The Hockey PDOcast - Thomas Harley, the Stars, and Their Offensive Approach

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Darryl Belfry to talk about Thomas Harley's emergence this season, his unique offensive skillset, and how it's been a perfect fit for the way the Dallas Stars attack as a team. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the HockeyPedio cast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich, and joining me as my good buddy, Daryl, Belfrey, Daryl, what's going on, man? How much excited to get going again this week? This is going to be a fun one. It's one of our favorite players to watch this season.

I think just as importantly for our purposes here, one of my favorite developments or evolutions to chronicle this season in Thomas Harley becoming and blossoming. into a top flight defenseman and doing things on the ice that I think, and routinely at that, that I think are just so rare for the position, particularly from a young defender like him in his first full NHL seasons. And we're going to talk about the team component as well with the stars and how I think that skill set ties in so nicely to the specific way they play.

There's so much to unpack here with Harley. I'll give you the floor to kick us off. I love doing this because I always say, what's the thing that interests you most? and then you drop about seven different things on me, and then it's up to you to try to figure out which one I want to tackle first. But I love that because you give me all sorts of options. So I'll give you the floor here. All right.

Thomas Harley has been a player for me where I studied him last year. And when I was studying him last year, I felt like his rush defense was a real Achilles heel. He was essentially an absorbed defender. and he was using his reach to try to make plays deeper in the zone. So he didn't really contribute as much to the transition game as much as I thought he was capable of. Now you watch him this year and you see his offensive zone play, which we'll get into, you see how he's joining and playing in the rush.

I think that's connected all the way through to his rush defending. So his rush defending is connected to his offensive zone play. Because he's so much more confident in the offensive zone and the routes that he takes, he is skating forwards defending much more often. When he was in the offensive zone last year, I would not say he was tentative, but he certainly isn't what he's doing now. And then he began to exit the zone early. he'd open up awkward gaps and then he wasn't contributing as well in transition.

So for me, my takeaway after last year was here's a guy who's big, rangy, great stick, really good skater, but doesn't realize how good of skater he actually is. And once I've seen the rush defense this year, like to open the year, I did another study on him in the first 10 games of the season. And it was like night and day, skating forwards, and then you see it the offensive zone. And then like I said, all those things then are connected. So it's not an accident. The way in which he's scoring and generating offense and the type of player and the most

confident player that he has now become so quickly, I think it's tied to his application of his skating skill set in rush defense. Well, that's a really interesting point because I do think all of that stuff is sort of intertwined. And it makes sense that he would have taken a big leap this year because he gets called up essentially during the stretch run last year, right, and they get thrown right into the deep end, playing for a competitive team at that that's going deep into the playoffs, right? I think it's one thing to come up and make those mistakes with no real stakes on the line because you're playing for a bad team or a rebuilding team where the end result doesn't really matter.

In this case, every one of those sort of mistakes or issues that will crop up would become you know, highlighted even more so. And so in this case, he gets this first full NHL season, as I said, and I think that's a big deal. And we're going to talk a lot about the offense here, but I'm glad you brought this up because I think if you want to play off the rush the way he does individually and the way the stars do as a team, you have to be able to defend coming back the other way, right? Because you're going to create this kind of game environment where it's great that you're attacking downhill.

But then when the other team gets the puck, they're going to have counter-operative. and you're essentially encouraging them to speed up their own game as well, right? So you're almost dragging them into this kind of back and forth. And so it's great that you can attack off the rush. But if you can't defend off of it, then that's going to be a real problem when you get into that conversation of whether it's kind of a point of diminishing returns or whether it's even worth it to be playing that way. So it's huge that he's made those strides in that area this season. Well, we had this conversation about the Philadelphia Flyers a week or so ago when we talked about them and the way in which they attack the rush.

And we talked a lot about the way in which their defensemen engage, how they kind of get in their presence, but then they make good decisions so that the rush that they give up is not better than the rush that they're trying to create. I think we see that with Harley. One of the things with Harley on his rush when he's attacking off the rush is he does so primarily through the middle of the ice. And the other thing that he does is he doesn't carry the puck. from one end to the other.

He does an excellent job of distributing the puck early, and then he'll get it back either on or just after entry, which is an extremely important detail as it relates to rush both offense and defense. Anytime a defenseman is repeatedly going from one end to the other, they are stopping the forwards at the offensive blue line. There's just no other way around it. If you're coming from behind the forwards, and if you continue to skate it all the way through the neutral zone, every one of those forwards will have to reroute or stop. And many of them stop.

So the implication of that is regardless of how good you are on that entry and the shot that you take, you have now every one of those forwards standing still. So you're now not able to as intelligently and as effectively defend the rush as a team. But because Harley is willing to give it, he keeps the forwards moving. They can time the line. Now the entry depth happens. So now they have the proper spacing. So anything bad happens or they take a shot and it doesn't go in and the other team is ready to break out. They have active forwards who are able to get on top of the puck.

And he is an active player who's also able to get on top of the puck. Everybody's skating forwards. now it's much, much easier to defend the rush intelligently. So you're not giving up a better chance than the one you were trying to create. And I think that for young defensemen who want to be offensive defensemen, when I see a young defenseman, like I'm talking like junior or even lower, carrying the puck from one end to the other, whatever it is that you're doing, that whole pattern is going to need to be broken.

it's not going to work at some point. It's not going to be as appreciated as it is where you are now. And I think that Harley's development, when you watch how effective he is and the things that he does, that is a hallmark piece. And I think that's what's given him the space in Dallas to apply that so aggressively as he is now and so consistently because he's not putting them in perilous situations.

Well, and why it's an even bigger deal is it's one thing when he comes up last year and he's playing 15, 16, 17 minutes a night. And they're very sort of carefully designed minutes, right? It's against secondary competition. It's in more offensive situations. Now with Mero Hayskin and getting hurt earlier this season and him having to play a top, top defense player role and us wanting, just clamoring for him to play 22, 23 minutes a night, he's going to be put in spots where not only is he having to do it more often, but he's having to do it against better competition as well, right? He's going up against the other team's top players. They're going to be much more adept at attacking off the rush themselves.

And so it's going to put him in these spots where it's going to become integral that he can do that. And so I think that's a really good show by you there to start this off because we're going to focus a lot on all the fun stuff he does offensively. But I think especially gaining the trust of a coach like Pete DeBurra on a team that has Stanley Cup aspirations, it all kind of begins and ends with that because if he doesn't have that lockdown, none of the other stuff is going to be able to. to manifest itself. No, and I think another really important point is he's had this space to grow. And what I mean by that is I think there are situations on teams in which a young player like Harley has difficult time growing and doesn't have the same space to grow because of the configuration of what's going on with the team.

With a guy like Haskinen, he goes out that opens up minutes and opportunity for him that he would have probably been boxed out with before, and now he's had that space to grow. I don't think you can under appreciate the work of now Ryan Suter in his role there. What I love about that is it's a bit of a career arc for Souter, because as we talked about a few times ago, was I felt like in Minnesota Souter had blocked the development of other young defensemen coming through in Minnesota because he was

chewing up way too many minutes, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a myriad of reasons for that. Now, because of where he is in his career, he's now a mentor defenseman essentially who's chewing up minutes very responsibly. And he is mentoring and providing the space for Harley to grow. So I think there is a perfect storm in terms of opportunity here for Harley who has the space to be able to let his hair down, make a few mistakes, be insulated by both DeBoer, who has shown a lot of faith in him, by his own play has also insulated him, but also the partner has created a space for him to grow. And I don't think that that can be understated. And I think that a lot of times defensemen run into interesting parts in their career in which they potentially are just boxed out in the situation they're in. One of the great places to look for this right now would also be in New Jersey where they lost Dougie Hamilton for a large period of time. That gave Hughes a lot more space to grow.

They bring up Simon Namich. He also has great space to grow and doesn't look like. He's coming out of the lineup. But it's perfect storm. Like you need the space to grow. So sometimes you need a guy to fall out of the lineup or the team has to trade a piece away to give you that space. And sometimes they just don't do it or the timing just isn't right. For Harley, it's the time has been right.

Well, one final thing on the defense is team metrics in terms of like the actual results and the output when he's on the ice aren't necessarily the best right now. a lot of the individual stuff where you look at how he's defending himself is. And I think part of that is just because there are still some turnovers when he has the puck, which it kind of comes to the territory of the way he plays. And I think also part of it is just sort of all of this coming together in a larger sample size. But you mentioned it. Like I think he's doing such a good job now of leveraging those skating gifts that he

has to cover more ground and kill plays sooner rather than sort of sagging back and just relying on that reach. I mean, this is a guy who's, you know, 6-3, like listed at 205 pounds or whatever. He is a big lad, but he certainly moves very well. And so him using that more effectively is huge. Let's move to the offensive stuff and his attacking off the rush and how he sort of fuels their breakout game because I think that's huge because the reason why I've been harping so much on his evolution

and integrating him in a bigger role in his team is beyond Mero Haskin. And they just didn't really have a guy who could do the stuff. stuff he does in this regard, and it's so important for the way the stars want to play. And now you're seeing it all come together where he's top five in the league in exits with possession on a permanent basis. He's in the 90 plus percentile in defensive zone retrievals, exiting successfully. And there's so many layers to this, right? I think one of them is certainly you see him actually moving the puck himself, and it's usually

actually by skating it out and kind of maneuvering through traffic. And he's really adept at that. But what I wanted to focus on even more, because I think it's just as impactful. for the way the stars play is his movement off the puck and you mentioned the the the the flyers conversation we had a couple weeks ago and we had this little bit in there about how guys like sean walker on that team are benefiting so much from the way they're playing because they're the weak side d who's able to then jump up sprint up the ice and turn it into a numerical advantage for them it feels like harley himself is benefiting from that quite a bit and making them so much more dangerous as a team

Yeah, well, it's what I love about what Harley's doing, and it's very similar to why I loved Hayskin. And when he first came in the league in his first few years in the league is he is often the strong side defenseman or the primary defenseman in the retrieval. And then he's also the weak side D seconds later. He has he does both roles because his skating is so good. So he's a guy, you're going to dump it in the corner. He's going to go back and get it. His skating is excellent. He is able to retrieve the puck. He makes an excellent, you know, ability to escape the pressure of F1. Yeah, like you say, he can, if he needs to get through a little traffic, he can do that. But primarily he moves it and then he jumps and joins. And when he jumps and joins, he's in

the middle of the ice. And what's interesting is a lot of times when you're the strict, when it's two separate roles, you have a retriever who's going to start the breakout and then you have the guy who's the weak side D who's then going to engage that weak side D often engages starting in the middle of the ice but then we'll come down the dot line and they that's where they they create and they become like a dot wide option they tend to be like f3 type of thing in on entries this is not what harley's doing what harley's doing is he is attacking through the middle of the ice so once he's in the middle or he's the doing both roles he goes he goes goes through the middle of the ice and that's what I love. And so now he distributes on either side.

That's one thing I think is really effective. And he is essentially controlling the middle of the ice like another center. So he's like he would almost be like in a in soccer terms, he'd be like, no, there's a striker who's controlling the middle of the ice on on that side. But then you have like the middle back guy that's like that hat, that guy in the middle that he's controlling that space. but controls the middle of the ice. I think Harley has done an effective job at being that guy where he controls the middle like another center. He's like another layer of a center.

There's oftentimes where he does a lot of work where he's F2 or he's F1, but not because he skated it all the way down the ice. He gave it up. He got it back. He's still in the middle of the ice. He creates the entry. Off you go. Where I think he's really effective in traffic is actually after entry.

He generates a lot. a lot of shots from high traffic areas where both defensemen who he's attacking have converged. And he's finding a way to get those pucks through, which are extremely difficult to do. I think his shooting off the rush in high traffic area is really impressive. Some of the angles that he takes to create shots, some of his goals he scored. There's one against Tampa that it's in your clip package. It's just unbelievable in terms of the whole package resulting in a goal. but also the angle in which he took to create it is really high-level stuff.

So, you know, he's been able to transfer what is normally for defensemen their escapability work in the defensive zone. And he uses that same mindset also on the rush to generate shot chances. It's quite fascinating. And he doesn't turn pox over there at a high enough frequency that you would discourage it. it. No, and I think that that thing that you highlighted there is very important. One of my favorite parts of this. It's he is generally the guy who goes back and is the primary retriever of the puck, and he's adept enough at playing that puck.

But then he's also, because of his size, he's able to quite literally just eat the forward checker, right? If someone's going to come and decide they're just going to hit him, he's able to bump it off to either his D partner or the winger up the wall. Or if he has enough space, he can all of a sudden open up his skating stands, go to that 10 and 2, shake him a little bit, juke him, and then move the puck up the ice himself, right? So he can beat you both ways in that regard.

And what he does really well is all of a sudden, as you see in this clip, right, he moves the puck along, he beats that first guy, and then all of a sudden now he's sprinting up the ice as the weak side defender up the middle and creates something out of nothing. And I think what the stars do really well as a team on the breakout, actually across all zones, is their work off the wall, right?

Their wingers are so good, whether it's a Pavelski or Robertson or Ben of knocking pucks down, of making plays in traffic in congested areas, and then getting in and bumping it to the middle of the ice, right? And that kind of creates that phenomenon that we always talk about where a guy like Rupert Hince essentially has this open runway to basically build up speed and attack the middle because they're dragging so much traffic and so many bodies to the wall with them, right? And that similarly, I think Harley is able to step into that as well. I think part of why he's so effective as that weak side guy is because they're making so many of these plays off the wall that it's essentially leaving that room for him to sprint up the middle and he's taking full advantage.

And you can see him scanning in his own. Like as soon as the opportunity presents itself to go, he's good. Like he's completely uninhibited in doing so. And that's really fun to watch. Yeah, I don't think you can be a top five team. And I do believe Dallas is in that conversation as a top, like in the last several years. has been one of those teams that's like you would mention them, people would mention them as a top five or upper echelon team in the NHL.

You just can't do that unless you can exit your zone and dominate the walls. And you've highlighted that. But what I think is really interesting is it's then another layer to have these defensemen. And in Dallas, they now have two guys in Haskin and now Harley, who are adept at being able to do this. and it just creates that, to your point, another layer of a guy who can skate the puck through the middle of the ice

and just wreaks havoc on the other team's rush defense because now you have speed, genuine speed coming from underneath the puck and with a guy who can make plays. Part of the other problem is there's so many defensemen who are effective when they, like they'll do this similar thing where they'll get a puck on exit. They'll skate the puck between the blue lines.

and then somehow some way they manage to make a play that boxes the play in the corner. So whether they themselves get, they themselves get skated and painted into the corner themselves, or the play converges on them and they don't have that next layer of skill to be able to make that next play to the right guy who can then attack. They give the guy the next guy the puck in a part, in a part of the ice that's awkward for that guy who then he gets painted into the corner. So oftentimes, like you kind of look at the D and joining the rush. And then if, of course, they turn the puck over and they're not responsible and now they're giving up a better chance than what they were intending to create, well, now you're forced as a coach to wonder like, do I really want this D leading the rush?

Like, do I really want him in the rush? Like just get it and move it to the forwards because you're causing more problems than you're creating. That's not what happens with how. Heiskenen and Harley. They are creating so much opportunity because of their ability to make the play to the right guy, to control the middle of the ice, to not stop the forwards at the offensive blue line. And it's a true weapon. And when they get everybody healthy and everybody's playing and they can redistribute the minutes

properly, that's going to be a real fascinating team because they have layers now of people who can create off the rush that most. teams just don't have. Well, I think part of why him so unabashedly just going straight line up the middle works with the configuration of the stars is that I don't know if you feel this way as well, but it feels to me just comparing them to some of other top teams in the league. They have a very sophisticated rush game in terms of their patterns, right? Like you'll see them, especially with the top line.

It's not just everyone occupying their space and you're going north-south. there's so much east-west movement within the attack, right? You've got guys weaving, you pass the puck, you go, you're cutting, everyone's bobbing in and out of lanes. And so for a defender, if you don't have a specific role in that regard, you can really slow down that attack if you're constantly getting involved, right? You're going offside, you're trying to time it, right? You don't know where to stand. You're awkwardly bumping into people. You don't have good spacing.

And in this case, obviously, if the play is there for him, he's either going to be a shooter or, he's going to get the puck and then distributed from that middle. But even if he doesn't get it, if the forwards have it, him just attacking the middle and going towards the net forces the primary defender to come with him, right? And then that all of a sudden drops the layer of defense back. And then that allows Hinson-Robertson or Duchesne and say again, depending who he's with to all of a sudden execute that more because they've got this kind of created window that he's afforded them to attack in, if you know what I mean.

I know exactly what you mean. And I think it's interesting because, you know, so much attention on this Dallas team goes towards that top line and rightfully so. They've been excellent for many years. I think the addition of Douchain is an underrated stroke of genius with the way they play. Because Duchin has an outstanding ability to pass the puck after entry. And he's very bright in the decisions that he makes after entry. And he fits alongside Jason Robertson, who are now on different lines,

but they play similarly in the way in which they distribute the puck. The type, like Douchain also likes to slow the game down. He can make plays to the backside. I think he's really underrated in that aspect. And then guys like Pavelsky just figure out where they need to be and how they, the intelligence level is just through the roof. And so they find ways to contribute based on what the assets

are of the line. And then once you add like a Harley to the mix, you add a Heisken into the mix. Players like Dushan, players like Robertson, like to have a guy that's coming in late who understands timing or who's coming in as a second layer who's going to push people back because they have great speed. I mean, they're contributing to the depth of the play, which is so important. You have to have somebody who could create the depth on the entry. Otherwise, you're in big trouble to create entries. And so these guys have defensemen who can do that. Plus they have guys like hints who can do that. And then you have the other players who are primarily entry players like a Robertson and a Duchenne who can make the right decisions.

It's just a real recipe to be able to be more sophisticated. Like I always say that there's, you know, we want more sophisticated offensive rush and we want people to be able to go east-west, I like the neutral zone delay as well, where the delay is not even in the offensive zone. They don't wait until they're crossing entry. They do it at the red line. And they pull up and they draw the defenseman over and then they pull pucks in. I love all of that. But you still have to have the players who understand how to be able to play inside of that.

And I think Dallas has, in terms of their team configuration, I think that they've done a brilliant job of being able to maximize a lot of those assets. All right, Gerald, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll pick things right back up. and keep chatting about Thomas Harley. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.Cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. Big guests and bigger opinions on everything happening in Leifesland. Real Gipper and Born. Be sure to subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You're guest joined by Daryl as we do our deep dive of Thomas Harley and Daryl. Before we went to break, we're talking about the star's lineup configuration. And while we're on the topic, I want to talk to you about the idea of playing him with Hayskin, right? because before the All-Star break, Miro comes back, they put the two of them together full-time for their two games, and they look phenomenal together. And I think this builds off the conversation we had when we did the Quinn Hughes episode,

where we talked about sort of the benefits or luxury of him playing with the guy like Filipronik now and finally giving him a partner who can, they can kind of riff together, right? They can play off of each other all of a sudden, not all the heavy lifting is on him. And that kind of runs counter to the way we've thought about, or NHL coaches have thought about constructing their D pairs, right? Where you put someone who can be a primary puck mover with someone who's maybe

more conservative and stays back and then you've got like a balance and you spread that throughout your 3D pairs. In this case, the idea of playing them together, I think, is so appealing to me because not only does it afford a guy like Mero, you know, an opportunity to not have to do everything himself where he's having to go back, be the guy who stops the puck, play it, break it out, and then do everything else he does for the Stars team. But it also, I think, measures well with a lot of the concepts we've talked about in Harley's game where playing him with a skilled puck mover like Miro all of a sudden allows that play where he bumps the puck over and then he can move up the ice to work more effectively because chances are the team will

actually be moving with possession and attacking downhill because Hayskinin is so good at breaking the puck out himself whereas if he's playing with a defense partner who's not as capable then all of a sudden either Harley has to do more himself or that's just not going to be as effective because he's not going to have that opportunity to be the weak side guy moving up as often. So what do you think about that kind of concept of them playing together, the mesh and the fit between those skill sets

and kind of how maybe playing with a guy like Hayskin would all of a sudden actually make Harley even more effective even though it kind of might run counterattuitive to the way we think about the deep pairs. Yeah, well, this is an evolution of the, this is like we talked about career arc before, but this is also like just the development arc of a player. The reason why Quinn Hughes is able to play with Hironic is because he proved with the mentorship of other defensemen who were able to be there and create mentorship. He was able to prove that he could defend at a level in which he no longer needed someone,

like that to hold his hand. With young defensemen, that is a part of the process. You can't just come in. So Harley couldn't have walked in the league and dropped in with a player like Heiskin. Because he hadn't done enough of the work yet to show that he could do those other things

and take control of a de-pairing and elevate to become the primary defenseman there, play tough minutes against a good line where now he's had to do that. When Heiskenen was out, he went with, he went with Souter. Souter provided that mentorship. He's now proven that he is now can do it and he's capable of doing it on his own. Why is that important? Well, because why couldn't Heiskenen be the mentor?

Like that's a fair question, right? Why couldn't you just use Heiskenen to do that? Well, the reason is because you want Heiskenen to be able to do what instinctually makes sense for him at given times in the game. No different than you want Harley to make instinctual decisions that go on a game. You don't want them second guessing or worrying or wondering or whatever. That's why you put a responsible defensive defenseman with them at the early stages of their career is because you want to insulate them to say,

we still need you to be instinctual while you're learning these other things. And don't worry, this guy will hold the fort down for you in case things go sideways. And what we'd like it to be is sideways, a lot less and a lot less and a lot less. And then ultimately you prove that you're better than that. And then now that he's proven that that is the case. So now you're in a position to where the two of them can play together and truly play off of each other instinctually.

And they can create, then they have the same level of trust that each guy can carry the mail. Back in the early days of what we were hearing coming out of the way, like in the old days of Russia, When they were powerhouses, when you heard Teresov talk about his line construction, it was like, I put the top three players on the, on, that's one line. Then the next best three players, that's second one.

That was their line construction. The top two defensemen, the two best guys we have, though they play together. Then the next two guys, they play together. And, you know, in our situation, and I'm a big believer in that, talent should play with talent. But in the NHL, it is incredibly difficult to do that because the pressure to win is so high and the parity amongst teams is so big, is so intense that you have to be able to defend if you're going to play big minutes because you're invariably going to get caught out there

with Nathan McKinnon. You're going to have to play that guy 20 minutes. That's a tall order. That requires you to make really smart decisions. decisions at given times and sometimes you've got to manage the game and that's an important aspect. So you have to learn that. There's an arc development arc to that. And I think that that's really important. Now the fact that the two of them are on the same team and can play together is a massive. Like one of the interesting parts in Toronto was watching Morgan Riley. And

Morgan Riley took off last year. It was like a career year for him, especially when we hit the playoffs, he really took off, and you looked at the work of Shen. Shen was unbelievable, but he created and insulated that. And you got the feeling, at least I got the feeling, that Riley had taken that step where he was now ready to move to what we're talking about here. Now, in Toronto, they don't have that extra guy to play there that's at that level like a Harley and Haskinen. And so it does affect the development arc of Riley.

He's ready to move on. They don't have the pieces to do it. Here they have the pieces to do it. Harley has done the work. I think Souter did a brilliant job with them. My sense is put them together, let them play 25 minutes a night, redistribute now a Souter into a better window of time where he can be more effective because he's not going to be as effective.

It's hard for him to be effective playing in the playoffs and playing 82 games, trying to run him 22 minutes and he's just not there in his career arc no different than Shen Shen could do it for a short period of time but you can't you can't expect him to do it for a long time and that's why it has to evolve and you have to have that next piece ready to go to jump in and i love that they can do that in dallas and if it was me that's exactly where i'd be going well and i love watching them play off each other because you can see it on the breakouts how they can improve the conditions for each other when they have to play the puck, right? And that's a luxury that Mero just hasn't really had much of throughout his career.

Like, he's constantly had to play on his offside to accommodate his D partner. He's had to play with, I think, less talented partners. And part of what's made him so unique is you talk about that sort of career arc for defensemen, right? He never really got that. Like, he stepped in and his game was so mature and he was relied upon so much from day one that he essentially just had to do it all right away. And so I think there's been a lot of talk about, well, you know, he's clearly a top defenseman, but the thing that's stopping him from that Norris conversation is the points in the offensive production.

And I think you can't just view that in isolation. I think contextually, it makes sense. But all of a sudden now, the idea of playing it with a guy like Harley, I think it's going to free him up off the puck as well. And all of a sudden, you're going to have all of these additional opportunities for him to attack, him to have more space to make plays offensively. And I think if there is more there offensively for him, this is the best way to draw it out of him. And I'm really curious to see how much that pays dividends and what they can really accomplish with that. Because I do think there's something potentially special down the road of playing these two guys together.

Well, if you take that even further and you take a look around the league. So take a look at the Ottawa situation with Shabbat. So Shabbat would have been very similar to what happened to Heiskenen. He comes in. He's kind of ready to go. And even if he wasn't ready, you go in and he's relied on office. So his problem is he did do the offensive work, doesn't defend particularly well. So he erred on the side of offense, didn't, didn't really, wasn't able to really defend very well.

Heiskenen was able to kind of come out of the gates, show some offensive flash here and there, but then has had to become more responsible as it's gone along and has diminished his offensive development because of that. Then you look in Ottawa and you take a look at Sanderson. Sanderson, I think, has tremendous offensive ability. He's erring on the side. He's like Heiskin. He's kind of sacrificing a little bit. He's picking his spots.

He's trying to be responsible. But he is being restricted because he's not quite in the situation that would allow him the ability and the freedom to play as instinctual. Harley has come in and he is in a situation now where he's had the proper, really the proper arc. It's been a great arc for him to be on. And if you were to diagram an arc for a player like that, this is kind of how you would like to see it go. And now he's in position to where he can then play with another guy who's like-minded, who has the same level of similar levels of instinct.

They'll be able to see a play similarly. And that's what they'll be able to see that similarly and be able to take that forward. I think it's genius. And to your point, I think it'll be interesting to see if now that is the piece that pulls out some of this offense that I personally have been really dying to see out of Heiskenen because he is a guy that you see flashes of it where you're like, oh, my God, this guy is Uber talented. Like, when is he going to get loose? And it could be this type of environment that does it.

But he's had responsibilities at a young age that he's had to be able to, he's had to attend to the sacrifice of his own development offensive. and that's what's put him in this particular spot. You could also create that argument with Drew Doughty over the years that he was in that situation. And eventually when they got to winning, he took his offensive game and set it aside for basically like seven or eight years.

Now this year, there's been a lot of talk of him trying to come out. It's just been too long. And he's getting older now. It's just not where like Heisken is not in that spot. It's only been a couple of years. He's in a space where all of a sudden this lightning and a bottle hits with Harley showing up and being ready to go,

I mean, he's well positioned. And that star's team could be one of those teams that the offense that they get from the defense could be the thing that does put them over the top and put them in a conversation where they are perennial like cup favorites. Well, especially because of the way they create offense and they're really efficient this year. I think they're second and five-on-five goals. They're third overall.

have a very defined, two-pronged offensive approach, in my opinion. One is the rush game we talked about, and Harley certainly fits that. And the other is their work in front of the net, right? With Pavelski and Robertson and all the forwards they have up there in their top six in particular, but even their top nine now, they're so good at this layered approach where they screen in front, they try to tip everything. And then once the rebound comes out, they're so quick to it, to retrieving it, and then getting it back on it and creating additional opportunities off of that, right?

And I wanted to highlight Harley there because I think his goal scoring individually is getting a lot of attention. And rightfully so, like he's got 12 goals in 46 games. The only defenseman with more is Rasmus Dali. And he's got the same number of goals as Quinn Hughes and Kail McCarr, except he's started playing like 300 less minutes than him so far this season. Now, I don't think anyone should expect Thomas Harley or any defenseman for the most part to consistently score at the rate he has. because as we talk about scoring is very hard to do in the NHL, but particularly for a defenseman. If you look this year,

defensemen have scored on 2.3% of their shot attempts. Like it's just, it's so exceedingly rare to shoot as a defenseman and score. The good thing for Harley, though, is I think there's a real strategy or process that I admire behind his shooting, and he scored the 12 goals, but for the most part, particularly in offensive zone sets, I don't really feel that he's actually shooting trying to score.

It seems like he's shooting low strategically to try and make the puck available for his forwards in front to either get rebounds or tip the puck themselves, right? And so I think that's part of why I also think he really accentuates the way their top forwards play. And I want to talk a little bit about that sort of process and the way he works the blue line and how he shoots with that design in mind beyond just, you know, the approach we don't like, which is you get the pop. you wind up and you shoot it as hard as you can and you hope to dent something, whatever it hits, but you're not actually trying to accomplish anything meaningful. Harley's almost the opposite. Like you'll see him uncork a slap shot every once in a while, but most of his shots when I think about him are him holding onto the puck,

sort of waiting for a shooting window to open up and then kind of risking it and taking a bit off but making sure it gets through as opposed to just shooting it as hard as he can. Yeah, I see two approaches with him. One of the big approaches that I think he has. he does get into middle distance a lot, which is a hallmark of defensemen who score, they tend to score from middle distance, whether it's him activating off the blue line on the weak side and being available, whether it's him attacking the defenseman who's in front of him

and stepping by him and putting himself in spots. He also attacks the middle of the ice and gets a lot of shots from the slot, which is, again, it's difficult to get there. you're going to have to have great stick handling ability and skating ability to do it. He has both and he puts himself in great spots. I think that's a big part of his goal scoring. To your point, though, which is the actual play at the blue line, the one habit that he has that I love is when he's on the strong side and the puck comes low

to high, when he grabs that puck, it's one crossover to the middle. And then he turns his body. So his hips are now facing his partner or towards like even more like towards the hash mark on the far side is where his hips go. So he's skating now. He went kind of laterally on the crossover. Now he moves and now he's going forwards but on a slight diagonal. And he shoots off that inside foot. And it's got a little bit of more pepper on it as it gets off of his stick. But he's not winding up to do it.

He's using his lower body and his skating ability to do it. It also creates great angles, and he's separating his upper body from his lower body. So from a technical technique perspective, he's checking all the boxes. The other thing that he does exceptionally well is he tends to shoot halfway up the net, which is the easiest puck for a forward to tip. When you watch Pavelsky's goals, yes, he scores a lot of, he will score the one that's like the heater that's right along the ice and he kind of knifes it up in the air or he'll or he'll like redirect it a little bit but when i think of

pavalski the most amount of times in which he deflects a puck it's usually in the air about waist high those are the ones that he's exceptionally good at being able to get and that's where the hand-eye coordination comes in and a guy like harley has seems to have mastered that height and he puts it in that position so that it's an easy puck for those guys to to to to to defeckel deflect, which is a little counterintuitive to what we used to say. We used to tell the defensemen to shoot it low, shoot it low, shoot it on the ice. And now, like, it's so difficult to get that puck through. So many of the shot blockers, they could take away that bottom part.

They're essentially goalies themselves up at the point in the way in which they approach their shot blocking. So it's really difficult to get that puck through, especially like if you say, if you take any time at all, like winding up to try to do it, It's just going to be difficult to get it through. Harley is an exceptional skater. He uses his skating to get off the wall, to attack the middle of the ice, to go on slight angles.

And then when he does shoot it, he puts it at a height that now if the tipper misses it, which often they might, it's now in an awkward spot for the goalie. Because it's above the goalie's pads, which they love. They like a puck that's low. Many goleys are impossible to beat from those distances. when you shoot it along the ice because their butterflies so good. But now it's in the guy's hands. There might be some traffic that he's trying to work around.

And now the puck is in that height where he's going to have to use his hands. He's going to have to reach. Plus you have the anticipation of a guy deflecting the puck. There's a lot to it in terms of him being able to find some goals that happen from a sifter type shot that has, like I said, a little bit extra pepper on it. of the way in which he utilizes his footwork, it's a dangerous shot.

He can score off of that shot and he has, but he can also put it in positions where the guys who, especially on their team, where they funnel guys to the net, and those guys are exceptional in second layer shooting, because in order to tip when it's in the air like that, you like to have the puck be able to travel a little bit of distance. And so Pavelski is primarily in that hash mark

around the hash marks area when he's doing it, not necessarily right on top of the goalie. So, yeah, I think it's a perfect storm. I think Harley has really developed an excellent ability to shoot like that, but I also think that his shot is also conducive to guys who want to spend time around the net and deflect because he gives really good pucks for them to do so. Well, and the stars certainly have those guys, and I think they really benefit from those, you know, chaos, scramble situations down low, right?

They're so good at feasting on that. And a lot of it is just like it's it's kind of marginal stuff. It's not necessarily anything that's completely game breaking, but it's all like either increasing your margin for error or giving yourself more outs in terms of a positive outcome. And so Harley's not just standing at the point going, all right, I'm going to try to pick this top corner here because not only from that distance, it's so hard to do so, but the likelihood of just accomplishing that is just so minimal.

Whereas in this case, you're almost creating this little buffer for yourself where it's like, all right, either there's so many things that can happen with this buck, whether it's a tip, and generally it's not just Pavelsky standing himself, like Robertson's in front of them. They're both trying to get their stick on it. And then with that many bodies in front, even if they don't get it, the goal is going to have a tough time of corraling it and holding onto it cleanly. It's going to bounce in front. All of a sudden, we can jump on that and do something with it.

There's just so many ways they can score off with those plays beyond him having to pick a quarter and score it himself, which defensemen just don't often do, right? And so that's kind of what I appreciate about it. And if you are going to shoot from the point, I much prefer that to the alternative that we see from some other guys in the position. I think it's outstanding what he's been able to do. And like I said, so many of the things that he's doing just puts himself in position to be able to have a positive outcome,

which I think is exactly what you described of the number of ways in which this could be a positive puck. He puts those pucks in there consistently. And so he does get positive outcomes. I mean, if you're just going to go up there and fire puck right along the ice or low or that the puck is on the goal these pads and you're going to do that from 60 feet, you know, I think 2.5% shooting percentage is probably going to be generous for you. You're probably looking at, you know, you're really looking at a hope play at that point. When this guy's doing it, he's just kind of increasing the odds that there's going to be a positive outcome, whether, and it doesn't have to be a goal even, to your point. it could just be a puck that's awkward that the goalie cannot intentionally rebound.

He's not like he's turning his blocker and putting it right to the corner. You know, he's reaching at the last second and it just hits his arm. And then now that's a puck that's much more recoverable for the stars to be able to continue their offense. So it doesn't have to go in to be positive. And I think Harley has done an excellent job. I think the other thing, too, is like, Hayskinin's really good at the, this too. He puts himself in some really interesting spots and puts himself in some, has an excellent shot himself. So between the two of those guys working up at the top,

they get into this like, they can almost like in the same way we were talking about the exits where Harley is basically two players. He's the guy, the retrieval guy, plus he's the week's ID joining. You don't now need a high three on two like you would traditionally look at it because you have two so high profile great skating defensemen they can handle they can be they can be three positions between the two of them which opens up a now plethora of other options and opportunities that they haven't even had a chance to really explore yet so if they were ever to say you know what this offensive blue line if we work it we could be three positions by the two of us what would that due now to, you know, Robertson or hints, where could, like, what could hints do now,

rather than having to be in certain positions, what, what could he potentially do? And I often wondered that in Colorado, even though that five-man unit with McCar and McKinnon and Taves, they get in that high three. I often wondered, you know, there's so many things that they could do because they have now three guys who could play all three positions and they would only need the two of them up there. I think that that does open up some other opportunities. Like for example, could a guy just leave the zone, the offensive zone, and then come back in, which is an underutilized offensive tactic that you can now do because you have the trust

that those two guys can manage the three positions between the two of them. So I think that there's a lot of options and opportunities that if these guys were to play for three or four years as a pair together, I can't even imagine what they could come up with together. That's what's so exciting. And that's why for me, I'm really hopeful that the stars find a way and they stay healthy enough in the other parts of their lineup

where they don't feel like they need to break these two up. Well, you can see that in the number as they back it up, certainly. When he plays with Mero, the numbers are through the roof. When Harley's on the ice with hints at 5-on-5, the stars have scored 18 goals in 190 minutes, which is about five and a half per hour, which is just outlandishly good. And so it's not by accident.

A lot of it is how they facilitate each other and a lot of the concepts we talk about today. And Darrell, I'm glad we did this. Thank you for indulging me because Harley's, as I said off the top, not only one of my favorite players, but I think there's so many habits that he's already showing right now that I think are very important for young defensemen to utilize themselves. And so I think if you're watching a guy play in the way he's able to create, I would take a lot of what Harley's doing and try to incorporate into your games. So that's going to do it for today's show. If you enjoy these shows that Daryl and I do together every week,

then I'd recommend checking us out on the Hockey PDOCAST YouTube channel as well, where you can watch along with us to get some video examples of the concepts we're talking about, and I think that'll really help reinforce it and enhance the listening experience to make sure you get the most out of it possible. I'd also recommend hopping on the PDOCast Discord server where we're building an awesome community that's generating some great conversations every day. It's also a place where we're picking our weekly mailbag questions from, and it's a place where we've got some really fun stuff planned for the upcoming trade deadline

that's only about a month away now. So if you're not in there yet, just click the invite link in the show notes and join us for what should be a really fun ride. Thank you for listening to today's show, and we'll be back with plenty more of the Hockey PDO cast, as always, streaming on the SportsNed Radio Network.