The Hockey PDOcast - To worry or not to worry?

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Dimitri welcomes Ryan Lambert to the show as they run through a laundry list of things they believe they should or shouldn't worry about across the NHL. 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.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Ryan Lambert. Ryan, what's going on, man? I'm hanging out. What's up with you? Oh, you know, same old, same old,

just doing this daily PEDAO cast. First time we're having you on this season, which is very exciting. I always love when we get together and chat. So I'm looking forward to it. Here's the plan for it today. we are going to bounce around the league and discuss things that uh or ask the question whether whether we should be worried about stuff how worried we should be about it we picked a variety of topics and so we're going to get right into it i'm going to open the floor to you you go first what's

the first topic you want to discuss i think the thing that is maybe most interesting to me in the league right now is a team that i picked pretty high i think i have them like ninth in the league this year coming into the season and that's the thing that's the one of the league right now is a team that That's not like a scientific, you know, I didn't, I don't have a model or anything like that. I just kind of eyeballed it and said, I feel like they're above night. And that's the Minnesota-wide, obviously starting the year out. A bit of a rough stretch here. Maybe people would have said, well, you know, they have all these, all this dead money on their salary cap and that's not going to help.

It certainly doesn't help. But, you know, again, there's. struggling. So I guess the question is, how long can we expect that to struggle? I think it's a very fair question. I mean, they're 0 and three, three regulation losses, should note that while all three of those were at home as they opened the season here on a bit of a homestand, those three losses were against the New York Rangers, Los Angeles, Kings, and Colorado Avalanche, three teams, I think, you know, I mean, obviously all three teams made the playoffs last year. I think they're well positioned to do so again, and we think pretty

highly of them here in the PDOCAS. So clearly like a pretty tough schedule in terms of quality of competition now, I mean, the elephant in the room is they've given up 20 goals in those three games, which is just a startling amount regardless of how much goal scoring is up around the league. It's, you know, this is in your, this is in the Minnesota wild team of the past. It hasn't been for a while that was kind of that stingy two one team that would grind out ugly playoff wins. Like this is clearly ever since Carol Caprizo basically came to North America has become a team that actually a pretty fun, fast-paced, high-scoring team that it's going to beat you in five, four formats instead.

But this is another extreme. I mean, 20 goals in three games is kind of hard to fathom. Yeah, and even beyond that, like, you know, it's early in the season. There are, excuse me, there are a lot of teams that have gotten, like, horrifyingly bad goal-tending that you wouldn't expect to last, right?

but I think even beyond just the fact that like Mark Andre Flurry can't make a save and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a minute I just like if you look at all their underlying numbers and stuff like that it's like oh they're lower middle of the league pretty much across the board you know like they're in the like 15 to 18 range in a lot of cases and again like you said they played a difficult schedule so it's not it's not like total panic time yet but this is a team that last year and the year before that they were very good across the board in most of those kind of stats so it's a um i don't know it's just like very uh out of character for them i guess you would say under dean evison yeah for them to be playing this poorly and um we talked about it on uh on my podcast yesterday

you have a podcast you know i might have one okay um But, you know, it's a situation where, like, you know, obviously we don't put a lot of stock into plus minus, minus minus minus. And the season where Kirill Kaprizov is going to go minus eight across three games, you know? It's crazy that, like, even the big guys are, you know, he's scoring, but, like, they're getting killed when he's on guys. Well, that's, and that's why I'm not concerned. Like, the players that are getting hammered are their best players. Caprizov and Zuccarella have been outscored 6-0 at 5-1-5. so far. Jonas Brodine has been on the ice for seven, five-on-five goals against in just 46 minutes.

I think those guys have enough of a track record and aren't necessarily at a point of their career where you're like, oh, is this a sign that, you know, they've kind of turned the corner here and are all of a sudden in decline. Like, I think that's just a random three-game aberration. You know, what's interesting about them is last year, you know, safe percentage was down quite a bit across the board. They had a team's safe percentage of 903 last season. Yeah. And they still finished fifth in the league with 113 points. You know, so now they're, they're currently at 81.3 percent, a combination of Mark Andre Fleury and Phelb Gustafson.

That's clearly not going to continue, like regardless of how bad they are. I think the lowest possible number we'll see at season's end is going to be around 880. Yeah. So that's going to be, you know, that's going to normalize. But I think they've sort of proven with this offense that, you know, I mean, they're averaging four goals again, four goals per game. in these three they've played so far as well. So the offense is fine. I think I'm not too worried,

but I think certainly, you know, the fact that this appears to be in their range of outcomes and the defense itself has been quite troublesome, I think. Like there was a play in the opener against the Rangers where it's just etched in my brain where Panarin had the puck behind the net. No one seemed to really care, even though he's Erringo and he's very good.

He kind of passed it out finally to the side of the net to Alexis Lafranier. He's kind of standing there. he's like almost waiting for a defender to come. No one really seems to care. And then he eventually hits a streaking, Adam Fox, kind of backdoor pass to tap it in for an easy goal. And that's the type of coverage you just almost never see in the NHL.

It was kind of laughable how little effort was involved. So it makes me think that this is just kind of more of a sluggish start to the season for them. And they're kind of ironing stuff out and maybe with some more practice time, they'll figure it out as opposed to it being like, wow, this team just suddenly forgot how to defend completely and entirely. Right. I think the only thing that I would say as a word of caution with this team is that, like you say, they didn't get great goaltending last year. They were a little below average. But they traded away a goalie this summer. And it's just a situation where they basically pushed all their chips in on a 38-year-old who's played. like 950 career regular season games.

There's a guy with a lot of miles on him. And I'm not saying he's going to be anywhere close to this bad all year, but like the idea, he wasn't particularly good last year. So the idea that, you know, this, like Mark Andre Fleury could continue to struggle. Like, I buy that. And as, you know, as you say, they'll probably sort out a lot of their other problems, and maybe that doesn't matter so much. Yeah.

But he, I mean, he's like, incredibly. bad so far this season and I don't know if I'm counting on like a big rebound at any time soon for him you know yeah he's uh yeah he's he's swimming out there and I think like all the goal all the holes in his in his game basically have been exposed by the Rangers and Kings every time they made him move laterally um just because he's so wildly overly aggressive and just can't kind of get back into position this is part of the deal though right like I think even at his best the peaks and valleys in his performance compared to even his peers

have been so extreme and you imagine that as you said he's 950 regular season games another like whatever 150 playoff games in the NHL he's turning 38 years old here in a couple weeks you presume that those extremes will be heightened even more

at this stage of his career I guess this is a bit off topic but and it might be besides the point because Kant Talbot himself got hurt before the scene season and is going to miss the first month or so here with a rib injury for Ottawa. But I never really understood why he was in such a rush to get out of town.

Like as soon as they committed to Mark Andre Fleury this summer, he almost like took it personally. He was a slap in the face. And he was like, all right, I got to get out of here. I got to go somewhere where I'm wanted and appreciated. And I get that. But I always thought, like, it's kind of strange because even with Flurry there, I imagine the Wild certainly don't want him playing more than 40 games this season at the stage of his

career. It feels like there's a meaningful chance or a meaningful opportunity here for Cam Talbot to still play his 40-ish games. And if he plays well and plays better than Flurry, maybe even a get up to 50 and be their playoff goalie. Like that's within the range of outcomes. And instead he was like, no, I want to get out of here. And that kind of, that kind of stings, right? We don't, much smaller track record of Philip Gustafson certainly hasn't looked good so far. We'll see he was fine in Ottawa last year. But it would be nice to have a healthy Camt Albert here because he's generally considered to be a pretty on a reliable goalie, and that's sort of what they need at this point. Yeah, I guess at some point it's the thing where, like, an NFL quarterback gets mad if a team

drafts a quarterback. Right. But instead, it's if the team signed, like, group led so at this point. You know what I mean? Like, they're just like, okay, we've got to get the oldest guy in we possibly can to replace this other guy. Yeah, yeah, it didn't really seem like much of an impediment beyond, I guess, just the reputation. Okay, let's shift.

Is that all we have on the wild? Are you ready to move on the first topic? Sure. All right, the Florida Panthers, who by the way, today the league, every team revealed their new reverse retro setups. And I'm not above shamelessly asking them to send me some merch here if they're listening to this because I love this. The Panthers new look is absolutely fantastic. That shade of blue is just wonderful on the eyes. But that's not what we're going to talk about here.

Instead, the question is about their blue line, because now, as I'm sure everyone listening is heard, Aaron Eckblatt is out again. He is on IR, not on LTIR. They're expecting him to be back at some point, which almost works against them in a sense because it precludes them from going out and using that cap wiggle room that they afford to themselves here in the short term to actually add another player because they basically just have to wait for him and Anthony Declare to come back. But here was in the first game without Ekblad and without Branden's,

in Monterey out as well yesterday against the Philadelphia Flyers. Here was their usage for their six defensemen at 515. Gustav Forsling played 1551, led the way. Mark Stahl, 1528. Radco Goudas, 1522, Josh Mahura, 12 minutes. Matt Kierstead, 1122, Lucas Carlson, just under 10 minutes. How many of those guys did you make up? Well, I made up Stahl.

Okay, that makes sense. Well, I actually know all of those guys because I'm, I'm depraved and I care about this stuff. But I imagine your average fan at home or listener who's kind of casually just following the Florida Panthers certainly didn't have those guys on their death charts. So, yeah, I mean, it's impossible. They've played one game so far against the fellow Flyers. It's tough to know what to make of that. They looked fine. I think they have the forwards to score a lot of goals still, even though it's a different group than it was last year.

and different coach. And they have two goalies who are fine enough, especially in the regular season, to not completely implode, regardless of who's in front of them. So I don't think it's going to necessarily be a total disaster, but clearly this is almost like the worst-case outcome for them. You know, the summer were like, okay,

they got rid of McKenzie Weger, they didn't replace them. They're really one injury from Arineck Blad away from this being an absolute disaster. And what, three, four games that a season were already at that point. Right. Yeah. It's one of those situations where it's, I don't want to say it's unavoidable because, you know, like, or that you can't plan for it, I guess, because like Aaron Ecklett always misses time, right? Like, that's just kind of his thing. I don't think. I think the last time he played like 82 or even particularly close to that is like 2018. So it's been quite a while. And so, like, I guess the question becomes like, how do you mitigate your risk around, okay, we're going to miss a guy who, you know, legitimate Norse contender last year until he got hurt? And, you know, I don't know that because of, you know, I wrote about this over the summer, but, like, you look at the, the Panthers, uh, cat-friendly page. And it's like, oh, well, there's your problem.

It's this Sergey-Bovsky contract. And like you say, Mabrowski isn't playing badly or anything like that, but he's not a $10 million goalie. So, you know, they just kind of hamstring themselves right out of the gate with, oh, what if we signed a little more defensive death? And, yeah, like, I guess the point is that if you're like, okay, we're in Eckblad, like maybe even, you would say,

almost inevitable Eklad injury and a Brandon Montour injury away from dressing basically an AHL lineup on the blue line. That's a tough situation, but that's, you know, the cost of doing business when you're trying to be around the top of the league, I guess. Yeah, so, you know, an interesting kind of subplot here that might have snuck under the radar a little bit, just because it came like right on the eve of the regular season, was that extension they gave. Spencer Knight where it kicks in next year, right? And it jumps up from his ELC to 4.5 per for three years.

There's no scenario where they're spending $14.5 million in cap allotment on their two goalies next year, right? Like how desperate is, regardless of what happens this season, how desperate is that potential Sergei Bobrovsky trade

going to be this summer in terms of whatever futures they have to unload to potentially dump the contract? on someone, you know, he has still control of that in terms of his no mood clause, but it makes it much more palatable because I believe after they pay a signing bonus this summer, like most of the money is paid off. There's like $5 million in terms of base salary, and then the rest is almost peanuts. So it would be pretty appealing for a seller's dweller to basically kind of just try and rig their cap that way with his $10 million hit. So I almost assume like that that has to be

in the works for next summer or not to kind of put the cart before the horse here, but it's almost like, it's looming in the not so distant future. Yeah. It's honestly at this point, like one of those situations where you're just truly waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're just going, well, it has to happen. It has to, yeah. You know?

And like you say, I believe he has a full no move for this coming summer, at least. And so, you know, it's a situation where how do you even, you know, navigate your way around that reality. You know, you can't trade them to Arizona in all likely book, right? That's the issue you run into. Is that Chicago want them? You know, does Florida have to retain half to make it work? You know, these are all ins and outs, but it's something Florida is going to be dealing with for quite a while.

I guess it's kind of besides the point of this conversation, right? It is. It's from over summer. Beyond, I guess, the point that it precludes them from going out and improving their team in the meantime because they just don't have the flexibility to do so. I, you know, their next seven games here are against the lightning, the Islanders, Blackhawks, Flyers, Senators, Coyotes and Sharks. So I think they're going to be fine for the next little bit here.

That's a lot of bad teams on the horizon for them. I am curious to see how this works out. I don't know what Brandon Montere's status is. I imagine he won't be out for that long. so that'll help a little bit. But there's kind of two workarounds that I thought of here. One is basically just strap Sajabar Barcov to whatever bottom pairs they have

and just treat him as essentially their number one defenseman when I guess Gustav Borsing isn't out there, which would be interesting. I kind of see no reason why he can't just play 25 minutes as almost their top defensemen. But the second one is, and this is kind of that Matthew Kachuk chaos effect, to start the season, they're playing the least amount of time at even strength.

Like they're pretty much leading the league in terms of power play time and leading the league in terms of time they're spending short-handed. They're basically just playing large stretches of these games on special teams. And it almost behooves this group, right? Because it's almost easier for a Mark stall to just kind of get settled in his own zone on the penalty kill and block a bunch of shots and not have to do anything. It's much harder when all of a sudden the game is flying around at 5-1-5 at even strength and he has to move up and down the ice.

So not that you want to be playing short-handed, but it benefits them maybe more so than other teams to just have large stretches of these games played at special teams where they can almost kind of pick and choose who's out there more so. Yeah, and as you say, especially against a lot of the teams

that you just mentioned that are on the schedule coming up. Obviously, the lightning is a tough draw there. But those are maybe teams that, apart from maybe the senators, you would say, oh, they don't particularly scare me. on the powerplay either. Yeah. All right.

That's all I got on the Panthers here. Give me your next one. We have room for one more before we go break. All right. Let's quickly talk about. There's kind of like an epidemic right now. And I feel like it's more pronounced than usual of rookies barely getting ice time. Shane Wright, averaging 633 a game.

Marco Rossi averaging 729. Uri Slavkovsky, a little under 11, Kent Johnson a little under 12, and Dylan Holloway was getting about eight before he got knocked out early in that Savers game, and so now I think he's around like six and a half. But even before that, he was only getting eight minutes a night. And the reason I wanted to bring this up is this is something

that always is of great interest to me, and I'm curious to see how you feel about it, of how teams handle guys that they could send down to the AAHL, guys they could send back to the CHL, you know, and actually give them real minutes. Because I guess you can start with Shane, right? A little of that is going to be marketing, you know? But Marco Rossi, that's a guy that I think a lot of people were like,

oh, he's a legitimate rookie of the year candidate. Yep. and he can barely get off the bench. It seems crazy to me, but, you know. Yeah, and I mean, what he showed in the H.L. Last year was that he was already too good for that league. So you think, right, the natural progression here is this team has a lot of opportunity with all that cap tied up in those buyouts and with Kevin Fiala gone, they need scoring out.

It seems like a logical fit. He's had 21 shifts in the two games he's played. Yeah, it's just, it's embarrassing. You know, I was talking to Darry about, this last year and he was saying that the players he works with the thing they're almost most most interested in and it's a stat that you or I would probably never really think much about or have a lot of conversations about on the outside is puck touches like in terms of like literally how many times per game do they have the puck on their stick and how do they increase the avenues

for doing so and the biggest challenge for young players that are put in these positions is if you kind of map out what the game looks like for them, you know, you have the anthems or whatever, after warm-ups, you're sitting there for a while, maybe there's a commercial break, then the puck drops. And then you like don't, it's not your turn for your fourth line shift until you're like six minutes into the game. And by that point, like, it's probably been 15 to 20 minutes

in terms of actual real time since you even really handled the puck. And then you're probably playing on a fourth line with kind of more traditional veteran grinders whose job it is to get the puck, dump it in, go throw a body check, and get off the ice after 35 to 40 seconds. And then you wait another 15 minutes in real time before you get to do that again. And then when a young player struggles in that situation, the veteran coach goes, well, see, yeah, this guy just wasn't ready for this.

He's, you know, he's got a lot to learn here. And he does, he's not deserving of being higher in the lineup because look at what he's doing with his current minutes. And it's like this feedback loop of coaches getting exactly what they ultimately want because they don't trust young players and so they'd rather play guys they're more comfortable with and they're more familiar with

and so they put them in these situations where it doesn't work out and especially for you know for Minnesota they've lost these three games as we talked about they have higher aspirations for like Seattle it makes absolutely no sense to not be playing all of these young players

that you have that you've drafted high in feature roles just to see what you have in them and like your number your only task for this season is to get the most out of those players so they can actually be difference makers for you by the time you're good. Yeah, and, you know, I guess there's a difference, like, I just looked at all Marco Rossi's most common pairing,

or our line mates, rather, are Connor DeWore and Brandon Du Hane, where now they've been horrible when they played together. Like the underlying numbers are awful. Well, that's clearly a sign that Marco Rossi shouldn't be playing. That's exactly right. Yeah, no, like, because I think, again, coming into the year, everybody was like, oh, you know, maybe you don't give him every shift with the guy, but like you give him plenty of minutes with Kiral Kapriza and it feels like those two are going to take off together. And, yeah, Dean Evanson's like not so fast. We have big plans for him and for him and Brandon Du Hame instead.

Yeah. I don't, I truly don't get it, but. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of an unbelievable situation in the sense. that, you know, Shane Wright is pretty clearly there's, I mean, last year, he was like the, the, the knock on him heading into the draft was, all right, he's kind of bored in the OAHL. So he can't go to the HL. So what's he supposed to do this?

He's, I don't think playing six minutes a night or sitting in the press box is going to help him develop his skills. So I don't, I don't really understand it. For me, it's weird because don't, don't you think if you were a coach, developing one of these young players and seeing them progressively get better would almost help you with job security because then that's something you'd be able to point to as like, oh, let's see, look, look what I'm doing. I'm guiding this young player along his development path.

I'm getting the most out of them. You should keep me around because as we go through this rebuilding process, this is what I can do with all the young guys. Like, that's something that I would be thinking if I was one of, if I was Dave Haxstall or one of these coaches. Yeah, and like I said before, I think keeping him around for the nine games and then sending him back to Kingston, him.

That makes a lot of sense because you know, you get to say, like on paper, that makes a lot of sense because you get to say, this guy's the future of our franchise. But in reality, you're saying, come see the future of our franchise play six minutes tonight. And to your point, maybe he gets eight puck touches in those six minutes. Yeah. And off you go. It's really strange to me.

And like you say, like he's playing with Ryan Donato and Brandon Tanna for the most part. And is that putting Shane right in a position to succeed? Look, I get it. The NHL is difficult for rookies and especially coming out of the CHL, like the oldest players these guys have really played against, they're 20-year-olds. And so it's a completely different game,

at least with guys coming out of the NCAA like Maddie Baneers, you know, they've played against guys who were like 23, 24, 25. And the game is fundamentally different for those guys in the NCAA versus the CHL. And I think this is, there are guys, these are guys where the transfer agreement between the CHL and the NHL is really putting a hurt on them and their ability to develop in a serious way where, yeah, this guy was a high pick. He was supposed to go number one overall. he drops to four. And then he's kind of stuck in this no-man's land between being bored of the OHL as well he should be.

And not even being able to see the ice for 20 minutes at a time in the NHL. Yeah, yeah, it's not. I mean, it's doing the players. No, it's a, doing them a disservice, I should say. All right, Ryan, let's take a quick break here. When we come back in a few minutes, we're going to keep going with all this topics. You are listening to the HockeyPEDO cast on the SportsNet Radio Network.

We're back here on the Hockeypedio cast with Ryan Lambert talking about a variety of topics around the league in terms of how interested we should be in it, how much stock we should put into it, how concerned we should potentially be about it. Ryan, let's stick with the theme of talking about young players and let's talk a little bit about the Connor Bardard sweepstakes here. I know a very exciting topic for fans of teams one or two weeks into the season to already be thinking ahead like this. but I have to say I don't know how heading into the season I feel like coyotes,

Blackhawks, potentially Canadians, Flyers, those last two have actually looked quite encouraging to start the year. I think we very, very firmly

and definitively need to put the San Jose sharks not only amongst that group but arguably at the top of it based on how they look to start the season. Yeah,

and that's a bit of a surprise. I think, you know, a lot of of us would have said Arizona and Chicago and a runaway and as much as people want to bag on the flyers

for what they did this summer I think it's totally reasonable to expect them to finish like you know 21st or whatever like that that seems like the John Tortorella system. There's a level of competence. Yeah

that's right. And so yeah I boy these sharks stink me I don't know what to say. I don't know what else to say. They are unbelievably bad. And I think the reason they kind of snuck up on everybody here is, you know,

you look at their roster and it's like, oh, those are like some pretty good players, right? Like, you know, maybe Logan Couture is a little bit past it, but they got like Emo Meyer. They have. Tomash Hurtle. Yeah, Tomash Hurtle, right. Like, just like maybe not young. is the right word anymore, but like, guys that you should be excited about, you know? And I think the other thing is you would have said, oh, I bet their goal pending can be

somewhat competent. Capo Kacken and James Reimer, those are both goalies that even if you're not like, oh, those guys are really solid. I think you would say, yeah, they can be like average, even behind a team that maybe isn't great defensively or whatever. and how about this James Reimer 919 in his three games he's faced 111 shots he's allowed nine goals and he's 0 and 3 yeah it doesn't even matter if the goal tendons good because that's how bad the team you mentioned some of those four is um I don't know if you've already been looking at their depth chart can you name

the 12 fours they're currently using I I know when I looked at it yesterday I was like oh I feel like any time a team is led at any point in the season in scoring by Evgeny Svetnikov, that's bad. I know, let's see here, who else do I know that they have? They got Stephen Lawrence. That's a guy I looked at over the summer, or like just a week or two ago because I thought he might have a brother who was playing college hockey. They were unrelated, two different Lawrence.

They got Luke Cunning over the summer. Oh, yeah, top six, Luke Cunnen. Derm. That's another guy, I know, plays for them. Barabanov, of course, the whole controversy with that. Kevin LeBanks still plays for this team, right?

Yeah, he does. He's not active right now for some reason. He wasn't on their daily face off page. But, yeah, he is also one. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, so I guess that's all the sharks' forwards I can name off the top of my head. What was that, like nine?

Yeah, you missed Nick Bonino, who's in their top six? Okay, that's where Nick Benino is, sure. Yeah. Matt Nietto, who's... Boy, what's all these B.U guys on this? This has to be Matt Nietto's, like, 10th time coming to the Sharks. Yeah.

I feel like he just keeps coming back. Well, I was just making the joke Mietto and Benito both played for BYU, and that's where their coach played as well in college. Yeah, well, there you go. A clear sign that, yeah. Yeah, then Jonah Gajovic as well, and Oscar Ler. Blom. I mean, it's such a... Oh, right.

Alster Lindblum, sure. I should have got that one. It's such a random group of skaters. And that doesn't even get me into what they did with their blue line this summer. Their 0-and-5, as you mentioned, they've been outscored 17 to 7. I don't know which performance was worse from getting

steamrolled by the Blackhawks at home. Like, that's really bad, obviously. But I, for some reason, watch them play the Islanders the other night. And that was like... Just such a pitiful performance. And it really made me, I was watching it, I was like, wow, this might be the worst team in the NHL.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think the guys renamed that they have up front, it's really going to end up, you know, like the classic activity of remembering some guys. If you're doing remembering the 2020-23 San Jose Sharks, those are some guys worth remembering, I think. You know? Well, the reason why I brought this up for the badard sweepstakes and everything,

and listen, they've lost all five of their games so far pretty handily. So it's not like they necessarily need to do anything moving forward to, like, improve their odds. Like, they're well on their way. They're doing just fine in that regard, if that's their objective. And it seems to be. But imagine if this team decides to strip it down even further, whether it is potentially proactively trading Tim O'Mire before they have to deal with whatever RFA.

headache they after this summer or Tomash hurdle and Eric Carlson who are still their best players have extended injury histories what if those guys one of those guys gets gets hurt or all of a sudden you know just decides to let's let's let's let them take some time off to rest a nagging injury you know what's the point of having them out there which I imagine we will see more and more of as the season goes along as teams do try to jockey for a position for for draft lottery rods because Connor Bredard is that good I mean it's it's almost hard to fathom that it could be worse than this product we've seen so far, but I imagine we will, yeah, we will be remembering some guys from this, from this incarnation of the sharks.

Yeah, and it's, it's interesting because they at least acted, I don't know if we want to, how much we want to say we actually believed it, but they at least acted like, look, one thing we definitely don't want to do is a tank. That's not, that's not of interest to the San Jose Sharks organization. and then like this is their forward group and you're like well you know whether you wanted to or not I think I think that time has come so yeah I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were just saying that while actually trying to just distract this from what they were actually trying to do because it would be very sad if they really were trying to be competitive with this group so

all right I'll give you I'll give you your turn here what's next in your list well we just mentioned timo mire and you know i i've seen a lot of people being like oh david pasturnex and i'm one of them so i'm not like casting a turgeoning just seen yourself saying this yeah um you know more and more people are saying that david pasturac is going to get uh insanely paid this summer and that's true he's going to i think he's going to get basically the connor macdavid contract 12 and a half million you know um and he deserves it if we're if we're we're saying the cap is going to keep going up and that kind of thing.

He absolutely deserves that kind of money. He's one of the best players in the league. But I wonder what the effect is on guys like Tim O'Myer, like Dylan Lark and like Alex DeBrickett, like these kind of mid-20s guys who are approaching unrestricted free agency status and potentially poised to cash in big time. You know, you wonder how much. much,

how much, like the Bruins are going to have to spend, or at least you would have, because, you know, they're going to have the bonus over just for Bergeron and Creachie on next year's cap, probably in all likelihood. But then,

yesterday or the day before Gary Betman's like, oh, no, the cap might go up to $86 million. And it's like, well, that's where all that money is going, I guess, you know? Yeah,

this happened in the... I just think it's going to be really interesting to see how all that plays out. Yeah, no, certainly. I mean, This happened in the NBA as well, right? When the cap spiked and it really showed how much just timing factors into like who gets paid how much. And, you know, I think fan, like when you say, oh, he's going to get something in the ballpark of Connor McDavid's contract, I imagine a significant portion of hockey fans would initially bristle at that, right?

And be like, what? No way. He doesn't deserve that. And Army David is the best player in the world. He should be getting paid the most. And now Nathan McKinn is getting paid more. And I think you lock yourself into the salary figure and then the cap keeps going up.

And then players who probably aren't necessarily as deserving will just naturally benefit from that and get paid more because everyone gets a larger piece of the pie. And that's totally fine. That's just how the business works. I think Pasternak is worthy of every dollar he's going to get here. Right? Like what a time for him to bet on himself

And I think the way he's been doing it to, I love so much. Like, it's so, like, he's just, he's just dripping in self-confidence, right? It's like, all right, I'm just going to go out there and just do my thing. Oh, go ahead. No, no, no, that's all that. Oh, yeah, what I was going to say is, like, I love that he's doing the thing of, like, I'm not afraid to negotiate during the season. All these other guys, they're, like, I get why they don't want to do it, but for me, I don't care.

I'll do it. And then, you know, he's going out and having, like, three or four. four-point nights on a pretty consistent basis so far. And everybody's like, oh, there's another extra, like, $100, tack that on to the end of the contract, you know? And the reason it's interesting for the Bruins, obviously, is that they're probably not going to have to pay Burjohn next year. They're probably not going to have to pay Grady to next year.

And that money is going to go somewhere because, again, like, this is a team that's not going to attempt to blow it up or anything like that. And maybe you would even say you kind of can. can't if you have, you know, David Grady, Charlie McAvoy, or, sorry, David Pasternak, Charlie McAvoy, Brad Marshand, like, these are guys that are maybe too good to allow you to really fully, you know, fall into the mud, you know, and, but like you said, with Tim O'Meyer, I'm really interested to see what the sharks do. Obviously, the senators are going to try to give Alex to Brinkett a bunch of cash, but, like, is he a tax?

$10 million player. If Posternak's 12, 12, and a half, is to brink it a $10 million player? Well, I don't know. Let's stick with Pasternak for one more second here because I didn't want to point out. So he's 26. First four games so far this season. Three goals, five assists, four of them primary.

41 shot attempts, 24 of them on net. Drawing four penalties. High danger chances with him on the ISA 515 are 22. 10 for the Bruins. Just doing everything clearly enjoying having his buddy David Craichie back and really, I mean, that gives them, you know, they don't have even Brad Marjohn or Charlie McAvoy at this point, but having those two separate lines you feel good about in any matchup is provides them with so much flexibility and answers pretty much every question we've had about this team for the past

however many years. And the reason why this next contract negotiation firm is going to be so interesting to me is because the Bruins, the way they've operated over the years, is they held up Patrice Bergeron's $6.875 million cap hit as sort of the high watermark, right? They were like, listen, he's our best player. He's the face of the franchise. You can't expect to make more than him.

He's already locked in at 6.875. You're going to have to take less just because that's how this team operates. And they've somehow like Jedi mind tricked every player, basically, into being like, you know what? The math checks out. Yeah, fair enough. I'm going to sign here in a dotted line for less than, I'm probably deserving on the open market because that's the Bruins way.

And now Bergeron at this stage of his career is basically just playing because he's still really good at hockey and loves it, clearly not doing it for the money based on the contract he signed. And so that's kind of no longer a point of leverage for the Bruins to use in these negotiations in a way, right? Like, so when you... Well, that is the McAvoy contract. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, especially in terms of forwards, right? Like, if you look at pretty much whether it was Mar-Marshan or whether it was the,

the deal they got Taylor Hall to sign, it was like, yeah, you're going to get somewhere around $6 million because, you know, we value you and you're a really good player and we acknowledge you to get more, but it has to be less than the 6.875 that Patrice Bursarun is coming in at. Right. Yeah, and so, like Craigie can just, you know, totally, much like McAvoy did,

can just totally, like, change the discussion about what the Bruins will pay players. although, you know, they could also say, like, well, I mean, look with Brad Marshands making, so think about that, you know? They could kind of play it both ways a little bit, I guess, but. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, in terms of Pasternak, like, beyond just the fact that he should be in contention for the Rockerichard and has, like, developed so much of his game in terms of the passing and the off puck stuff, like, becoming so well-rounded over the years. Yeah. Like, in terms of just, like, an asset to a... an organization, how likable he is and how marketable I feel like he is.

Like we've already seen, nothing the commercials he's in and stuff in terms of tapping into that, but it really does feel like that's the exact type of player that you do want to be investing in long term. So I would just like, unless he just decides, like, listen, I don't, I don't want to be in Boston, which I don't like you will. I think it will ultimately gets settled. Like, I can't see a reason why this wouldn't work out. like just basically give him a blank check and whatever he wants to stay for it he's going to get.

Yeah, it's definitely a situation where it seems like everybody kind of wants to make the deal works, and they, you know, you just got to figure out term and numbers and all that kind of stuff. And you go from, that's why it's taking so long, right? They really want, I think they both really want to get where they're going with this, but they just kind of got to go through the process a little bit. And it's not going to be like the will they won't they would like with the Canucks with J.T. Miller, where they, everybody was like, they're trading them, they're trading them. No, they just reset.

You know, there's no thought to trade it faster next. There's, and there shouldn't be. This is, you know, in terms of at his position, top one player, I think, probably. I don't know who I would take over him. Yeah, he's pretty good. Pretty good at that hockey thing. Okay.

Ads on boards I've got here. Sure. So over the weekend, I tweeted out a clip of an animated puck flying at Cam Fowler as he went back behind the net to retrieve the actual puck. And I just pointed out how distracting that was. And for some reason, that was received with... a lot of comments of people being like, you realize the players can't actually see it. This is purely just on TV.

And yeah, that's that's that's that's kind of the point. Like I, this league, uh, seems to just really love, um, showing us time and time again how little it cares about its paying customers. Like the, it makes it so difficult to enjoy the product, right? We talk all the time about how hockey is such an amazing sport, but the N, CHEL just can't seem to get out of its way. And I understand, like, monetizing and trying to get, get all the money back financially. And we all want the cap to go up so the players can make more money and so teams can improve their rosters. And this is one way to do it. I totally get all that.

But this idea that there's, like, animated digital objects that are moving around during the course of play in a zone is just something I'm sure we'll get used to, I guess. But right now, it's just driving me crazy watching these games. Yeah, I'm a big, uh, I, uh, I, uh, I, I like watching soccer on a Saturday or Sunday morning, right? And so I'm used to animated ads. And I was like, so this probably shouldn't be that much different. Like, it'll be a little different because it'll be closer to the playing surface, obviously.

But I thought that a lot of the concerns about it were all overblown. And then what I failed to consider was the thing that you said, is that this is the NHL we're talking about. Of course it's going to be like the worst possible version of the things that everybody's talking about, right? And so it was a situation where I wasn't accounting for the fact that, like, guys were just going to be disappearing into the end boards because their jerseys kind of, you know, they have a white jersey on. And so there's a car insurance ad. over whoever, Jimmy Beezie, he's standing in his own zone, you know?

And so, yeah, it's just a, it's one of those things where I would have, I would have thought they would have had the technology nailed down a little more to make it not so distracting. And they were like, no, we haven't figured that out at all. No. Why would you think we did? And, yeah, you got it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure that puck tracking data will come eventually. they've been figuring that out for years. That's right. Any day now. Yeah. Yeah. It really has been glitching out so much. I, it's, oh, man.

I mean, I guess maybe I'm, I'm even more sensitive to it just because I'm, like, watching so many of these games every single night and, like, flipping back and forth between them, and it just really sticks out. I think, yeah, if you're probably just casually watching a single game here or there, it's like, whatever, just tune it out. But it's been, it's been really tough. It's, it's weird that in 2022, it's becoming. even more difficult to watch these games.

You'd think it would become easier with the advances in technology, but here we are. Yeah, I mean, the thing I compared it to initially was, you know, how some broadcasts will have the ad behind the net, like on the glass behind the net, during a power play or whatever, you know. I figured it was going to be a little like that, where it's like, oh, that looks horrible,

but it doesn't, like, really affect how I'm actually watching the game. Like, it doesn't look good, but it's not awful. And then the NHL was like, what if we also did an awful one? Yeah. What do you think about that? Well, I guess, again, you got me. I guess they care more about the people who are paying to go watch these games live and send the seats as opposed to people like you and I were trying to watch these games from home, right?

Like, I guess that's the clientele they're appealing to more here because it's, as a TV viewer, it's been quite rough. So, I don't know, it is what it is. Is there any, um, any other stuff you think we got a couple more minutes here before we, before we saw it. Yeah, I, I, I wanted to say just like kind of

one more thing to say about the board ads. Sure. And what you said about, uh, you know, they care more about people in the building. Yeah. Um, that's because the NHL is a gate revenue league still. No other, I mean, maybe you would say major league soccer, but no other major, uh,

sport in the United States is a gate revenue league. And so the NHL's like, yeah, I mean, what do we care if you want to, you know, like if you don't have cable and you want to watch your favorite team. Like go to a game, I guess, or get cable. Those are your two options. And, you know, we've seen it a little bit discussed in Major League Baseball where they, where bad teams like jack up the ticket prices. and people go,

well, I want to be able to take my kid to like a, I don't know, a Baltimore Orioles game for less than $600. And they were like, no, we'd actually rather have, you were fans who are paying more

than more fans who are paying less. Right. And I feel like maybe that's a direction. A lot of sports are going in, but it's one I can certainly see the NHL going in. sooner than later just because they kind of just don't have the the underlying economic support that all these other leagues do. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that seems like a not ideal way to grow the popularity of the sport and make it more accessible. So I guess that's, NHL has no issues with that, so whatever. All right, Ryan, plug some stuff. Where can people check you out and what have you been working on? Yeah, so if you want to go to E.P.Rinkside.com, you'll find all my hockey writing there. I write about college hockey. I write about the NHL and, you know, all the kind of associated stuff with the NHL.

So, yeah, I recently wrote about the Toronto Maple Leafs goal-tending situation where, you know, maybe you could have seen it coming a little bit. and I wrote about the University of Massachusetts just beat the reigning national, or not even beat, swept in a two-game series, the reigning national champions in the NCAA, and I wrote about that. I wrote about the Aaron Eckblad injury this week.

I wrote about kind of the theme of this podcast. Should we be worked up about results X, Y, N, C, and C to start the year, that kind of stuff. So, and then tomorrow I'll be writing about the three big stars of the week. Sweet. A lot of writing going on. I love it. Well, hockey back.

I hope you've heard. You're a beast. Thanks for coming on the show. It's great to finally have you this season. We'll certainly have you back on more down the road. So, Ryan, thanks for coming. Thanks to all the listeners for checking us out. Please help us out by smashing that five-star button wherever you listen and giving us a nice review.

And we'll be back tomorrow with more here on the HockeyPedio cast on the sports internet radio network.