The Hockey PDOcast - The vibes in Buffalo are immaculate

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Buffalo has been on a roll lately, winning their last three games. The culture of the Sabres has seen a big change allowing them to get off to a hot start in the young season. The vibes are high, but what is the ceiling of this team? This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

addressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovin. Welcome to the Hockey PEOCast. My name is Demetri Filipovich. And joining me here in studios, my good buddy, Cam, Sharon. Cam, what's going on, man? Oh, it's a wonderful Monday afternoon. Very happy to be here.

It is. It's exciting. So we should let the listeners know. We're going to start a new theme or a new gimmick this season where you and I get together on Mondays. Mm-hmm. And we're going to adopt the team. Yeah.

which implies that we're going to go back. We're going to rewatch their games from the previous week. And then we're going to blend what we saw in those games with their performance and their stats so far and talk about them for the first at least block on every Monday's show. We have picked the Buffalo Sabres this week. Now we should say next week we've already decided we're going to do the Washington Capitals. I was going to say you should hold that as a secret until the end of the show. So we know who actually listen until the end.

Yeah. So the listeners stay engaged. And so listeners know as well. You've been tracking both Canucks and Leaves games this year. Yep. And as a bonus for the PDO cast, every team we adopt that week, you're going to go and track that team's games as well. And we're going to have a little stat packs. You're giving me a lot of work to do.

I'm happy to do my homework here. You got to earn your spot here on this show. I do. We don't give away guest spots for free. You got to do some tracking. And some people call in. I'm right here in the studio sitting next to you. I love it.

I love it. I love it. I love it. I have the dedication. Okay, so let's start with the Buffalo Sabres. Where do you want to take this conversation? Because right now, we're talking about the vibes for this team. Forget the numbers.

Yeah. The vibes have been immaculate. Okay, what I want to say is I want to start us off pointing out that this is a show called the PDO cast. Yes. You and I were talking before the show. We have no interest in talking about how the Sabres are riding a high PDO or riding high save percentage. It's going to come back to Earth.

We don't care. You're right. The vibes around this team are immaculate. Yeah, we understand that Craig Anderson and Eric Commery have a 9-59-7% and so far this season. I don't think anyone in their right mind is necessarily expecting anything remotely resembling that to continue. I also don't think we're insulting the listeners if we come on and just do a whole spiel

about, well, let's pump the brakes on being too excited about the Sabres because this won't continue. It's like, yeah, we get it. At the same time, they've taken legitimate steps so far. They're four and one off a pretty tough schedule in which they just went through Western Canada and pretty handily disposed. I mean, definitely that Flames game was about as badly as you're going to see the Calgary Flames beaten from a speed perspective.

And they also beat the Oilers and the Canucks pretty handily as well. So they're four and one so far. Yeah. Honestly, I would say we were looking this up earlier. Pretty much since Alex Tuck rejoined this or I guess joined this lineup after the trade and once he got healthy midway through last season, they've played 52 games. Okay. The 26, 21,

and 5, which is 18th best in terms of point percentage. And I feel like based on watching this team, that seems like a pretty accurate reflection of where they stand in the league and what their true talent level is based on how they're playing now. And for this Buffalo Sabres organization and for their fans, I think that represents a massive step in the right direction. If you took, we'd be a league average team at the start of last season. If you look, okay, you know, 12 months from now,

where are we going to be? I think they'd have taken that, especially considering where they were having to deal with Jack Eichel, having to deal with a lot of, like they had a very toxic culture for a lot of years. And it took them a long time to get over that.

It seems like it's mostly gone. Like, right, you know, they're winning. If, you know, what happens two weeks from now if they, if it starts going, like, will we start to see those, that culture permeate? I don't know if it will.

Right now it seems like they have a bunch of people that want to play there, particularly Tuck. He seems to have brought just this energy to this team. He's from there. He wants to be a Sabre. He's very happy when he scores. He does it often. I kind of like that personality mix.

So I don't know what will happen. We haven't seen this team as constructed go on like any sort of extended period of losing. And, you know, we're mentioning their first. and one matching their save percentage. And hockey teams are going to get, you know, periods of good shooting or good save percentage over a short span, over periods of a week or two weeks. And the question is,

do you turn those periods into four and one stints where you have very convincing wins against good teams or are you going to be three and two or two and three? And that's kind of what they were in the past, where if they were playing well, they were barely hanging on. They had a run of 20 games a few years ago where, you know, they won like 10 straight or something. I forgot the exact details, but they had a lot of shootout and overtime wins.

And they're not doing that. Like they convincingly crushed the flames. Yeah. Yeah, they did. And I think the manner in which they're doing it in terms of just watching the way they're playing so far this season, which is kind of a carryover from how they ended last year as well, is very encouraging to me. Now, basically, unfortunately, all we have in terms of the public data to gauge. what I like to call pace is combining shot attempts for and against

because that's all we have. I don't. I understand the flaws in it, especially like a bad team, like let's say Columbus, for example, that's getting rocked defensively is going to show up as playing

a quote unquote fast pace when in reality they're just buried in their own zone, giving up a litany of shot attempts against. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're playing fast. It just means that they're conceding a lot. At the same time, though,

this Sabres team last year, was 32nd in terms of 5-1-5 shot attempts four and against combined, which reflected a pretty snail's pace they were playing at this year so far. They're up to third with only Vegas and Pittsburgh ahead of them and behind them is New Jersey and Carolina.

And I'd say that's a pretty accurate reflection of teams that play generally high-event hockey that are trading shots pouring against and moving up and down the ice and not necessarily just trying to kind of keep the puck pinned against the wall for long periods of time. And the reason why I bring that up is because, you know, you mentioned that sort of toxic culture and how negative the vibes were

towards the end of that Ralph Kruger era with Jack Eichol still there and playing hurt and then clearly not wanting to be there anymore. It was maddening watching that group of the Buffalo Sabres, try to grind out these sort of slow, uh, offensive zone cycle sequences when, yeah, they were a flawed team, but they had a bunch of pretty good. good skaters who theoretically should be able to at least get up and down the ice quickly, and they just showed no interest in actually catering to that or playing that way. And what I love about John Granato right now and what the Sabres team is doing is I think they've

recognized, all right, we have a lot of young fresh legs and guys who move up and down the ice pretty quickly. Let's try to kind of shine a light on that and let them actually succeed as opposed to forcing them to play some sort of brand of hockey doesn't necessarily conducive to their skill set. And it's interesting that you mentioned that Carolina. as one of those high event teams for a lot of shots for and against, because you tend to think of like, well, what can a grind, like what does grinding it do in 20, 23?

Yeah. Or 2022, 2020, 2020. Right. Like, this is a very fast game. There's offense is king. Speed is king. Scoring off the rush is king. You have,

you have 10 or 12 players in your lineup every night that can score off the rush. That can beat goalies from distance. That can beat defenders one-on-one. It's, you can't get away with playing that slow grinding style anymore, especially if you don't have the horses for it. And I really appreciate that the sabres are going in this direction playing a very watchable brand of hockey. And I liked against the Canucks. They scored off the rush. They scored off the forecheck. They were skating hard, getting to pucks, and also trying to get open, trying to use that extra space in the neutral zone. Yeah, they're definitely

in the defensive zone. They're playing very high up in terms of they're looking to leak out in transition when they can. And when they do, their defensemen are actually joining the rush. it's not necessarily like a solo voyage for just one puck carrier going up the ice by themselves. Yeah. Yeah. So there's no like one on two or one on three. It's like a full team effort almost, right? And I think the reason why we brought up the goaltending and what will be interesting to track moving forward is I think it empowers you to play that way when you're getting at least competent goal tending because you feel like, okay, if we give up a rush chance the other way, if we play this way, we might actually get a save as opposed to if we mess up once, it's going to be in the back of our net. And for the past, however, many years, I don't know how far you have to go back to find like a positive goal stable of expected season from a Sabres goalie, but I imagine it's a long time. And so even toning down this 960 they have so far, if they can just get league average from Eric Comrie and Craig Anderson. I mean, the two names you just mentioned there, don't. Well, I mean, I think Eric Comrie's sample

small sample, but in terms of dating back to last year, I think there's at least reasons for optimism. Like, you know what I mean? So the bar, the bar here is pretty, be low to clear in this regard. But I think as long as they can get some semblance of that, they're not going to necessarily have to rein it back in and they're going to allow their skaters to just get out on the fly. And that's what I want to see from them moving forward. Beyond the wins and losses and everything,

just in terms of their style of play, this is what I want to see from them. Yeah, and it's, you kind of get into, well, what's the goal of the organization right now? And they kind of want to make it a fun place for their players. They're going to have more fun if they score goals. If they win those games, 5-3-5-4, it's more fun than if you're losing games 2-1 or losing games 3-2 and you're really

trying to grind down the opposition. That's just, I think that that kind of feeds into a pervasive toxic culture when you're doing everything right and it's not working. That's, I think, a recipe for, you know, frustration. Of course. So, you know, play to win. Yeah. Don't play not to lose.

I think that's the right, that's the right thing to do if you're a, I, I, I, I, younger team with a lot of skilled players as the Sabres are. And I think we can probably start to talk a bit past the vibes and more into their... No, no, I think this is the perfect segue for us. The embodiment of this change in terms of playing style, in terms of perception, there's everything. He's Rasmus Dahlin. Well, it's Alex Tuck.

But it's also Rasmus Dahlin. No, he's been a big driver of helping change it. But in terms of just see what, like, if you look at tape from Rasmus Dalyne under Ralph Kruger during that shortened season. Yeah. to what he looks like right now. The goals he scored in five straight games are great, obviously. Yeah.

Not expecting that to continue clearly. But just in terms of how he looks out there, it's an entirely different player, and it signals to me a player who's finally actually being allowed to freelance and try stuff and not necessarily being beholden to this kind of like rigid structure. And we've seen so far this season, I think you kind of noted it in the recap you did against the Canucks.

he can be an adventure at times, right? Especially breaking out of his own zone. And sometimes he pushes the envelope a bit too far. He tries risky stuff. There was a play he had against the senators and there sees an opener where he takes the puck from behind his net. He like eludes two four checkers, makes a nice play. And then all of a sudden decides to turn around at his own blue line

and do a draw pass back to someone who wasn't there. It gets intercepted. It leads to a great scoring chance for Tim Shudslis, I believe. Yeah. But that's, you kind of have to embrace that sort of exploration for him because I think that it's going to be a net positive. You can't every time he makes a mistake like that, I'd be like, all right, I actually want you to just send it off the glass and out

because that's not going to be good for his development, and that's not what he's programmed to do. Right. And just speaking kind of from the perspective of a team employee for a division rival for several years, and whenever we would play against Rasmus Dahlin, we're preparing for those games. Okay, what is he? Well, he's a player who's a bit of an advantage.

venture in the defensive zone who has above average puck moving ability and there's a lot of players like that so the fact that he you know what he's become this very dangerous player very active in the offensive zone you know you mentioned the connect savers game i tracked that one i was expecting to see a lot more owen power adventuring through the offensive zone but it was really dalene who was getting deep who was feeding those passes across the slot yeah that i think signals to me that he's playing, as you mentioned, like more to his abilities, more to what he should be doing, less on, well, what does, what does an ideal defenseman look like with this skill set in 2007? Yeah.

And more, okay, how can we make this work, what this package is in 2022? Because when he was picked first overall, it wasn't really a question. There wasn't, like, there wasn't controversy at the top of the draft group. He was very, he was very clearly the number one pick. and we went a couple years and, you know, we're in Vancouver here, so we have to mention, hey, maybe Quinn Hughes is the better player. And I don't know, like, I don't want to spend the hour making a value judgment on Rasmus Dahlin versus Quinn Hughes.

But I think that there was, there was multiple years where I think there was a legitimate question as to whether Dahlene was a first overall caliber player. Yeah. And I would have landed on, no, he's not. and yeah, you're right. Like him changing that narrative. Like Don Granato helping him change that narrative. Helming to turn him what he is.

Five goals and five games, whatever, not going to continue. I don't care. I don't care who scores the goals as long as the goals are going in. And Dahlene right now is creating this environment where offense works. Well, so look at the goals he scored. For the most part, it's been kind of like broken plays where he's getting into the middle of the ice and the offensive zone. own and benefiting from it.

And that signals to me a young player that's actually being allowed to tap into that creative sort of freelancing side of his game as opposed to, okay, stand at the point when the puck comes to you. Yeah. Shot to throw out on it. Yeah. And then skate back. I mean, he did score like that against Vancouver.

But he did. That was the power player, right? Yeah. But I mean, in general, like there was the goal he scored against Florida, I believe, where he comes like streaking across the middle of the ice, receives a pass. Yeah. Nice wrist shot. And that's what you want to see from young players.

like I'm I I a whole firm on this Ralph Krueger belongs in jail for what he what he did what he did during his tenure coaching him I mean it was shocking and I'm glad that it didn't go too far like that he was able to be salvaged like this and redeemed yeah and um I another point I wanted to make on Delling here was and you know we saw matthia samuelson go down hard and it was a pretty scary sight it seems like he avoided worst case scenario so hopefully he will be back soon or rather than later it was interesting to me that they paired those two guys up this season because they leaned on them pretty heavily to start their shifts in the defensive zone. And that makes sense for Mattia Samuelson.

That's kind of what he profiles as and with his reach. He's such a good one-on-one defender. Well, and with Samuelson, the idea of giving him that contract, you know, you can agree with it or disagree with it, but at least you understand, at least anyone knows the logic of, we're going to lock this more defensive guy up early on. He's going to handle the defensive weight. Dahlian and power are going to be able to do their thing.

I think regardless of whether you believe the contract was a smart thing to do or a bad thing or a sillier thing to do, that logic was very present. So I like the fact that logic is governing these decisions. So now we get into what he's done with Dahlene. Well, I thought you were going to say you can either agree with the contract or you can admit that you've never watched

Matthew Samuelson play before because those are pretty much the only people that I saw disagreeing with it. Like it's clearly a slight gamble. Yeah. Well, anytime, like he had what, like 22 games in the NHL? Like, not, yes. Like, you're really taking a game. You are taking a gamble or the guy who has spent most of his time

I know, but at that cap figure, with that profile that he has, at the age he's at, it's with the cap spiking. Like, I think like, and with really, and because of how young he is, a really low risk, because if you buy him out,

you get a credit in some of those years. Absolutely. And so the point I was making there was, so they started a lot in the defensive zone, and that actually makes a lot of sense for Dali. Like, he needs to be paired with a guy like Samuels, and now that Samuelson out,

I think they're going to play him with Lubbushkin, who you're quite familiar. familiar with and we'll see if they can do a similar thing. Yeah. But because of Samuelson's presence helping lock up in a defensive zone, that almost got even more out of dialing with that deployment because all of a sudden now his breakouts and his ability to impact transition makes a lot more sense, right? Sometimes I think we get lost in the shuffle of, okay, you want to shelter a player and that

can come in the form of playing either with your top players. They can come playing against other team's third lines or it can come, all right, we're sending him out for every offensive zone draw and that's just how we're using him. which is understandable, and you can get good results out of inferior players that way. But if you have a talent like Dahlian in terms of skating it out

in terms of passing it quickly up the ice, it's almost wasting him in that type of use. Why would you want your best breakout defender to never start in the defensive zone? That's where you can create more opportunities for your player to create some space. And especially on one defensive zone face-offs, we see way too frequently defensive players

to shoot the puck out into the neutral zone. Okay, now what? now you have to defend as opposed to take the time make a good first pass make a good read exit with control

okay now we're on the attack I think that's a better way of going about it and I think that Dahlin is you know he's a good enough puck mover that he can turn defensive zone face off wins into

controlled zone exits which then turn into okay we're playing in the offensive zone for 20 30 seconds yeah yeah and this is really dating back I think it was like maybe February or March of last year his results have just been so much better.

And this is the type of player that he always, we always thought he could be. And then he's finally reaching that. So that's great. Let's talk about Alex talking Tage Thompson now. And Jeff Skinner. And Jeff Skinner. Yeah.

Yeah. No, but I think in terms of the problem with those first two pose, like watching what they did to the flames in particular, it must be such a nightmare to play against them because the combination of size, speed, and skill. is like there's so few defenders in the league that can reasonably be expected to match them in all three of those facets. Now, this does come with the caveat. Since that line has been put together, Skinner, Thompson, Tuck, dating back midway through last season,

they're a 51% coursey line together. Yeah. So they do have 4.3 goals for, per 60 minutes. So they are a good offensive line. They're tough to contain. But the other thing, too, is that they're not, the way that teams have been able to beat them is that,

well, you score just as many goals against them. So it's kind of, they're the perfect line for this, for our show, which is, you know, focused on watchability and just kind of chaos. The way you beat them is you,

you really have to play against them with speed. You have to get into the offensive zone against them. And you have to make sure that they're, spend more time defending. And maybe we get to the point where where teams learn to do that. But yeah, I don't know how you shut them down off the rush. I don't know how you shut them out even in in zone settings.

Like against the Canucks, there was that one play where I think Tuck ultimately wound up scoring on it when he got a little steel off the four check turned around and scored. Yeah. But the play leading up to that was 90 seconds of just pure dominance by Tage Thompson, where he did everything he wanted to in the offensive zone. he was basically just passing it around, skating around, controlling it, leaning on the puck,

and no one could take it away from them. And that eventually led to tired skaters, eventually led to them coming out fresh and benefiting from that. And, you know, I just want to point out about that goal, because I mentioned in my recap, there have been, there's been a lot of two-goal leads in the NHL blown this year. Right. When that goal went in, I kind of knew that that game was over, that the Sabres just kind of toyed with the Canucks. all the all the Canucks were able to do when they got the puck out

was just to get out to center. They weren't able to change all their players and then the Sabres immediately come back in force a turnover from a rookie who's in his first NHL game get him bumping into someone. And it was very clear at that point

that the Canucks don't have the horses to... The Canucks don't have the horses to skate with the Buffalo Sabres which I think is as much of an indictment on the Canucks as it is where the Sabres are now, they can take advantage of these weaker teams. Yeah, I think plays like that are so instructed to me in terms of coming around on Tage Thompson

and really just appreciating what he's capable of as a player because once the Sabres made that commitment to him this offseason, I believe it was seven years, 50 million, there was a lot of eyebrows raised in terms of, all right, are we just investing here on one slightly elevated shooting percentage season where a guy showed a skill he had never really shown before at this level. It wasn't really slightly elevated. Like it was, his shooting percentage last year was a lot higher than his created date. I don't have the numbers right in front of me. I could look them up, but my keyboard's far away.

No, but the reason why I phrase it that way is because I think he shot like 15% or something. Yeah, he did. Yeah. He did. But he was like beating goalies cleanly with like missiles that were like going bar down every time. And I was like, all right. Yeah. This guy looks like one of the most lethal finishers.

the league and showed no signs of this in the NHL prior to this. Changing from winger to center shouldn't just make a shot that much better. But for some reason, like, he was using it more. Yes. I think it was probably a, it was probably a talented dollar-ray hat. But now that he's showing these facets of his game where he's able to just consistently take the puck, carry it into the zone, protect it, keep them pin there, make plays happen. The way him and tuck, they've been destroying teams off the rush so much, but also they look

for each other so much in these set plays where one of them is just basically hanging out in the slot. and the other one kind of cycles around, pass it into them, they get a quick shot off, and then they alternate. Yeah. And Skinner is also very good at finding out Sospheria as well. Yeah.

And so adding those layers to his game, like he has one goal so far in the first five games. Yeah. And I think natural statric has him down for only five high danger chances by himself. He has like five breakaways so far and at least like 10 great A chances from the slot. And he's looked great to my eye. And the goals haven't come yet. he has one goal in five games, and I've still loved the way he's played.

And so the question when he signed that contract was, oh, is he going to be able to repeat the shooting percentage? He can score that many goals? Well, he hasn't yet, and to me it hasn't mattered because he's been every bit as dominant. Yeah, and when I was watching that game against the Canucks, and I went and I looked at my date after. Okay, well, I'm counting all these scoring chances, and they're mostly tuck and Skinner focused.

What's Thompson doing out here? Oh, he's going seven for seven on controlled entries. Yeah. He's the one that's moving the pop-paca of ice. He's the one that's creating that environment for Tuck and Skinner to thrive in. Now, because we've praised Don Granato quite a bit so far, how about at the start of the season when he used Thompson and Skinner with Victor Oliveson as their winger? Yeah.

It was two games in and you realized, okay, we're just going to go back to the line that worked last year. Yeah, yeah. It was infuriating to watch the results predictably not good. No, that's good. That would make Don Granato a very good fantasy football player. He recognizes his mistake early and he rectified it. Yeah, he didn't seem committed to it. Let's see this through for another 81 games.

All right, DJ Moore. Let's go. No, but I will say you bring up this point of creating space. And I love that aspect of this where watching Alex Tuck skate into open spaces of ice with a full head of steam, like a locomotive, is incredibly satisfying to watch. Choo-choo. Yeah. And Thompson's done a great job of kind of creating that space for him. Yeah.

And so I love watching those two together. And we'll throw Jeff Skinner in there as well. Yeah. Well, I'm a big fan of Alex Tucker. I've always really been. Yes. All right. We're going to take a quick break here.

And then when we come back in a few minutes, we're going to keep talking more about the Buffalo Sabres and other NHL topics. You are listening to the HockeyPedio cast on the SportsNet Radio Network. We're back here on the HockeyPedio cast with our guest Cam Sharon today. we have adopted the Buffalo Sabres and we're deep diving them today. Cam, so we've talked so far about kind of the identity of this team,

the way they play, the combination of Tage Thompson and Alex Tuck, Rasmus Dalian's return to form. What else in the Buffalo Sabres really interest you? Well, I guess we should probably talk a little bit about their defense. I thought with Rosamst Dalian, we kind of covered that. Yeah, but I kind of want to, you know,

they have more players. You know, like you're a big fan of Owen Power. We've talked about him before on this show. Yes. But you want to talk about Ilya Lubushkin. I know I can see it in your eyes. I'm a big Ilya Lubushkin guy. Well, he's going to get a chance here, playing next to Rasmas Dolly.

Yeah, so it's good. It'll be good to note that, you know, we saw Mattias Samuelson go down with it. It's not good to note, but Mattias Samison went down with a bad knee injury in Vancouver. It looks like he's going to be out for some time, even if it's not as serious. They've already lost Yoki Har Yu, puck in the face. So they're kind of having to already play some players up in the lineup. We're going to look at, we'll give a chance for Ilya Lubushkin and his brand of physical hockey

to play alongside Rasmus Delian, give it a really interesting mix. Lubbushkin isn't that bad at moving the puck. He obviously has a reputation of his defensive defenseman, a little bit more physical. But I do like his ability to shut down the cycle. he's actually quite good at retrieving pucks as well. I don't think that teams are going to really be able to take advantage of him on

dumpins and that's going to be half the entries against that you face. And I've always had some time for Jacob Bryson. I'm excited to see him in a top four role. Well, the thing that I liked about their previous construction before these injuries where they had Rosam Stadley on one pair, Owen Power and another and Jacob Bryson on the third, and that gave them at least one guy out on the ice at all time, whose first instinct is,

let's get this puck up the ice as quickly as we can. And that feeds into what we were talking about in terms of the new identity of this team and the way they've been playing. And so part of the issues with having injuries all of a sudden is not only does it force players into bigger roles, but it kind of takes away some of that sort of spread throughout the lineup of having that skill.

And I think I'd be a bit more upset about losing that dynamic if they didn't have Lawrence Pilate to come out from the HL and makes his triumphant return. I don't know, probably a PDO cast favorite. Yeah, absolutely. So despite, and that's a good thing about having your depth D that can move the puck effectively is, you know, we're, okay, we're down a few roster players. Who do we put in?

Well, a pretty good guy, a pretty good HL offensive defenseman. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really have anything else on their blue line. I did want to quickly talk about JJ Petrka, though, who's been one of my favorite players to watch this season. Uh, his passing is incredible, uh, like what he sees on the ice, how he sees the plays developing before they happen. The angles, he kind of hits.

I think I've seen people predictably be a bit frustrated of like, oh, I want to see this guy shoot a bit more. Fair enough. He only has 12 shot attempts in, in five games, despite having the puck a lot. I love that half of those shot attempts have been listed high danger chances. And I honestly have no issue with a player who we've been on record talking about how much we love the blues, a player who's willing to show, patience in terms of letting plays materialize and kind of trying to sniff out great looks as opposed to just shooting it for the sake of getting it off your stick. Yeah, and you don't need those guys to make up three players on your line. I think it's good that, well, especially the current

LaRosser construction for the Sabres, they have Petirco on a line with Vincent Hinoistroza, who I think is very much in that similar mold. And Dylan Cousins, right? I think that's the other line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the other line. I think Cousins is a bit more of the shooter on that line. And Hinesstrosa has been around the NHL for a long time. It's just as kind of like, I don't want to call him a quadruplea player. But he's never really, he's never really been able to stick with a good team in the NHL. Right. I appreciate his motor.

He has good motor. He's got good speed. I like his ability to pass. I think that he's probably not around because he doesn't, he doesn't really stick because he, you know, defensive issues, physical, yada, yada. but I've, you know, given a chance with two excellent young players, cousins and Peturca, I don't know, maybe it'll stick. Yeah, I like, I like the construction of their lines right now. I mean, we still, you know, they're trying to mix in Peyton Krebs and Jack Quinn in there as well.

Yeah. But in terms of that, top six, and then you've got Rasmus Aspen locking down the third line. Yeah. And I also appreciate that they have Casey Middlestadt and Victor Olison on the same line, so you know exactly when to tune out. That's not very nice. I was saying this before. I think the game Casey Middlestad played against the flames was the best game of hockey I've seen in play since the world juniors.

He was remarkable. If that was the one game you watched of Casey Middlestad, he'd be like, surely this guy lived up to all the hype and has become a remarkable NHL player. Yeah. I mean, with Olives and it's like, you kind of know what you're going to get if you get him the puck in good spots. He has a high likelihood of converting on it and scoring. He scored two goals in Vancouver, just kind of,

he went to the front of the net. There was no one covering him, and he put one under the pads of Thatcher Demko. Yeah, and listen, that was a great sort of test for what you want to see when watching a hockey play develop, right? Casey Middlestat, brings the puck up the ice, threads the needle in the pass. Great. He's the playmaker. Victor Oliveson, ready to shoot, fires it home. Now, I know you love what Rasmus Aspland did on this play.

Now, the real engine for that play and for this line is what Rasmus Aspen did at his own blue line, which is be a disruptor. knock the puck away, make a subtle little play, which I guess they score up on the score sheet because he got an assist. But he's the ultimate player to me where, unless you're truly depraved and a massive nerd, you will not appreciate the little stuff he does. Because he's a play connector. Like, what he does is,

I'm going to win a board battle or I'm going to be low in the defensive zone and provide puck support to get it out. And that's not something anyone ever celebrates. And this is why I'm always aware. of people that mentioned primary assists as if they have a as if the primary assist matters more than the secondary assist because oftentimes a secondary assist is a play made somewhere on the ice that facilitated the chance for an offensive play unless you're that you're at tyson berry yeah unless you're at least here with the oilers yeah unless you're getting assist when he's not

on the ice yeah yeah yeah so it's one thing to just okay i'm gonna bump the puck over to con mac david in the offensive zone yeah that's one thing but it is another there's thing entirely of, okay, I'm going to break up a rush and poke the puck forward. I'm going to win a board battle and move the puck out. I'm going to, I'm going to be the one exiting the zone. I'm going to be the one entering the zone. And there's a lot of really good plays that can show up on a secondary assist or even tertiary assists if we went back far enough on the play.

And I think that instead of discounting secondary assists, we should be looking to count all the assists. We should be counting more assists. Yeah. If you touch the puck after the opponent, If you touch the puck before our goal, after the last time the opponent touched the puck, you should get an assist.

Everyone gets an assist. They all helped out. I also wanted to talk about their power play if we have time. Yes. Well, let's do it. I mean, I think that's the one thing they need to fix. Yeah. Especially with the talent.

And we were talking about it before we went on. There's this kind of tendency in the NHL that, okay, you need to get it in with your entry. You need to set up your power. power play. You need to get it in formation. Yeah. Okay, now you can work the offense.

There's a couple teams that generate power play offense off the rush. The Buffalo Sabres are not one of them. They probably should be. Well, especially considering the talent they have and how we just spent the first 25 minutes discussing how they've created so much of their 5.15 offense through that exact avenue. It's strange to me to be in the highest leverage scoring position you can be, which is having an extra player on the ice, and go away from.

what's making you effective in the first place. And it's strange that teams continually just let penalty killers off the hook because I think if you're the other team you're killing a penalty, you would love for them to methodically take their time so that you can actually get into your defensive set and be where you're supposed to be as opposed to scrambling and being like, oh, who's got that guy? And so, I don't know.

They clearly need to work on. I mean, there's enough talent, especially in the forward group. And then you have Razum Zalien as the one defenseman out there. like there's no reason why this power play shouldn't be at least league average or above. Yeah. And we should mention it's, uh, they've been together 53 minutes. This is I'm still looking at their first unit. Yeah.

Thompson, Tuck, Skinner, Middle Statt and Dahlene. Is this dating back to last year? Just dating back to last season. They've been together for 53 minutes, 95 shot attempts for over 60 minutes. That is not very good. The NHL average is 100. for a unit. The angel average for first unit should be five or ten shots above that. I don't know exactly. I don't have it offhand. It's probably changed over the course of, you know, since I last looked. So now should we be looking at shots generated on the power play as yes indicative of I think it's I think you know, you know, no one goes to a Brian Adams concert and doesn't want to hear summer of 69 when you know, this is, you know, ostensibly a hockey analytics podcast and it is. But we talk about all the time about how much. Yeah. going for quality is something that we appreciate.

It feels like in those power play situations, that should be true even more so. Yeah, okay. I look at both shot attempts and I look at goals. Yes. And what I did want to mention after that is that they have scored quite a bit. They have 10 goals per 60 from that unit. And the cause for concern I have is that it's not really,

is that it's really been a one-trick pony, so to speak. A lot of it is due to Tage Thompson. Thompson's high shooting percentage. He scored eight goals on 33 shots as a flank player. Yeah. That is a very high shooting percentage for a player off the flank. And I don't really think of him as a player that kind of has these great shots set up to him. He's not Stephen Stamco's.

Wow. Maybe. In the game against the flames. Okay. Now, this was such an impressive shot by Tage Thompson that the officials stopped the game and just started and awarded him a goal. It got reviewed and clearly was a crossbar that never came close to scoring. But he obliterated the puck to such a degree.

It flew off his stick off of that left flank as you're talking about. And I think you need to go rewatch that before you start making accusations against Tage Thompson's ability to do that one thing. Well, one of these days we're going to adopt the Tampa Bay Lightning. And I'm going to be sitting here saying, okay, well, Stephen Stamco's is clearly better, or clearly not as good as Tage Thompson. He looks like Tage Thompson out there. All right.

Is there anything else on the Buffalo Sabres that you wanted to get to? We have done quite a bit on them. I think we've done our due diligence on them, but we've got a few more minutes here in case there's any other notes. We can also just move on into our next segment. Yeah. You know what? I actually wrote a bunch of notes on this page, and I have very illegible handwriting.

I think we've hit them all. I think we've covered it. I think we've done our, I think we've done a good job here. I just have vibes underlined. And that seems to be, we've covered that in the early going. Well, that's Sabers-Kinnock's game. I don't know when we made this joke, but that was the biggest vibe mismatch

last Saturday night of any games so far this season. So, all right. Well, let's look ahead a bit here. Since you and I are going to be getting together every Monday, we can kind of help lay out the coming week in terms of games we're excited to watch that we're going to be watching, especially closely. And listeners, especially if there's so much going on

on some of these days, like on Tuesdays and Thursdays, there's nine games on at once. And I think it can be a bit of a bit. overwhelming for myself and I actually kind of I'd like to think I know what I'm looking for. So I think people might want to get steered in the right direction in terms of, all right, we should be checking this out. So what are you watching this week in terms of games or matchups? Yeah, if you're not Demetri sitting in his mountain cabin, surrounded by his dog and no one

else watching hockey. Yeah. Not far from the truth. Tuesday's games, I think it offers an excellent back-to-back. Yeah. So we're looking at the five, or the, I guess, I guess we're going to talk on Eastern time. We can do five,

Pacific, eight Eastern. Five Pacific, eight Eastern. We start with the New York Rangers and the Colorado Avalanche. And I've quite like the Rangers this year. They're scoring a bunch. Zabanajad is having a great start. Yeah, a couple of Luggeshifers recently

against the sharks in an overtime loss and then against Columbus last night. But they were, they were, I watched a few minutes of that game against Columbus. They looked awful. Yeah. But I think, yeah, certainly the way they started the year, and I think in terms of the talent and the way it's coming together.

I'm excited to see that. Oh, just we didn't, we haven't, I don't think you and I have mentioned Keondra Miller on this podcast yet, but I wanted to give a shout out to Keondry Miller, just expertly shutting down a would-be two-on-one in the yesterday's game. He's so good at doing exactly that. Yeah, just speed, physical. Anyway, so, yeah, Rangers, Avalan.

tomorrow night and then immediately after. So two and a half hours after that, 10.30 Eastern 7.30 Pacific start. We have the Tampa Bay Lightning in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, I don't really care what their record is. Their games have all been, this complete tire fire.

It's fantastic hockey. They move the puck well. They allow their opponents to move the puck well against them. Their goaltending isn't great. No. There's a lot of potential for chaos. Even then those, we've seen some sluggish early season efforts from the lightning so far. But hopefully they crack it up a little.

Hopefully the Kings can drag that type of game environment. Yeah. We want the lightning to be far less organized. Yeah. Oh, those are two good picks. I'll give you, I think there's a game on Tuesday night that I'm seeing here that I'm actually much more excited about. Okay. You know, the ducks don't play on Tuesday.

I know. We'll get to the ducks. Pittsburgh Penguins at the Calgary Flames. The reason why I bring this up is because for my money, those two, when they're right, are the crispest passing teams in the league in terms of how smoothly they transition it from deep in their zone within four just tape-to-tap passes,

all of a sudden they're going downhill. And if those two teams are playing right, now we just talked about how the Flames had all sorts of difficulty dealing with Buffalo Speed, they've been pretty good so far this year. I'm excited to watch that matchup because I think the best versions of those two teams make for a really, really fun playing environment where there might not even be that many goals. But I think it'll just be kind of back and forth with very little stoppages. Yeah.

And also, you know, you can't really talk about the penguins without talking about just how good Crosby and Malkin are with bodies on them. And they have, you know, the flames of so many players that can just lay the body and break up the cycle. And it's an interesting little stylistic match. up. I think that's correct. I think that's a game worth checking out. I'm looking here. I mean, we will be watching very closely all of the Washington Capitals games because as we mentioned the top of the show, they're going to be the team we're adopting next week. We were considering doing the Montreal Canadiens, maybe we should do them soon. Is there any other matchups here next week, though, that they really are appealing to?

I mean, we've got the Battle of Alberta on Saturday night, which... Well, I think there's one hockey game that every fan needs to check out, at least for five or ten minutes. Not a game I would normally recommend, but Friday night, Mullet Arena. Oh, yes. The home opener for your Arizona coyotes.

Yes. Who have given up six goals four times over the last five games? I mean, I think that'll be a spectacle that every hockey fan should be watching. That's appointment viewing on a Friday night. Crack a couple cool beverages,

get comfortable. Yeah. Well, I've made the distinction so far in this season. I have my beer games. Yeah. And I have my coffee games. The coffee games are the ones I'm,

they're the Leafs and Canucks games, which I watch to clean information about those two teams. Yeah. The Capitals this week, they're going to be some coffee games. And then you have the beer games. Those are the games where I just sit down on my couch, crap open a crack open.

Yeah. A cold locally brewed beverage. Nice. And that'll be one of them. I mean, Friday night's actually looking pretty fun here. We've got Colorado and New Jersey as well, I think two teams. We enjoy watching, and I think that could be, the game they played last year actually at New Jersey,

what Jack Hughes did that Avalanche was one of the most impressive individual performances I saw all of last year. Yeah. So I'm excited to see that. A repeat of the fixture. I like that. I like that match up. Okay. Let's plug some stuff here before we sign out.

So we're going to be having you on every Monday, as I said. You have alluded to the tracking you're doing of the Leafs and the Canucks. Give the listeners a little preview in terms of when they go on your website to check out the stuff you've been working on what they can expect to see, kind of the methodology, why you're looking at what you're doing, and what you expect to kind of glean from that information. Why I'm looking at what I'm doing is because I'm depraved. The website is camsureau.com. Yeah. I am tracking every Canucks Leafs and adopted team now. I'm tracking zone entries, zone exits, and I am also because I do not trust the NHL's ability to put

together shot data that I can use. Yeah. I'm also looking at shots. I'm recording generally where the shot is on the ice. And with that in concert, with the other things I have, I'm able to determine whether those shots were scoring chances. So is it off the rush? Is it after a turnover? Yeah.

What's, you know, what's the environment? And the reason I'm doing this is because I've been. behind the curtain. I've seen what you can do with good data. And frankly, we don't have very good data publicly available to properly analyze a game when you really get down into it and, okay, why have the Canucks started? Oh, and six. I'm going to be having a post for the VIPs on the athletic this week about basically my observations, Leif's as well, my observations of, okay, why it's not enough for me to say, okay, well, this is what's happening.

They've gotten this many shots for, this many shots against their say percentage is this, their shooting percentage is this. I want to know why. I want to get into the why. What's really been the trouble? And so, you know, you look at, well, the connects, they're not,

are they not generating enough out of the rush? Are they too slow? And you can get into that a lot more if you have really detailed information of basically what's happening every shift out there. So that's why I'm looking at it. It takes about four hours to track a game, maybe

six hours with all the procrastination I do and games of chess I play in the interim because it's a very slow process. But it's fun. And I love once you get to the end of game is being able to look at, okay, who set up all the shots

for a particular team. Just how good was Tage Thompson in Vancouver? It's the thing I wouldn't have even be able to appreciate it without being without tracking in the level of deep detail I do. So yeah, the website is camshaw.com. I was going to say on that point.

You know, I mentioned how natural statric, which is just taking NHL's data, has Tate Thompson down for five high-hid injur chances this season. I guarantee he has significantly more, maybe even up to 15. And I think that's just a sign of how, yeah,

not random. Like, it's, it's, in the grand scheme of things, it will lead you to the right conclusions. But I think in terms of, like, specific details, it's off. And I think for people like, like, you and I, we care about that sort of stuff. And I don't want to at all sound like I'm criticizing natural statric. I think that's a fantastic... Or you're criticizing the NHL. Yeah.

Fantastic website. And those numbers are very, very useful when looking, when trying to look on basically an elephant gun. Yeah. You want to be, you want to generally know what's happening, even if, you, you want to be, you want to generally know what's happening. even if you're sacrificing a little bit of precision, in able to have all this information about all these teams. And the problem comes into the fact that the NHL doesn't record things like puck movement,

a pre-shot movement, I guess, is more applicable. It doesn't record where the turnovers are happening. And Natural Static is doing the best with what they have available. And this, I'm going to be making frequent, frequent calls for the NHL, you know, improve the level of data. that you give the public because there's a lot of really interesting things to research that, you know, you can, you can really only do if you sit and watch a game for four hours. Yeah, well, I mean, if you go on the NHL's official website, they keep track of shot types in terms of like whether there's a wrist shot or a slap shot or whatever. Yeah.

But something I've given a lot of thought to, and I wonder how much better we'd be as analysts if we had access to this all the time, is exactly what you're talking about collecting the shot information. Because it's always strange to me when we say, okay, well, this player is a 9% shooter this season. And that just kind of buckets every single shot they've taken. I feel like it would tell us a lot more about that player if we knew, all right, well, they actually shoot 14%. at this one specific type because every player has strengths and weaknesses and spots on the ice they like to get to in places they're better than others. And it seems strange that we kind of bucket it all together. I guess that's all we have to go off of. But it paints a very imprecise picture in terms of actually describing what that player did because you're just, all right, they took seven shots tonight.

Well, where do those shots come from? What type of shots were they? How close was a defender? I think a lot of the question marks we have about volatility and shooting and save percentage would be, answered by just more more clarity there. Yeah, and you look at the level of data that's available in baseball, and basketball,

and football, things like, you know, you can, for you, for doing fantasy football research. Yes. Okay.

I'm looking at route participation. I'm looking at, uh, nearest defenders. I'm looking at everything. Yeah. There's so much stuff available, uh,

that you can subscribe to. Yeah. And that option isn't available. You, like, you can even get the, you can even get the all 22 footage in the NFL if you wanted to shell out for the service. But there's no equivalent like that for the NHL.

I don't think they take themselves seriously enough to give people this data. And they have the data. Yeah. Well, they do keep this stuff. I've been behind the curtain. I've seen it. Well, I woke up this morning. I had about 10 cups of coffee.

And I watched four Sabres games back to back, back, back to back, back to back. So I, you know, it was a good day. And I'm glad we got to do this. Cam, pleasure as always. We're going to have you on next Monday. Thank you for listening to the HockeyPedioCast. If you enjoyed it, we'll be back tomorrow. You can help us out by leaving a five-star rating and review

wherever you listen to shows. So thank you for tuning in to the HockeyPedio cast on the SportsNet Radio Network.