between the two, but a Buffalo, a Utah, a Toronto, like all of these kind of bigger

market teams with, at least for a couple of them, theoretically closer proximity to competing for a Stanley Cup, would have all of a sudden come and play and been natural landing spots for him. And so this was probably their very defined window to get a coach with P.D. to Burr's caliber. And so that's why I kind of view it as them jumping on the opportunity to do so now in viewing it as an upgrade for the next couple of years as opposed to just trying to squeeze better results out of this group with only four games left. Yeah, I agree. Any playoff stuff this year for the Islanders is gravy. I think that's, I think that's okay to define it that way. And it's a win-win position for Pete. Pete comes in where if they do do, if they if they do have a playoff run and they

and they went around or anything like that. It's a great launching pad, but I think for him the big thing is going to be building for October. The other important timing on this that is just, I can't help but laugh at is Pete was getting paid $4.25 million by Dallas this year. And I believe about 4.2 of that cleared already from the stars. And I think there was only a little bit remaining. So this was, I think there was a big part of just kind of,

that, oh geez, neighbors, sorry, we've got the, the neighbor is having drilling done next door. Is that Pete to burn knocking on your door, trying to join the show? Clearly, clearly that's Pete knocking on the door right now. No, it's the neighbor. They're doing some plumbing work.

They're a big digger next door and everything like that. Anyhow. But Pete, yeah, it's nice cushy gig for Pete where he gets the full, basically the full payout from the Dallas starts to not coach this year, gets to come into the islanders with a nice kind of win-win situation. And I also think for him, it allows, it kind of creates a four-game fast. Like these last four Islanders games are going to be fascinating for me to see what and where

and how looks like a team building for October versus building for a playoff series. Because I'm really, really interested to watch this up close right now with the Islanders. that he kind of must watch TV for the last four games, even if they lose them all. Well, also it helps that he's given a chance to familiarize himself with the personnel a little bit before the offseason. Because I imagine, especially with the four-year term he got, he's going to have a say in terms of roster construction and personnel decisions they make. This summer, the four-year term is interesting to me. I think it's kind of the price of doing business, right? And I imagine that's a big selling point here in terms of getting him to sign now as opposed to waiting till the off-season.

I was thinking about, especially in light of, you know, Bruce Cassidy being fired and out, Patrick Waugh. We discussed this last week. The percent odds you'd put at him actually seeing this full term through with the Islanders has to be under 25 percent. I'd say just based on the fact that there's only six current coaches who by the end of this season will have been with their current clubs. For four full seasons, Pete DeBore himself, despite all the success he enjoyed in Vegas and Dallas with extended playoff runs, lasted three years in each of those spots, but I think that's ultimately fine if you're going to improve this organization's outlook

for at least two or three years. Moving forward, I'm curious for your take on this, I imagine, because I was thinking about the timing of it, and as I said before, I imagine if he had held out and he held out pretty much all season, although now that the payments are essentially stop coming from Dallas,

maybe that expedited this a little bit from his perspective, if he had held out for just a couple months longer, he presumably would have had access to coaching teams with closer proximity to competing for the Stanley Cup amongst the ones I mentioned earlier. I don't mind this for him in terms of just the idea of hitching yourself to a player of Matthew Schaefer's caliber moving forward based on what we've seen from him. As an 18-year-old rookie, it's an intriguing idea if you believe that it's a strong link sport.

And we've already seen an impact, a guy like M. Knav in terms of coming in, re-invigorating this organization, and already dragging them to at least being in this playoff consideration, to begin with, 20 games post-Olympics, only Quinn Hughes and Zach Wrensky have played more than Matthew Schaefer, and he's about a point per game and decisively winning his five-on-five minutes. And so the idea that this is just scratching the surface of what he's capable of, I imagine that was pretty alluring here for our old pal Pete as well. I also think there's something about,

I think part of the ability to sell Pete DeBore on something. And I think part of this is what you give is why the four-year contract. And once again, you hit it spot on. If Pete lasts more than three years on this, I'll be stunned. That's just that's the reality of coaching shelf life and Pete's shelf life in general. But Pete is someone who I think one of the things that makes him effective as a coach is he, when he gets the keys in the command, he, that's what he operates towards. He is a very, I've spoken to lots of players have played for him.

I've spoken to lots of people that have worked with him. Pete has a big vision and he can push towards and he can achieve that vision. Like what he will want the Islanders to do, he will be able to drive everything towards that. Pete's problem tends to be, and it's the reason that Pete's, what Pete has a shelf life that kind of pitters out after three years is once he pushes those buttons, he doesn't really adapt super well and he starts to find, And others, typically those wearing pads, goalie pads, to blame for why the master plan didn't work. But he's a really good, he is a really good master planner of taking things, of helping a team hit the next level on something. And I think that's something where, I think that's why the Islanders went and went with this four-year plan and part of kind of giving that autonomy to him of, you know what, we want this goal is, what does this team look like in year two and three of Matthew Schaefer? We really want to build off of that.

This is gravy again. We've talked about this playoffs and it'd be awesome if they're in. I would love to watch Matthew Schaefer in playoff hockey. But it's really about what a year and two and three of it. How do we build off that? And how do we kind of, for lack of a better word, take some of the responsibility off Schaefer. I think that's going to be an interesting part of it where Schaefer is obviously going to always be that big minute guy. And he's just going to get going better and better and better as we go.

but I think part of Pete's job is going to be where Matthew Schaefer also gets to be a little bit more of the fun, even more of the fun Matthew Schaefer because the other the rest will, some of the other defensive elements of the game will be better. And I think that's an important part to bring about all of this as well

is Pete gets to be the visionary and he's going to get two or three years to do it and then we'll see where it goes from there. And I do think, like, I'm pretty confident that you're going to see improved results, but certainly process under him heading into the next season. We might not necessarily see it between now and the end

of this season, but just giving him time in the offseason, knowing who he's working with to create that plan that you talked about, because I think we've seen this proof of concept with him and the success he's had at various stops where he comes in and he's a clear floor raiser, right? Because he is so detail-oriented, he's going to instill a structure and then he's going to get his team to execute within that. And I'd argue that's the biggest point of emphasis here for him in taking over this job because it's been fascinating watching Islanders broadcast this season in particular. And I've talked about this on the show where part of it is just lazy discourse and a lack of research or preparation, but especially some of the national broadcast when

they're doing Islanders games, it's just repeating the same talking points of, well, this team is top five and goals against. It's a representation of this being the same team that we saw have success in the Peekberry Trots years where they were so structured and stingy and didn't give you much. And that just has not been the reality when you watch Islanders games at all. They've been unoffensibly oriented team. They've given the car keys to Matthew Schaefer. And I do think it's a net positive. But the only reason they've been that good in terms of goal suppression is really just the feather

in the cap of Ilya Serochin and the biggest point in his favor that he should be the Vesna favorite this season. I mean, for him to have a 9-09% percentage or whatever he has in a league where league average eight percentage is 896 and he's playing on a bottom three defensive team is a remarkable individual accomplishment sport logic has them 30th and expected goals against 31st in inner slot shots allowed and he's really been the only difference that's made it look as good as it has so far right and so just instilling more um organization defensively which i think is a hallmark for peterborough in terms of expectations of where guys need to be,

what the assignments are going to be, and then executing upon that, we have not seen that from this Islanders group. They've been a mess in their own zone. There's a ton of blown assignments. In transition, they're always slow to get back and don't have numbers accordingly. And so I think he's going to help a lot there.

And then all of a sudden now, if you could do that without necessarily taking away some of the offensive juice we've seen, and then having a top one to three goalie in the world behind all that, all of a sudden that is a pretty interesting formula i think for the islanders moving forward yeah two notes on that one i think if you just kind of want if you have somebody to go watch an islanders broadcast and if i said hey to put up just a if you were any way you're able to like edit an islanders broadcast and just put a black box basically over the goal and then you just watch so you never

saw the end result of the shots you would realize kind of how poor things are if if you if you just we're able to do that. And then the other thing, it's, it's, it's kind of the fun irony of it because it's fun. And obviously, I know there's lots of people who follow me who are, remember what happened with Pete and Jake Ottinger last spring and everything like that. But like Pete does help his goalie. Pete does help his goalie initially. He builds a system that's better for his goalie.

It's also why one of the reasons that when Pete Stark gets to the end of the Pete DeBore cycle, that's who ends up getting the. blame because there's a little bit of the, well, look what I built for you. And now, gosh, darn it, you got to hold it. You got to, I need you to be the one that, that holds it all together at the edge. So it is going to be, and that's, that's kind of one of those funny parts of we see all these people talking about like, oh my God, you bring in the guy who has a history of clashing the goalies. Well, part of the reason he's clashed with goalies, because, and he's not wrong in his mind, he's done such a good job, actually, of building stuff in front of them. And then maybe his

dismount in human-to-human relationship to do a little better with the position. But it's, it is going to be for Sorokin to his life, you'd love to hear some truth serum from him. And maybe we get it from like one of those Russian outlets because that's where we get the best most influential and actually honest summer stories from Russian players. Maybe we get one of those where we get the Sorokan breakdown of how much better life will be. Because I think his life is going to be a lot easier now. Yeah, I will. I mean, as I said, Pete DeBer is a genuine floor raiser. We've seen that time and time again. And that's because he's right up there near the top of my list in terms of the best coaches from a tactical perspective with X's and O's and getting his teams to play within a

certain way. That is a fascinating wrinkle, though. I don't want to default to kind of like the lowest common denominator analysis here. But I think it's an important thing to mention where Seroquin right now, if you're making a list of the most valuable players in the league, would have to be right up there because of what he's meant to this team and how he's kind of brought them along for the ride along with Schaefer to at least give them a chance to be in the playoff conversation. And he's owed $8.25 billion as one of the highest paid goalies for six more years beyond this one. So it's clear that the organization is very committed to him. He will be there almost surely longer than Pete DeBur will with the team, despite the fact that

DeBur just got there and how he navigates that relationship given some of those past missteps, both with the Audinger handling, where you pull some seven minutes into their final game of the season against the Oilers in game five of the West Final last year. And then even before that, the only time I can remember a coach having their name inscribed on a sword sticking out of his goalies back as well. So you put those together. And I think that relationship is going to be a fascinating one, but especially in the short term, I imagine Seroquin is going to enjoy life with Pete DeBore as coach. You know, one final note on this, and then maybe we can move on and go to break. Beyond me just valuing Pete DeBore as a coach, everything I just said, like, I'm happy he's back in our lives on a day-to-day basis because he's excellent at what he does.

And in particular, I like when coaches do stuff a little differently from a tactical perspective because it's interesting for us to watch and then break down and think about and it creates results. I think what he did last postseason, for example, is a massive. accomplishment by him getting that star's defensive group with almero haykinen for as long as he was out past the abs and obviously it required a herculean individual effort from from ecorenton in game seven but i think he did a lot of stuff with that group that other coaches probably wouldn't have been able to squeeze out of them so i'm happy for that i think also selfishly i'm happy as people who have followed my work for a while know he has brought me a lot of joy over the years because of his deadpan reactions behind the bench where the best thing in the world could be happening for his team or an absolute disaster could be unfolding and he will have the same reaction which is one that I could only summarize as him almost looking like he's thinking about whether he left the stove on before he left his house to come to the rink and he's been doing it for years and it's led to a bunch of great memes and screen grab gold that I've been fortunate

enough to tweet out and so I think from that perspective as well I'm quite happy that he'll be back behind the bench behind an NHL bench and we'll get to watch all that unfold And a perfect note on that, one of the ways to kind of wrap this all into a bow. And we didn't plan this at a time, but I'm very happy you brought up the Pete demeanor and everything like that because I will be fascinated to see. So Pete's been since the 15-16, sorry, since the 15-16 season, Pete at every stop has had Steve Spot, who was an assistant with him in Dallas in Vegas in San Jose. And Steve Spott's now an assistant on the Boston staff right now. but since then every season until, obviously up until this Islander's job,

Pete has had Steve Spot on his staff. And one of my favorite comments I've ever heard about Steve Spot and Pete DeBore's demeanor on how they things was someone who told me who worked for Pete told me that if not for Steve Spot, I don't think Pete DeBore would ever smile. And that is the, and so I can't help but now wonder,

obviously the Bruins are going to be a playoff team and we're going to see where that goes. But I can't help but wonder if all of a sudden to get, are we going to get a, I know it's an assistant coach move in the NHL, but it's been part of Pete's dynamic for a decade. And ironically enough, if you take a look at kind of his playoff success versus non-playup success, he had one playoff appearance in his first five years, then Spot comes in, and then he's got Spot as kind of his seconding command and person who helps bring up his demeanor.

Are the Islanders going to have to be, as part of Pete's summer deal, the deal with the Islanders, I need you to go get my guy back from Boston, because there's just those other, it's a really silly dynamic I realize, but as someone has told me you worked closely with both in the Stars organization, that Pete DeBore needs Steve spot so much because he needs someone as an assistant who can both communicate with him and basically make him smile, which doesn't usually happen. That's an interesting component of this that we obviously don't talk about a lot because

we generally focus on the head coaches. But I think distribution of tasks and assignments for kind of these connections between assistants and coaches, I imagine you could lump me, Shadanskov into that as well. And I'm especially curious, you know, part of it is because of the personnel they had, but the stars on the power play have been very, very efficient for a while now. And I'm the Islanders, that's been a big struggle for them, despite me actually liking a lot of the individual pieces and on paper them having guys that you're like, all right, you put all this together. It should be a very effective, thoughtful power play. And yet they've been 30th or 31st in the league pretty much all season.

And part of that is they brought in, you know, Ray Bennett from the Aves, who ironically got fired because his power play in Colorado really struggled against Peter Burr's stars in the playoffs. But I'm curious to see what they do there because that's probably another logical upgrade for them. I guess one final note I have on this. I lied. I actually have one more.

is I was thinking about, and you made me think about this, talking about kind of how this sort of shows like a thought being applied to squeezing more improvement out of years, two and three in particular out of Matthew Schaefer while he's still on this very cheap entry-level contract. You could lump in, you know, Bull Horovat is turning 31. Matthew Berzel is turning 29. They're in their most productive seasons right now,

and this two- or three-year window which kind of lines up nicely with how long we'd expect Pete to be there, the aisles would do well to not kind of rest on their laurels here and try to be very thoughtful and pragmatic about how to scale this up and improve this team around that core that's already in place. And I think they had a big misstep this season. It ultimately wasn't a devastating one because they have so much gap space moving forward. And, you know, they trade that first round pick to the blues for Braden Shen.

But ultimately they get off of Jonathan Druand's money next year. it's the abs first, which will be in the 30s. And so it's not necessarily a backbreaking move. But you look at how they approach this season, and they bring in Carson Sussi, they bring in Andre Pallat, they bring in Braden, and it's a bunch of guys who are on the wrong side of 30, who I get the concept of veteran leadership and all that.

But then you look at how they've performed so far with the Islanders and what the results have been, and all three of them are losing their five-on-five minutes pretty handily. have looked like guys who are on the wrong side of 30. And so I think just being more creative and, you know, diligent about what they do here, I think is going to be a big thing. And hopefully beat DeBer has a say in that because he's had success in the past with very successful organizations.

And targeting the right types of players to build around this is going to be huge because we've seen young teams on the way up, get this stuff wrong, and really kind of sell themselves short by bringing in the wrong type of players. I just hope it's a signal from an Islander's perspective that because obviously making this move when you did, it is a bold play. It is a bold play. It's not as much risky, but it's just bold and, hey, we're going to do this with four games left for a potential playoff series. We're going to do this and that. I just hope when I see teams make moves like this, it's a signal of more boldness to come in the right direction, right?

And I think that's always a great, that's always a fascinating mark. after a big move an organization makes, is that one where they've checked that box in their mind and hey, you know what? We've put it, we've thrown all of our chips in now and now we see where it goes, or hey, this was step one of building in the right direction.

And I hope from an Islander's perspective and watching that team play and watching what Matthew Schaefer can do and hopefully the core around him, I hope this is, hey, here's step one. And then the next move and the next and the proper steps are coming in the right direction. But as we both know, there's too many times an organization will make a big move.

And then it's like, all right, well, we've done our piece. And then we don't change. We don't actually do the follow the follow-up piece is necessary. Yeah, it's wild to look at because those three guys I mentioned, Carson Sousy, outscored 18 to 10, 5-15 of the Islanders. Andrea-Palat, outscored 18 to 12, 5-15. He has one goal and four points in 26 games. And it's pretty clear.

It's just an offensive black hole at this point of his career. And then Braden Schen outscored 16 to 9, 37% expected goals. share high danger chances are 54 to 23 for opponents, and that's despite him playing half his minutes or more than half of them with Matthew Berzal. And so that is clearly not good enough. And so you put all that together, and this is how we got to this point. So I think you and I are both, you know, I'd be more bullish for the purposes of this year, if this had happened around the Olympic break, for example, to just give more runway for Peter Burr to come in and actually make meaningful changes. But in the meantime, as a forward-thinking move, I like it quite a bit from their

perspective. All right, Sean, let's take our break here. And then we come back. We're going to close out today's show. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the Hockeypedo cast, joined by Sean Shapiro. Sean, before we went to break, we spent the first half of the show talking about Peter Burr with the Islanders. Let's talk Red Wings a little bit.

And, you know, I guess it's a nice segue because of this Eastern Conference playoff race and the wild card. But the Red Wings are a team you cover. They're down to 14% playoff probability via hockey stats. after a dreadful weekend where they go to MSG, they lose to the Rangers, although I guess not as badly as the Capitals who are in a similar spot, lost at them the next day. But then they go home on Sunday, another batonet game on national TV,

and they come out of it with zero points against the wild, despite a third period comeback where they score three goals within a seven-minute span, essentially, get the crowd going, you're like, all right, they're going to salvage something out of this. And then a back-breaking totally inexplicating. penalty by Patrick A and winds up immediately resulting in the game winning goal by Caprizov. For me, it's not just the losses. And it's not just necessarily.

I know it's a neat story to tell about this organization in March and April the past three years. And, you know, coming out of February being like, all right, we're going to end the drought. And then all of a sudden falling flat on their face and being well below 500, it's specifically for this year watching these games unfold, the bizarrely kind of dispiriting efforts throughout that. especially early on. And I think that Rangers game is a great example of this because the game previous, they're coming off a huge regulation win

against the Flyers team that's been playing really well. It's one of their direct competitors, one of these playoffs spots. And you're thinking that's a building moment in terms of turning this around. And then they come out, they have just, what, 14 shots on goal through 40 minutes against the tanking team, essentially,

and are playing from behind. And the same thing on Sunday. They get that, early goal from Albert Johansson. The start of the second period was insane to me. Like I can't imagine what was going through Tom McClellan's head and watching the breakdowns in the neutral zone that led to those two quick goals against. And then all of a sudden they're playing from behind again, not generating anything offensively. And so that's the thing that I think is the most discouraging about all this. It's not the losses. It's kind of how they're unfolding

and how we're getting to this position to begin with. Yeah, I break this weekend for the Red Wings into five periods of just absolutely fun, like just embarrassing hockey, and then a sixth period of, well, oh damn, we have to, like, if you can't find a pulse in that moment, and they obviously, and eventually, they do tie the game and then the cane penalty,

that's just, as you use the word inexplicable, and that's perfect explainer for it. Like, it's, the thing about this, and it's kind of, of, to use, I had asked at the beginning of about a month ago, I think it was actually March 6th, so it might have been a month to the day. I remember I asked Todd McClellan about marches, past marches and everything like that. And Todd at the time said, well, we're going to let,

we're going to let this team write its history and let it write its story. It's not really fair to completely lump everything. Well, this team has just gone and done everything to make sure we do lump them into past history. But if we're going to follow what Todd has said, and let's look at what's happened this season and everything like that. It is, it's pretty wild to me to see how, I guess the word is enthused, how unenthused a team can look in the most important moments. And I don't know whether you want to call that effort. And it's not just effort, right?

Because like if it was just effort, you'd be like, well, hey, it's, they're just, I don't think it's an effort. it's unenthused, not just in the effort, but it's unenthused and they seem to forget to play their, they seem to forget to play smart hockey at that same time, right? Like there's times where teams are boring and start slow, but they're still at least playing their game. The wings just go through stretches where there seems to be no, no, no give a damn for the, on the emotional level or the, or the mental to basically to actually, want to play the system that actually can work at times.

And that's been the wild thing to me. And you look at this team and they tried to address it, right? Like one of the things that while the David Perron trade has been 10 games, zero points and everything like that, they went and got David Perron because they looked at this room and said, you know what? Well, we don't have enough emotion. We don't have enough loud leaders. It's still a quiet group that Derek Lal lamented for multiple years before we can't

him for Tom McClellan. So let's bring back. the guy who we feel almost helped drag us emotionally into the playoffs a couple years back. And that's done nothing still. And it's, I don't like being the, it's the, to kind of go to the point here, if I don't want to completely connect this team to the past, but at some point there becomes the connection of if it's been three different head coaches that keep finding similar problems, and they will get to them in similar ways.

and it just comes to the end of the year. It just feels like burnout. I mean, and you can tell me for watching from afar. For me, it just feels like a burnout of this team basically, they just don't have it to get through that wall. And I'm speaking anecdotally, but I'm at a loss for answers for why this team just falls apart like this, both between the ears and with their feet.

It's baffling to me. I mean, there's seven, ten, and two since the Olympic break, and, you know, the trend of falling apart in March and April past couple years, they were 9, 12, and 2 from March 1st on last year, 8, 11 and 3 in 23, 24. It's an interesting upcoming stretch for them because you look at it and it's the next two games, home games against the Blue Jackets, who have also been struggling, a home game against the Flyers, who they recently beat on the road, but have been playing really well and jumped into a playoff spot recently.

So two direct competitors at home, there are only two points out of Wildcard 2. now they don't have the tie break against the senators and the senators have an easier schedule at least on paper moving forward but with five games left it's not necessarily time to bury them but you look at those efforts and the way they've played

and it's tough to cobble together the path of the vision of like all right well if we just keep playing this way things are going to turn around because I don't think that's what's happening here and I think there's a couple moving pieces or kind of factors to blame right one is you know Dylan Larkin

it's interesting you bring up March 6 because that was the day of the trade deadline. I think that was the last time we had you on the show. We broke down all the deals that happened that day. One of them was the Red Wings, even if it was mostly a half-measure move, at least finally making a move to bring in someone to theoretically help them. They send a first, third, and a prospect out.

They bring in Justin Falk to play on the right side, and he's gotten hurt since. But even before that, the underlying numbers and playing with Ben Chirot, the eye test did not suggest that that was the move that the team needed. But at least it was something you could kind of point to as like, all right, well, this is why it's going to be different. The team's finally trying to win now. And then Dylan Larkin gets hurt a couple hours later that day, misses two and a half weeks. And since he's come back, I know he's had some chances on the power play, scored a couple goals there.

But he's clearly not anywhere close to 100%. And I'm curious if you've had any conversations or interactions with this because his usage is down. I think he's sixth on the team amongst forwards in 5-1-5 usage. and those minutes have been absolutely gnarly. They've been outscored 4-1, 33% expected goal share. High danger chances, 21 to 8 for the opposition. And you think about how well he was playing leading into Olympic break and the burden he took on defensively for this team

while still producing offensively. And that's the thing that I think I'd point to most because they didn't have a lot of margin for error in terms of game breakers and guys who could put the team on their back. And if you remove one of those, even some percentage of it, it kind of shows that they just didn't have that to despair, I guess. And he's, I mean, it's the whole, like, I can't listen into the radio on the way home from the game last night, obviously. It comes into the whole debate of, well, Dylan Larkin must still be playing hurt.

And I'm sure he is, right? I'm sure he is. But there's the, there's been the, he hasn't injury or not, he hasn't had the same impact. And I don't know, once again, I talked about the burnout stuff. I'm fascinated to see. I would be fascinated with some truths here from Dylan at the end of the season. Just like last season, last,

at the end of last season, he said we felt like we got nothing from the trade deadline. I'd be fascinated to see if we hopefully get something more like that from Dylan, from his perspective and how things want to. But the other thing that's really been wearing on this team and just being around them is there's been a, there's been multiple times. times you've spoken with players around this team and you've spoken with and you ask questions

about what's going wrong and obviously I know it's not fun right like I get it as a player it's not fun to go through the slide and but the players don't seem to see the problem and I think that's one of the biggest from like for me boots on the ground type deal that's one of the biggest things where I think there's been for a large part of the group of the of the Red Wings roster, there's a good amount of them that look at this and say, like, well, this is unfortunate, but we're not doing anything wrong. And I think when you have a bit of that internal vibe going, it creates even more of a pressure that Dylan Larkin can't live up to where, well, he's the captain and your best player and all

of that that's going to fix everything, when there's just so much, when there's other pieces that you can't no matter best leader in the world can't go and force pull the give a damn meter up higher for some other guys or make them see what the truth is and I think that's one of the biggest problems I'd love to be able

to say this as a as simple as well I got to do this better on the ice or that or in the ice it really is I think that team has just become a little bit numb to the problem being themselves and I've never seen a team as shaken, and I've covered some Dallas teams as well,

and I've talked to, like, I've never seen a team that's been in Detroit, and that's my time here, that's been as impacted and notices that they're getting booed off the ice. And like, you want, you want to, you want people to, like, I think as a pro, if you're,

if you got a team and you're booing them off the ice, you want it to be taken as a, you wanted them to respond with an FU response. And I guess maybe they did it in the third period against Minnesota the other day, But in general, like, I think just the entire vibe and the defeatist attitude is getting to this group as well. And that reflects a lot on the nature of the people in the room. It's, once again, it's a lot of ifs and butts and what's and everything like that.

But that's what I've gotten to of how you break this Red Wings team down and what's been happening with them. Well, don't you think, I think, and you're not suggesting that you're saying otherwise, but don't you think it's fair? And I know you've been writing a lot about Steve Eisen. and kind of the relatively strange, in my opinion, lack of urgency. The organization has shown in the recent past. And now in light of like the Sabres playoff drought ends at 14 and they were the longest active streak this weekend, fittingly as a result of Detroit's loss to the Rangers

that we mentioned earlier. The ducks were third. They're going to end theirs at seven this season. The sharks are after that. They're at six. They have a very live chance of squeaking it. in as a second wild card in the West. Missing this year would bring the wings to 10.

And it's a pretty rough place to be in. And so I do think you put all those pieces together. And it's fair, especially in light of wasting a genuinely remarkable most cider season. Right. And he's been doing it, I'd argue, even elevating his game post-Olympics, where a lot of these other guys have struggled. He's lifted his game since, despite going over to the Olympics, playing for Team Germany and playing pretty much half the game and doing everything for them

throughout those four or five games he played, 16 points and 19 games since he came back over 26 minutes a night, 57% expected goal share and actual goal share. They're up 20 to 15 with him on the ice, down 23 to 13 without him. Like he's been one of the best, most impactful defensemen in the league all season, especially post-Olympics, and yet the team itself has not joined them essentially in that. And so I think that would be, you know, exciting because he's obviously he's still young and on the way up and you have this foundational piece at a great price moving forward, him and Edvinson and some of the other stuff we've seen this year. Like, it's not all

doom and gloom, but not capitalized on it and having this essentially show for it is, I think, a very disappointing outcome if it winds up going this way. I think about it this way. It's also the, if, no matter what your job is in life, if your boss has go on record multiple times and said, hey, we're going to, we're trying to build something that wins, that completes the job. We're trying to build something that can win a Stanley Cup, not just make the playoffs. And that's what Steve Eisenman has said multiple times. And that's always been the defensive. I don't want to just build a team that just gets in and doesn't have a chance to win it. Right. So when his actions and his words, year over year, I've been,

hey, this is part of a long-term plan. This is part of a long-term plan. This is part of a long-term plan. long-term plan. At some point, you've got to lie to the players and say, we've got to win this year. Right. I mean, like, whether he believes it or not, I just feel like that message has just become so ingrained with this group and with some of the people. And it's, it's one of the greatest shields that he's had is, you know what, hey, we're trying to build it.

We don't want to get in and just be a team that's going to be one and done in the playoffs. Well, at some point, you got to do that before you can win for series, right? Like, there's a big gap between the two. And I think that's another. just like case study for the Red Wings when you look at where things have gone of if everything is about, I think there's been this expectation of final goal and a GM that's got basically, as I wrote about a week and a half ago, this GM is basically going to get the carte blanche to do what he wants. If there's no pressure on him job wise, and this is a great question for any

organization, I don't know the answer, but I want to oppose it. And they're like, if the GM has no job pressure and there's no trickle down from him to anyone else. Is there really enough pressure internally for the organization to succeed? And I don't know, but I think it's a very important question that the Illich family and anyone running a team probably should think about when they're running an organization. And so why, assuming it goes this way, I'm going to be very fascinated to see how they approach this off season. Like we talked about how the past couple summers they were, you know, I think for the for the good of the team, relatively quiet compared to his first couple of seasons where he was just recklessly spending money on unrestricted free agents and they're going to have I think they have 32 million right now in cap space

everyone has caps space but that still is on the higher end Simon Edvinson's second deal is going to eat into a chunk of that but it's the final year of Alex to Brink at a nice number they have all these prospects they've held on to in choosing not to go for Quinn Hughes or even Remy Panarin and just settling at Justin Falk at the deadline and so what they do especially if, you know, in division rivals like the Sabres or the HABs have long playoff runs and build even further enthusiasm, I think comparing those two and kind of what the actions are following that are going to be really interesting to watch. All right, buddy, we've got to get out of here. I'll give you a chance to plug your new show because you've got a fun new podcast project

out with our pal Robert Tiffin, so I'll let the listeners know a little bit about that. If you want something fun that I'm really excited about, we launched a new podcast project out with our pal, We launched last week algorithmically incorrect hockey. I know it's a bit of a mouthful, but shorthand it stands for AI hockey, which will be probably SEO pleasing at some point for us as well. And we had, speaking of Sportsnet, which this is on, we had Elliott Friedman on as guest won last week. Robert and I basically are going to do a live show every Wednesday, 2.30 Eastern, 1.30 Central,

I guess 1230 Mountain 1130 your time, Dimitri, if we go through all of the time zones. Yeah, I think you got right. And we basically, it's going to be Robert and I talk in hockey, try and tell some fun stories and bringing some guests with some fun perspectives. I know you and I, you're going to be a guest on the show at some point. I'm holding you to that. We will figure out the time and day.

So, Demetri Filipovich will be a featured guest. I will use that word when he comes on because we got to, stroke that ego form, but algorithmically incorrect hockey, live on Wednesdays, also on all the podcast platforms as well. And we're going to have a lot of fun with it. So check it out, please. And it's, if you like this show, if you're a listener to the PDO cast, I think it's under the same vein of crossover interests. Well, I'm looking forward to listening. I'm looking forward to joining as well. I do have one condition and not to be too much of a diva, but I do want you to promote it as the biggest sports net guest that you've had in the history of the show, even though you did

just say you had Elliott Freeman on. I think just it would help me if you framed it that way. So that's going to be my only condition for joining. We can do that. I think we, I think we can do that. We can, we can make sure to, I mean, we can definitely make sure to massage the proper egos here. I think that's important. It's a huge part of the business. So I'm looking forward to that. I got a couple quick plugs on the way out. The first is, our live show and chat with Jared Bednar from the Halo conference in Denver last week are up on the PDOCAS YouTube channel.

So I know a lot of you have probably listened to it here in the podcast feed and radio as well already, but if you want to put faces to names and just see us kind of three dudes hanging out on couches talking hockey, you can check that out there. It was a blast and I think you'll really enjoy it. And subscribe to the PDOCAST Patreon as well. As part of the conference, we had a couple

shows, but one in particular, we had Jack Hahn and John Madison, two friendly faces here on the show recurring guests. We sat down together right after the conference from the DNVR studio and talked about the event and some kind of big picture takeaways in terms of some of the next frontiers for hockey in terms of mining more value for organizations. And then we've got another episode with Harmon on the PDOCAST feed today and we'll be talking about a variety of topics. So check that out.

Join us for all the content we have heading into the playoffs, including a bunch of team deep dives and all that good stuff. Give us a five-star review wherever you listen. And that is all for today. We'll be back soon with plenty more. Thank you for listening to the Hockey P.D. Ocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.