The Hockey PDOcast - The Thrilling Finish in Edmonton, How the Panthers Evened Their Series Up at Home, and Rantanen’s Impact

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Thomas Drance to get into their main takeaways from this weekend's set of playoff games, including Saturday night's thrilling finish in Edmonton, how the Panthers evening up their series at home against the Leafs, and the impact of what Mikko Rantanen is doing right now offensively for the Stars. 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.

since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dimitra Filippovich and joining me as usual for our Sunday specials, my good buddy Thomas Trans, Tom, what's going on, man? Another great weekend of hockey. Thought the Florida Panthers performance to punctuate our weekend of hockey, a Saturday night victory over the Leafs, 2-0 final, but man, that was lopsided. That was a, statement game it felt like from the Panthers. And I'm curious to see how the Leafs respond, especially because now we get sort of that

breather. I like at this point in the playoffs. The extra day off? I love that. I love the extra day off, especially in a series with this much like passion and controversy and massive swings. I think two games off and we'll get two relatively fresh teams on Wednesday. This is perfect.

It's perfect stuff. I wish I get why they don't do it because the season's already so long. you get to the point, and I know bugs people where the Stanley Cup finals being played late into June and you just want to get it over with. So you're trying to condense these games and actually play it out. And I get also that I'm coming from a very biased perspective as an analyst who's releasing content trying to break the stuff down. But I do wish there was more time between games. I think that extra day off would not only improve the product itself on ice, let the players heal up and get rested, especially after some of these long overtimes when they occur. And then you get more time for people like you and I to break this stuff down and talk about it.

Let's go through this weekend's games and some of the stuff we saw, the biggest takeaways. I mean, this postseason has been incredible this weekend delivered. Yet again, as you said, do you want to start with Oilers' Knights? Sure. Because I thought that game on Saturday night was a fitting next chapter to this series that's been so captivating. Obviously, game one with the Knights being up 2-0, the score line was close, but it really felt like, as we've talked about, as that game progressed, the final 40 was above. as tilted as you're going to see in the Oilers' favor.

We were curious to see a Golden Knights team that obviously has a great coach in Bruce Cassidy from a tactical perspective and is blessed with a bunch of interchangeable personnel and options in terms of the way they can play, what they do. I thought they came out in Game 2 and played a much better game, as you'd expect from them, and didn't get the result they wanted. Game 3 starts off with a 2-0-0-0-0-0-0-lead. You're thinking, all right, the Golden Knights are down 2-0 in the series. They're down 2-0 in this game.

they're on the road. That crowd in Edmonton was going crazy, and they got the two goals in close succession before that first period ended, and then obviously the bonkers finish at the end. What were your thoughts and kind of watching that game play out? And maybe we can holistically talk about the series as a whole because you and I haven't really had a chance to talk about it yet

in terms of the twist and turns, and whether you feel like watching these games, Vegas is truly back in it, or you feel like the Oilers are going to drop a nuke here in game four and really take a strangle whole. of the series. Yeah, I thought Vegas steadied themselves in that second game, right? That first game was obviously, you know, that that first game looked a lot like game four of Leafs Panthers, which is just fresh in my mind as a lopsided one. But it felt to me like Vegas sort of steady

themselves. They got back in it in the third, obviously. So, you know, there was an element of like Oilers goaltending going on, of course, Pickard looking, you know, you could tell that he was not right. Yes. In the third. to the hurdle collision. I mean, right before the Pietrangelo goal, you could tell that there was something wrong with that left leg. But I think overall, I was curious to see, and in fact, I was pretty low on what Vegas chances would look like

with this series shifting back to Edmonton, in part because of the way that Noblock has found ways to free up McDavid against the middle six or even the bottom end of opponent's rosters when the series shifts to home ice. I think home ice matters more for the Edmonton Oilers as an edge than it does for any other team, simply because their top end of the lineup is the nuclear weapon in the NHL right now. And so I thought Vegas was in a really tough spot. And one thing that struck me in that game was whether it was, you know, Carlson and Riley Smith, whether it was like Colossar and the bottom six.

lines that McDavid was getting free against, I thought in some ways he looked most dangerous head to head against Eichael, which was a matchup, I think, both Cassidy and Noblock were fine with. And I don't know that the damage that McDavid habitually does against softer comp on home ice. Like, I don't know that that edge was sharp enough for Edmonton in that game. And to me, that was sort of, I mean, it's a game obviously defined by a dramatic goal with less than a second remaining. But for me, in terms of the dynamic of this series and how my expectations, where my expectations were going into it, and then what I actually was thinking is I watched it play out, I don't know that the Oilers edge in like McDavid's head to head minutes against Carlson

or McDavid's head to head minutes against the bottom six were as decisive as they probably will be in the other games played on Edmonton Ice, but nonetheless, you know, credit to Vegas' depth players because I think they played a crucial role in getting or sort of getting Vegas back into the series. It's remarkable hearing you say that because I do agree with the sentiment, yet you look up and McDavid plays 24 minutes in that game three, he comes away with two points. Ten shot attempts. He had the two setups to Drysidal. It didn't result in goals, right? There was the one right after they killed the penalty in the first period where Drysiddle rings it off the crossbar. And then before they tied it up in the third with that kind of patented play between

the two of them where McDavid kind of hovering around the left circle rifles it cross-ice, right-sidal from his spot and just shoots it off the side of the net essentially and the crowd thought it went in. And so for all that sentiment, I thought the looks he was creating were still incredible and they just didn't have the finishing touches on them necessarily, but it could have been a monster game from a points perspective and maybe that that looks differently in terms of this conversation. Let's get a little nerdy here in terms of what Vegas is done because I really want to break this out and I find it really interesting. So after they got smacked by them in game one, you saw this happen a lot in game two and then really fully fleshed out in game three,

where Vegas kind of in the neutral zone went from a one-two to a one-one three more so, and the logic being, especially against McDavid, just trying to have more bodies there to provide resistance, kind of slow the rush, force them to dump it in as opposed to getting those automatic entries and then provide an extra guy back for retrievals once they dump it in. And I'm fascinated by that because it puts Chris Knoblock into a bit of a predicament here. And you saw that in game three where was it in the third period? I know he went back to McDavid-Androcytel at the end when they were pushing for the goal, but you saw him go back to the regular season formations, which was McDavid with R&H and Hyman,

and then Dreisito playing with Kane and Perry. And I think the logic there for him is if they're going to set up this brick wall of bodies to force us to dump it in, I need a guy like Hyman out there with McDavid for more forechecking juice, right? To go dig it, retrieve possession, and then get our cycle game going. Part of that is because Dry Seidel is clearly not 100%. Right. And so the issue is coming up in a lot of these shots, but also some of the puck battles. And so they got into the spot then where if you do that, it's great.

And I think that line's going to look awesome. But then Drysidal has to carry a line of Perry and Kane and do a lot of the heavy lifting as the puck carrier and transporter. And that might not be best suited for them. So I'm very curious TBD on Drysiddle's health, but kind of what they choose to do in game four if the script keeps playing out this way. I just, I love that sort of interchange

or kind of that chess match in a series like this because you're really seeing, obviously Vegas came out of game one being like, we cannot afford for game two and the rest of the series to look like this. Yeah. And so they're posing some resistance in roadblocks

and McDavid and Dreis-Sidler so good that they're eventually going to figure it out. But for the time being, I do think it's slowing the Oilers up a little bit in terms of at least being like, all right, no more automatic entries for the most part. the one way around it is what you saw in the first goal where there's a bit of a turnover in the neutral zone

they can't get set up in that formation. I think Klingberg gets it quickly into the middle of the ice all of a sudden McDavid is just barreling downhill, gets it over to Perry and you get that rush goal. There were fewer of those opportunities I think for the Oilers and it forced them into more of a half-core game that I think

the Golden Knights were pretty comfortable playing in. Yeah, I think that's the you can't stop McDavid but can you cause him to stagger right? Just long enough that you're able get back into this series. Just knock him off his route a little bit. Yeah, exactly.

And it felt like that's what Vegas was successful at. I also think the, you know, a lot of conversations have been had about the performance of Edmonton's depth throughout this playoffs and sort of the goal differential in the way that they're controlling play and the emergence of that, you know, Hyman-Kane, R&H second line, which has done real damage against Vegas, but also in the first round against L.A., as the Oilers survived a bit of a scare there. And I think that's all well and good, but I do think we are seeing something of a reversion to the dynamic in this series that we would have expected to see from Edmonton where, you know, realistically what you're looking for from your not top end is just to find a stalemate. McDavid can win it.

Let's find a stalemate at five on five in all the other minutes. And I think you're seeing it sort of interestingly less in terms of the performance of individual. Oilers forward lines and more in terms of the self-matched minutes between Bouchard and McDavid. And I still think, and I still thought in that game, and in part I think this is because Bouchard's had his best three-game run of the playoffs. Like, I think this has been a really nice groove of contests for Bouchard. But his minutes self-matched with McDavid, it just feels like Vegas is really hanging on by their fingernails in those men. minutes. It's a 4-1 goal edge for the Oilers in this series of 5-on-5 in those minutes,

and there just feels like there's a certain level of calm, a certain level of maybe confidence or poise, or maybe it's just the puck's bouncing is way more than it did in the King's series, but it feels like Bouchard's come on, and that's posed a real issue for the Golden Knights, one that I think they're going to have to come up with an answer for of some kind, even just to slow it down. Five-on-five in this series, your Katz game, six goals, four or six goals against in all minutes outside of that matchup, but it's a four-one score line for the Oilers. So I thought that was a pronounced factor in the first two games.

I thought it was again in game three, even if Vegas managed to, you know, slow them down enough to get back in it. And it's something that I'm watching here. Like I do sort of think that the same dynamic that governed the King Series, right, kind of applies here, whereas, you know, Vegas is probably a souped up version of the Los Angeles Kings.

I don't think that's controversial to suggest. But that McDavid Factor remains an intractable issue. I think an interesting thing to consider for the Golden Knights and Bruce Cassidy, and we saw this play out, right? They started this series with, I think, visions of carrying over what they did against Caprizov and Boldie, where they had Carlson playing with Ikel, and they really tilted that series in their favor. They start game one doing so,

and the Golden Knights just wound up never having the puck and didn't create anything. And so they split those two guys up in game two. And Eichel, as I talked about on Friday, had a prolific playmaking game. He was just so much more involved. I thought he set up a couple great looks in game three as well. But I want you to talk more about this

because I've heard you here in the studio kind of bouncing around and you had a unique insight into this covering an Euler series last year against the Canucks that went seven games. And sort of this, I guess, conundrum that comes up when you're playing against McDavid for another highly skilled player on the other team because I think it fundamentally changes your approach and the way you play, right? Some of the stuff as a highly gifted creator that you might have otherwise tried, you all of a sudden really need to narrow your scope, I think,

in terms of what you're willing to do out there on the ice because one slip up or one bad pass into ice, all of a sudden can result in just an immediate high danger chance for the Oilers. and so maybe you're just changing the way you're playing, and that completely takes you out of your element. And so I do wonder that for that Bruce Cassidy and the Golden Knights, like whether they are best suited, and we can talk more about William Carlson and the job he's done, but just having him out there for as many minutes as you can

and freeing up Ikel, as good as Eichol's been, I thought he should have gotten more Selky love this year, and he's certainly one of the few players over time in Game 2, notwithstanding, that can keep up with McDavid from a skating perspective. So I get the logic of trying to match those minutes. But if you're the Golden Knights, you need him to create offensively, and he's not really necessarily in a position to do so

just tactically and through what he's willing to do if he is out there in those McDavid minutes. Yeah, so, you know, I think speaking of Selke-love, right? McDavid's never been nominated. We don't necessarily associate McDavid with having this, you know, phenomenal defensive impact. You watch him play and you'll notice him win a bunch of battles and always have the puck, but you're not necessarily,

like I would even say McKinnon has, far more highlight real back checks using his speed, right, than McDavid has using his. And that's not to say that, you know, it's for a lack of effort or a lack of impact. McDavid is the greatest player on the planet. But we just don't think of him that way. And for other elite players, you know, as you were alluding to, I do think there's an element to which, like, there's a defensive impact because McDavid serves as such a deterrent. Yeah. He inflates the cost of the mistake.

Right? And, you know, especially from, if you're an offensive driver from the blue line, like a Shea Theodore or like a Quinn Hughes, you know, you want to try stuff high in the zone. Right. Well, you better get it right because if McDavid's the guy cutting off the top or if one of his linemates is and they're able to hit him in stride, like he's gone. He's gone and he's beating your goalie too and you all, and you know it. And that dynamic, I think, weighs heavily, especially over a seven game series, like especially when it's these rude. routine matchups just on a conveyor belt coming one after the other. I do think it limits what players are able to do creatively. And so from, you know, Eichol's perspective, for sure,

in terms of his passing game being essential, as we saw in game two, to sort of making this Vegas team tick offensively, yeah, I mean, that does require, obviously you always have to be managing the puck, but that does require a level of risk-taking, right? That, you know, that equation of, well, we're willing to live with this turnover in this circumstance because you need to make stuff happen. Yep. The whole math behind that is just altered, bent, by the way McDavid plays.

I thought William Carlson was tremendous in this game, and he had to step up, right? Because Mark Stone gets hurt in the first period, he plays 5.54 in this game. you know, he scores the 3-2 goal in the second period off the rush. He sets up the winner, which I'm going to get more into in a second here. He plays 1621 at 5-1-5 in this game. Shots on goals, 6-1 Vegas, goals 3-0-Vegas, 7 minutes against Drysidal particularly, and kept the Oilers off the sheet in terms of shots.

It was 2-0 for Vegas in that time. For the series, Golden Knights are, you're talking about McDavid's one-sided impact in terms of his minutes versus everything else and how even it is. I'll do you one better. The Golden Knights are up 5-2 in William Carlson's minutes in this series of 5-1-5. They're down A-2 without William Carlson on the ice. And the play at the end, obviously we could do a full show, breaking down frame-by-frame

where it went wrong for the Oilers here. I want to view it through the lens of what William Carlson did there, though, because I think it's such a good teaching tool of not taking anything for granted. Like, just thinking about it, all right, you get the puck. He's like kind of around the wall, but near the face-off circle in his own zone. the Oilers are four guys back defensively. There's 11 seconds on the clock. How often would you see 99.9% of NHLers there?

It'd be like, chip it into the neutral zone. There's 10 seconds left. Let's bleed out this clock. Get to overtime in a regroup. And instead he doesn't take it for granted. He pushes the puck up the ice. He gets it deep. He wins the battle on the forecheck.

And then sends it in. Obviously, it's a bit of a hope plan. A lot needs to happen for that goal to materialize and go in their favor. And it all did. But none of that happens unless he does that. Right? And so just allowing them and enabling that opportunity, I think, was incredible.

And I just love William Carlson so much. And I think, like, there's players on this team, obviously, they get a lot more shine and attention and put up bigger point totals and everything. But what he does in terms of his impact and how good he is. I mean, there were a couple plays with Oilers would get the puck into the slot here, and he would just lift a stick or knock it away

or immediately neutralized. I thought he was incredible. And he keeps doing it. He's done it all postseason. But the outsized impact he has, I think, like, he's been by far their best player. Yeah. The, you know, the standard for like the middle six winning player that I often think about is smart enough, right, to force mistakes and skilled enough to capitalize off of them.

And I think that's Carlson to a T. I actually think he's capable of real game breaking moments. And I think that attack mindset, right, being aggressive in that situation in an end game scenario. is exactly what, look, down to nothing against Vegas, or sorry, against Edmonton going back to Euler's ice, where McDavid's going to get, you know, some minutes against the bottom end of your lineup at five-on-five and going to have slightly easier sledding in, what, 33 to 40 percent of his ice time?

Like, you need to throw some haymakers if you're the, if you're the Vegas Golden Knights and Carlson's decision-making there, you know, the decision tree that he sort of followed. That's a perfect example. I do think remember it was game one against the Kings, right? Where the Oilers were pushing, they had that dramatic comeback. Yeah. And then we talked to the time about, I think, a miscalculation by Chris Knoblock of getting a bit too greedy because he had used McDavid and Drey's title so much just to enable that.

And then he sent them back out there and the Kings come back and score the goal. A similar thing happened here, I think. Now, obviously, it's not nearly anyone's fault individually. But McDavid plays 447 of the final nine and a half minutes or so. And then he's out there for that play kind of floating around the circle and his own zone. Any other stuff stick out to you from either team here as we look ahead to the game four on Monday. I think from, especially if Stone is going to be banged up or unavailable, I feel like Tomas Hurtle needs to get on the scoreboard here.

For the Golden Knights, he was a player heading into the playoffs that I identified as obviously a key X factor here. I mean, it certainly had his chances. We can talk more about Stewart Skinner making his first appearance for the Oilers since game two of round one, but for all the mistakes and like just aesthetically not looking comfortable in it, he stared down and made a couple huge saves on Hurtle to keep the game 3-2, I believe at the time. And Hurtle in the series is at 14 shots, 7-9-injured chances, it's just zero goals. So I feel like he really needs to get going here for the gold nights. Yeah, I'll add Ivan Barbashev to that list.

I think doesn't, I don't know how heavily I need to hit that Barbishev needs to be better, especially after he failed to capitalize on how many golden opportunities in game two. Do you have a count? Do you ever written down? It was almost double digits. That was one of the worst finishing games individually that I've ever seen. They need more from him. I mean, there's nothing else to it.

He needs to be a difference maker in this series. And he hasn't been. He just hasn't been. I'm a huge fan of his game. But whether it's the giant hits, whether it's just those physically assertive forechecking shifts, bogging down the Oilers breakout, or whether it's finishing. and making hay off of some of these Jack Eichael, you know, can opener passes to open up the Oilers defense.

Like the script in which the Vegas Golden Knights advance to the conference final, I think requires Barbushchev to be the guy he's been so often for them in the past two post seasons. I think, I mean, the lawyers are still in good shape right here. They're up to one. They have game before at home with McDavid playing the way he did in this game. You expect even more offensive production. Yet I do, I think Vegas has played two pretty good games here. I agree.

Honestly, obviously took a bit of good. good fortune to win game three in regulation. I thought they were pretty unfortunate not to win game two with the way they played. Beyond just the one-one-three, I was mentioning, I think their back pressure, and you saw a result in a goal. I think they got caught dry-sidal, trying to do too much with the puck and then turned it back for a goal. They held Oilers to just 20 shots on goal here.

I thought they had quite a bit of offensive zone time as well, right? I think, you know, I did a full show on goalies with Kevin Woodley before the weekend, so I don't want to rehash too much of that, but with Stuart Skinner being in net here for loyalers as opposed to picker. I mean, you saw it off the rush here, right? Like the, the Riley Smith one is tough because Klingberg gets dragged out to the wall. Ikel makes a nice little bump, and then all of a sudden, I believe it's putt hole as the last guy back defending against Riley Smith, and he just quickly goes around him and then tucks it five hole. But there was so much there. And you could see Stuart Skinner as soon as he starts moving, how stuff opens up,

and all of a sudden there's little holes to shoot through. And I think that was pretty clear mandate from the Golden Knights, because the first two games, I don't even know how much of the offense came off the rush for the Golden Knights, but I think the Oilers had scored like eight rush goals themselves and had really dominated in that category. Right. And I felt like in this game, the Golden Knights may be part of it just out of desperation

being down to nothing, but I felt like they were purposefully pushing much more to try to create there specifically as opposed to a lot of the cycle around zone and then shoot point shots and go for tips and stuff like that. Like they were trying to make that the primary source of their offense. Yeah, and you have to do that against Skinner, right? Very much the opposite of how you attack Pickard. And yeah, I mean,

that was such a tough. You just, we've seen Skinner have his battles in the playoffs over the past two years. I think for the most part, though, over a pretty large sample of performance, he's managed to hang in there. You know, he hasn't been great, but he has been playable, and he has given this team a chance to win more often than not. You just hope that that's sort of backbreaking last second goal, especially one that really wasn't on him, you know, isn't something.

something that sort of comes back on. He was pretty far out of net. He was swimming, but I do think the logic was the clock is ticking down. Like there's so little time that you just want to take away the first shot and hope that the time runs out. And then unfortunately, it goes off dry cycles taken past them. Tough. Yeah. My one final note on this, I noticed it a lot in this game.

And I gave you the stat during round one, but we're up to now for Darnel Ners. He was on for three more five on five goals against here. And he's playing in those minutes with Bouchard, as you mentioned, with the top guys. Now he's been on the ice for 13 of the Oilers' 21-5-1-5 goals against this postseason. He needs to stop defaulting to sprawling. On all these goals, it's like just spamming the go-down on your belly and try to take away space button, also just taking yourself out of the play. And so I really need to see that change.

All right, I think that's all I got on Vegas-Edmonton. You got anything else? Nope. I'm really excited, though, to watch game four. Yeah, especially with how competitive these past two games have been, I feel like, and I don't know, maybe you're feeling this as well. It's not anything new for the NHL because we know that the game environments have changed so much with the offenses and no lead is safe anymore.

But it really feels like even in this game, when Vegas went 2-0, on the one hand, I was like, man, this is going to be an uphill battle. But now they just changed so quickly on a dime for them. And I think that makes all of these games so much more exciting as well. Yeah, no, I'm with you. I think the fun part, too, about a series like this is it's felt like Edmonton's been in the driver's seat throughout. And then you really sort of drill down and think about it. And really, it's been one dominant game from the Oilers and kind of two that absolutely could have gone either way,

you know, depending on a couple of bounces or a couple of calls that went one way or the other or didn't. And when I think about it that way, it's a huge opportunity still for Edmonton to push them to the brink to bring about stave off season, as it were. But this one feels like it has likes. Like this Vegas Golden Knights team is very, very good and have actually held up far better than most will against McDavid. All right. All right. And then when we come back, we'll jump right back in there. We're going to talk about some other series.

You're listening to the Hockey, P.D.O.cast streaming on the SportsNet Radio. network. We're back here on the Hockipedio cast of the Sunday special. Tom, let's talk about the game we just watched before we went on the air. Panthers Leefs, game four with the Panthers winning games three and four at sunrise to send this series back to Toronto, tied at two. You know, haven't done a show since game three. So I kind of want to lump that in as well, obviously two very different games,

aesthetically. But I thought there was a lot of interesting stuff. And I want to start off with this. You know, in games one and two, in this series, in particular, it feels like the matchups are so important because of the guys at the top of each roster. And in the games in Toronto, we saw, as he's done all year, Craig Broubae, going power versus power, right? And using Matthews against Barkov in those minutes at 5-on-5. And then we saw, you know, Lundell get used in game one against different lines.

But then in game two, we saw a lot of him against Willie. And I thought that was a bit of a mistake for the Leafs being able to dictate those matchups a little bit more. After game two, I talked on this podcast about how, and I don't think this was a hot take by any means, because you look at his production, you watch those games, how Willie Nielander is clearly not only the most dangerous player on the ice offensively for the Leaps, but in this series, and maybe other than McDavid, left in the postseason because of his ability to just get out in transition and how many breakways and odd man rushes he creates and how lethal he is with the puck on a stick. And I feel very vindicated because Paul Maurice, who knows a thing or two about puck, clearly agrees with me because he has, entered these games three and four, switching the dynamic by trying to match Barkov's minutes against him instead of Matthews, and then using the Lundell-Lustarina

and Marshaun line, which has been so good for them all postseason, against Matthews Nyes and Marner. And I thought he had success doing so. It went against my expectations. I thought we'd continue with these matchups, the way they kind of always have the way when these two teams play. And I thought that was a pretty interesting revelation. Obviously, the dynamic shifts a little bit with Brubay having more of an opportunity, I think, to get Nielander out there, especially against the Kachuk-Bennett line that I think he can cook against off the rush. But we saw Maurice here just really very diligently and religiously try to keep Kachuk and Bennett away from the top six entirely.

Now, the game four was essentially sealed in that particular matchup because I thought Kachuk did a great job sort of shadowing Nielander in a neutral zone, forces him to pass the puck where he might have otherwise not wanted to. and then Bennett's able to convert off the rush after that. But we saw that match up very infrequently in these games. I feel like you've undersold it, though, by saying that Bennett finished off the rush. That was such a sick play. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I just, sorry, not to interrupt you because I think you're making a great point. I just want to take a moment to appreciate the patience from Sam Bennett, you know, Canadian hero or villain du jour, depending on your perspective. But, I mean, to outweigh Joseph Wool, who was on one. Yeah, he was incredible. All afternoon or all evening in sunrise. But also to outweak Chris Tanna of one of the smartest game readers you'll see and you'll ever find. I mean, honestly, one of the smartest defensive thinkers I've seen play in the last decade,

to have both of those guys and to just have the calm to wait. turn in, look past. He looked past the whole way, which was a big part of why, once he actually did turn in, they were completely flat-footed. McAbe, Tanev, and Wool. I just thought that was a tremendous moment, especially because until that goal, that game had the feeling, one of those classic playoff feelings of, man, Florida's all over them, but can't, mostly because Sam Reinhardt appears to be one of the most snake-bitten people on the planet. But they couldn't find that insurance marker they couldn't find that last goal and finally Bennett did it and I've just a really exceptional moment of individual brilliance that I just wanted to spend a minute ruminating on that's fair back to

the bark of Neilander matchup the reason so in these two games five on five shots on goal head to head 15 to four for Florida and now you saw in game four the odd occasion the least would look dangerous offensively kneelander would get open yep and be skating downhill and I love the interplay we saw between him and Gus Forsling, two of the guys who are the best at their individual crafts, wildly different crafts. One guy trying to create the other guy trying to eliminate. Demolish. And Nielander got the better of him the first time where he kind of works it around him.

Doesn't, I think, wind up getting a shot off on it, but got free. And then in the second one, he looks like he's off for a breakaway, and Forzling chases him down and plays it about as perfectly as you can, just essentially hitting his stick so that he can't get a good shot off. And Barowski's able to stop it. And I love that. But I think the reason why it's so important, why the Leafs looked so lethargic offensively in this game beyond the amount of time they spent short-handed in the first period is it feels like, you know, in the first two games, they created so much of their offense off of the Panthers being over-aggressive on the forecheck and then getting these odd manned rush opportunities. Yes.

If the Panthers play it a bit more in a calculated manner, the way they did in these two games, the Leafs' offensive opportunities are essentially going to come down to Neelander creating off the rush individually. or some of these plays that we saw a lot of in the third period of game for, when the Leaf started to mount their first real push of the game, the point shots, and then the tips in front by Nyes and Tavares and getting some of those opportunities off the second efforts. And so I think it's going to be imperative for them as they go back to Toronto to find ways to get Nielander in these advantageous situations where he has more opportunity and more room on the ice

and isn't just stuck in his own zone playing against Barkov to do so, if they're going to have enough offense to really get back in game five and win a game. Yeah, I think you're right. Between that and, you know, I thought Mitch Marner still had some dangerous sequences. But there's, you know, it's so, it's so unfortunate because of the conversation that's dogged Marner throughout his career that it's like tough to have this conversation without feeling like, uh, Marner's shooting.

from the perimeter has been a key driver of Toronto's offense. Yeah, that high ice. Nathan McKinnon's sitting at home doing the DiCaprio pointing at the TV. 100%. But I don't want to say Marner's like perimeter. Like he's been really good at it. It's been a key, the game winning goal in game two came off of a play like that. The first shift in game three.

Exactly. So like there's been a lot of that. I didn't think he found those. I didn't feel like in this game his pucks found their way through the first shooter with the same level of consistency that they did. in the first couple games. So while I am talking about Marner's perimeter-based offense right now,

I want to talk about it from the perspective, not of, and he needs to get inside, but instead from the perspective of one of the reasons he was so dangerous in the earlier games in this series is that those shots were getting through and they were often changing direction or there was traffic in front to a greater degree.

I felt like that was missing from the Maple Leafs attack. But more than anything, I really think that the first five periods of this series, were shocking to me, in part because of how cleanly and regularly the Maple Leaf's defense was getting out of their zone on the breakout, just consistently puncturing the Panthers vaunted, you know, stress game. The Panthers pressure game took like five periods to actually play and show up. Yeah, go until period two of game three when we're down three, one to really see that.

To really start to cook and take over and look like Panthers hockey again. And I do think, certainly tonight, like certainly in game four, that was, you know, the imperious old panthers that we've seen across the last three playoff runs. I mean, that's what we expect from this Florida team. And it started to look like Leif's defenders were more regularly under duress. Their breakout was getting bogged down. It looked absolutely miserable to skate through any five feet of ice, you know, anywhere within five feet of the Maple Leaf's Blue Line for Toronto, that the connectivity of their game just sort of started to die. And I think that's, why they struggle to generate offense in game four. But I think when we're really starting to think about it, you know, for the most part, there's been a lot of minutes of game time, frankly, where I don't know that Toronto's generated an awful lot, even if they're sort of shooting efficiency is kind of massed that.

I do feel like at this point now, the question is, for me anyway, the question is can that Leaf's defense with, you know, Chris Tann of taking all of these hits? He's taken 81 hits in 10 games. Next up is 46. Right. And on the one hand, I don't want to fall victim to his game of Possum in the sense that you and I are very familiar with Christendev's game.

He has a normally freakish pain tolerance. Like he always looks like he's hanging on by a thread physically. But, man, every time now he goes back for it, I'm fearing for him. Right. And, well, I mean, this is what it's going to take. Like, he's going to need to take those hits. because he's usually making really smart plays off of the fact that he's consistently drawing four checkers to him. He creates space with those sequences.

And that's going to be crucial because that's, you know, Toronto's breakout has been a real strength of their game in this matchup against the Panthers. And it has to continue to be. Like, in fact, they have to get it back to where it was in the first five periods of the series. because if it is, like if these, if the, you know, game five, game six, maybe game seven, look the way those first five periods did, Toronto's going to have more than a puncher's chance to still win the series. Do you subscribe to the idea that there's an element of like a cumulative series effect when a team plays so decidedly in a way that the Panthers do here from the perspective? And you could, you know, lump in the hurricanes here or any other number of examples, but these are such extreme ones of, like, Like, I agree with you that the first, whatever, five to seven periods look different.

But on the one hand, the Panthers aren't really going to change the way they play because that they had so much success to do so. And I assume part of their calculus is eventually if we keep playing this way, like when it winds up biting us when we overcomit, when Nate Schmidt's left on an island, the neutral zone and you have a two-on-one or a three-on-two coming back and you burn us, it's going to look bad. but in the aggregate over the course of a seven game series, eventually you're going to make mistakes, you're going to slip up,

you're not going to have the same precision or efficiency in those plays and getting it out of your zone and being able to build up that speed. And maybe that's what we're seeing here a little bit. Obviously, especially with the day off, I think that'll help, and you can cook up and design some different ways to break through that. But I do wonder whether we're seeing an element of that here

and whether that's a thing that actually applies to the NHL postseason. Yeah, I mean, and I don't think they have, like, do you think the Panthers have adjusted beyond? Well, they changed the matchups, but I feel like otherwise, I mean, it just comes down to going as hard as you can and winning those battles ultimately. For sure. In the first two games, they were a step slow. The Lees were able to get those bounces and then punish them for it. And then in these ones, those opportunities have been fewer and further between. The Leaves still got a couple.

Certainly, I mean, you got at one-nothing on the short-handed, you got a Matthew and I's breakaway and he misses the net. so it's not like they were completely devoid of them, but it just did look a little bit different aesthetically to me. What do you think about the Maple Leaf's power play, having come up sort of goose eggs in that second period? They had that one opportunity. Where they were in there for pretty much two minutes. And I love it.

As soon as the puck got out of zone, it expires, full two minutes pass. And all the same players have been out on the ice, and the Panthers got a bit of a break opportunity themselves. And then you just watch Gus Forsland and just going a million miles an hour joining the rush, beating everyone up the ice. I'm like, where did that come from? And he's the only guy joining the guy who's coming out of the box. Yeah.

On the, after Lusteran and hauled down Matthews. Yeah, that was awesome. The, I thought the Maple Leaf's power play had one just exceptional sequence. And other than that, I did think they looked vulnerable, both to attacks the other way. And they just didn't generate looks. Like, I think there's, even on their really good sequence, too, it felt like not enough touches for Nielander in particular. Yeah, he was isolated kind of in that left corner and not really involved. And high up the zone, too.

Like, it's not like he was, you know, in sort of a classic Stamcoaster dry-sidal type, you know, low-in-the-zone shooting spot. He was kind of floating up high. And again, sorry, I don't mean to use the word floating to describe a Maple Leaf skill player in a loaded sense. That's not what I mean. He was positioned up high in the zone. Yep. And reading play, but not even really positioned to where he was taking away. like space or occupying mind share as a shooting threat for those penalty killers.

I still want to see them stick with it, but the fact that Morgan Riley on PP2 had some really smart plays, like a couple dangerous tagging sequences, and the fact that PowerPlay won didn't really work, and Marner's sort of shooting from up top was regularly getting blocked. And honestly, you know, DeKembe Matumbo, like the Panthers were finding ways to turn those into rush opportunities themselves. I'm curious to see if Barube and the Leafs look at that and whether or not they feel the temptation before game five to make an adjustment. I thought Barcove and Reinhardt played an awesome couple of games.

Here, especially I thought after game one, Barkov wasn't good enough. And they certainly responded to it. You mentioned this, you kind of alluded to this earlier, right? But Reinhardt, in these two games in Florida, wound up with 23 shot attempts and 13 shots on goal between the two. He hit the post a couple of times. he had so many opportunities. How NHL post-season coded is it that the one goal he scored in these two games

was this comical sequence where the puck's kind of in the crease against BioWol, then Carlo plays it with a broken stick, kind of covers it, and then it winds up being pushed in, and that's the goal he gets credit for. They obviously all wind up counting the same, but the number of looks he's had from the slot in these two games and either hit the post or just missed or been robbed by Joseph Wohl has been, I mean, it's reaching a fever pitch in terms of the frequency with which has happened, and the lack of goals that are resulted in it.

Yeah, he had the one where he batted out of the air in this game. And then brought it back to Barkoff, yeah. Which was incredible. Then he had the one where, on the short-handed sequence, where he just like personally dissected the Maple Leafs and then had a quality sort of wrist-shot opportunity. And then Barkov has the follow-up opportunity to, which I guess Marner blocked that one, right?

Marner blocked the second, which was an awesome defensive play. So, yeah, it just feels like. like this guy can't buy a break right now. His level of actual attacking ingenuity chance generation and his level of scoring in this series have absolutely zero relationship with one another. And you figure that if he keeps generating like this, it's just a matter of time before that's going to go his way.

Yeah, that PK sequence you're describing where he kind of lulled the power plate of sleep and was just dancing around with it weaving in and out and then all of a sudden brings it in for that shot, which I believe will glove down in a very dramatic fashion, was incredible was really awesome all right any other notes on this three want to quickly get to i saved jet stars and kane's caps for the end here just because we're going to see kane's caps on monday i believe and i'm going to talk about it with shana the

following day and then also just like jet stars is an island game on tuesday i believe the only game on the schedule and so i'll cover that at full length wednesday so we'll you know we'll get to those eventually but we do have about eight or nine minutes left here do to quickly talk JetStars. Another game we saw here on Sunday. Sure, yeah. Let's, I mean, so I guess your listeners, PDOCast listeners, regular. The smartest and best looking of the bunch, yeah.

I don't think they're surprised by the Thomas Harley glow up. But it does feel like increasingly when I'm perusing social media, I'm getting more and more or seeing more and more people who are like, are you getting targeted Thomas Harley ads? Yeah, pretty much. No, I'm just seeing more and more people who are like, whoa, Thomas Harley has how many points in this last 35 games? Yeah.

Whoa, Thomas Harley's doing what since Mero Hayskinen left the lineup? Like, I do think there's an element to which, you know, even after the Four Nations showing, um, there's still a dawning recognition that this guy's a true 1A level defender, independent of Hayskinnan, that, you know, this is very much, I mean, I think now people are beginning to see it as sort of like a Taves-McCham car situation where, hey, we thought this guy was tied to this guy, but actually he's great

on his own. And I actually think this is like a Devon Teve situation plus. I think Harley's upside case is even higher than that. And I think Devontees is one of the 10 best defensemen on the planet. So that goal he scored today off the wrist shot after that missed trip, that was such a sick shot. That was one of the big standouts for me. And then the Rantanin four two goals. So the 4-2 goal, that's one of those where... You don't want to talk about the 3-2-1 that resulted in like a 12-minute delay while they reviewed it? I mean, so the problem with that is I don't understand how that review could possibly go that long and reach the wrong decision. So I just don't want to get into it too much.

Like it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. I'm not here for it. But the rant and entry is what I want to talk about. that 4-2 goal where, you know, what McDavid accomplishes where he seems completely unstoppable because of the flash Gordon speed through the neutral zone, Rantin occasionally does because of his combination of control and size. And it honestly felt a lot to me like the 2-1 goal he scored in game seven against the avalanche, where, you know, he's just like slowly dissecting his way

through a team's sort of neutral zone four check or a looting squeezes at the blue line. Once he gets going like that, there's nothing you can do. And then the patience to wait out the goaltender like that even finished it, almost the exact same spot that he scored that two one goal. I mean, I just don't know how you contain this guy at this point. This is truly becoming one of the most special individual performances we've seen in a long, long time and we saw McDavid in the playoffs last year. He's up to 17 points in the last six

games. Obviously got held off the scoreboard in game two with Hellebuck's shutout where he was, I mean, Helibuck was incredible in that second period. Three plus points in five of the past six. Dallas went from April 28th to May 11th without scoring a goal of the ranton and didn't get a point on. He got to the point

in this series now where I was texting you about this, but game two, I've got a good chuckle out of it. The Jets crowd, which is obviously awesome with the whiteout. was exclusively reserving booze for rantin and puck touches. Yeah. Purely because he's so good. Yeah. Like there's no real,

I mean, I know they played each other last year in round one, of course, and that went off the rails for the jets. But there's no, it's not one of those situations where there's animosity about, like,

past history of a bad hit or some comments or anything. It's just purely like, man, this guy just ripped our hearts out in game one, and so we're going to boo him throughout in game two. I love it out in game too.

I love how targeted and isolated it was to that. What a compliment. And what a show of respect it was. Yeah, what a compliment. And look, I mean, hockey fans do a lot of silly stuff, right? I mean, I'd rather fans pick out just like the best player and be like, boo, you're too good, as opposed to, you know, chanting USA at the Maple Leafs

when they've got a bunch of guys who don't have American passports on the ice. Or sorry, it was the Panthers who had like, what, two fins, a Swedish, a Russian goldender on the ice at the time that that was happening? Classic. Yeah, as I said, they did this in game one as well, but Pete DeBoer has done a nice job of sneak and rant in and out for additional opportunities away from some of the kind of main defensive assignments, getting them out there with guys like Sam Steele, for example,

and they've been creating in there. I thought Y Johnson was excellent in this game in the first period. I believe Josh Morrissey would have a sure-fire goal in the power play, and he ties his stick up and eliminates that, and then he scores the goal to essentially put it away in the third. And in this one as well, we've talked about how he's gotten some new linemates as well compared to round one. He was playing with Jason Robertson a bunch in this game as well.

They shook him free a little. but in this game with last change, away from the primary assignment against line one as well, right? They were using him so diligently against the McKinnon line in round one, and he didn't have to play as much against Schifley and Connor. As he did in this one, he played, I believe his top opponent was Ladenov in the second line. And so I'm curious to see if that continues into game four because we know what Wyatt Johnson's capable offensively,

and it feels like he's being put in a bit of a better position here to actually create now, and that could be a, you know, tilting it a little bit in Dallas's favor. I thought, I mean, obviously, the final scoreboard and kind of the final 15 minutes of the game or so got away from the Jets after the controversial goal and the review and then ranted in coming back and applying the dagger and then that Y. Johnson goal. But those first two periods were incredibly competitive and really fun and back and forth. And this has been an awesome series so far. Yeah. I mean, the Jets just need to find a way in terms of when these games on the road spiral away from them. Because, you know, there's an extent to which, like maybe some of those.

Blues games got a little wild, a little more, obviously more dramatically, but also a little earlier. Yes. But for the most part, you know, I think about that game four in St. Louis where, or was a game three, where the Jets were honestly up playing them for 30 minutes and then it just snowballed against them. It did feel a little bit like that. You had the 12-minute review and then it felt like for just a little bit, especially because

Ranton and caught a breather during that 12-minute review, he just sort of went force of nature on them and all of a sudden the game's kind of not over because the Jets as we know can overcome a two gold deficit in the third period with their six on five play but hit a point where you know the Jets need to stem the bleeding a little faster on the road it's it's now been four games in the playoffs and all of them have had sort of a pivot point moment like that I don't love that element of sort of the Jets chances going into a critical game for here certainly all right Tom we're going to get out of here. This is a fun show, as always. You got anything to plug on the way out here? I know you're going away for a little bit. I don't know if we're probably taking next Sunday

off. I might have to get a backup co-host for the Sunday special. Got to keep it going. Yeah, you'll need a ringer. Going away for a destination wedding to the tropics. So it should be fun. Do you need the NHL playoffs? My God. Wow. I mean, it's a destination family wedding and the fact that the Kinnaks are not, you know, in the equation is probably a lucky break for your boy, but I'll still have off-season content pre-scheduled at the athletic running across this week, maybe some nuggets on a coaching search and some work on the cap. So check that out at theathletic.com. I also wrote a thing about playoff trends and how they apply to the Canucks on Friday. Give me a couple quick hitters. What did you see in there? Well, I just talked about the shot volume.

Yeah. Honestly, it's mostly just going over some of the stuff we've been talking about all season. But I talked at length about shot volume in that piece. And, you know, the stat that I pulled up that I found really stunning, and granted, I think the NHL's changes to tracking data have been like a huge factor here too. But I think it was a bunch of teams, 17 teams last year, so 20, 3, 24, managed 30 shots or more per game. Yeah, so 19 of 32.

And this year it was four. And it's Edmonton, Carolina, Florida, and Vegas. you'll notice that all four of those teams are still playing. I was theorizing that in a world where shots are this hard to come by, relative to what we've been used to in the past, that the ability to generate them to consistently attack maybe brings us to a point where we have to question the old bromide of defense wins championships,

went over the idea that it's a star-driven league and some of the Rattan and stuff that we've been talking about, talked about workhorse starting goaltenders, and they're being on the verge of extinction with really only two guys above 55 starts still playing in the playoffs, and they're playing against one another, so much like the Highlander, like, you know, there can only be one in the conference final. And then talked a little bit about, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, because I was looking at the data. And not only is Winnipeg the best six-on-five attacking team from a goals rate perspective across this past season, but also St. Louis was the most permissive team defending with their net empty.

Right. And so I was sort of going over what we saw in that game and all of the, you know, six on five swings we've seen across this playoffs and wondering if sort of endgame excellence is, is something of, you know, increased importance, something that actually maybe we should be focused on a little bit more. Because, you know, for all that we've talked about that Winnipeg Blues series in, or game seven in its immediate aftermath and on and on, It's like actually this thing that felt actually It's like this thing that we saw as a miracle in the moment Not to suck the fun out of it

But to some extent it was the team most likely to score When chasing a game with their den empty Against the team most likely to surrender a goal When trying to protect their lead against a team with six attackers And that sort of mutual extreme just caught my eye As something that I suppose I hadn't considered In reacting to that unforgiving forgettable classic that we saw in Winnipeg, I guess, last week.

I like that. Yeah, I think even Jim Montgomery in the exit interviews was saying that that's something they definitely need to work on, obviously, fresh on your mind after that's the reason you got sent home. But, yeah, I like that angle. All right, buddy, we're going to get out here. Apologies to Matthew Coronado's extension. I'm out on my list again, and I really want to get into that with you.

We're going to have to save it for when you're back because I think, you know, we had this conversation at the time Jacob Chikrin signed his extension and just taking it as a full view of the league in terms of what it represents or what it means. I think a similar thing can be applied to Coronado. I think so too, but with the difference being that Chickren was all UFA years, right? So I think applying the logic of being reticent to do a bridge deal with a player you believe in, because getting them signed now at today's market price versus trying to sign them in three years after they've delivered on their potential, and now the cap is $125 million or $120 million or wherever we get to by 2020.

I think that's the risk here. Like the risk is not going long on Coronado. The risk is not going long on great players now. And that shift in focus, much like we've seen in un-cat or leagues that have had regular cap growth like the NFL, where you drag your heels on a star player and the market is reset because the cap's always going up 10% or 15% year over year. That's where teams find themselves behind the eight ball on a regular basis, at least in that league. I think this is exactly how teams should be pursuing deals with guys like Coronado

who have a real potential and who they really believe in. So that's the angle that we'll get into a little bit more at some point. Okay, we'll follow up on that. Give us five stars wherever you listen to the show, pop into the PDOCAS Discord as well. That's all from us today. We'll be back Tuesday, as I said, with Shana Goldman to keep the good times rolling on.

Thank you for listening to the Hockey-Pediocast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.