The Hockey PDOcast - The New Jersey Devils deep dive with Cam Charron

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by The Athletic's Cam Charron as the pair do a full deep dive of the New Jersey Devils 9 games into their season. This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Progressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippo. Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name is Dmitra Filippovich and joining me here in studio, like every Monday this season. My good pal, Cam, Sean, what's going on, man? Having a great day. That we are. What a way to start the week?

I took Thursday and Friday off, was feeling a bit under the weather. Feeling much better now. And I feel like this is the perfect way to start the week. And, well, the perfect way to start the week is you got to be a day. to wake up early this morning. Yep. And you watched a lot of New Jersey Devil games. New Jersey Devils games back to back to back.

I did. I watched all four games they played this past week. So let's kind of rehash our weekly plan here for people that maybe didn't tune in last Monday, although I can't imagine why they wouldn't have. After our rollicking Buffalo Sabres deep dive. So people really seem to enjoy it. So we're going to make this a regular thing. Every Monday, we're going to pick a team and we're going to, quote, unquote, adopt them.

And by that, we're just going to watch their rewatching. the most recent games they've played, then deep dive them, talk about everything kind of going on with with the team, what we're seeing, what the numbers are saying about them, kind of look ahead as well for their future outlook. We told listeners that we were going to do the Washington Capitals today. Unfortunately, we have decided to put that on the back burner and focus on the New Jersey Devils instead because they're the talk of the league right now. You're red hot New Jersey Devils. That's right. I mean, look, right now in studio, I'm wearing an infernal access sweater brought

to you by my pal Todd Cordell and his website covering the New Jersey Devils. So we're all in on the Devils right now. And so we're going to discuss them. So they have a 6 and 3 record. Okay. But that's misleading because they've actually won 6 of their past 7. How's that misleading? Well, you see 6 and 3, you're like, yeah, that's pretty good.

But like they started, they've lost their first two games. And you might remember, because I mentioned it on a previous PDO cast episode, they were chanting Fire Lindy Rough. after in game two against the Detroit Red Wings at home. Game three, they started off, I believe, down two nothing to our Anaheim ducks. And it was like, okay, this could go really poorly at home. And then they bounced back. They won that game.

They rattled off a number of fairly impressive victories. Now, we should say it's been a pretty favorable schedule to start. Six of those nine games have been at home. They've played the Flyers, the Red Wings twice, the ducks, the blue jackets, the sharks, the islanders, lost of capitals. beat the avalanche who are kind of banged up right now in a pretty competitive one-nothing game I believe over the weekend so we mentioned that favorable schedule now here's my pushback to that because I know that's going to be like a natural thing to point out and you have to provide the context what I'm going to say to

that is it's important to see how they're winning these games we mentioned this when we were discussing the buffalo sabers last week and it's not that they're just squeezing out victories against the Columbus blue jackets they're absolutely throttling the Columbus Blue Jacks. I believe the high danger chances last night were 24 to 1 for the New Jersey Devils in that game. So it's one thing to win or even, you know, win by a kind of a 7-1 score line, but a few of the goals were lucky or whatever. That was about as dominant as a performance from start to finish as you're going to see. And so I think that's an important distinction here to make in terms of how you're winning these games. Well, and the other thing that's

worth pointing out is, yes, they've had a favorable schedule. You know what's happened a lot of times in nine game segments over the past, you know, since 2007, teams have had favorable schedules. Yes, that happens, yeah. You know how any times teams have had a better expected goals percentage than the devils as per natural statric. What is their current expect of goals percentage? I don't know. Okay.

All right. But, well, I looked up, you know, what they've done over the last nine games. Yep. That's the second best nine game stretch for expected goals in the natural statric era being bested only by the Colorado Avalanche last season from game 21 to 29. Yep. And that team was pretty good. They might have been.

Yeah. And so it's, you know, you can look at it from two ways. One, yes, they're beating the teams that are putting in that, that, that are being put in front. The schedule makers have put it on them, yes. Yeah. That's all he can do. You can't, you know, you can't affect your schedule. Right.

But two, you know, as I said, teams have, there's been other teams that have faced easy schedules. and they haven't been dealt, you know, they haven't gone through them as efficiently as this New Jersey Devils team. Yeah, as emphatically, I mean, they really, in some of these games, they almost haven't let the opposition up off the mat, right? Like the game against the Islanders recently,

I believe they had the first 14 or 15 shots on goal in that game. And so that's kind of what you want to see in terms of the process, in terms of actually dominating from start to finish, not having slip-ups, not kind of allowing some of these inferior teams. I mean, for the past handful of years, you could argue that the Devils were one of these teams,

teams that were classified as inferior teams. So at the very least, they're stepping up in class and sort of differentiating themselves from some of these other clubs. Yeah, and I think we should also say that with context. Yes. The last two Devils wins, both the 1-0 win against Colorado and the 7-1 win against Columbus, probably the two most impressive performances by a single team against an opponent so far this year, just the fact that they were able to grind out that 1-0 win against Colorado

and shut them out. you know, I don't think that anyone really expected the devil's goalie to be able to hold, to be able to hold on against that Colorado offense. I know the Colorado offense hasn't been very strong at five and five this year. Yep. But they're still an incredibly dangerous team. Well, here's what I'll say. The devils are still 26 and C a percentage now that some of that is cues just because

the first couple games were really bad. VT. VT.iq. I have been very solid lately. I approve of their strategy, though, of acknowledging that maybe they're not so, confident in their goal tending and just saying we're just going to not let the other team out of the puck for extended periods of time. So I do feel like in terms of the defensive effort, you sort of seen the puck pursuit that they play with now and how aggressively they're pressuring it. So they're not

giving other teams time and space in the offensive zone as frequently to basically just post up in the slot and get great A chances off every time they're down there seemingly. I think that's been a huge thing, right? So all of a sudden, if your goalies only having a face, 20 is shots and not very many of them or high danger, they don't necessarily need to be Andre Vasselowski to post good numbers. Like that's a pretty favorable environment to be playing in. The other thing, too, was last year they would be trading rush chances quite often. And they got into trouble doing that because their goalies were not good enough to stay in the game if they were just trading chances. So I dug up a few stats.

Oh, that's what we do here in the Piedocast. Yeah. So last year, the devil's had 4.3 rush shots per 60 minutes. This is based on natural statrick. Fantastic website and resource for those of you that don't use it. Please do. So basically all other shots, so non-rush shots, they had 53, which was 17th in the NHL. So about average in terms of creating shots in ways.

Which would include off of draws, off the forecheck, off the cycle, etc. Yeah, mostly cycle and forecheck. This season, they're now the leading team in rush shots, 7.1, but they've, they've, they've, they're now the leading team in rush shots, 7.1. but they've also really stepped up their game on the cycle in the forecheck, 67 shots, which is third in the NHL, just in that situation. So what's really happening here is, and it was very noticeable in against Columbus, while I was expecting, I tuned in that game knowing the result. I expected to see a lot of kind of fire, like back and forth.

Yeah, just kind of firewagon where the devils are actually just kind of shutting down the jackets rushes, preventing them from breaking out, and then just turning back in and attacking them wave after wave after wave. That's not what I saw. I saw a few rush chances. I saw them be really efficient. And the ones I got, I saw Ryan Graves post up from 50 feet

and clap one over Elvis Merzlicken's shoulder. As he's one to do? Yeah. But I mostly saw they were just able to hang on to the puck and the other team's end move very quickly, really efficient use of just like offensive zone motion. So dropping the defenseman below the hash mark. but not really leaving yourself too open to counter attacks.

They always had one or two guys back. And winning those loose puck battles, you mentioned, you mentioned their ability to get on pucks quickly in the defensive zone. They're also doing them in the offensive zone. And two guys I wanted to highlight in that case are Jack Hughes and Jesper Brad. Two good players. Yeah. We're going to talk quite a bit about them today.

I didn't want to steal your thunder. That's why I paused a little. No, no, no, no. It's good. You're more than welcome to you. Listen, the sustained pressure is huge. This is a team that is young and fast, right? And so it makes sense that they'd be able to give those multiple efforts and not just have the one initial rush chance and then go back the other way. They still are attacking off the rush.

But I think diversifying their offensive attack is huge to see. That's something what we saw from a team like the Panthers last year where we'd see those glimpses of, okay, they're just seemingly going downhill, three on two every time. But acknowledging that you're not going to score on every one of those chances, what's happening? happening after that and then they most of the time win the next battle and then keep it in the zone and cycle and get another couple extra opportunities to score right and so seeing that from this team is huge we were talking before the show not that attacking purely off the rush is is necessarily a gimmick i just don't know how else to phrase it but this team has enough game breakers in hughes and bratt and neco his here and even dougie hamilton in the offensive zone in terms of

ability to create that they don't need to just be fully selling out and saying you know what we're going to throw all conscience to the wind. We're going to just try to get all five guys up the ice as quickly as we can. If we don't score, all right, we're going to deal with the consequences

and considering we just talked about the goaltending, how still not sure if you're going to be able to get that save on the next chance, all of a sudden, they can create in different ways and utilize all these skill players

they have, and it's really great to see. Yeah, and so I think, I think I just wanted to highlight that. That exactly happened, the first goal against Columbus. I had as a as a rush shot. Are you going to give us a little play-by-play here of the action? I was going to, but I didn't note down exactly who took it.

Okay. But either way, they came, I think it was Fabian Zetterland. He came in over the line, took a shot, missed it, or it was stopped, and then they were able to recover. That was a play where Nicolusier, like intercepted in the neutral zone, brought it in, passed it to him, got it back around the neck, gave it out to him again. There you go. That's the play by them. Yeah, you're better at this. There we go.

Well, there we go. That's called to watch a games. They were able to get that follow-up shot, which I was impressed by, and something I don't think that we would have seen last season. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the reason why, like, I wanted to highlight, I wanted to do them today, obviously, because they're just, they're winning so much,

and everyone's talking about them. Their numbers are also so comical at this point when you pop natural statics. They, like, we just needed to deep die this a bit further. At 5-on-5 shots so far the season, 288 to 139. The Devils, 5-on-5 high-danger chances, 122 to 42. They're generating 3.7. expect the goals for 60, five, they're out shooting teams almost 40 to 20.

Like, they're doubling up in a lot of these games. It's comical. And it's one thing for teams to do this when they're not winning and they're playing from behind. Right. Yeah, yeah. And so you're shooting a lot of muffins from the point. But we're kind of seeing it in action where the team's winning, where the team's hot. And it's fun.

It's, you can see this work now. And it gives you a lot of hope for the future if you're a devil's fan. It does. Okay. So let's talk about the individual. Okay. kind of drivers of the success so far. Okay.

I want to start with Jack Hughes. Okay. Because he is my favorite player in the least watch right now. Yeah. He has three goals and five assists in his first nine games, which doesn't seem overly impressive. It's fine. Before we started this, I was showing you a real I've pulled up of every time Jack Hughes

is either taken it to the net himself in an individual effort or made a pass that led to a grade eight scoring chance for a teammate. Yeah. And it was a very long video. We're going to put it together. for the listeners as well and we'll tweet it out later and just seeing his ability to impact the game that way I mean is there anything more exciting right now I guess like when connor macdavid gets a full head of steam and he's going and he's cooking that's very exciting but I love when jack hughes

comes it's a bit more um methodical it's a bit more sort of um calculated on his part yeah where he comes in the offensive zone sometimes and he's sort of like like a basketball term keeps his dribble alive right he doesn't instantly give it away or just try to fire it on net he loops around the offensive zone. He manipulates defenders. He drags attention to him in terms of that gravity always talk about. Yeah. And he waits for passing lanes to open up. And if you're a line made of his, your job at all times is just basically find where defenders aren't and stand there and you will probably get the puck. He is such a big toolbox. Yes. And I think when you mentioned how many, you know, when McDavid comes in, you kind of know what's happening. He's, he's, he's the best at it. Yeah.

But when he just comes in, you don't know whether you're going to get that little shifty stick handle. He's going to try and beat the defender one-on-one. You don't know if he's just going to, you know, stop up and create this, this, all this space and send that pass across the seam. You just don't really know. He can, he can threaten you so many different ways. He has that speed too. There's a couple of these clips here where he just starts so far back. Like, oh, well, where's the scoring chance can come from? Yeah. You just see him out of nowhere. He's got such a combination of awareness, speed skill, stick handling ability, passing ability, and that shot as well. He can pick corners from, from distance now.

Yeah, he can. And you really are seeing it. It's almost like everyone is a chess piece on the chess board, right? He's like he's intentionally moving people to where he wants them to so that he can set up whatever play is next. And I think it's also what's been really rewarding to see is, you know, when he came into the league as a teenager, he was very slight frame undersized. People were worried, okay, how is he going to hold up to the physicality of the NHL playing in his grown men? It's great that he has all these puck skills. Is he going to be able to utilize them in a functional way?

And you're seeing time and time again, he's constantly, able to get to the inside in the offensive zone. He's able to get to the net. He's able to kind of craftily pass it into the slot. It's not a perimeter-based attack where he's sort of doing all these fancy one-on-one moves up against the wall and it's not leading to anything. He's doing this stuff to create scoring chances and that's a big distinction for me. Yeah. And it's, you know, we always talk about like, oh, well, big guys are going to get inside. How do you get inside? Small guys can do it too and just by being smarter. And he's able to find that. He's able to to find that spot. He's able to find the defender's weakness. And he just kind of knows skating

at them one-on-one. It's great to watch. I think he's the best offensive player in the league to watch right now because he's just got such a big toolbox. Yeah. I mentioned Todd Cordell in his tracking for Infernal Access earlier. He's got him down averaging roughly 11 five-on-five shot contributions a game, which for the listeners combines his own shot attempts and attempts he's directly creating for his teammates. And that's in like 15 minutes per game. So pretty much much every time he's out there, there's a shot going towards a net for the devil's. It's generally a high danger one. And, you know, we saw a lot of them last year.

They had a lot of success. I feel like to start the year, they wanted to potentially split them up just to diversify their attack. So they split up Jack Hughes and just were brat. And then after a few games, they're like, okay, let's just bring them back together. You know, we got peanut butter, we got jam here. Let's not, let's not, let's not overthink this. Let's put them together.

They make sweet magic together. Yeah. Let's get back on track. And it's really fun to watch him to play together because initially I would think, okay, both guys are best in terms of being puck transporters in terms of like using that speed and skill to get the puck from point A to point B. So I worry when you put two guys like that together, does it make sense? Are you optimizing their skill sets?

But in reality, they're both so dynamic that they almost play off of each other in this beautiful way where they're able to go cross seam all the time. Like they're able to each divert attention towards themselves and get the other guy an easier look. And so it actually has worked, which is really nice to see. Because I was always wondering, what is the ideal setup for Jack Hughes' line in terms of capitalizing all these scoring chances he creates because it's so frustrating seeing him pass it to a guy and him just shoot it right into the logo on an opposing goalie?

And so how do we capitalize on this? How do we create an optimal offensive environment for Jack Hughes to thrive and score as many points as he can? And it turns out just playing with another really sweet player and just where Brad, it was a pretty good idea. It's a really, it's a really obvious thing, and yet so few coaches actually do it. Sometimes you always think, okay, you want to put him with two grinders, guys who can just forecheck and win puck battles and be gritty, take it to the net.

And it's like, no, sometimes just having two guys who can think the game in the same manner and be on the same wavelength is probably pretty good. Well, and during the watchability podcast, I was talking about the potential of having him with Andre Palat as just a guy that can go in, muck around on the forecheck and win him some pucks. And I'm thrilled to be wrong on that. Palat, he's hurt now, but he's found success not on that line. I think he would be fine playing with Hughes and Brat. But it doesn't really matter who the winger is for them.

So right now, right now they've been with Eric Hala. They're going to be able to find chances. They're going to be able to create. They're going to be able to, like all that guy has to do, all the third player on that line has to do is just find some open space or just hang around defensively and don't allow three on two the other way. I mentioned, I put this down. my notebook here. This is their second line. This isn't even their best line. There's 71%

coursey this year. 6.9 goals 4 for 60 minutes. Well, that's actually dating back to last year as well. Like, this is such a strong combination. Well, they've played 65 and five minutes together, Brad and Hughes. Yeah. They've already created seven goals in that time. Yeah. Like, the shots are 62 to 23 in that period. They're, yeah. They are like, they're dominating to, the utmost degree. Yeah. They're their best line. It's, well, we're going to look at the stats for their top line at some point.

Okay. We will. I'm just telling you in terms of what I'm seeing out there. This is their best combination. It's true. Yes. This is their best combination. Yes.

This is their best combination. It's not their top, their first line on paper. And their other line, the Heeshire line, has been almost as effective offensively. And that's the amazing thing is that the devils have two lines that can run at you. not just control the play, but absolutely level you, both in terms of possession and offensive ability. Yeah, I mean, you know, Brad is off to a heck of a start himself, because we're talking about the two of them. I feel like we focused a lot on Hughes here. And we always talk, okay, it's just a rat being underrated.

If we just give all of our attention to Hughes, then I guess we are underrating him because he deserves to be propped up every bit here in the same way. He leads the league in 5-1-5 scoring after being a top 20 player in that regard last year. he's notably playing on a one-year deal. I don't like framing it as all the devil's messed up, not signing him long-term. I think he very, in a calculated manner, bet on himself, acknowledging that he's a really good player

who's about to be 25 years old. And if he has another justice productive season, if not more, he's going to earn himself pretty much a blank check. And so I think it was a very smart decision on his part, acknowledging the risk of at any point in such a fast, violent game you could get hurt

and all of a sudden cost yourself a lot of money. that there is that risk. I understand why players sometimes just take the immediate paycheck while they can. But I totally get from his perspective from him and his agent being like, all right, let's just do this again. And then we'll have so much leverage heading into the next negotiations. Yeah, the Fred Van Vleet, bent on yourself. Absolutely.

And so far, it's, he's seeming like a pretty prudent decision on his part. Yeah. And I think it's important to note, too, that with Brat, you know, we're talking about a player that was kind of in some trade rumors over the summer just because of that contract situation. and I think was, I think may have even been offered to teams at the last deadline. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how available he was because I do think the devil's like him quite a bit.

And I think they're good, like they see him firsthand how good he is. No, no, no, no, I agree. But I think that where the team was last year is that something had to change to turn this from being a rush-based attack. Clearly a rush-based attack into, okay, how do we look more like a good hockey team as opposed to look as dangerous as we can offensively? I think that they were able to, they were able to do that without giving up any of their major trade pieces, which is a fantastic. a fantastic credit to their management staff and their coaching staff. Well, and if you look at it, not to look too far out ahead, but they have a lot of financial commitments coming off their books this year.

Some of the players, they might try to extend and retain, but there's a lot of resources they'll be able to reallocate probably more wisely than they had in the past, right? Like they've got like $3.9 million attached to Andreas Johnson's coming out of the books, 4.5 of Thomas DeTar, so on and so forth. they're going to have both the draft capital, the prospect pool, the current team in terms of young players, and also financial flexibility to basically craft this team any way they want. Be able to pick up next year's Oliver Borkstra, basically. Pretty much. Yeah.

And that's a great position to be in because they do have that core in place now, right? Like you're not, it might be a bit trickier to go out and find a player that's going to be one of those core members, especially at a discount price, but they don't need that. Exactly. And Oliver Brooks time would be perfect. And the extra money that they're going to spend on brat that they wouldn't have otherwise if they had been able to go along on him. They're saving by, they went early on Hughes. And they signed Hughes that deal before I think it was well known that he would break out in the way he did. And that deal, I remember being fairly criticized at the time.

Maybe not fairly. I thought it was a great signing by the devil's when it was made. Yeah, he just hadn't like necessarily offence, hot broken out in the point total category. But in terms of how he was looking and the trajectory he was on, yeah. Yeah, is everything was there except for the scoring. And, you know, the score takes care of itself, to quote. Yeah, I mean, they've got, they've got him in his year at, what, 15.25 combined. I know.

You're the one looking at the numbers. For, yeah, eight and seven point two five for pretty much the entirety of their respective prime years, right? Like most of their 20s. I'll take that. Yeah, that's a pretty good starting point. Yeah. Is there anything else on Brat or Hughes here? you wanted to get through, there's so many other pieces here for the devils that we're going to discuss.

We've got time, but before we go to break here, is there anything, you know, a quick mention? No, I have not. I think that we've covered Hughes and Brat pretty well here. Yeah, yeah, we have. Well, you know what? They deserve it. I feel like we could probably do a full show on those two guys, but there's so many other pieces that we're going to get to here. So, all right, Cam, we're going to take a break here. And then when we come back, we're going to keep talking about the New Jersey Devils and all the other things they've got going on. You are listening to the Hockey PEOCast playing on the Sportsnet Radio Network. The PDEOCast, Deep Diving the New Jersey Devils today with Camshare on Cam.

Mm-hmm. You want to talk about the vibes with this team. I want to highlight a quote that I found, well, that I pointed out at the time. This is from October 14th. The Devil's lost their opener to the Philly Flyers, 5-2. The following day, Miles Wood is quoted as saying, spy from Amanda Stein, devil's beat reporter, I'm just sick and tired of being on a bad team.

That's the thing that stinks the most. tomorrow is a must-win game for us, and it's my job to get the guys going. Dimitri, they did not win that must-win game, but they did win six of the next seven. No, well, they lost that game. Their season's over. All this analysis we've been providing is for theoretical games

that never actually happened because their season ended after they lost that must win. But as we were saying, this was the point when their home crowd was chanting, fire the coach, fire Lindy Ruff. Well, you also need to acknowledge the baggage of... For a guy like Miles Wood, yeah. No, for this team where it felt like for two or three straight off seasons,

everyone universally liked what they did. And it was like, the joke became the New Jersey Devils have won the offseason. Again. And then they actually started playing games. And it was the same old, same old where they'd have fun games. They'd score goals. They'd look exciting individually. The results weren't there as a team.

They'd give up a lot of goals against. Their goaltending will let them down. It was like, here we go again. But, you know, Miles Wood has also just been in this organization for so long. Like I can remember him with their HL affiliate during the 2016 playoff series that the Marley's had against them. So I have a lot of familiarity with Miles Wood and Damon Severson. Just some guys that have been around forever who were probably like, oh, here we go again. We're going to out shoot the other team.

We're just not going to score. And you know what, now that we're seeing that you out shoot you score, it looks great. Yes. Yeah, regression is a hell of a drug. All right. You wanted to make a quick note here on his year before we talk about my boy John Marino? I did because you were talking about how the Jackie's line is the number one line. And that's correct.

What if I told you that they had two number one lines, Tim? That sounds like a great formula. Okay, so last three games, Nico Heeshire has been on a – yeah, you can hear the page flipping here. That's great. Last three games, Nico Heeshire has been aligned with Thomas Dutard and Fabian Zetterland. They've been together for about 30 minutes. Yeah. During that time, they have a 72% coursey together.

they also have six goals per 60 minutes and what do you think a line that is scoring that much, what do you think their shooting percentage would be? Well, I would guess it would be very high, but based on the way you're framing this question, I'm going to guess it would be surprisingly low. Their shooting percentage on six goals per 60, now keep in mind the NHL average is about 2.4, is that 9.7%. So they're under 10% shooting for over double. the NHL average of goal scoring.

This is essentially like over a full season, this would be one of the top scoring lines in the league. Yes, it's probably going to come down, regression, yada, yada, yada. But the fact that they're doing it with such a low relative shooting percentage compared to a lot of these other top lines, top lines have sustained that level of shooting over the course of an entire season. I know this is just a week, but it's been a pretty good week. Well, Eniquel has an awesome player who has been, I think, disrespected.

and kind of like not look down upon but as a first overall pick yeah he's been he's been banged up he hasn't put up the point totals you know there's a rock he's been a first overall pick in a draft that included kale macar yes it's a tough yes but i think lost in that is that he's a really really good player yeah and then now he's in this environment as well he's looking even better and the points are coming and i think like yeah there's what's not to love like he's he's a fantastic player i think if this keeps up and he stays healthy, there's going to be a lot of cell keep us for him. Yep. So, um, all right.

Speaking of defensive excellence, that's my segue. Yeah. Take us, take me out of John Marino journey. I'm going to take you on a John Marino journey. And I think his usage so far this season is very instructive because he started the year on a pairing with Brendan Smith. And I genuinely think that the coaching staff didn't either realize or appreciate how good John Marino was, and then they started playing hockey, and then eventually they realized,

okay, we need to lean on this guy significantly more, and they paired him up with Ryan Graves, and we can talk more about the dynamic between those two. But as these games have gone along, it's interesting you noted the two most recent games is kind of like the most impressive showings they've had, both home games where they had last change. Lindy Ruff used Marino pretty much exclusively as like a hard match for the other team's best player. So against the Aves, he was out for pretty much all of McKinnon's minutes. McKinnon played three minutes at 515 without Marino on the ice.

So he was just shadowing him shift over shift. And then against the Blue Jackets, he played for 930 of Johnny Goodrose 1320 at 515. And so he was out there for most of his minutes as well, dominated, especially in the last one. And the other one, the underlying numbers weren't as good. But from the eye test watching him go up against McKinnon, you could tell McKinnon was pretty frustrated in terms of the shadow coverage where he seemed like every time he tried to do something

with Marino's stick was kind of there. He was in the way. He was being disruptive. And I guess we can kind of tie this into like a larger conversation about how we evaluate defensemen. Because if you look at Marino, like he's great positionally. He's got an awesome stick in terms of like being able to poke stuff away

and how he utilizes it. And he clearly sees the ice well and understands sort of what the other team wants to do. So he's allowed to kind of anticipate and get there. But in terms of like physical traits, you would never be like, all right, this is a number one shutdown defenseman. Yet the way when you watch him play, that's exactly what he's been and what he is. And players like this, I think typically kind of get not necessarily overlooked, but don't

not fully appreciated because they don't have necessarily the physical traits of like your idea of what a number one defenseman is conventionally. And I think we still, in terms of our evaluation of defense, and it can be very hit. or miss in terms of who we think is good and who we think is it. Well, it's also what you want your defenseman to do. So as you mentioned, the underlying numbers against Nathan McKinnon worked great in the Colorado game. Yeah.

But what's Marino trying to do? He's not trying to create offense against McKinnon. He's trying to limit McKinnon's opportunities. Because the McKinnon is going to get his opportunities. McKinnon's going to get his opportunities. And what you need to do is battle him to a draw on the goals and hope that you can beat him and hope that you can beat the ads lower down the lineup. And I fully trust the devils to be one of the teams that can do that against a team

like the avalanche. So it becomes a. about frustrating McKinnon. It comes about making sure he can't get passes across, just handling him physically. You don't have to, you don't have to lay in a big hit. You don't have to rush the puck against him. You don't have to lock McKinnon into his own zone. You just have to make, you just have to make those zone entries that McKinnon has a little bit more difficult. You have to ensure that when McKinnon comes over the line, when he has touches the puck in the offensive zone, he doesn't have that obvious passing lane or shooting lane. You close on him quickly. You know,

Marino's a guy that can do that. And the other thing I really like about Marino and what you were showing me of him was when he puts a stick down on the ice to protect against a pass, he gets the knob of his stick all the way down. And that doesn't seem like a really big thing to note, but the number of passes that are going to get under his stick, you know, just the way that he's done it, it's almost minimal. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate the way he's able to angle. other team's best players, right? Like you see his positioning in terms of

there's a play against Miko Ranton where Miko Ranton is very big and like he has the physical advantage against John Marino but Marino is able to basically get the inside track against him protect the puck and then eventually kind of diffuse the pressure and get it to his defensive partner, get it out of the zone. So he's able to sort of utilize leverage in a way

where he doesn't need to be as strong because he's always on the right side of the defensive side of the defender and the puck in terms of basically being between them and the net. And so he's able to sort of utilize that inside leverage, that inside positioning to win all of these battles. The other thing that I think has been really important for this devil's team, we talked all about how they've been a rush team, how they're diversifying now. If you watch the little subtle things he does in terms of when they're the offensive blue line, whether it is pinching or kind of in the neutral zone just outside of the line, he's able to get enough of either the puck or someone else on the other team that's carrying the puck to sort of slow them down just enough that his teammates are able to basically get back in transition defense.

And that's huge for this team because we've talked about how last year they struggled with exactly that, where they'd get into these chaotic game environments where all of a sudden they're trading three on twos back and forth. And that's a problem when you don't trust your goaltending. Now all of a sudden they can have their own three on two. but with Marino back as sort of the last line of defense, they're not necessarily giving it back the other way because he's slowing it up and up, and then all of a sudden you get back in that even strength battle.

And so his ability to both defend in the defensive zone traditionally, but also in terms of that transition game, has been so massive with this team. Yeah, and just looking at the weaknesses for the devils last year, I think, you know, I'm going to preface this by saying that, I think Damon Severson is a good defenseman on average. I think he does more things that help you than hurt you. but Damon Severson makes so many brutal mistakes in transition

and the fact that Marino's been able to basically prevent against that become a clear antidote and he's really taken on that you know that that that shut down defensive role and now the devils are able to roll out two excellent pairings the other one being Seagintaller and Hamilton that have their own strengths that have their own strengths that they bring to the table but we know you know we know a little bit more about those already because they've been around for a year Marino's new, shiny piece. You know, a big reason why this team is a lot better defensively.

He's added a whole dynamic to this team. With him on the ice, high danger chances at 5-15, 32 to 12 for the devils, goals are 8 to 2. I think a big change, honestly, was them realizing that we should pair them with graves and have them be our number one matchup pair, especially when we dictate the matchups at home. And you could just see that. As I pointed out, not only starting with Baron Smith,

but against the Red Wings, the first time they played them, he was going head to head with Oscar Sunquist line. And then by the time they played them next, by the time, yeah, the big line, quite literally. And by the next time they played him, it was like, oh no,

maybe he should be out there against Dylan Larkin and Lucas Freeman. They're pretty good. And this guy's probably our best defender. Yeah. And so seeing that evolution, it's, in a way,

it probably should have happened at the start, but acknowledging, okay, first couple games, trial and error, like they made that change pretty quickly. And I imagine they're going to go this course the rest of the way, assuming that the results

keep going this week. Well, it's fantasy football. Sometimes you draft Najee Harris in the second round, and you know what? You trade them away after the second week. That's the best thing to do. First DJ Moore last week, now Najee Harris. I'm going to introduce fantasy football to every episode we do.

Yeah. I guess offensively, I want to make the point. You know, you're seeing he's finally started to put up a few points. I think we both agree in terms of like the points for defense, but I don't really care that much. It means much more to me if your team is scoring while you're on the ice because it probably means you're doing something to help that. what I like about Marino is

and this might frustrate people if they're looking for the wrong things is he's not very trigger happy like when he gets the puck at the point he's not looking to just load up and hammer it as hard as he can towards an end like he'd much rather defer and that can be frustrating if you feel like

it's passing up opportunities but I think we both agree that I prefer when my defenseman waits for something better to open No defensemen should be taking slap shots at even strength. Unless they have like a clear path towards a net where they're all of a sudden kind of going downhill and getting closer. Like in terms of just standing at the blue line and taking a point shot. Yeah. I guess context doesn't matter.

But yeah. I think it's a general rule. No, of course. And it certainly shouldn't be like something you're trying to set up every time. Yeah. How frustrating is it seeing Jack Hughes dancing around the offensive zone, beating his initial defender, like drawing the attention, passing it off? And then all of a sudden it's like this chance, the shot. that has no chance of going in.

Kick it out beyond the arc for three. Oh, God. Yeah. And so what I like Marino, you saw against the Red Wings there in their most recent game against them where he gets it to the point and instead of just firing it aimlessly, he brings it down the wall, waits for Dawson Mercer to get into a one-time position in the slot, gets it over to him, and it's a much better opportunity. He winds up converting on it.

And it's funny that they paired him up with Graves because Graves is literally the antithesis of that. He has never seen a shot that he does not love to hammer as hard as he can. And it worked against the Blue Jackets recently. but much to my chagrin, dating back to his day with the abs, there was a lot of times where it was off the shin pads and scoring chance the other way. And so it's funny they paired like a guy who does not want to shoot at all

with a guy who loves, loves, loves. I was watching the Ducks Leafs game last night and I saw on the crawl, the bottom of the screen, so many times throughout the game, Ryan Graves goal. I'm like, oh, I got to see this. Yeah. But it was a pretty nice one. Yeah, what were you benching with Marino,

just getting down low and setting, you know, setting up Dawson Mercer? this is sort of what I was talking about, about the devil's just being a lot more efficient inside the zone and moving around. And when you're able to activate those D, bring them in off the points, bring them in below the hash,

it's not always about getting your defensemen in spaces to score goals or even in spaces where they can set up players. It just opens up the offensive zone a lot more. It moves the forwards around. So the defensive coverage, if your opponents are playing man on man, now of a sudden they don't really know where to go. You're kind of mixing,

you're mixing up what the, what the defending team is doing. You're creating just these little mismatches throughout the ice. Yeah. You're creating confusion, which is what leads the breakdowns. Yeah. You're creating chaos, and my boy, Jack Hughes, thrives. He will benefit off of that.

In chaos. Yes. Yeah, so I've loved what I've seen for Marino. I mean, getting him for Ty Smith and a third. Not only that, but having him under contract at $4.4 million for his age 25 to 29 seasons is a tidy bit of business. Hashtag. T-Bob. Is there anything else here on?

I guess we've done enough on Marino. I will say they've used him and his year together in some matchup minutes, and that's quite a luxury to have two players like that that you can throw out against the other team's best line. And they've had great results so far. We've talked a lot about how this dynamic with this team in terms of how different it is this year. We also talked to spend nine games against some inferior competition. Also, last week we were talking about... Last week we were talking about the Sabres, and the next game, they got absolutely throttled by the

Seattle Cracken. So it's okay. It was still a good road trip. It was a good road trip. They looked fine. They came back. I thought they played well against the Habs, even though they lost that game.

Then they beat the Blackhawks. I think the Sabres will be fine. I think we also acknowledged we weren't crowning them in terms of being a contender this year. We were crowning them with good vibes. The vibes are still there. How are we feeling about this devil's team in terms of how far we're willing to take this in terms of, all right, the vibes are clearly much better. The results are significantly better so far.

we've given all these caveats. I guess we're going to find out quite a bit about this team because they are coming out west this week. They're playing the Canucks, the flames, and the Oilers and a three-game West trip. And so I think how that goes for them, especially...

The Saturday game against Calgary, I think that's the biggest test. Just how they're going to handle a team that can throw two lines at them. Well, also how they're going to handle a team in the flames that is probably the best in the league of flipping the ice in terms of getting like going from defense the offense in terms of the counter as like efficiently as they are

and we've spent so much time discussing how this devil's team part of the difference is they've gotten so much better at getting back and not getting kind of leaving their goalie out to dry and making life easier for them I think that will be a great test case to see how they look against a flames team that if that is the case then they'll be much better suited to play against them if they were referred back to what they were like last year that's a nightmare matchup for them. Yeah, I think, I think the flames are probably the best. I think coming in the year, we thought that they were going to be the best five-on-five defensive team in the league. I haven't checked the numbers. I don't know if that's still true or not, but I'd still rank them as being

the toughest team to play against and be interesting to see how it'll, you know, it'll also be interesting to see is who Darrell Sutter uses his top pairing against. What do you mean? It's obviously going to be Hughes and Brett. All right. Listen, I love Nikki Hish here. I acknowledge their results have been good. I think it would be silly to do. Otherwise, especially because, you know,

McKenzie Uygar is such a good rush defender. I feel like having him out there against Jack Hughes and Jasper Brat makes a lot of sense because he be able to kind of aggressively get out and stop them from just fully building up a full head of steam the way they sometimes do through the neutral zone. I think otherwise you're asking for trouble if you allow them to do so. Yeah, I think, yeah, just

just trying to play it out in my head here. I don't know how often Brad is going to the other side of the ice on entries, so he's going to be seeing a little bit more of Tanna than he would on Uyghur. But yeah, but yeah, like Hughes is going to be coming right up against Uyghur. That would be a fantastic matchup.

I think Uyghur is so good at thinking on his feet and getting, you know, getting his stick down, disrupting people once inside the zone. He's like the John Marino of the Calgary Flames. he is man we love john merino here on the video cast okay that's a good segue then for us let's let's close out the show we're doing this to go along to supplement our uh our weekly adoptions of teams we're gonna kind of go through the schedule and highlight some games for the coming week the word interested in um is there any sort of matchups in particular we can start with tuesday if you want go on ahead of tuesday and thursday as usual seems like everyone's playing and then monday and wednesday there's just nothing going on I love when the NHL stacks the schedule that way. But on a busy Tuesday, for example, what are you trying to watch for? I'm going to be watching the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

You know, there's a lot of drama going on in Toronto right now about the team having a bad road trip. Now they're coming home. Oh, boy, that's not compared to what the Pittsburgh Penguins did on their western swing. Yes. The Penguins went 0 and 4. They were outscored 18 to 6. and now they're coming home against

probably the most impressive team in the NHL so far in the Boston Bruins just in term of record and what they've been able to throw about teams at themes and I don't like Brad Marshand was back for a game and then he left like is he going to be in? What's the... Yeah, I think that was like a load management I think

because it was a back to back. Yeah, back to back. Okay. I think he's going to be fine for that. You know what? I'm going to make an executive decision here. Okay. You know, we're joking before we went on air how it should come a bit here where we say we're going to do the Washington Capitals. It's not a bit if you say it's a bit. But I don't want to do that.

Okay. We're not going to do teasing them that we're doing Washington Capitals every week. I really do think we should adopt the Boston Bruins for next week. Okay. Because their upcoming schedule this week is at Pittsburgh on Tuesday, as you mentioned. On Thursday at the New York Rangers. Yeah. And then on Saturday at the Toronto Maple Leafs.

They've started the season. and what are they, seven and one, I believe, which is like the best start they've had in franchise history I saw for the Boston Bruins. I don't look at records this early. No, but all the underlying numbers are in the way. Patrice Berger-on is rocking a 70% expected goals year again in his 19th season in the league. I think those three games in particular are going to be very interesting to watch because three equality opponents, all leaves jokes aside.

And so I think against those three teams, we'll be able to really kind of sync our teeth into that. and then next Monday talk about what we saw from them. Got a really close look at what Hamas Lindholm has been able to do this year too. From all I'm seeing out of Boston, I haven't really sat down. I haven't watched a full Bruins game beginning to end yet. But it's a good place to start going Pittsburgh, New York, Toronto. Yeah, I want to, you know what, we should, we should do like a Patrice Bergeron on Deep Dive too. Okay.

Because every time I look at his numbers, it's just you can't really compare it to any other mere mortal in the league at this moment. moment. And he didn't even have his top line mate for the first seven of those games or whatever. Just it's ridiculous. So I think that would be a good topic for next week. Here's one thing I want to do. Thursday night, Carolina and Tampa Bay are playing. I want to steer our listeners away from that game. Yeah. Tampa Bay have been pretty bleak to start the year. They've been incredibly ho-hum. They're going to coast. They're in coast mode. They're just going to go to the radio Zs. I mean, the abs are the abs. I mean, I guess you could say Sirelli's out too, right? Yeah.

But like they have, you know, the Atlanta's going to go and the Chuskinners out for a bit there. Like, they're like, they're... All I'm saying, Dim, is that that's going to be heralded as this big matchup between two good Eastern Conference teams. I think that that is, I think that, going on at the same time as that game is Vegas and Ottawa. I think that that would be my Thursday night pick

looking at that schedule for the Eastern games. Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, I would probably steer our listeners away from any game involving the Carolina Hurricanes if you actually want to enjoy the product you're watching. Yeah, I mean, Thursday's jam-packed. I honestly would say New Jersey at Edmonton. Yeah.

There's some good games on Thursday. Yeah, Thursday's going to rock. Friday, they're playing games in Finland. Yeah. Or playing a game in Finland. You've got the morning games. I love it. Yeah.

Yeah, and then, okay, let's give the listeners a Saturday watch then. Yeah. Should we say Boston and Toronto because they can keep up with us? I mean, yeah, I would, you know. Well, New Jersey at Calgary. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I would just keep it in at Hockey Night in Canada on Sportsnet, to be honest.

You get the Leafs and the Bruins. There we go. And then you get the flames and devils. I think that that's an excellent back-to-back. I would say a very fun evening game here is on Saturday night, Florida at Los Angeles. Yeah. You know, Florida, they're not as rush-heavy as they were last year. But, like, the idea of those two teams in terms of the north-south elements of their game going up to,

Like, that's, that could be the definition of a track meet. I feel like every, every King's game this year is just, like. Except the game that they played against the Leafs. Well, no one can drag a fun game out of the Leafs at this point. No, it's, it's really, it's getting really bad right now. Yeah. Here's, you know what, one final King's observation I want to leave. Yeah.

This Gabriel Villardi, he's going to be a capital P problem for a lot of teams, I think. He's looking fantastic in the Kings. He's scoring a lot of capital G goals. He is. Um, all right, Cam, quickly plug your website, the work you've been doing, tracking the Canucks and the Leafs. Well, that's what I've been doing. You need to start tracking these teams who are adopting so you can give the listeners. Yeah.

Some, some statistics. I was, I was going to be tracking the Capitals last week, and I didn't realize just how difficult my life would be with the Leafs playing in the Western time zone. Yeah. And now that they're back east, I'm, you know, maybe I'll have time to do this. Yeah. next time I won't. It's a pretty big project to get to, to do. But I like the idea of having all this data for other teams.

And I'm going to start, you know, I want to be able to have my own data for the devils next time we talk about them. Yeah. For the Bruins for next week. Yeah. I think the listeners would really appreciate it. Yeah, I know. I would as well. I don't want to hear you saying, oh, this data was via natural statric.

Yeah. I want to hear you saying this is data via Camtron. Yeah, you just have to trust me on this. Okay, so what's the website? The website is camsheron.com. And starting tomorrow, I guess, it will be paywalled content for Canucks and Leaves postgame reports. Yeah. And you can also find some stuff I do at The Athletic.

Yeah. And Camture on YVR. Oh, yeah, follow me on Twitter at Campshire on YVR. We're going to be back next week with another deep dive, not the Washington Capitol. On the Washington Capitals. We'll be talking about John Carlson. Hopefully you enjoyed this, and we'll be back next week with that. We'll be back tomorrow with more here on the PDOCast.

you have enjoyed listening, please leave us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Greatly appreciated. So thank you for listening to the HockeyPedocast here on the Sportsnet Radio Network.