The Hockey PDOcast - The January Mailbag

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jack Fraser to help answer your mailbag questions about San Jose's plan for filling out their blueline in the future, rookies that have impressed us beyond the obvious ones in the Calder conversation, Sam Malinski's extension, the Ondrej Palat trade, public models vs. private models, and the future of tracking data. 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 HockeyPedioCast. My name's Dimitri Filipovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jack Fraser. Jack, what's going on. I'm doing pretty well. There's like six feet of snow on the ground right now in Toronto. But other than that, it couldn't be better. Well, let's try to warm things up a little bit with our takes here today. We're going to do a mailback episode. We got questions from our listeners over at the PEDOCast Discord. If you're not in there yet for whatever reason and you're listening, please join us. can get involved for future editions of these mailbags. And we've got a fun list of topics to get through today.

Let's start with this one, because I think there's a lot of layers to it that we can unpack. Emily asks, can we walk through some possibilities for how the sharks are going to get a number one defenseman? Because this is what keeps me up at night as a sharks fan. Now, Emily also included a tweet you sent out recently, kind of wondering the same thing. And I think it's a fascinating question, especially in light of San Balinski's extension yesterday, not that he would necessarily profile as a number one defenseman.

But I'm a big fan of his game. And on Friday, Harmon and I did a show on the Patreon and we were kind of going through the logistics of if he made it to free agency, how a team like the sharks would approach that situation. And I think they certainly would have been very interested and would have pursued it pretty aggressively. Obviously, that takes it off the board.

And now there's one less option available for them. As good as things have been for San Jose, you look at the blue line, they're rolling out. It's remarkable that they're hanging around a playoff race with an Orlov, Klingberg bear at the stages of their careers, Ferraro and Lilligrin, and then Dickinson and De Harnay. They've been building up this young forward nucleus through the top of the draft over the past couple years.

Certainly are already seeing promising results out of it, but in terms of supplementing it with the blue line position, how do you think Mike Greer and the sharks are going to approach this, whether it's this offseason or in the last season, or into the future as they keep leveling the organization up. I mean, that really is the question. And it's amazing how easily it would have been solved with just a few different bounces of the lottery ball a couple months ago.

I mean, there isn't really a lot that they can do. I mean, you're talking about, you know, like you mentioned, Balinski, a lot of people are saying, oh, well, you know, maybe the Dougie Hamilton option opens up again. But I don't know that any of this really addresses the franchise cornerstone 25 minute a night defenseman in his prime question, which is what the sharks are really going to have to answer if they're going to scale this thing up properly. You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody that they pick in the top five. I mean, the penguins obviously, you know,

as an example, since everybody likes comparing Celebrini to Crosby these days, you know, they signed a 35-year-old or something like that, Sergei Gonshire, and then ended up finding their long term, and by long term, I mean, you know, literally like 20-year number one defenseman in Chris LaTang in the second round, you know, second or third round. And maybe that's how it's going to go. Maybe Sam Dickinson is going to be the guy who just grows until he gets to the point that he can handle that minute load. But, you know, you look at who might be available next offseason. There really aren't a lot of options on the table. And I would say personally, with the possibility that someone like a

Adam Fox or a Zach Werencky might potentially shake loose in the next couple of seasons, I think that the way to go is probably the way that the sharks have been already going, which is finding these guys that they can just kind of plug in, whether it's your Orlovs, whether it's Hamilton like they tried to acquire in the off-season, whether it's Klingberg.

Basically fill the gaps while you can, keep as many of your assets as you possibly can. and prepare yourself for the possibility that at some point in the future, one of these game-changing number one defensemen might become available. The idea of a Zach Wrenski to the Sharks package that looks awful lot like the functionally for a first-round pick offer that Minnesota ended up making to Vancouver doesn't seem out of the question to me. And maybe other options will arise in the meantime that might be interesting.

Maybe like a Roman Yossi could find his way to, San Jose at the end of a contract or something like that. But, you know, I think they essentially have to be patient and hope that something comes up internally because I don't really see a lot of imminently feasible options to really fill that prime-aged number one defenseman throughout the Celebrini era type player. Yeah, what makes it especially fascinating is the situation ahead for them where if you just look at their cap sheet this summer, they'll still have 35-year-old Dimitriolov on the books for one more a year and Sam Dickinson on his ELC.

But beyond that, those are the only two defenders with NHL deals at the moment. Now Shakir Mukmadulin is an RFA and they're obviously going to have him around. But I think there's going to be a lot of minutes. And I think premium ones open at that. And you already watch the way they play and I've been talking about on the show, like especially when Celebrini is out there, there's so many offensive zone opportunities and the puck works its way up to the point. And they just don't really have the talent necessarily to maximize that.

And that's kind of a scary thought that if they eventually did accomplish that. Celebrini's minutes of 515 could be that much more lethal. Their biggest asset right now is the cap space. Beyond the young talent, they've been accumulating. They have about 60 million in unused cap space for next season. Some of that is going to go to their own RFAs, but they're still going to have more than they can spend. And I'm fascinated. That's why I thought Malinski was such an obvious option to go along with the fact that unlike a lot of UFA defensemen that hit the market, he's still what 27 years old so the timeline from an age perspective makes sense with this group and the upside in terms of already seeing the offensive skill set but now thinking all right

you know if you scale up the usage all of a sudden maybe there could be even more there than there's already been in colorado and that's why i was so fascinated by the fit there maybe they are going to pivot and it's obviously not going to answer the question of the number one defenseman but in thinking about belinski and i wanted to talk about his extension with you a little bit here while we're on the topic. I imagine this signals that Sam Gerard at some point, most likely this offseason, will become expendable for the abs because they're probably not going to want to or not be able to fit his $5 million on the books with everything else they're spending on their players and how they're going to round out their roster and he'll be 28 years old. And so

it makes sense from a business perspective that the abs went this route because I much prefer the alternative of keeping Malinsky and trading Gerard and getting a couple assets for him as a opposed to keeping Gerard and losing Malinsky in free agency for nothing. I think Malinski's versatility playing on his offside now with Macarra, for example, just being more stout and stronger defending in zone than Gerard is because of his frame. I think all those things make him a superior player. So it makes sense from the ass perspective, but I do wonder if that becomes the natural kind of fallback to this.

And we just pick the wrong abs defenseman to place on the Sharks' roster for next season. Well, I don't know that Harmon did. I think Harmon actually got it spot on predicting that the abs were going to extend the whiskey. Honestly, as far as Gerard goes, I think there's going to be a lot of things that are not only looking to add a defenseman, but they're also going to be looking to ask some salary next season. And the sharks are one of them. We've seen them ride this model where they kind of plug in these puck-moving defensemen, you know, to fill cap space and fill space on their blue line, and it wouldn't surprise me the shorts.

a guy that they look at. And honestly, anybody who can reliably put the puck in the hands of Macklin-Cellibrini and as a bonus, you know, do all that spinny, fancy work that Stam-Jarrag can do in the offensive zone alongside him, I wouldn't mind seeing that even if I would recommend that they not play in 25 minutes a night in the playoffs for the next 10 years. Would you think about the Malinsky extension, both like the price point that he wound up settling on with the abs and kind of picking that as the situation he's going to stay in as opposed to playing out the rest of the season and potentially getting even more, I think he probably reasonably could have if he had become a UFA.

I like it just because with that kind of defenseman, we always spend so much time talking about, oh, you know, how much is the system, how much of it is the environment, how much can he scale it up, you know, what does he look like on another team? And when you have a player, like Malinsky, who's doing so well in this role in Colorado right now, and, you know, I think for the first time really showing that level versus still moving up the lineup, there really just isn't a reason to break off that relationship, even if, you know, maybe hypothetically with the production that he's had this season, somebody would maybe have come calling to play a bit in a top four role. But if the abs are planning on moving

Gerard, as I would imagine that they are, and, you know, sliding him up into that top four moving forward, then I think it will be a great situation for both the player and the team. And he's a lot of fun to watch. He's one of the fastest defensemen in the league. He's an awesome passer. He has a great shot that he does a great job of getting through. I mean, he's created so many rebounds and tip goals this year from the point. You know, I think it's a matchmate in heaven. And I'm glad to see one of these players who's, you know, a bottom of the lineup, analytical darling player, not just kind of toil away. on the third pairing forever because he's not the biggest player in the world

and get an opportunity to move up the lineup and crush it to the extent that he has. Yeah, it's been interesting. The last two weeks in particular with Devon Te's out. They've been playing him, as I said, on the offside with McCar. And he actually leads a team in 515 usage. In that time, they've scaled his minutes up to 21 per game. And I'm with you. I love his skill set.

And it's awesome to see it blossoming even further. Like he's so good at accentuating everything the abs do best, pushing the puck up the ice, entering zone with possession, making those high IQ reads in the offensive zone with all the movement they incorporate, getting shots through for either tips or rebounds. It's amazing seeing the micro data that Corey Schneider tracks for him just seeing like the deflection shots essentially, which he winds up generating, are just essentially breaking the chart on a permanent basis because he's so good at that and he has to look for that all the time. I imagine, as I said,

he probably could have been bordering near $6 million per year, I think, on a four or year deal this summer if the rest of the season had gone the way it's going so far and he had made it there. From his perspective, though, you probably can't put a price or certainly not worth that extra million and a half or so. Getting to play in the best environment possible, getting that money right now in terms of security. It's interesting to see that he's got a full no trade clause in the first two years. So I think he feels very secure staying there in a spot that he loves. And then plausibly, if things go well, 2030, he'll still be only what, 31, 32 years old. coming off a lot of individual and team success.

I imagine he's going to be able to command one more big payday. So it makes sense for both parties. All right, next question here from Luke. Which rookies are you most excited about based on their underlying stats? And how do those numbers compare to their actual production? Now, Luke's a duck fan in the Discord. And I presume this was his way or thinly veiled way of getting us to talk about Beckett Seneca. And we certainly can.

I've spoken a lot about Schaefer and Demidov and sort of the obvious candidates atop the the Calder ballot right now, do you want to talk a little bit about Seneca or do you want to kind of use this as an opportunity to highlight maybe a couple other first-year players who are a bit under the radar because their scoring production isn't as good as these guys, but are still doing like really fun,

productive things that we've been impressed by. Well, in my notes, I have been Kindle written in gigantic letters. So I am a little bit biased in that direction. Seneca has also been an extremely impressive player. I mean, he's such a archetypal player that, you know, teams love. And I think there's a reason that he was drafted where he was despite, you know, the tough start that he had in his draft here.

He really came on in the second half. You know, there were a lot of people who was skeptical about that pick, and, you know, including people who I think were looking at that draft through production. But I've been, you know, immensely impressed by the, I mean, you know, the goal of scoring is through the route. He's one of the most efficient. five or the league. But it's not just coming from, you know,

you know, shooting the lights out he's finishing above expected. It's just a volume of chance creation that is making him on top of, you know, such an incredible goal score so far this season, also one of the best, you know, individual offense drivers in the league as well, which I don't think was something that we really had any right to expect from him this early. So, you know, I think this opens up a lot of options for the Ducks. I know that we might talk a little bit more about certain other parts of that duck score later on. But just having a player of that type able to contribute so early to the extent that he is,

and not just in terms of goal scoring, but also just in terms of chance creation, I think it's been just a huge thing in unlocking this duck's offense this year. Yeah, he's been going nuts lately. I had the hat trick with the overtime winner in Calgary, a couple nice assists against the Oilers the night after drawn even with Demadov for the rookie scoring lead. I'm with you. He's so good. He moves differently as well. Like some of the stuff he's already doing off the rush to just twist offenders into a pretzel and change the shot angle and make life hell for goalies. He's going to score so many goals in this league. And it's fun seeing like they're not playing together right now necessarily.

But two cornerstones of this Ducks organization, him and Cutter Goce, when they've been out there together, it's a very symbiotic relationship. I think they have like a 58% expected goals here in that time. So that's certainly something to build on for them. I did have Ben Kendall on my list. So I'm going to indulge you. there and i don't know how you can watch him and not come away just immensely impressed by particularly the detail in his game like coming in as an 18 year old center uh who wasn't even a top 10 pick necessarily obviously way ahead of schedule and just already demonstrating this kind of feel for the game i love in particular the games whether it's on ESPN or you know this past weekend

they're playing the knox and i'm listening to sports net broadcast and ray for hours on it and he's so appreciative of like all that stuff in terms of him how he moves around the offensive zone finds these soft pockets of ice and then is able to do stuff from there. They technically been outscored in his 5-1-5 minutes. A lot of it is because the PDO is at 96 right now, but 54% expected goal share, 56% high-dangered chance share playing right now with Brazil and Manta has certainly certainly rock plus seven penalty differential and 19 of his 22 points or primary. So I don't know if you have anything else to add on Kindle or if you think I did justice to

just how fun he's been so far in his rookie year, but we can certainly spend more time on him because I think he certainly warrants it. Yeah, I mean, that's a great rundown. I think another aspect of his game, you talked about the detail. I think there's also an element of fearlessness in his game that I wouldn't necessarily have expected. He's, you know, one of the knocks on him was that, you know, he was supposedly going to take a long time to make the NHL just because of his lack of, you know, physical development. You know, he's a relatively smaller, player. He's still a bit slight. He doesn't have elite separating speed or anything like that. And, you know, you put him into an NHL setting and he's, he's not a perimeter player. You know,

he's getting engaged on the boards. You know, he's not able to really assert himself physically or anything, but he goes to the net front. He, you know, goes to, you know, chase pucks in the defensive zone or the offensive zone. And, you know, he's got good details there. I think that there's still level for him to unlock when he does physically mature. Right now, I think he's winning most of his battles through his intelligence and stick work. But when he is engaged in a physical battle, he is still losing them most of the time. And I think that points to the possibility that, you know, right now he's, you know, a great possession player. You know, all his underlying numbers are great at both ends of the ice. And I think it points to how high his ceiling can be as

a play driver, you know, I still think that there, it remains to be seen what his ultimate ceiling is going to be, whether he's going to be, you know, a true number one, you know, 85, 90 point player. But in terms of blowing expectations out of the water, like, I thought that this was what he was going to look like two or three years from now. And the fact that he's able to do it at 18 and that the penguins have put him in a position not only to get these reps in, but also to play alongside good player. and a broad variety of different types of good players is something that is kind of blowing me away this year. I mean, he's 18. He looks like he's 10 years old, so I think it's fair to suggest that he's got some physical maturation coming. The thing was posted a clip today where they all were dressed up in, you know, fancy, like, tuxitos and desks and everything. And he was basically so zoned out that he didn't realize that his tie was not tucked in properly and everybody was making fun of him like that. And he legitimately looked like a six-year-old who had gotten dressed up for one of those like Walmart family photos. Bring against the workday. Brazer-Minton is on my list.

I'm going to rattle through a couple guys here. And I'm curious for your thoughts on it. Fraser Minton, uh, the Bruins are winning his 5-1-5 minutes, 32 to 20. 18 of his 26 points have come at 5-15, 23 of the 26 are primary. And I've been really impressed. I've obviously playing more of a middle six or third line role on that team. but with a rotating cast, just how strong down low he already is, I think, especially in light of what you just said about what we can expect from Ben Kindle in a couple years

and Minton's 21 relatively. So it makes sense in terms of that gap. And I wanted to shot him out as well because, you know, past track and geeky and their defensemen get a lot of the shine, but the Bruins just keep winning and hanging around this Atlantic Division race with Buffalo and Montreal. And so I think he's been very impressive sticking into division. Noah O'Sland. I absolutely love his game. And, you know, I talk a lot about guys like Josh Doe and Zach Benson on that team, but they're up 26 to 16 in his 5-on-5 minutes. He's playing down the middle with Josh Norris out. I still think there's meat on the bone here as well offensively, because he's only getting like two attempts off per game, one shot on goal per game,

and he can absolutely rip the puck. I imagine there's more there. But such a productive player with all the touches he does get. And it's nice seeing an older coach in Lindy Ruff, like during this road trip, trusting him with heavier usage in terms of ice time on the road late in some of these games and really relying on him. And I think he's rewarded him. Like, you watched that game against Nashville recently

and playing on his kid line with Benson and Consta, hell in us just some of like buzz saw offensive zone shifts where they're dominating. And so I've loved his game. And then Dominic James, who probably is the best sort of, deep cut that you could come up with here because he's got four goals and 11 points yet every time I tune into a lightning game he's so noticeable just flying around with a men's pace and draws a bunch

of penalties they're relying on him now he's centering a line with gensel and gonzalez and there's so many moving parts there in tampa but i'm always coming away impressed with dominic james you got any notes on on any of those guys or anything anyone who fits this bill that i didn't get to well i mean dominic james one of the things about him too is that because because he's so slippery and so quick. He's just that classic Tampa Bay Lightning player who draws a billion penalties, which is never something that you want to do when you're playing is the Tampa Bay Lightning. I did also want to shout out Justin Sortif.

Yes. I know that you've talked about him on this show a decent amount. He is well respected among the stat watchers. But when I posted his very impressive results around December or so, I saw some Capitals fans saying, like, I'm glad that you've posted. this because he's getting disrespected by big parts of our fan base, you know, and maybe he had a bit of an uphill climb coming in because he was a no name that was acquired for a second round pick last year.

And we've seen those kinds of acquisitions go a little bit south where teams got a little bit too fixated on AHL guys that they think are going to plug in and then it doesn't turn out well. But, you know, it's not only that he's played well kind of as a bottom six player, but that he's essentially had to take a much larger role. role than I think anybody had any reason to expect him to at center. And I think he's filled in very respectfully, yeah, very respectfully. You know, his production has been solid. I think he's clicking at around a half point per game. But his defensive impact, I think has been

super impressive. He's plugged in. And I think it's just yet another example of this Washington Capitol's pro scouting group, just being able to kind of pick players from around the league, to an extent that we've seen teams like, you know, like Tampa Bay or like Vegas or like Florida. You know, I think the capitals are right up there right now in terms of identifying these undervalued players and other systems, putting them in a position to succeed. And then, you know, suddenly that's a spot in your lineup that you've filled up. And, you know, I don't know what the ultimate upside is going to be for him, whether, you know, he's going to be a future, you know, top six player full time. But even just having that type of utility center who you can move around the lineup and never feel that you're worried. about giving something up is a huge luxury,

and it's something that sort of provided for them. Yeah, to your point, like when you tune into their games early in the year, he'd be noticeable, and then he'd look at the underlying numbers, and they'd all be, you know, paint a glowing picture of his performance, yet you get pushed back about the scoring in particular

for people who just care about points. And then past 12 games or so, eight goals, seven assists. I think he's quite frankly been their best skater for about six weeks now. And in that game on Saturday, which is a wild way against the Oilers, he was absolutely flying and looked like one of the more impressive players on the ice in a game that featured a lot of top names.

So I think that's a good shout. I guess my last one is Arseni Gritschuk, and this one's cheating a little bit just because, you know, compared to some of these guys, he's on the older side. He's going to be 25-year-old RFA this summer after just one year in the NHL because of all the experience he banked in the KHL. He's one point behind Nico Hishier for the team lead in 5-15 points. now for the 30 second rank scoring team. Maybe that's not as impressive as it sounds, but underlying numbers are off the charts. He makes everyone better that he's out there with.

And he's probably the Wowie King in the NHL right now. It's either him or Josh Stone. If you look at like the splits for everyone he's played with and he's played because of all the injuries and them trying to get the offense going, like he's played 100 plus minutes of I-15 with Glass, Brown, Mercer, Palat, Meyer, Hishier,

like pretty much everyone on the team up front. and they're all around high 50s to 60% shares with him and then fall into the high 40s without him. And so, you know, Wauis are certainly complicated and there's more nuance to it. But I think it makes sense because he does all this connective stuff, and especially in transition that I think makes the team so much better. And so I'm fascinated to see how the final 30 games go for him in New Jersey and kind of what that contract looks like because it's a unique example of a guy who's very productive right now and probably even more meaningful. or valuable than the points suggest, yet it's a small sample size, and he's going to have a

fair bit of leverage in terms of where he's at relative to a lot of these other rookies when they come off their ELCs. Yeah, I'm especially impressed by how he's looked, you know, not only in transition carrying the puck, but also initiating zone exits. He's been super active on those. You see him all over the ice, and I think that's why you're not just looking at a, you know, a one-way offensive impact with his ability to create off-the-rush and transition. turning entries into chances, but initiating the transition play as well, which is such an

important thing when you're playing on a New Jersey Devils team that has plenty of guys who, if you hit them with the puck in stride, then they're absolutely flying. And I think that's why the with or without use look the way they do. And he wasn't really somebody that was on my radar. Are we going to get hate mail because we didn't mention Oliver Caputon? No, I think it's fine. All right, moving on then. While we're on the devils in Gritsick, do you want to quickly talk about the Palat trade and the two deals the Islanders made? Because I guess it's topical with them making those two deals this week and us not having a chance to get into it on the show yet. Yeah, let's go for it.

I feel like you haven't talked enough about Andre Palat on this podcast. I used to pray for days like this. No, let's get into both of them, I guess, together. because in a way, especially with the thirds moving in and out, they kind of correlate with each other. The Islanders add Carson Sussi. They add Pallad's contract for this year and next year. They essentially swap thirds and get a sixth out of it as well. I'm curious for your take on like the decision to go this route for them.

Because on the one hand, it's very clearly if you just combine the salaries that are coming in, not the most efficient usage of that. yet I think for like where the islanders are at where they're hanging around a playoff spot the metro around them is looking pretty weak and I think you know their playoff probably is around 60 percent I think that makes sense with teams like the caps and devils in particular fumbling the bag as much as much they have this year and with how well Schaefer's playing on his ELC and having the best goalie in the league this season you kind of want to see this through yet I think it's a sign as well that they're not like viewing it as like oh we're a playoff team we're

going to push in and be a contender and move all these futures to improve our team in the short term. So I think it's a marginal upgrade for a pretty decent price. And so I don't necessarily mind it, even though I do get like adding two older players who certainly aren't going to help you offensively. It's not necessarily going to move the needle that much. But I think it's pretty pragmatic, I think, of Matthew Darsh and the Islanders beyond, I guess, just not doing anything or being sellers, which they probably wouldn't do because of where they're out of the standings.

Yeah, I mean, I thought the Sousy acquisition was fine. Like he, you know, the player card doesn't look good, but, you know, you look at how he's played this year. I was generally played in the past. He's not going to move a needle, but you can plug him on a third pair. He'll clear the crease. Hopefully he won't play the puck too much because when he does, it's kind of a hot potato. But whatever. I mean, the plot thing, you know, I could kind of rationalize it as, you know, you put him in a depth

role. He does have that defensive conscience. He is involved in the defensive zone. You know, he's a connective type player. But right off the bat, they've stuck him with Bo Horvatt. Like, he's going to be in the top six. Patrick Wall was talking today about how he thinks that he sees a good compliment with Bo Horvatt, which may turn out to be the case, but I don't know that I quite see it. And, you know, I wonder whether we're just going to find ourselves in the same position of saying, oh, I can't believe that, you know, Andre Plott is screwing up, you know, prime scoring chances for yet another team. So especially kind of when you took on the full ticket there for the extra year, like, you know, you know that an acquisition is is really, really good when you see people saying, oh, well, the buyout's not too bad on it. So it should probably be okay.

You know, I'm marginally interested to see if Sipikov can get anything going in New Jersey. I know he has two points this year, which is never a good sign. But I think there are some decent broad materials to his game. You know, he's got good hands. You know, he's big. He crashes the net. I like some of his passing ability. You know, it seemed like he really lost the trust of the coach this year,

which was leading to him, you know, really not getting the opportunities that he got last year. But, you know, he produced pretty well last year. And I thought he looked pretty good as well. and the underlying numbers were pretty solid. So, you know, I wonder whether this could prove to be a little bit of found money for the New Jersey Duttles, not only getting off of that ugly, Under-Palat contract, maybe a couple months too late, but maybe being able to find a depth contributor as well in Sipulov, you know,

assuming he doesn't finish the year and then go to Russia or something like that. Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what happened in NACSyipalb this year, because I'm with you. He was so fun to watch last year. and, you know, in the role he was playing 10 goals, 35 points, and 77 games in his first year in the, in the NHL was certainly productive enough and was doing a lot of stuff otherwise to make him a valuable player was coming the year previous. His last year in the KHL, he scored 31 goals in 65 games and they signed him to a two-year, $2.25 million extension this past off season. And one goal, one assist in 27 games got so far in Patrick was doghouse that he was getting healthy scratch. but when he was playing, he was by far the lowest player on the team in terms of usage.

So, yeah, I have no idea what to make of it. It might just be a sunk-a-sat. He's 27, so I find it hard to believe that, you know, what he did last year is just completely gone. I'm quite surprised that this was all it took for the Devils to get off of Pilat's money. And I get that, you know, his actual salary next year is below $5 million compared to the $6 million. AV, to your point about the buyout, it's pretty reasonable. I think it's 2.7 and then 1.65 million in terms of cap hits. If they go that route and if they were done with Cypulcov, you know, subtracting his 2.25,

the actual math isn't that bad in terms of the extra cost for the Islanders, but for the devils, it's an absolute no-brainer clearing that money and taking that shot on Cypulcov. And so I like it more for them. You know, the Sousy note is interesting for the Islanders because on the one hand, all the underlying metrics portray them as far and away the worst defensive team in the league. Like Spore Logicazim 32nd, and expected goals against 30 second and slot shots allowed. And Sorokin's goals say above expected is off the charts. I'm fascinated to see what Sucie looks like there because he's a guy over, what, five different

teams now who consistently, despite eating up a lot of defensive zone starts, has wildly inflated on ice A percentages. And so I'm fascinated to see, even in a small sample, what that looks like in front of Ilya Sorokin with the way he's playing. I get it for them because of those defensive concerns and Romano being out. I will say in terms of deep cuts, I watched a couple games with Marshall Warren and he only played eight games for them this year, but it was interesting and I would have liked to see them give them a longer leash, but I get it in this role.

A coach like Patrick Waugh is going to want someone who he views is more reliable, and so Susie's certainly that. That is a deep cut. That's like a player that Thomas Trans would buy a ticket to go watch. Definitely. Yeah, the last one on the on Platt, a player I can't quit. And I get all your jokes about it. But I think it's an important thing to remember,

especially when we're talking about Alex Tuxnex deal, for example. And listen, Tuck's a couple years younger than Platt was when he signed this deal, much more productive offensively than Platt was a different player. And I think he's got more margin for error in terms of like diminishing physical skill set while still maintaining value. But with a lot of these guys, we always talk ourselves into whatever extension they sign in free agency as,

well, it's going to be bad in the final couple. couple years, but it's going to help a lot in the immediate future in the first couple years of that deal certainly. And then especially for some of these wingers, the end comes much quicker than you expect. And it becomes a problem much quicker than you anticipated. And so I think we should just keep that in mind whenever we discuss whatever eight year deal, tuck signs for 10 plus million with whoever it is this offseason. Yeah, I mean, we've seen it so many times. Like I, when the trade happen, I kind of went back in my tweet history to find when I posted about the plot signing. And,

you know, I almost felt bad, quote tweeting that the part where I said, well, this is the kind of deal that always goes bad because nobody was even disagreeing at the time. It wasn't even, and I told you so, it was a we all, everybody knew exactly where this was going to go. And, you know, here we are. I don't know that we expected in 2022 or whatever it was, that it was potentially going to costs the New Jersey Devils the chance of Quinn Hughes, but here we are. All right, buddy, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll jump right back in. We're going to take a couple more questions from the listeners.

You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. All right, we're back here on the Hockey-Pedocatio cast, joined by Jack Fraser doing our mailbag. Here's the next question from Tom. Tom asks, with so many teams hovering around a 50% expected goals shared 5-on-5, what ultimately makes a team good in that department and what's the functional difference between a team that's say 51% expected goal share versus one that's 49. Now, I think this is a really interesting question and the reason why I included it was I think it's especially applies this season where the standings are as condensed as they are.

There's so much wackiness with like overtime points and how many of them are being banked by some teams where Vegas is first in the Pacific despite having the same number of regulation wins as 31st place. St. Louis, one fewer regulation win than 29th place. Winnipeg, yet they just keep getting one point at a time to work their way up. The Pacific Division standings, the discrepancy and division strength where I kind of hinted at this when we discussed the Islanders before the break. You could argue right now in terms of the way they're playing, six of the seven best teams in the East are in the Atlantic. And yet, you know, Pittsburgh's in second in the Metro, the Islanders are third in the Metro.

These teams are going to have to make it unless Washington and, and, you know, New Jersey get their act together. And so we've got this point now in time where you've got the Colorado's, Carolina,'s, Tampa Bay, so the world that are 55 plus percent expected goal sharing clearly the best teams in the league. And you've got a couple in the Blackhawks, the Canucks, you know, the Cracken or the Sharks who are in the 45-ish range. Yet everyone else is seemingly between 48 and a half and 51 and a half or so. And we have to differentiate between those teams and it's not as simple. I think to say this team's seventh in the league and expected goal share compared to a

team that's 22nd, but not necessarily that much worse than them. How do we kind of go unpacking this in terms of framing it when you look at these numbers in terms of who's good and who's not and what the functional difference is between those two numbers? Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head. These are such small margins. Everything this season is just such small margins. And so unpredictable.

And, you know, you look at the way this. standings look right now, and especially in those kind of mid-y-gritty wild card races, they could look completely different. You know, I don't know that there's a good answer in terms of, you know, the meaningful difference between 51% and 49%. I mean, if you translate that into goals, you know, like last year, you're looking at the difference between the Ottawa Senators and the Minnesota Wild, which I don't think people, a lot of people would say, you know, those teams were massively different. They both lost it, you know, they weren't contenders. They, weren't really relevant teams in terms of the playoffs or anything like that.

You know, ultimately, I think it just tells the story about the way the NHL is right now, how the standings are shaping up right now. You know, I think there is still quite a bit of value in terms of comparing those underlying numbers to the goal shares, because I think that is where you do see some pretty significant differences right now. and we can talk a little bit more about that. But I think like you said, this isn't one of those cases where the 11th best team

in terms of expected goals is going to be massively different from the 18th best team or something like that. I think this really is one of those years where you have to dig in a little bit deeper into, which teams are overperforming, why they're overperforming, rather than focusing on the expected goals share of itself. Yeah, and I think it's important to consider,

like how they're coming by those numbers in terms of either the talent level in the team or the environment or or the look specifically. I think of a team like Dallas and I totally understand the idea that they're flawed as currently constructed and you know, it's all relative in terms of not judging whether they're a playoff team, but like whether they can upset the abs in round two or even if they're better than Minnesota in a round one matchup they seem destined for and they're all year sub 50% and kind of that 48, 49% range. I think they're up to 49.3%

expected goals on natural statric and yet their top five in shooting percentage and save percentage and that stuff fluctuates a bit more but also with the guys they have whether it's Audinger or net and then certainly their top six up front it makes sense that they'd probably be much more efficient

on their looks than a less talented team that controls territorial play and wins the shot battle but just doesn't have the guys you can turn those shots into goals. So I feel like we're getting, maybe it was always the way that case and now I'm just coming around to it a bit more. But I feel like we're getting to a point where that particular level of context is becoming increasingly valuable in terms of like differentiating between these teams. Yeah, I think especially because there's so many teams that have the chance to make the playoffs this year, which you don't usually necessarily see. You know, there's so many teams that are on the bubble right now in both conferences.

because Anaheim, Seattle, are still kind of hanging out outside of that wild card right now in terms of points percentage in the east. I mean, you know, you're looking at Florida, Philadelphia, Columbus, Toronto, Ottawa, New Jersey, Washington are still theoretically in the conversation for making the playoffs at the moment. They're probably going to finish with between 87 and 95 points. You know, I think that makes the question of sealing and talent a lot more relevant. because if we're starting from the premise that a team other than Colorado, Dallas, Minnesota, Tampa Bay, or Carolina is going to do anything this year in the playoffs, which you may not necessarily think is the case, then you know, you're going to have to start looking at these teams that are kind of on the fringes or the wild card or maybe not at the top of divisions and say, okay, well, in terms of expected goals or in terms of goals or whatever, this is how they're performing in the regular season. but what do we realistically think this team can top out as in a playoff series? And I think that's a very different question than, you know, is this team going to be a 51% expected goal team or a 49% expected goal team over the course of the season?

Okay, well, let's loop in this question then because I think it applies and can expand this conversation a little bit. It's from Colin Graf fan club, which is a phenomenal name in the Discord. They say, you know, Jack mentioned on Twitter that he has a new expected goals model for his cards and his website. who benefited from the model change and who fell down a bit as a result of it. You can get into the player's side if you want. I think it's more interesting from a team level, especially with what we just talked about, because especially comparing your numbers to even spore logic, for example, and then obviously to natural statric or other public stuff,

there are teams because of how closely bunched it is, where I'm not sure functionally how big of a difference it is in terms of what it's going to mean at the end of the day, but still within the context of the league, like a team like Washington, who's 11th in your model, unexpected goal differential versus sport logic at 18, the Leafs who fall quite a bit when you look at sport logic stuff, a team like Columbus or Nashville maybe that moves up relatively.

Let's get into the differences, I guess, maybe between the two or what we're kind of chalking that up to for the ones who do stand out in terms of the differences. Yeah, I think that's a great idea because I have to admit that when, Patrick changed the model over. It did not occur to me that I should ask him to save the previous results. And so as soon as he updated everything, I slapped my head and realized that I had not actually given myself any baseline to compare players.

So other than just kind of going through and taking a look at guys who seem to a change, I don't actually have a baseline of, you know, changes before and after, which is a stupid moved by me. But yeah, just to give a quick background, basically there have been some people in the, you know, public hockey and leg space who have pointed out that changes that the NHL has made to their tracking in the past couple seasons, you know, as they move towards, you know, more automated shot locations and shot tracking and are getting more picky with what they consider to be shots on goal, that it had been causing a little bit of calibration drift in public expected goals models that were based on kind of the old status quo. You know, some people like Neil Pierre-Louis was really, uh, ringing the bell on this one. And so we went in and we fully updated the expected goal model based only on this kind of post automated tracking data set from the past couple seasons.

So as far as I know, we're the only ones who have like a player based model that's based on that stuff right now on our site hockey stats. But what we found from changing over the model is that it has become more aligned with numbers that you see that are shared by sport logic, which is a good sign because it means that the NHL has been getting better at actually tracking their stats properly, which is something that Sport Logic who track their own stats and shot locations and stuff like that, that was an advantage that they had quite significantly over the NHL for quite a long time. They actually have the shot locations tracked properly consistently. The NHL is a lot better at that now,

and that's reflected in this to expect a gold data. So yeah, I think we're, we're, we're finding more alignment than ever with sport logic and what that means because it's not a question of shot locations or stadium bias or any, you know, nonsense like that. It means that we can make more productive comparisons of the variables that are missing in the public data that are present in private data. So, you know, for example, for the Toronto Maple East and the Washington Capitals, who are, I think the two teams that are most penalized in the private data relative to the public data, you know, there's conversation to be had. about structural things about team's defense. You know, I mean, for logic, I think, shared some numbers today about where the Leafs rank in some pretty crucial categories, including rush of rush off against.

You know, I think watching the lease is very clear that they are giving up a full lot off of some turnover to counteract, which, you know, one thing that I found while working with Corey Schnader's data in the All Three Zones project is that, you know, we tend to say, well, a rush shot is more dangerous than an end-zone shot. And oftentimes that's kind of used as a, oh, well, the private status is this, and it's because this team attacks off the rush. But I don't know that it's quite as simple as that, because I've found that the shooting percentage on rush shots is not necessarily that much higher

than off of similar in-soting shots. It's a question of how those rush shots are coming about and what's happening before the shot is stated. And I think one thing you see. see with both the Leafs and the capitals is that the rush shots that they're giving up, a lot of them are off of neutral zone turnovers and breakdowns that are leading to numbers the other way and hucks going east to west that are making life a lot more difficult for their goals. And that's something that a private model pick up on that a public model can't necessarily get that. I feel as we have boarded as they on. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think that's

pretty much the crux of it in terms of the difference, like the Leafs, the goals against, off the turnovers have been near the bottom of league all year. The Caps, for whatever reason, have just struggled so much getting back defensively. You watch them on Tuesday night in Seattle, and they made the crack and look like the aves in terms of how quickly they were flipping the ice on them and then clicking in transition. I don't know that my Beer League team could make the crack and look like the abs. Well, the Caps certainly did their best. And if Spencer Carberry had any hair to lose, I imagine he would have lost it watching that game. So, okay, well, this ties into, let's keep layering this then.

Because old grumpy asks, what new data would Jack like to see added most to future models? I think this came up a little bit last time. And, you know, I talked about passing data in particular, the stuff Corey Schneider's tracking in terms of shooting off the pass, East-West passes, like all that stuff and baking that into the shooting data so that we get a better sense of who's creating what and not just relying on results. in the way of assists, for example, in our evaluations, in thinking about this and this ties into exactly what you just said, my answer would be, and I understand the difficulties of this, but like a spatial slash timing component, in particular, like the distance from the nearest defender in the offensive zone,

which we have in basketball, the complication here is if you've got the chip in the jersey, for example, it's like the body's not necessarily as relevant in terms of its place on the ice. It would really be where the stick is in terms of blocking the lane or making it more difficult for a shooter or a passer. But that would be one. And then time elapsed following either a pass or an entry and kind of like being able to break it down on that level in terms of how quick hitting it was. And I think we'd certainly see that all of this stuff support logic's talking about where

turnover is near either blue line are just so much more likely. to result in a goal against because you're not going to be set defensively. And so that would certainly, I think, skew the way we look at efficiency and expected goal numbers and all that good stuff. Yeah, I'd like to thank Old Grumpy for asking this question because it turns me into old Grumpy, which is that, you know, I would just go even simpler than kind of these specific inputs. It's just if the NHL would just make the tracking data available at the level book.

We actually have, you know, I don't know if you've been on the, I know you have. I don't know if the listener has been on the NHL.com site where for the past couple of years, when you look at individual goals, there's actually a little kind of animation that you can play that's based on the chip data that shows roughly the 20 seconds leading up to a goal where you can see all the little dots moving around on the ice and there's the puck. And then you can basically see how the play develops. And when someone scores in overtime, all the little dots come off the bench and celebrate and it's all very charming. and it is scrappable. As I found out, I was having a conversation with, I referenced that Neil Pierre-Livie earlier on. I had a conversation with him back in December,

and I basically asked him, because Patrick was busy setting up the site and setting up the new expected goal model and everything, so I wasn't about to bother him with it. But I asked Neil, hey, do you think that this is scrappable and you can do something with it? And within a week, he had cooked up a brilliant way of working with it where he essentially was able to scrape the data

and then, you know, create shot maps essentially that mapped out the pre-shot passes. So, you know, if you were looking at Lane Hudson, for example, you could have a little shot map that we're used to the shot maps that show where the shots come from, but you could essentially create a passing map that showed his assists on every one of his assists for the past two seasons. And, you know, like, it's just all this data available. And you just think of what you could do with that data if it was available for the whole game in terms of not just pre-shot moving, but, you know, zone entries, you know, rush chances, pass the solid.

Like, all this stuff could basically be quite easily quantified. Basically, if the NHL, instead of just giving us these snippets for goals, just gave us that exact thing just for entire games. It really would be that easy. And I honestly, I think it would, you know, I obviously say that it's somebody who runs a stat site, So I would love to have it because we could massively improve expected goals models. We could have really interesting stuff set up, you know, in terms of ways to display, how plays develop and things like that. And we'd have all kinds of micros stats that would come down the pike.

But, you know, I think there would also be benefits in terms of having the status set available for people to work with, you know, Demetri, I know you're involved with this analytics conference that's going to be going on in Colorado in a couple months. part of the perk of participating in, you know, one of the, you know, data competitions that they're having there is that you get to work with NHL track data. And, you know, one of the perks of it is, oh, well, you get to see what is like to work with this kind of data. And, you know, for people who are interested in eventually working for an NHL team, that's something they can do. You know, I think the NHL is really setting themselves short by the fact that if you are a young person who wants to work for an NHL team, you should be able to gain experience working with the type of data that you'd be working with for a team right now, because it does exist, it could be uploaded very easily. They're already uploading little trickles of it. And, you know, I think that data science grads who want to do exciting things with NHL data and work for a team someday should have the opportunity to do that right now. But the way that the NHL for now has a setup is that there's

little goal animations on the website and there's a very limited NHL Edge website that seemingly loses functionalities every couple weeks. And, you know, I think it's a shame, you know, not just from the perspective of somebody who runs the stats website and wants to have all this stuff available to the public, but also somebody who thinks that, you know, who looks at other sports where all this flexibility and ingenuity is possible. And we are basically trying as best as we can to arrange sticks and stones in the most meaningful way possible.

Well said. Not only have I seen the animation data. I have a favorite one this year. And it's go watch Ryan McLeod's Empty Netter at the end of a game against the Rangers recently in New York. He like clears it from deep in his own zone. And then it gets dumped down the ice. I think they were short-handed.

So there was no icing. And the Rangers players are just like so slow getting back as they have all here. And Ryan McLeod just essentially looks like his dot has been sped up. And he just gets there before everyone. and scores what's the coolest animated empty editor I've seen. So that would be my pick for that. Last question here, Pixie says, just talk some penguins with Jack.

Now, we talked about Ben Kindle earlier, and I wanted to put a pin in that because I've got our pal, Jesse Marshall, on for a Patreon episode on Friday, and so we'll deep dive the penguins there. So I promise we'll get to that then. I was about to say, I haven't appreciated you in Harman being too good

to talk flames and penguins and games like that. instead talking about more interesting teams like Colorado and Minnesota. So I'm glad the thing was there going to be getting some love on this program. They certainly will. I'm proud of us. We didn't even spend any time talking about Ben Chirot's extension today. Speak for yourself. Yeah, you got into it.

I saw that. What do you want to promote on the way out? Well, I really want to promote HockeyStats.com, which is the site that myself and Patrick Bacon have been working very hard on for the past couple months. I mean, we've just added an unreal number of functionalities to it. It's not only the home of the J-Fresh player cards, but there's, you know, live games, past games. You know, we just added PWHL stats.

There's dashboards for everything that you could possibly think of. There's stat tables, the winds of up replacement, stuff like that. And then something that I would hope would be especially interesting to your listeners is, we recently have added over, I think right now the count is, yeah, so we have 200s for forwards and 83 defensemen, but they're scouting reports for NHL players that are based entirely on eye test observations and skills. So there's no direct reference to stats in any of them. It's not just saying, you know, this guy is a good driver of offense. This guy's a good driver of defense. It really gets into the nitty gritty of kind of the styles of how they get the results that they do.

This has been, you know, I've been talking to you about this project for for quite a while, Dimitri, and I've, you know, undertaken it also kind of working with some people who cover these teams or, you know, people who I trust their hockey opinions. They know, I've been validating a lot of them with those people. But it really has been kind of a massive undertaking and filling in a gap that I think has existed for a really long time where, you know, You know, any fourth or fifth round pick, you can find tens of thousands of words about the nitty-gritty of how they play. But as soon as they make the NHL suddenly, you know, you want to hear about, you know, how does Ben Sharrot play the game other than he gets a lot of hits? You're not going to really be able to find that anywhere. And that's kind of a resource that I've tried to fill in.

So there's still work to be done. There's still a couple players that, you know, I'm going to be watching carefully. And then I still did it and then kind of taking advantage of the Olympic. break to fill in some blanks. But yeah, we're well over 250 players on the side and just getting more. So I'm especially excited about that. Well, good stuff, buddy. I know how hard you've been working on it for a long time now. And you're absolutely killing it. So everyone, please go check that out. Next time, Jack's on. He'll join Drans and I for what's become the best annual tradition on the show. We cook up fun, fake trades. We'd like to see at least two of us do that. Trans does whatever he does

on those shows. Subscribe to the PDO cast Patreon. if you want extra content. We had a Josh Doan newsletter and mixtape up there this week and a couple shows down the stretch of this week will be added there as well. That's all for us from today. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedioCast streaming on the SportsNet Radio Network.