The Hockey PDOcast - The October Mailbag

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jack Han to answer your mailbag questions about the Devils expected goals vs. actual goals totals and when early season results don't match up with the process, how the Oilers are deploying their top players to start the year, Auston Matthews' return to form, notable trends for various special teams units, and the utilization of player tracking to improve on-ice performance.There will be a couple of new episodes each week that will be Patreon-exclusive only for our subscribers, and won't be appearing on the free feed. To gain access to all of that content make sure you've subscribed to the PDOcast's Patreon. The subscription provides you with the ad-free version of every single episode we do this season, and they will be available for you to listen as soon as we're done recording.I'd also recommend subscribing to our Youtube channel. We'll be posting full shows on there more regularly this season so that you can watch along with us. I'm hoping to grow the channel this year, so each subscription, like, and comment is greatly appreciated.We've also finally got some merch available for our listeners! If you'd like to get your hands on a PDOcast shirt or hat to rep the show, you can do so here. We've recently added a really fun new option on there to celebrate the start of the season. If you've already subscribed to the Patreon, one of the perks that comes with it is that you get a discount on all of the show merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Progressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey-PedioCast. My name's Demetri Filippovich, and joining me is my good buddy, Jack. I'm on. Jack, what's going on in? So I guess we're again on video for those lucky enough to be in front of a screen. Yeah, you can watch us on YouTube. We're doing that this year. But of course, we've got a lot of our listeners, as usual, just listening to us on their favorite podcast app of choice. I'm excited to have you on for the first time this season. We're going to do a little bit of a October mailbag.

We're about halfway through the month. We got some fun questions from our listeners in the PDO guest Discord, as usual. And we'll use the questions that they so nicely presented to us to purposefully launch into a couple topics I wanted to get into with you here today. Let's jump right into it. Here's the first question. What do you do with teams that appear to have historically bad finishing rates, but the underlying process looks solid now. I think you probably could have guessed that this listener is. a New Jersey Devils fan and this is a topic near and dear to their hearts. It feels like

it's really taken over the conversation around the league this week. And you and I talked about the Devils the last time I had you on. It was right in the aftermath of the Luke of Angelis the trade. You've got a history with Sheldon Keith in the past having interacted with him. So I'm curious for your take on all of this in terms of we can focus on the devil specifically. But I think just in general, particularly early in the season where you feel like your team's playing well, you're just having nothing to show for it and trying to kind of get out of that before it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts where maybe it bleeds into the way you're actually playing and then the process itself starts to change because the results aren't coming immediately.

Yeah, I realize that as soon as I saw the question that it was very New Jersey Devils coded. My first thought was to talk about coaching or style of play or whatever. And then I did some research and this is why it's good to do research. I found something extremely interesting when I went on natural stat trick and I sorted by 5 on 5 ice time for defensemen who played at least 3,000 minutes at 5 on 5 in the past three seasons. And what I found was quite alarming, I would say. So what I did was, and again, it's maybe something that I wouldn't recommend all the time,

but I sorted by goals 4 per 60, which, you know, you know, we generally would prefer to look at whether it's shot rate or expected goals. But, you know, over three seasons and over 3,000 minutes, I think goals start to paint a certain picture, right? And at the top of the list, we have sort of our Norris trophy or our, you know, top offensive defensemen candidates. We got the Ekholm-Bouchard pair at 3.4 goals per hour, which is the gold standard across the list. league, you know, they play a lot with McDavid and Drysidal, but 3.4 goals per 60 is essentially as good as a guess right now. We got Lane Hudson at 3.3. We got McCarr at 3.25. Werensky at 3.2, Quinn Hughes at 3.2. So these are the kind of, you know, anything above 3 would be qualified

as elite, right? And then if you go to the very bottom of the page, we got players below two goals per hour. So we have, uh, Carson Sousy at 1.97. We got Brian Dumolin at 1.95. One player that I'll name a little bit later at 1.88, Luke Shen at 1.84. And then Vinnie De Arna, our good buddy, at 1.78, which is, again, that's as bad as it gets offensively

when you're on the ice with your teammates. And what I found interesting is among these sort of these bottom dwellers, we got Brett Pesci at 199, we got Jonas Ziegenthaler at 188, and then we got Luke Hughes at 214. So you know, right now,

three of the sort of the top minute munchers for devils are among the league's least prolific offense creators when we look at actual goals. And this is over a large sample, over 3,000 minutes, over three seasons. And, you know,

we know that Ziegenthaler and Hughes and, you know, Peschi, these are all guys who are, you know, above 50% in shots and expected goals. But at some point, when somebody tells you who they are, you got to start believing them. And if you look at the actual results, I think there's some real problems with how these guys have performed, you know, or how these guys have set the table for their teams in these really large samples. Well, let's put a pin in that trend and focus on this season specifically. it's only six games worth of data, but at 5-1-5, the Devils lead the league in shots, 35.4 per 60, which is truly a lead, second in high-danger chances, over 15 per hour,

and first, unexpected goals generated at 3.5 per 60. Now, unfortunately, despite all that, they're 26th in actual goal rate, and they've scored just 9-5-1-5 goals compared to the 17 or so expected goals worth of looks. They've generated because they're shooting 5.3%. The only other teams, even though it's early in the season, that are under 7% in terms of 5-1-5 shooting are the Kings, the Flyers, the Flames, and the Red Wings. I'd argue all four of those teams based on offensive personnel and what we've seen from them early in the year belong. The Devils are clearly the outlier in terms of our expectations

and particularly the high-end talent. They have up front. Now, normally I'd say it's six games. You stick with the process. If you're generating this volume of quality looks, it's eventually going to break through in their last game against the aforementioned Red Wings. They score five when in overtime finally in line with what they generated from an expected goal perspective. The issue is, and the reason why this has become a topic this week is there's understandably a lot of baggage with this organization associated with the start due to those stats you just mentioned, which is this two plus year sample since the start of the 24-25 season when Sheldon Keev took over and the team started changing its personnel, where the bottom has fallen out in terms of 5-1-5 scoring. And the shooting percentage last year had an all-time low.

They were down at the bottom of the league and both goals and shooting percentage. And so I'm trying to reconcile all these things because I think the rational part of my brain is saying, and you watch them play, they're attacking more off the rush. There's more talent throughout the lineup than there was when they struggled previously. It's eventually going to come. Yet these numbers are about as extreme as you're going to see because it's not just that they're not scoring at 5-15, but they're actually generating volume that suggests they're one of the elite offensive teams in the league where even previously when they struggled to score, that wasn't necessarily the case.

I think there were some explainable things with their personnel for why they weren't scoring. That's less so the case early this season for me. Yeah. And again, like so for me, like having watched them play recently, I can't say that they're doing anything wrong tactically because they're not. Again, you know, the sort of the short to medium term process looks really, really strong. So then it's like how do you mediate that and improve sort of the long range outlook of this team without throwing the maybe out with the bathwater. And again, you know, three out of your 60s were sort of on the very bottom of the league. Like again, like it's a non-ice stat.

It's maybe not the most precise tool to use. But it certainly, you know, raises some red flags. And, you know, the whole idea since Sadi Mata took over with this team is, you know, they're just looking to upgrade it. position without necessarily discriminating for, you know, whether it's had in this or role or position. And I think if they keep going to this direction eventually, they're going to find a mix that works and the results are going to swing more toward, you know, the expected. I think there's a couple of reasons for optimism. Now, listen, I'm going to go down with the ship on this one. But in terms of some of those mixes that you reference, recently we've

seen them put Arseni Gritsuk up with Jack Hughes and Justper Brat and they look awesome together. And so I'm curious to just watch more of that. Last year, when I say some of the results are more explainable, you look at the personnel on the fourth line, for example. And when you're trotting Luke Linden out there over and over again, you probably aren't going to score regardless of what your expectations are. This year, especially with their most recent lineup, you've got Medell-Ais Lombardi flying around with Jasper Boquist.

That combination's created a ton of offense so far. And so I think there's more depth here in place. Some of the guys that have arrived, like, I probably won't expect Evan Rodriguez. to score very efficiently because he's proven that he's a really good player and will help you territorially but probably won't drive efficiency but Anthony Manta historically has and he got off to a slow start on that top line he'll probably get going he finally got his first goal and ultimately when you're controlling at this rate the way they are where they're first because

of this offense in 5-15 expected goal share the teams rounding out the top five are the hurricanes the mammoth the golden nights and the abs that's good company to be keeping and so if you keep plan this way, it'll eventually turn around. I guess the one thing I'd point to as a counter potentially is their three wins have come against the Red Wings, the Flyers, and the Canucks, and they generated actual offense against those teams. And then when they played good teams, they struggled to score and turn shots into goals. And they have a tough schedule coming up. So I think that will be a good limit test for whether this turns around. But I don't know. I'm not subscribing as much to, I totally get your point where when you,

you get a sample this big and your top minute getters are that low, it's not ideal. But to me, that kind of describes the environment, I guess, more so than maybe like anything specifically, particularly for a Luke Hughes, I think, with Jonas Seganthal, their skill set and some of the assignments he takes on it. It makes sense they're not scoring as much when he's on the ice. But I'm just curious to watch more of this. And if they keep generating at this rate, like I just find it hard to believe that they're going to keep being this inefficient. And again, I think Luke Hughes is going to be a big part of the devil's turning it around eventually if they are because again you know over a large sample he's sort of just above two goals an

hour his older brother is over three right like you know so uh even though luke is bigger and taller than than quinn like it's just if you look at the numbers in terms of the real offense being created they're not in the same ballpark so you know to that i ask you know where are the goals lobowski because we know the skill sets there we know the the underlying you know for for the most part it is pretty good. But at some point, you know, there's got to be some finishing. Yeah, and it'll come for for Jack Hughes. Like, he scores that three on three goal. He hasn't scored at a five one five, I believe, and he's gotten a ton of opportunities. Like, I feel confident that if he stays healthy on the ice, he's going to start scoring. I think Jasper Bratt is an

interesting conversation because he's immensely talented and a great player, but it's like three straight years now, essentially coinciding with his timeline of him scoring below expected. And I think part of it is he's so preoccupied with trying to play the role of a setup man and a distributor that like a belfryism that he always loves to talk about is like shooting to actually score and doing so decisively and quickly as opposed to settling for it as a last resort. And I see a lot of that in his game. He's too talented to be as inefficient as he's been as a shooter. But do you have any other notes on just this concept generally?

Let's remove the devils from it in terms of like early season samples. and when the two things don't line up between process and results and how you sort of navigate that from particularly within the team and prevent it from significantly affecting the way you're actually playing? Yeah, I mean, you know, a bit of a blind spot for any, I would say, process-driven or data-driven organization is if you spend a lot of energy optimizing for a certain metric, you start running into weird situations where, you know, that metric starts becoming a little bit less telling. So again, what, you know, with the devils, I think over the years,

you could see the kind of player that they brought in that had had, you know, good speed, good possession numbers who are tough on the puck who could, you know, defend the rush. And but then, especially on the defenseman side, like, you know, they would just give up goals from the primaries that are sort of the, you know, bluff first trauma variety as opposed to the paper cut variety. So again, like this team is not as bad as the actual goals and when the losses have been, but they're not as good as the underlying stats either.

They're somewhere in between. And I think for the team, it's just the idea of, you know, I think the style of play is solid. The big pieces are there with Luke Hughes being a bit of a question mark for me right now. They just got to keep improving because, again, you know, I think they're not as bad as a record, but they're also not as good as the underlyings have been. Yeah, part of why I'm optimistic beyond being a homer, I guess, on this topic, is that I just much prefer

the personnel and playing style this year than when the results were similar last year and years past I was like all right well that at least kind of makes sense in my brain somewhat and this I just eventually the results will start coming but even if they don't reach the level they'd hope for I think the entertainment product

and I guess like the vision that they're trying to push towards is much more in line with what I think they should be doing as opposed to what they were doing previously all right next question here What's the rationale behind Mike Babcock having Connor McDavid and Leon Dreisaitle spending so much time on the ice together this season? Is it a lineup construction you expect to make the Oilers a viable contender again? Now, six games for the Oilers so far. McDavid's played 96, five on five minutes.

Dreisaitle's played 91. They've spent about 73 and a half or so together as primary linemates and the Bushardack home pair is pretty much out there with them every time. and they are absolutely stomping. The opposition, they are up 10-1 together with a near 70% expected goal share, just rolling out that five-man unit. The numbers individually are just as outlandish. Bouchard's up 15 to 2 in his 5-on-5 minutes. McDavid has 17 points in six games, 14 of them primary,

and Vasily Parkolzen has seven goals already. What do you think is going on in Edmonton and kind of how would you tackle this moving forward if you were that coaching staff from how you distribute the ice time and sort of what the optimal distribution is, I guess, between having them out together when you need goals, but also making sure you're splitting it up accordingly. I mean, is it because the two hiring managers responsible for bringing Babcock in wanted to play together? Is that what's going on?

I think there's a couple factors going on here. One, R&H and Hyman are out. And I think that makes more sense that you're not going to have them playing with like bottom six wingers without their usual line mates and Savoy's out as well. And so they're just kind of loading up and feasting. The other is the schedule. One of the perks of playing the Pacific is so far they've played the Canucks twice, the Crackin, the Ducks, the Sharks, and the Kings.

And I think they have enough firepower to just like overwhelm the majority of those teams and live with the consequences. I'm not sure it'll be as viable when they start playing better teams. And the schedule is about to get significantly harder where they're going to play head to head two games in a row against the mammoth and they're going to play the wild and the hurricanes after that and then the other one in one of our listeners I think astutely pointed this out in the discord is by playing them together especially early in the season it actually allows you to get some reps for some of the other forwards in your team just because there's more minutes available

if they're splitting it up there there's separate lines then you probably have one of them out there at all times and the bottom six just kind of gets left out of the shuffle and in this case they're actually getting some minutes and especially early in the year it makes sense you'd want to see what you have with them and try to build them up so that they can provide something later on in the season. So that's the way I'm choosing to view this. I think these next four games will be a test to whether they're capable of kind of sticking to it or whether they wind up ultimately splitting them up. But they're winning a lot of games and outscoring teams. So it hasn't mattered so far. Yeah, I mean, when Babcock was in Toronto, I remember he really didn't go that route. Like he was

very much about spreading the young superstars up and down the lineup. You know, the Mark, Marner and Matthews rookie season, they played on different lines. It took, it took, it took them a while to actually settle in on a line together. I don't even remember if they played much together under Babcock or did it start under Keith. But, you know, like what I remember seeing was loading up a lot, let's say after a penalty kill. Like so situationally, Babcock was really good about.

loading up that top line to sort of exploit the situation. But that really wasn't his MO back with the lease. And I think it's just a very oiler specific situation. And, you know, if you look at, you know, last year specifically, like the non-McDavid and tricycle minutes, they were pretty bad anyway, right? And I, and perhaps it's easier to say, look, you know, 29 and 97 is going to win the game for us. The other three lines just have to play for a tie and play for.

something really low event and make sure nothing happens and then sort of leave the first line to make the difference. And so far it's been working. I don't know if it's going to work over 84 games or if it's going to work in the playoffs, but so far it appears to be the right solution. And ultimately where this team is going to live or die is, can they find any sort of depth behind those superstars? Yeah, it'll be easier to spread it out when they get some of those wingers back

into the mix. It's like you're peeking at my notes though because this is a natural segue into our next question and he goes, is Austin Matthews back? What have you seen from him so far this year? I mean, like I don't have any insider information about his health. I mean, if, you know, it's being reported that he's skating better and is feeling healthier, then I think that goes a long way into explaining. Matthews historically as a player who's at his very best off the catch. So it requires a very specific environment where, you know, you've got to have wingers who can lug the puck and who can make plays. You've got to have defensemen who are active.

And what Matthews gives back is obviously first the finishing ability. He doesn't need many looks to score. And second, defensively, you know, maybe he's not underrated anymore, but he still wanted a better defensive centers in a power-on-power situation, right? And I think that, you know, it's been a natural match with how well Marchenko carries the puck and how feisty is. And, you know, I've, I've been really even surprised about the synergy on that line because

Marchanko is a big time shooter and so is Matthews. But so far, they've, you know, it's been to the benefit of both players as opposed to, to their detriment. But certainly, you know, in an environment that's more favorable in terms of possessing the puck and him feeling better physically, I think when you put those two things together, for me, it's not really a surprise that he's back to playing like a top 10 center in the league. Well, last five games, five goals, seven assists. So to answer this question, yeah, I'm thinking he's back.

With him on the ice, five on five this season, the leaves are at 59.4% shots, 57.5% high danger chances and 57%. Expected goals, I think what's most encouraging, though, is just how he looks physically. Like he looks like he's moving faster. He's covering more ground. I was watching that game over the weekend against the abs. And there was kind of like a deflected puck in the neutral zone and essentially a foot race into the Aves defensive zone and he'd beat McCar to that puck and then as soon as he gets

on top of it he's such a handful. He's already drawn five penalties this season. I think some of the changes they made in personnel are tying into this as well. Just getting faster and more dynamic in their top six has been huge because of that buck carrying element. Now, what's interesting to me is he scored the five goals in the last five games and I think his shot like he looks healthier when he's shooting the puck than he did in the past couple seasons, more forceful, more threatening, like actually testing goalies and beating them. Yet the shot rate is down once again compared to the past couple seasons. Part of it is the first few games.

I think as they were figuring it out, he wasn't really shooting at all, and he's turned that up a little bit during the scoring binge. But I wonder if part of it is also just adjusting his game to playing with Marchenko, as you said, because that's going to be where he's going to lead more. and Matthews is such a good player that he's going to be more likely to kind of fit around that and maximize those minutes together. So I'm pretty bullish on what I've seen. I think the usage helps as well where Jim Hillers just cut down significantly on his defensive zone starts,

where he was a matchup center last year, essentially while also being tasked with being their leading scorer, and he's not having to do that as much this year. So I think that helps. While we're on the Leafs, do you want to talk a little bit about McKenna, I'm Marchenko. Oh, I've got a notes on all those guys. So I'm curious for your take on what you've seen so far. So just one last thing about Matthews. So he's 29 years old, right?

And historically, this is where we start seeing forwards, especially, but they're individual shot rates going down. So this is just a normal aging curve. And the idea for him now is, you know, if he wants to get back to being a 45, 50, 50, 55 goal score, he's got to be able to, you know, sort of mitigate the decline his shot rate, but also, you know, have a higher conversion rate and finding different ways to light the lamp. And again, this is nothing unusual. If you look at all the great goal scores

in the history of the game at 29, their shot rates are all going down. Yeah. And I mean, that ties into the health, right? Not only from like a skating perspective, but with the wrist in the back and the shot where he'll be more efficient if he's got more force on that shot and he's shooting the way and releasing the way he was previous and he looks to be doing that. So far, On Murchenko, you know, you mentioned how he's looked so far. I've seen some mixed takes early on because he's only got the one goal. He's got five assists in seven games. But I did want to note there's been a couple penalties and unfortunate giveaways and bad spots on the ice and that'll happen.

I think he's looked as dynamic as you'd expect. I think the fit is very interesting moving forward between those two guys. It's clearly provided significant juice to this. team, which I think they desperately needed after last season, and ultimately he scored one goal on 40 shot attempts so far. So somehow his PDO is absolutely in the tank, despite the fact that everyone else he plays with has a high on ice shooting percentage so far. That'll normalize for him, and I'm not worried about Marchenko's goal total at all. And if anything, I'd be pretty encouraged about what I've seen, especially coming to the team, what, like the day before the season

started and having to just integrate yourself into a mix on the fly without any practice time or prep time in the preseason. Yeah. I mean, for, like, I'm way less worried about his scoring, rebounding than double

scoring rebounding. I'll put it that way. Yes. McKenna. So, you had a big tweet thread about this early in his individual career.

He has started producing. Since then, after a couple games with no points, I believe he's got points in four straight games. There's been some interesting usage stuff in my opinion

where they're really situationally mixing and matching the wingers on the top lines and trying to manufacture more opportunities, maybe not as much as I'd like. Ideally, I'd like to see more of McKenna and Matthews. We've seen less than 10, 5 on 5 minutes of that so far. But let's get into a little bit of what you're seeing from him and sort of expectations, I guess, in year one

in his NHL career. So I had a peek at some proprietary data on McKenna very recently. And nothing really about it surprised me. I think it fits pretty well from what I've seen from him, you know, on tape. The thing with him is he's already one of the best players across the league at creating high-danger passes, you know, the sort of the high-end plays into the slot that really sort of, you know, creates goals and sets up his teammates, but also his turnover rate is catastrophically bad. So the problem with that is not only, you know, when you're a young player like he is, who, you know, obviously not the biggest, not the, not the strongest, not the most defensively experienced just yet.

Any time that you give the puck away, not only are you giving up offense, because obviously, you know, your offensive sequence is ended, but also it puts you and your teammates in a very, very difficult position defensively. And as an aside, Tavares' turnovers, whereas turnover rate is actually also quite poor right now. So when you have two players we're having turnover problems on a line together, even though these players are very talented and they bring a lot to the table in terms of their ability to retain the puck, that's what leads to a sub 40% expected goal share. And by the way, I also looked at William Nealander's turnover rates and his puck plays and

they're as strong as ever. So, you know, the reason why that line just hasn't worked from an advance metrics perspective is, again, they're creating a lot of things, but they're also way to easily carrying the puck over. And sort of in the short to medium term for the Leafs as a team, I think it will be much more productive to put Easton Cowan in that spot instead of McKenna because Cowan has shown a real ability not only to drive play in general, but also to sort of manage its risk a little bit better. I agree. Cowan's been phenomenal. I think the issue for that though is then as your primary lines you hiring mcana just playing not only with players who are going to be eating up a lot of defensive zone starts but ones who aren't particularly

talented to maximize some of the stuff he creates as a passer like i've been very impressed so far shouldn't be a surprise for the first overall pick and particularly the way his game was presented but just watching it over the past couple games like the flashy plays are are always going to be there that assist that he has on the power play where under the goal line like flips a pass to the other side of the ice and really man is able to tuck it like all that stuff is great but the things that I really like are some of the like stop-ups upon entry and quick touches to get it to a teammate in space and he's starting to stack together more and more of those I imagine part of it is just going to be figuring out the timing of the NHL as well and like I'm okay with young players in general turning the puck over as long as they're

doing so in a way where they're clearly trying to experiment and figure out what's going to work at this level and he'll tighten that up as the season goes along. I'm pretty confident. So I've been, I've liked what I've seen so far. You got any other notes on the Leafs or do you want to get to our next question? No, well, just the last thing on McKana, which is again, you know, I've heard some people online say that he's not physically ready, stuff like that. Like when I look at his high end skilled and the ability that he's able to create the toughest plays in hockey, which are plays into the slot, there's no way that I will. want to take this guy off the ice or I want to get this guy, you know, down to the

HL or whatever. Like it would be interesting if the Leafs can get maybe like a middle six winger who can hold the puck a little bit and almost like play off of, play off of McTen a little bit. And I remember back when Nick Suzuki was coming up, one of the guys who really helped them on the ice with Joe Armea. So Joe Armea, you know, not not the fastest, not the flashiest player, but just a guy who's very underrated in small areas who can almost like direct you into the correct play.

You know, there are other guys like that, whether it's Tyler Tofoli or James Van Rimsdike or, you know, Corey Perry to a certain extent. I think those guys are out there. They're not going to cost very much, you know, Demetri Varankov is a guy who can potentially be that. There are guys out there. And I think if the Leafs can build a third line with McKenna as sort of the focal point with one or two complementary players, like that's a team that actually that I can.

actually do some damage down the stretch. Yeah, I would like to see him on PowerPlay one more. I think he's been on that unit for like seven minutes so far, and they've already generated three goals, and part of there was Tavares missed that game, and then he comes back and immediately they put him back on there. But yeah, I think there's ways to get creative with manufacturing opportunities to make the most of his skills and ease him in the way they've been trying to. It's funny here.

You mentioned Joel Armiak, because it's such a perfect fit for him that he's landed in L.A., and he's been there the past couple years. I can't think of a more LA Kings player. All right, next question. So this is a good segue from talking about power plays. Any early special teams trends that are of interest to you? I feel like you're our special teams guru here in the PDO cast. I really enjoyed that show we did last year, I believe,

where we kind of highlighted some of the quirks or intricacies of some of the most efficient power plays, but just in general, whether it's tactically or even early season results. Is there anything you've noticed league-wide that's kind of caught your eyes so far? I mean, so we're still having this discussion online on Twitter specifically about, you know, the 131 or the drop powerplay breakout. Someone sent me a clip where Anaheim scored off of seven passes in a row in about 12 seconds from DZone to open that tap in on the powerplay. And the thing is, it's like highlights like that sort of, I think it reinforces the idea that we got to keep experimenting and put in different twists. But as I tweeted, I would say special teams is one area where it's the closest to being solved in hockey. Like, it's nothing hockey is definitively solved except, you know, the idea that goalies have to be big.

Because once upon a time, Darren Pang, at 5-4 was an NHL goalie. Never going to happen again. But, you know, every team plays a 1-3-1 as a primary formation. That's not up for debate. Some teams will use more secondary patterns depending on your personnel. But again, it's more just a bit of variety, a bit of a twist. Most teams will use a drop, either a single drop or double drop. The statistically speaking, the entry rate and the setup rates are just too good to ignore.

So, you know, on the flip side is that PKs are just, we see teams changing from a diamond to more of a wedge plus one with a winger, trap with that f1 trapping down but it's more to keep the power play on its heels than for any sort of specific advantage so as an example the montreal canadians once derrick alone came in over the summer they went from sort of a pretty aggressive diamond to now more of a wedge plus one that's a little bit more contained the early results have been good but you know give opposing power plays 40 games they're going to figure it out because it's a formation they've seen before so the idea is

especially on special teams, like it's good to change once in a while, but, you know, the meta is the meta. Well, a topic near due to your heart, I know last year you were talking a lot about the Sabres penalty kill and how despite their results and they were what third in the league, I think, in terms of few as goals against per 60, the tactics and what you were seeing on tape didn't necessarily align with a penalty kill that efficient. And part of it was just they were getting away with it. they were very aggressive, which was on brand for them, kind of cheating for short-handed opportunities, flying out of the zone and trying to jump lanes and attack off of those turnovers. And it didn't wind up biting them so far this year. They're giving up 18 goals against per 60.

They've given up nine goals against in 30 minutes beyond being a clear regression candidate. I think part of it is like they're just not getting saves right now. They've got an 855 combined say a percentage from their two goalies all situations. And so not getting saves is always. going to result in crazy early season numbers like this, but I do think for a special team's perspective, because I'm not worried about their five-on-five game at all. The Sabres do have some interesting topics, partly. It doesn't seem like they have a clear grasp on, like, who their best players actually

are to use on those units. And maybe more so for the power play, that's always interesting to me and generally not a very promising sign when it's not clear to you, like, who your five most efficient players are when you're most likely to score a goal. And the usage so far reflects that, I don't think Jack Quinn should be leading the team in power play usage. It's an incredibly stagnant and stationary

unit and a lot of the issues they had last year are popping up there as well. Yeah, I mean, so I watched Buffalo last night when they played Montreal. I'm going to watch them in person this Saturday, which will be interesting. Dahlina's out, which obviously doesn't help matters. And you know, you mentioned

it's never good when you're not sure who your best unit is. And I think this answers the question, I know somebody had of like, is it better to have two units that attack differently? The thing is, is when you have a man advantage or you have, you know, two players up, predictability is your friend, okay? Knowing who's on the ice, what their handiness is, what their preferred pattern to play it. Or at five on five, not so much. At five on five, sometimes it's the element of surprise that creates offense. But when you're on the power play, generally speaking, the more efficient you are in your set,

and the more predictable you are to each other, generally speaking, the more shots, chances, and goals you're going to create. And right now for Buffalo, they just, they haven't,

you know, created that predictability from a personnel point of view. I would still love to see them get a, a center who's a better face-off taker, because if you look at the good power play units across the league, you know, the guy taking the first face-off is generally a,

you know, well above 53 or 55% face-off guy. I don't think Buffalo has that. I think last year, Jason Zucker was taking a bunch of draw, which I'm not convinced about. So, yeah, I mean, it's still a work in progress for sure. You know what is a fun power play to watch? Are you Tom Ameth, who are at 14 goals per hour so far behind only Anaheim and Minnesota,

10 power play goals in seven games? They were mediocre last year. I do want to note, though, in something I probably didn't pay enough attention to was when they actually got to use the five-man unit they're using to start this season, which was Cooley, Gunther, Schmaltz Keller, and Sergeantib up top, they generated over 12 goals per hour. Now it was only 92 minutes of data because of injuries. And at the start of the year, trying to get like Petrka on there and Hayden,

getting some opportunities to take draws. And now they're just gone with those five guys and the puck movement is elite. And they've been devastating and have great 5-1-5 metrics as well. and it's early days they've got, as I said, a back-to-back against the Oilers this week, which I'm excited to watch, but very promising stuff for the Utah mammoth. To your point about Utah,

like talk about a unit with just the right amount of predictability, right? First of all, personnel, if you look at the usage, it's not really a question now what their top unit is. We got Schmaltz, who's a good face-off taker on a strong side, who's a good bumper player. Dylan Gunther is going to be hunting for one-timers near the left dot. Surgachev up top. and then Cooley and Culley and Keller are going to be the two players that are going to move around

and create some more different looks with their movement. So again, they're not static, but they're not completely chaotic either. So just the right amount. Yeah. I think Cooley's playmaking this year as well has unlocked a lot of that and they're finally using them there full time and he's been phenomenal. I'm curious if you know it's on Tampa's power play while we're still on this because they're at three goals per hour so far, which is 30th in the league.

They were middle of the pack last year to the numbers. were better if you remove their early season stuff when they were still using headman there as soon as they put Darren Radish on that top unit and just started teeing up bombs from Kuturav. They started scoring a higher end total of goals.

They still didn't address the lack of a right-handed one-time threat. They've been using Brandon Hago, who's a phenomenal player, but doesn't have that one-time optionality for those Kuturov cross-scene passes, and then they replaced Radish with John Carlson. He has one of their two power play goals, and

but clearly isn't as big of a shot threat from the top as Radish was. And ultimately it's only six games. And I would always just bet on Kutraal figuring it out eventually because he's that brilliant of a playmaker. But I am fascinated to see what the personnel they have, unless they make some sort of an acquisition, what that looks like because there was reasons for pessimism about it heading into the year. And I haven't necessarily seen anything early on that suggests that it's going to be as good

as we think of the Lightning Power Play being historically. Well, the issue is, you know, let's say that they signed Patrick Lina as a UFA and they just plug him on the left side. And let's say that, you know, the shot is still there and the finishing is still there. The problem that we're seeing now is all of the other guys in the unit, they're getting older, they're getting a little bit slower. So the issue becomes, you know, shot retrievals and getting back into a set. And, you know, it's sort of crept up on us because Point and Kuturov and Gensel now, they've been together for a number of years. like none of those guys are getting younger, right? They're getting one year older every year.

So again, if you plug in a high-end shooter on the left dot, which is in a vacuum what they need, now the shot rates and the shot retrievals become an issue. So I think they'll do better. I think they'll find a way to rebound, but perhaps the days of TAPA being a top five unit across the league, I think it's over. Final question here.

I noticed you started manually tracking things and then typing up what you've seen on your substack, a natural opportunity here for you to plug hockey tactics as well. Is there anything in particular that you've picked up from doing this exercise? So, you know, now in my work as a consultant, I vowsource a lot of my data tracking. So I rely on different vendors with whether it's puck tracking, whether it's ship-based tracking, whether it's, you know,

good old-fashioned manual tracking. So I do less of that compared to, let's say, 10 years ago. but once in a while I still like to use manual tracking as a tool to help me answer some questions. And the sort of the genesis of it was that infamous Jeff Blaschel interview when he lambasted, you know, on ice defensive metrics and talking about how, you know, you can't really quantify defense. And, you know, certainly I think coaches are free to say whatever they want. Maybe, you know, what they say isn't necessarily what they mean all the time. they're certainly not legally responsible for the veracity of what they're saying.

But it did raise an interesting point, which is, you know, I've always been of the mind that on-eye stats are extremely useful for evaluating defensive play because they capture a bunch of stuff that sort of we tend to gloss over. And what I ended up settling on as a tracking metric was I grabbed 100 on-eye shots against four different players. And I just looked at, you know, is there a way for me to manually assign blame for how that shot against the Kurt? And ultimately, I figured out that there's probably, you know, four sort of buckets that you can sort of organize these sort of mistakes into. First of all is you've missed your defensive assignment. And, you know, whether it's a miss box out, whether it's you go the wrong way. Like, that's pretty obvious, right? The second one is your own turnover.

So when I talk about, when I was talking about McKenna, a lot of his defensive problems stemmed for him, him having the puck and then doing something wrong with it. And the problem is, is when you give up the puck, not only is your team generally in poor defensive spacing, but you yourself are in terrible defensive spacing because you only have about one or two seconds to recover else you're giving up an on-man situation against. The third one is your teammates' turnovers. And the fourth one is your teammates defensive miscues. And what I actually found is that different players, depending on their reputation or their on ice profiles or their isolated impacts, they look differently. So for example, why is a Vetchkin one of the worst defensive players in the league?

And the thing that I found in, you know, sort of my brief tracking project was, you know, he's not especially bad at turning the puck over himself, but his teammates, for whatever reason, heard it over way more with him on the ice than with other players in my sample. And when you think about a vetchkin, he's not really moving out there. He's often, you know, cherry picking outside the zone. He's not really involved. So when the capitals are playing with a vetchka on the ice, they're essentially playing four on five, which means that whoever has the puck that isn't a vetchkin always has

one fewer guide to pass to, especially in the D zone. So in that sense, it's very understandable that just by the virtue of being on the ice, avechkin negatively impacts his teammates turnover rates. So I found that really interesting because, again, it's not a metric that you would say has any bearing on a player's ability to play defense, but I actually find stuff like that, you know, there is signal on that. And, you know, I'm going to do more of that throughout the season, but I think there's really something there in terms of reconciling a player's individual

defensive actions, which may be good or bad or frequent or unfrequent, versus their overall impact on the ice. Well, part of the complication with isolating for defensive impact is that just by nature, offense and defense aren't isolated in hockey, especially with the way the game is played right now, right? And so hearing you talk about that and sort of like the detrimental impact that turnovers can have on your defensive metrics, that makes a lot of sense.

But also it's pretty easy to have good defense metrics in the league if you just don't try to do anything with the puck. Like if you're Zach Aston Reese just kind of leaning along the boards of the puck and killing 40 seconds at a time, guess what? The other team's not generating anything either. And so you're going to be an elite defensive player, but ultimately your team isn't necessarily creating anything productive either. And so I think that's part of the complication.

The Blashell stuff is very interesting. I don't think he's wrong necessarily in a lot of his comments. I think the source would probably hold a lot more weight if it wasn't a coach of a team with catatessen. estrophic defensive metrics being like, these metrics are bad and not right. It'd be much more interesting or compelling if it was a middle of the pack team or potentially an even good one, because I think there is a lot of logic in some of the flaws with it. I've got a couple interesting anecdotes of late as it relates to kind of tracking and sort of utilizing some of that

data to try and incorporate into an ice product and improve performances from working with players specifically, one that really came up. And I'm a curious for your take on it is I've had people ask me like where are you most likely to score from? And it's a complicated question because part of it is obviously baked in with pre-shot movement, right? And what leads up to the shot itself and not necessarily where it's coming from on the ice, but how it was created. But all things being equal,

I think there is a bit of a misconception for players maybe that, especially players further down the lineup, they're often just told by coaches to just crash the net and good things happen if you're around the net. And so a lot of players just kind of blindly do that, think and try to get there and jam away at pucks because they think it's going to score. And then every once in a while when they get a bounce or the puck rattles in off of them, they're emboldened even further.

And it uses proof that that's what works, especially coming to playoffs. And in reality, I'm not sure that's the case in today's game. Like goalies I've found are so big and athletic and they're so good with their pads that if you are one of those players who doesn't necessarily have the hands of one of the best skill players in the league, you're probably not able to consistently lift the puck from that in tight and actually beat the goalie. And so really, it's kind of being tracked as a dangerous opportunity because of the proximity to the net. But it's got a diminishing effect. I think it's almost like a bell curve where it's very inefficient to be very far out and it's very inefficient

to be very close in. And then that mid-range area of the offensive zone is almost certainly the area you're most likely to score from as a shooter. Yeah, I mean, like we all know sort of the Brady Kachuk shot pattern or the Brendan Gallagher shot pattern. They don't necessarily yield the most goals. Again, the good scores in the league, if you look geographically, they're maybe 10, 15, 20 feet out as opposed to, you know, right on top of the crease. But the other thing that really sort of is, again, still very hard to quantify right now, regardless of the technology, is average scores, they get to spots. and they shoot the puck, you know, where the goal he isn't, right? But the real top scorer is the guys who score 30, 40, 50 goals year after year,

they're moving people out of the way without doing a lot of moving themselves. Whether you know, you think of Kutrov or, you know, for the forwards or Evan Bouchard for, or Adam Fox for the fencemen, a lot of times it doesn't look like they're doing much and then they're making people around them work to open up a lane, maybe even against the will. So again, this is still one of the things that's incredibly difficult to account for, to track. I've seen some really great technology lately that all you need to do is input the video of a game and it gives you a ton of information about how fast a player is skating, how distance covered, acceleration, stuff like that.

But again, it's still difficult to account for how much a player is psychically moving people, out of the way. Yeah. So I think that's maybe the final frontier. I don't know if we'll ever get there, but right now there's a ton of work in hockey analytics being done with player tracking in terms of player output. But, you know, we're always going to be missing that last little bit of critical information. This realm of player tracking, if listeners, especially ones who are maybe just tuning in this

season and didn't listen to past shows, you, me and our pal John Mattis, we were in Denver for the analytics conference hosted by the apps back in Asia. April of last season. And then after the conference, the three of us went to the DNVR bar and we just sat down on some comfy leather couches and recorded a fun show. And we talked a lot about this because there were a bunch of vendors in this realm at that event. And we're talking a lot about this exact thing in terms of player tracking, but also using it specifically to quantify player performance and then spot trends and improve it. It's a topic I find immensely fascinating, even though we've made a lot of strides. in it so far over the past couple years, it feels like we're still in calibration mode in terms of figuring out where it's ultimately going to go. And I imagine five, ten years from now, it's going to look dramatically different. So I'm curious if you have any parting shots on that in general. Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not only something that's relevant to hockey or high-level hockey, but relevant to all of us, which is when I was in the NHL seven or eight years ago,

one of the big constraints that we have from a data perspective was in terms of in terms of biometrics is, you know, players were not allowed by the CBA to wear sort of biometric tracking during games, right? We could have players where chips in practice, but in games, that was sort of a sort of off limits. And now with the sophistication and the accuracy of video-based, you know, computer vision tracking, you don't even need chips anymore, whether it's player location, player speed, player distance, player acceleration. So if a guy is hiding an injury, you see it. If a guy is, you know, in natural decline, you see it. If a guy is in unnatural decline, you see it. And I would draw parallel to, you know, where the world is headed with sort of the flaw cameras or the constant

surveillance. And, you know, I think it, you know, in one sense, it has upsides, but on the other sense, you know, it's, it's a profound shift in how we live our lives. And I think, you know, sports is in a small way being impacted by that. I think as the general public were being impacted in much more significant ways. But, you know, that's sort of, that's an area where I think sports mirror society as a whole. Now, that was a deep parting shot. I got to be honest, I didn't see that coming. Jack, blast is always to catch up with you.

I'll let you promote some stuff here on the way out because as the listener said in our final question there, you've been writing about some interesting stuff from the tracking you've been doing, but also hockey tactics always has cool anecdotes along the way, so I'll let you promote that a little bit. Yeah. So, I mean, at this point, I think you guys know. the drill, check out the hockey tactics newsletter on Substack. We're closing on on 10,000 subscribers. So it'll be really cool to reach that landmark. Also, the hockey tactics 2026 book is now

half a season old. So I'm going to put that 50% off for the next little while. So if you want to go pick it up, just Google it. You can find it at gumroad.com. All right, buddy. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to having you on again soon. Speaking of subscribers, please subscribe. to the PDOCAS Patreon. You'll get access to every single episode we do this year. If you've been listening to the show for a while now and you're just checking the free feed constantly and wondering why there's only one show per week up there, that's because we're doing multiple episodes each week for our subscribers on Patreon. So if you don't want to miss out on that,

please join us there. We've got a lot more fun stuff coming and it's been a blast, building that up along the way here. We'll be back tomorrow. We've got one more episode to close out the week. So see you back here. Then thank you for subscribing. and for listening to the Hockeypedio cast.