The Hockey PDOcast - Watching Celebrini Cook, Teams Creating More Offense, and Coaching Considerations

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Jack Han to talk about what we're seeing on tape from Macklin Celebrini to start his career, teams like the Capitals and Hurricanes that are getting more out of their players offensively, and some coaching considerations when it comes to things like handedness for defensemen or going with 11F-7D lineups. 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.

It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockeyedio cast. My name is Demetri Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, Jack Khan. Jack, what's going on, man? We're back. It's U.S. Thanksgiving. And now we have enough of a sample size to know how good or bad your team actually is.

Yes, very exciting times for us. I'm excited to do today's show with you because we've got a fun list of topics. I've been waiting to get into some of these specifically until the next time we had you on. And today is that day. Let's start talking about Macklin Celebrini. And I want to spend as much time on today's show as I can right off the hop here because just watching the NHL this past week, I feel like what he's been putting on tape in these couple of games he played just blew me away. I thought there was so much refinement and detail and maturity to his game and various elements of it that I've seen so far. And so I wanted to break that all down.

with you and do a little bit of a deep dive of what we're seeing on tape from him, what the numbers are telling us about his play and kind of how we put all that together in a neat little package. He's played the 13 games so far now. So he has a bit of less of a sample than that sort of 20 to 25 game mark that you just referenced where teams are at generally because after his debut, he missed 12 games or so. But he's come back. He's got seven goals, four assists in those 13 games. He's playing over 20 minutes a night, including over the past handful.

He played like 25, 30 against the senators in their most recent game. He played 2348 against the Blues previously. Let's break it all down. What are you seeing on tape from him right now that really sticks out to you and has impressed you the most? Because I don't even know where to necessarily start because I've got four or five things that just immediately jump off the page to me. Okay. Well, we can start last year. So last year I was looking at not just celebrating, but some of the other guys who, and

up going sort of in the first half of the first round in the draft. And the feeling that I got initially was like Celebrini was the only guy who didn't have a major flaw in his game, right? Like whether it was Lefshanov, whether it was Seneca, whether it was Lindstrom or Demandov, you name it, like all of these players, because they're 17 or 18 years of age, like they all have significant weaknesses that are most likely going to sort them sells out over time, but that's, that's a factor right now. And Celebrini was the only player in my mind was like, okay, this guy can probably make the

jump to the NHL and do reasonably well and, you know, play well enough so that it's worthwhile to keep him there. So I think so far, he's kind of proved me right on, on that side. And, you know, there's only three players from the entire draft class who's played any games, and he's the only one who's actually had any points. the other two are Jet Luchanko who broke camp with Philly but ended up getting sent back down. And then if we go all the way down to the seventh round, you know, Colorado had Nikita Prishapov who played six games because they just had too many injuries and they just needed a body. So yeah, I mean, Celebrini, he's 18. He's an NHL player. That's as good as it gets, I think.

Yeah, he's not 19 until I believe June when the season's all. going to be over for him. With him on the ice this year, and I think this is a good entryway into his impact so far and the effect he's had on the sharks, because with him on the ice of 515, the underlying profile doesn't necessarily blow you away, right? They're actually kind of breaking even in terms of just raw shots. They're being outscored by one goal. High danger chances are down to the 41% mark, expected goal share 44, right?

So you look at that and you're like, all right, well, you expect that from a young player and a bad team. He's not necessarily quote unquote driving play the conventional way we think about it. But then you dig a bit deeper and you go into the sport logic numbers that I know you've referenced as well and we're going to highlight them here on a per game basis

in terms of controlled entries. He's first in the league at nine of them per game. Controlled exits per game, he's 10th in the league with 9.3 of them just behind a guy like Nikita Kutrov who's a master at getting the puck effectively out of his own zone. And to end rushes per game he's second with 3.3 of them per game.

behind Connor McDavid, who I'm sure you've heard of. And then puck battle wins per game. This one really stands out to me. He's first in the league, 4.5 of them per game, just ahead of established, you know, high work rate, really just strong centers, like Ryan O'Reilly, John Tavares, Sean Couture, Nico Hishier. And so that's really impressive company for him to be keeping. Now I know this sort of definition of what Sport Logic has is a puck battle

is a bit sort of nebulous and tricky to wrap your head around. But I think when you watch and play, that really does stand out to me. And as I referenced, that maturity to his game, the anticipation, the puck hounding. I know you want to talk about the skating and the routes he takes. But all of that stuff really just is very visibly evident right from the hop. And for a young player like this to step in at that age with this lack

of pro experience and immediately be doing that is really impressive to me. Because I think we see young guys especially more recently over the past couple years, commented NHL and enjoy some media success much more than they used to be able to. But a lot of it is because they're just immensely talented and have tons of puck skills and maybe sacrifice a little bit defensively

to cheat offensively or however you want to put it. And so they can put up points, they can have flashy highlight real plays, but they're taking stuff off the table at the other end of the ice. That's not really what I'm seeing from Celebrini here at all. It feels like if anything, he's had such a commitment in his own zone and kind of dropping down low

and providing support for his defensemen, defending off the rush, all of that stuff that's reflective of like a veteran top two-way center, Selke caliber guy and not an 18-year-old playing his first 13 NHL games. So let's talk about the puck battle stats for a second because I think it's actually a really good segue

into something that, would really interest like hockey nerds and people work in the industry as coaches or scouts or analysts, which is like not every puck battle is maybe. And I actually think there's a direct correlation between Celebrini's puck battle numbers and his relatively sort of mediocre possession numbers. If you look at, you know, course, you or expected goals, which is the more puck battles you engage in, in your defensive zone, the more of them you're likely to. a win. And if you look at every single

NHL team, when they're playing in the defensive zone and the puck is down low, they're playing at a five on three advantage on the defensive side. So if you're the low center, which Celebrity often is, he's going to be engaged in a lot of puck battles, especially because the sharks

are not the best team at driving play in general. So he's going to win a fair bit just because there are people helping him, right? Their, his winger is taking away the load of high pass. His strong side defenseman is in the battle as well. So it's a good environment for him to

win some puck battles as long as he's able to get there and be reasonably physical. And this is, again, for a player who's 18 years old, like this is not nothing. I think it's a great sign for him. But related to that, like a lot of coaches that I've worked with in the past that I talked to,

like they really value the puck battle stats. But the big, Red Herring is that, again, the better your team is, the better you are at getting up ice, the more than you're going to lose because you're going to be having these puck battles in the offensive zone or in the neutral zone as opposed to behind your goal line. So that's something that I think we got to sort of keep in mind not only for Celebrini, but also for teams in general, which is, you know, it's not necessarily winning more puck battles or a higher percentage of them.

that's going to indicate that you're doing necessarily everything, right? And for Selle Brini, like, I don't know, if we look back five years from now, maybe this year is going to be the year that he wins the most puck battles, just because this year is going to be the year that he spends the most time in his own zone. And the better he gets, the worstest puck battle stats are going to be cut. That is fair. And that's an important distinction to make.

I will say, though, just anecdotally, I haven't necessarily just tracked this stuff myself. I'm going off of Sportogic's numbers, but just on the video, it does seem like a high share of these puck battle wins are coming off of exactly in the neutral zone or even in his own offensive zone

in terms of his backtracking and how well he's competing there. And you see that from a part of that is skating anticipation, he's got a great stick, all that stuff. I think part of it is also, and maybe you want to talk a little bit more about this, his positioning, right? Because it seems like already

he's very disciplined, which you want to see from a center, at staying in the middle of the ice. I think he takes really concise routes. Everything seems to be kind of by design and sort of pre-planned by him. And you see that. That's a common trait amongst a lot of elite players in the league.

But none of this stuff is sort of happening by accident. So in a lot of these plays, the other team's trying to break the puck out where they feel like they're in a good position, the neutral zone. And then all of a sudden, he just shows up in the middle of the ice and just takes the puck away from someone

or rubs him out. And so you see a lot of that. I think part of it is also, like, physically he's been quite impressive to me. There was a sequence in particular in that senator's game where he was down low defending in his own zone one-on-one against Brady Kachuk, who's a legitimate handful to deal with for even like an established NHL veteran defenseman. And he held his own Kachuk tried to take the puck to the net.

He was able to like body him enough and sort of disrupt it and it wound up being a harmless sequence. And so stuff like that really stands out to me and watching his game so far. Yeah. And this is something that's really jumped out to me when I've watched, which is he has this knack of taking the shortest route to the puck, which obviously, you know, it helps you get there faster. As long as your timing's good, your anticipation is good,

you're able to change speed, change direction. Well, obviously, you know, having a good route efficiency is going to get you to more battles and get you to more pucks. And the one thing that I think is it might be hard to pick out when you're watching NHLers. But if you're a beer league player or maybe, you know, you're a hockey parent and you watch a lot of youth hockey, um,

you'll see certain players that like the puck is to their left, but because, you know, they're not able to turn that corner sharp enough. They end up making three right turns to get that puck to their left. And that gets them out of the play and makes them late. They look like they're not engaged. They look like that for hockey sense.

Well, at the highest level, there's sort of that gap as well, even though, again, it's way more subtle because players are better. But if you compare, let's say, Celebrini to Connor Bardard, for example. Well, you'll see that Bardard, he'll swing away from the puck. You'll turn away from the puck a little bit more. And that's why Chicago is using him more as a winger, even though he's certainly a very competent center.

But when you're a winger, you have more opportunities to turn away from the puck and to free yourself up. Whereas if you're a center, your number one job is to control the middle. And it's hard to do that when you're turning away from the play. That's interesting. Yeah, I was thinking I would, I recommend for anyone watching a shark's game moving forward,

obviously when so, So Brini has the puck on a stick, it's scintillating. You want to watch the skill at play. For me, it's almost just as fun to sort of like isocam on him when he's off the puck in the offensive zone because his movement already is incredibly intelligent to me.

You just watch the way he operates, how he gets lost, especially on the power play. He'll sort of either circle behind the net and then take a bit of a route kind of coming around and getting lost and then opening himself back up to receive a pass or even down low. He's got a defender on him and his defenders all be so aware of his presence there. And so what he does is he kind of spins out, comes right back in the back door in his blind side after the defenseman redirects his attention elsewhere. And we have already seen it's fun watching him interact with a guy like William Eklund and it must be such a god. send for Eklund in particular after who he played with last year to have a guy like this to all of a sudden now experiment with and have all these intricate passing plays but we've seen so many giving goes from them already and so for me celebrating the on puck is really fun to watch but almost as

soon as he gets rid of it i i'm very very captivated by what he does next and i think that's an important thing as well yeah so i think now is a good time to talk about is skating because you know, the habits that allow him to be so involved and to be such a facilitator is, you know, he's patient, he holds the middle of the ice, he turns the right way, he stops when he needs to stop as opposed to, you know, taking the long way to the play. But all of that, I think, it's made possible because he's such an efficient and powerful skater, right? Because I think every single coach you talk to, like they want their centers to come and swing low to support the puck, to stop in the defensive zone as opposed to overshooting their checks.

But the problem is with a lot of players is when you lack that high-end footspeed, then what you're doing when you're stopping and you're playing very low is you can't really be as involved on the counterattack. And that's why you'll see some players like they're cheating for offense because ultimately they know that if they don't cheat for offense, they're not going to be able to get the pucks and get those rush opportunities. Whereas Sellebrini, like his skating is so sound that he doesn't need to cheat, right? And this is something that even like Carter McDavid early in his career, like you see him getting ahead of the play a little bit pushing out too early, even though he really doesn't need to do that.

Like he can start from a standstill and still blow by, you know, most defensemen in the league. But Sellebrini's already kind of internalized those habits. And one thing technically that I find really interesting is, you know, I don't know if everybody knows this, but his dad, Rick Sillabrini, works for the Golden State Warriors. And so, you know, he comes for a basketball family. And the really interesting thing for me and a reason why I would encourage more hockey players to play basketball is hockey is a sport where if you do a lot of skating growing up, you're not really at ease with the idea of being in the air, right? Like a lot of times when you, when you watch like skating coaches and especially like power skating coaches, it's all about pushing hard into the ice, digging into your edges,

using your edges. But I think if you want to be a high level skater, you want to be able to get some air every time you push off. And, you know, same thing as a sprinter, right? Like the best sprinters in the world are the ones who have a long stride and spend a lot of time in the air. So, obviously we've all heard about hockey players with like short choppy strides and those the players were not able to get on their toes or get on the balls of their feet and explode into the air so that obviously when you're in the air there's the least friction possible you're just moving up and forward and that's really what creates that efficiency and that sort of athletic quality to someone's skating and I think Celebrity has that and I wonder it's because you played a lot of

basketball growing up with his siblings or, you know, his dad kind of treated him more as a basketball player in terms of his training. I don't know exactly what that is, but I think it's interesting when you see that parallel. Yeah, I definitely noticed that about. I mean, he just moves different. There's such an easy power to his skating stride, watching him kind of reminds me of Jack Eagel in terms of the way he can just accelerate so efficiently like that. I want to mention his shot as well because he's been firing the puck quite a bit. He's got 43 shots on goal and 13 games. He's obviously, I think, profiled as a goal scorer heading in, considering scores 46 goals in 50 USHL games, then goes to NCAA last year and has the 32 goals in 38 games

there. And so I think he's going to score a ton as well, what really stands out to me. And I think he's still, for any young player, the quality of not only the opposing defense and the looks and space you're going to get, but also just the goalies in general is so elevated once you come to this level. So I think there's an adjustment there. But what you see, from already is and he had that sort of you know the the highlight real goal earlier this year against mark andre flurray in that game against the wild but he's done it a few other times already where that sort of deception that he has where he's on the move and he's got the puck within his sort of stick handling regimen and then all of a sudden it's just flying top corner and so for me just kind of

watching that growth as well in terms of shot selection and placement and kind of figuring out that all right you don't always necessarily have to shoot the puck as hard as you can because a lot in this league doesn't really matter as much as that deception and placement and everything. But just the already what you're seeing from there, I feel like there's just so much room to grow here as a goal score as well. We haven't even really seen him, you know, on the power play,

have that sort of downhill wrist shot that I think was billed as probably one of the strongest parts of his game, uh, coming from college. Yeah. I mean, you know, last year he scored 32 games,

uh, in, uh, sorry, 32 goals and 38 games as a true freshman, which is like, it's freaking tough to score 30 goals in college hockey. So I think that that really tells us all we need to know about like kind of what,

what that baseline is and how much more potential he still has. Yeah. I think you're certainly seeing it as well. And I think it's really fun because you have a lot of leeway on a team that's obviously still rebuilding and doesn't have aspirations this year of competing. So he gets to experiment and kind of test out what works at this level in almost real time. And so there's going to be a lot of plays where like he puts the stacks together a couple of really promising moves

and then tries a pass that ultimately either gets intercepted or knocked away or doesn't wind up completing and I think that's okay I think that's all part of the process I mentioned the you know when we're talking about puck battles earlier what I was thinking and watching him

and how he pursues the puck is that I think that we'll see if the sharks ultimately want to use them there when they're good but I would bet on him being a very strong penalty killer at some point in the not too distant future he probably could already they've only used them for like a minute short-handed so far this

year, but I kind of want to see him get a few reps there because I think he can certainly disrupt a ton and create coming back the other way the way a team like the Hurricanes does. Well, what a final point of kind of a topic or conversation that I want to have here on Celebrini with you and then we can move on to the other stuff we have on today's docket is just that kind of general idea, especially for a young player entering the league of how much we sort of value or how we weigh the individual contributions, the stuff that I just said in the sporologic stats of how much he directly does. whether it's those puck battles or transition stats and then comparing it to the actual sort of

underlying numbers the team effects the team metrics and sort of trying to think of it as all right how is he driving play i know you noted in your piece when you wrote him up on on your substack that an interesting comp is someone like jack hughes for example right and that's a recent one that comes to mind where he enters the league he's doing a lot of this stuff especially on puck that we're seeing from celebrating and it's like all right this guy's assintillating transatlantic transition player. He's setting up so many opportunities for his teammates. Yeah, you look at the overall numbers at the end of the day and the team with him on the ice has like a sub 45% shot and expected goal share. And so it's not really adding up there. And then by the time Jack Hughes

gets to year three and I know he improved his shot a ton along the way and I think that was part of it. But by year four, when the devils were ready to be good in 2022, 2022, 23 and they got back to the playoffs, it jumped up to like 57% shots, 58% expected goal share and it was truly elite. Do you have any notes on or kind of just thought in terms of evaluating young players, especially on bad teams and how we weigh individual contributions versus their actual team output? Well,

I think it's quite a special situation when you have teenagers playing in the NHL. And I think, you know, for, for these very young players, it's better to look at, you know, do we see kind of things popping, right? Like, is the individual contribution popping or is, is, is their play driving? popping, like you don't need to, you don't need to have both. As long as you see some positives and you see that this player is able to deploy their skill set in some way, shape, or form, then perhaps it's good to sort of keep giving them more opportunities as long as, you know, you're not looking to contend right now.

And so, you know, the way that I see it's almost like if you're a very smart high school or taking college courses, like I'm not expecting. straight A's, but I'm expecting you to show me some things and show me that you're not, you know, getting discouraged and that you're able to sort of benefit from it. And as long as we see that, then I think it's fine. Yeah, I'm right there with you. If anything, I would actually prefer seeing the individual stuff because I think once the team gets better around and once the quality of line mates and in general, just everyone that's

on the AIS with them, especially on the blue line improves, I think you're going to start to see them capitalize on benefit on a lot of that stuff he is doing individually and it's going to lead to the team results. So that's the way I sort of view it. And I just mentioned, like, I think his game is already increasingly with each game getting more refined as he's figuring out the bounds of what works and what doesn't. Yet you watch it and it still feels like it's like, all right, it makes sense. It's an 18-year-old. It's still very raw. And I think that's just scary to think about what that's going to look like once he does figure all that stuff out. You got any other final kind of thoughts or notes on Celebrini here or do you want to go to break?

I mean he's a good player already but but you know obviously he's got a lot more room to improve so it'll be excited to see where he goes and I think the sharks you know obviously they they worked hard for that draft pick but but I think so far they've been very fortunate in getting such a good I think the listeners should note that Jack is not a very he's very level headed and even killed especially on a player of Al so the fact that he says this guy is already really good is about as glowing an endorsement as you're going to get for a young player. So I think Jack's right there with me that we're both blown away by this guy so far. All right, Jack, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we'll jump back into it. We're going to switch to a sort of team level view. We're going to talk about a few teams that have been notable to us early this season and a bunch more fun stuff. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.

All right, we're back here in the Hockey PEOCast with Jack Khan. We spent part one of today's show talking about Macklin Celebrini. That was a really fun way to start today's show. let's switch to a team level view here and you mentioned right off the top we're getting to the point of the season now where it's like all right we've seen 25 games or so of these teams we can feel confident

in not only the data but also in terms of just watching them that we're building up enough of a sample to know that this is intentional at least and like how they want to play and the way they're approaching their games this season and so I thought it'd be fun for us to look at a couple teams that have stood out so far

that have kind of tactically changed the way they've played this season now a lot of that in this league is driven just by person unless you have some sort of big coaching change and philosophical change by the organization. A lot of it is, all right, you get either better players or more diverse players, and it allows you to unlock certain things in terms of the way you want to play. And a team that comes to mind when you describe that is the Washington Capitals, right? They've obviously had a lot of success this year.

They're scoring a ton of goals. I know that you've been looking at them recently as well. And whenever you kind of pose the question on behind of, all right, which team tactically do you want me to look at, the capitals are a very obvious choice because not only are their results night and day from last year to this year, but also just the game states in terms of how much they're

creating, how sort of entertaining and fun the games are is a seismic shift from last year when even when they were winning and they made the playoffs as the eighth seed, it was grinding out low 20s shots on goal, just trying to win 2-1 or 3-2 led by their goalie. This year it feels different.

What are you seeing from them on tape and kind of how much of it do you think is Spencer Carberry actually making changes in the offseason to adjust and how much of it you think is just a matter of, all right, we got many more new players. A lot of them are much better than the guys we had last year. And so it allows us to play a bit more. And that's why they steered in that direction. Well, I think the starting point would be the offseason moves that they made. They obviously got Pure Luke Dubois.

They went and got a friend of podcast, Andrew Mangapani. So I think they've made some really smart moves kind of in their kind of middle six. You know, they went inside Matt Roy as a right-handed D. And I mean, the thing that I'm seeing from them, it's, you know, they're averaging close to four goals a game or they were over four goals a game, at least when I checked last week.

It's not like they figured out anything new offensively. They just done, just done such a good job of counter attacking and taking advantage of their opponent's turnovers in the neutral zone and sort of high in their zone. So for me, like, you know, they're doing some interesting things in the O zone in terms of getting the D's active, rotating, things like that. But, you know, these are things that we've seen before from other teams. And the thing that's really elevated the Capitals offense is, again, their ability

to take advantage of the other team's mistakes. Yeah, their first in the league in goals. scored 90 of them in 22 games. They're averaging over four goals an hour, as you said, of play. Their second in the league and expected goals, fourth and high danger chances. Now, a lot of it is driven by the fact that their first in the league in shooting percentage. They're still scoring on over 14% of their shots. But the stat that really stands out to me, and I think all of this ties together in terms

of individual chess pieces. And you mentioned that counter game is the fact that they've been starting so well. I'm not sure ultimately how much of this is sort of sticky in terms of your ability to actually control. Every team enters each game being like, all right, let's start strong, let's get an early lead, and let's go from there. And then obviously only one of the teams playing at any given night can actually accomplish that objective. But so far, they're up 33 to 19 in first periods. They've held the lead for 661 minutes out of their 1328 played.

So that's nearly half of their game time. And you look at Michael McCurdy's kind of heat maps broken down by game score for them on is website hockey biz. And what really stands out to me, especially when they're up one or even up two, is how much they're creating offensively to go on top of that. I think everyone is kind of familiar by now with the concept of score effects and teams that are up don't push us hard offensively. They kind of sit back.

Teams that are down try to create more and take more chances to get back into it and create offense. And so what you see in those types of moments is a team like the Capitals is able to then essentially compound their lead, right? Like they just kind of turn an existing advantage that they gain from being up on the scoreboard to an even bigger one by counterpunching that way. And so their fifth in the league in rush chances, they're 31st in the league in offense's zone time.

And so you put that all together and it paints a pretty clear, neat picture for me of the way they want to attack you. Like certainly they want to hold the puck in the zone and they move really well. And a lot of that rotation stuff and puck movement you mentioned is there. but where they're most dangerous is once they get up early on you, their ability to be reliable and solid defensively, but then as soon as they get the puck, just go back the other way and punish you even further.

And I think that's interesting because we do see teams do that, but it feels like they're really capitalizing on that more than teams typically do. Yeah, and I saw the transcript of a recent interview from Carberry, and he talked about how defense really underpins his team's success, up to this point. And I think, you know, it's a very cliche kind of coach-speak thing to say. But I would say he's 100% right and he's being 100% honest because I don't see this team

scoring four goals a game if they're not as organized defensively as they are. And a lot of the defensive philosophy that you'll see in high-level hockey is like, you know, forechecking aggressively and taking away the red line and trying to, you know, prevent entries. Washington does it a little bit differently because, you know, their personnel, you know, they're quicker than they used to be, but they're not like the New Jersey Devils or, you know, what have you. So they play more of an of an absorbed game.

So they're looking to create turnovers, maybe even inside their zone. Once you have four, maybe all five of your players invested in an offensive situation and the puck comes out in their favor, all of a sudden, Washington's got a two-on-one. And really, that's how they hurt teams, especially when, you know, the cap's already leading. Because when they're leading, then they can even be a little bit more passive, allow you to come set up, block some shots or force some turnovers, and then they got the whole ice to counterattack with an army.

They do. And I think what helps this as well, and this ties into just the off-season they had and how much they improve their team and the way they added in various places is you look at the lineup construction. And what's interesting to me is how balanced it is, and it makes sense because you look at the depth chart on paper, and they have talent pretty much across all four lines,

and then after adding Larzella and filling maybe one of their existing weaknesses or unknowns in terms of having a young third-line center, now their number one center, which is Dylan Strome, plays about 1259 per game at 5-1-5. Their second-line center, PLD, plays 1256. Their third-line center, Nick Dowd, plays 1229. and then their fourth line center, Lars Eller, plays 1104. And so there's also no real drop-off as well.

And so I think that allows you as games go on and as you're leading to continue playing this way. And obviously, you just have, I think, generally more energy and more juice as games go along in these situations. Because not only are you a bit more passive, so you're conserving energy that way, but you also just are conserving it because all across the board, regardless of whether which pair it is or which line it is, they can essentially just keep kind of replicating and doing the exact same thing. Obviously when a guy like Connor McMichael is out there, maybe there's a bit more punch to it offensively than when Lars Eller or Nick Dowd is, but I think the point kind of stands.

So like this kind of brings me to the big worry I have with this team and the reason why like even though they're near the top of the league, like I don't actually see them as a legit Stanley Cup contender. I'm going to wait because I'm getting tomatoes thrown my way here from the U.S. Capitol right now. But the reason why is because when this team, for whatever reason, goes down by a couple of goals and they have to chase a game, then their whole game plan and their whole roster deployment, it kind of breaks down. So, you know, I mentioned how much offense this team creates from counterattacks. Well, once the other team is up by a goal or two, they're not necessarily.

activating their Ds or getting four players in the rush, like they're not taking chances offensively that Washington feasts on. That's the first thing. The second thing is, is, you know, imagine a situation when there's a two, there's two minutes left in a game and Washington is down by one goal. And it's a five on five.

Maybe they're thinking about pulling the goalie. Who do you have out there on the ice, right? Because you have the protest, Strom, and a betchkin line when Ovi's healthy. And then you have the McMichael, PLD, and remind me who's on that unit. Tom Wilson, right. So it's like, who do you put out there?

Because you don't have a dominant first line that really can drive play in all situations and also convert on them. Because the Strom and OV line, like they're scoring on 20% of their shots, which obviously not sustainable, even though Strom is a super underrated center. And then, you know, the PLD line has actually done a really good job of driving play. even though they don't necessarily have that finishing punch that, you know, with Ovi and Strom and protests, whatever.

But that's the problem. Like when this team is trailing and they got to shorten the bench and they got to mount a push, I don't know if they necessarily have that. And, you know, you mentioned the hockey viz heat maps. Well,

despite being excellent when tied and when leading, this team is actually surprisingly bad when they're, when they're trailing because, again, they don't have the personnel to chase games and to really mount a push. And when they try to push and take more chances, they actually end up giving up more than they come. Yeah. And I think that's a fair differentiator between them and a team they're competing with in the

Metro like New Jersey, where they're almost the opposite in the sense that if they go down big or if they're within a couple goals, their push is terrifying, right? Because ultimately you can just cut down the lineup. You're going to still have his share's line out there quite a bit. but it's going to be a ton of Jack Hughes and Jasper Brat and that's reflected by their heatmaps where when they're down by two or three goals like they're just they're a nightmare they're just creating so much

and I think that does give them more wiggle room if the game gets away from them early to get back into it I do think that from the capitol's perspective though it gives you such a high baseline in the regular season where I think that's sort of depth and ability to within close games control it recordingly I think is a very valuable skill so Maybe I'm a bit higher on them than you are right now, but I totally get your point.

I think that's a fair differentiator between them and the New Jersey's and Edmontons of the world, certainly just based on lineup construction and sort of playing style. Do I talk a little bit about the hurricanes? I know you wrote about them as well recently. A lot of what they're doing is similar to last year, certainly. I do feel like watching them play and the numbers bear this out, they're more dangerous. They're more dangerous offensively. They're fourth in the league and rush chances.

I believe that Edmonton, Dallas, and Colorado are the only teams that create more rush chances than them. That's a bit of a continuation from the second half of last year where it seems like they changed the way they played a little bit. Getting a guy like Jensen at the time helped accommodate that. They lost Gensel this offseason, but they bring in Roslovich, who's been scoring a ton in the top six. They give more opportunities to young guys like Jackson Blake and Jack Drury. They bring in Shane Gosses bear. And it does feel like obviously these questions are going to be to be answered in the playoffs. And that's totally fair.

But I feel like at least for the time being watching them play, I do feel like there's more bite to their offense at five on five than there might have been in previous seasons. Even when they were stacking up shots and chances and even goals, it just feels aesthetically a little bit of a positive change in the right direction for me than in the past. So I'll start this with a with a very brief anecdote. So recently I was talking to a friend of mine who was a head coach in a developmental league. So young head coach, offensive-minded, works a lot with his players in terms of developing skills. And his team was having trouble scoring off the rush.

And so he asked me to take a look at his team's clips and to tell him what I saw. And the thing that I saw was, again, you know, you have players trying to make plays using the width of the ice, doing all the good stuff that we often like to talk about. But the thing that was lacking with them, it seems like everybody wanted to be the guy open for a pass and nobody wanted to be the guy who's in there for checking and their drive the net, pushing the fencedman back, you know, doing the leg work that creates space for their teammates. And why this relates to Carolina is, is that you could never accuse the hurricanes in the past decade of not doing enough in terms of sprinting off. the puck and getting up the ice, you know, and being physically active in their style of play. And what's happening with them now is now, you know, with players like NACAS really getting, you know, the opportunities that I think his skills, you know, does, you know, really have earned them. Well, they're able to play fast and get up ice and play that sort of cardio hockey that we, we know and may or may not like.

But now they're slowing down to play a little bit more. They're controlling entries a little bit more. And it's just, you know, they're working off the base of we got to work hard. We got to get up ice. It doesn't matter if we dump pucks in. We're going to go and retrieve and win them back. But now we have a little bit more opportunities to make plays and to slow things down and to use our skills. So this team, you know, they went through this arc where they were able to,

to get a lot of shots and not score. And now the shot volume is still there because that foundation is so solid with their core players. But now you have players like Nietzschez and Gossus Bear kind of doing their thing and creating maybe higher quality plays. Yeah, they're averaging four goals per game, which is behind only that capstan we just talked about. And the power play, you see it as well.

I feel like they're just, and part of this is because he's played so well that you're given the freedom to do so, but they're just running so much more of it than they have in the past in my opinion through natures and then obviously adding gossus bear and bringing him back has unlocked a little bit there as well and he's such a he's such a fun underrated player in my opinion that i feel like we should appreciate more now than we probably do because his career if you look at it has been obviously some twists and turns there especially you know like philly gives up a second round pick just to get off a very reasonable contract that they still owe him but he's just found ways to contribute offensively and just add a level of dynamism at that position

that I think is pretty rare. So I like watching them a lot more than I did last year. I feel like some of those elements are still there. But as you just described there, more of it feels kind of purposeful and selective at times. They're going to get that shot volume, but they are trying to actually create a little bit more functionally than they have in the past. And so I appreciate that. And I think that's why my views on them in tone in general, I think has changed quite a bit

this year compared to the way I viewed them and talked about them in previous years. All right, Jack, let's end today's show. We got a couple more minutes here with a few questions from the PDOCAST Discord mailbag. The listeners are always pumped up when I tell them you're coming on and they have various questions for you. And I pick two of them here that I think are interesting. One of them is question for Jack, I'd love to hear his thoughts on defensemen playing their offside. Are there any Dmen who actually are better on their offside or is every Dman ceiling on their strong side? Should it be every GM's goal to have an even balance of righties and lefties?

what characteristics or play styles are common amongst defensemen who play well on their offside. I think last year we spoke about this as it related to Sean Jersey because he was a right shot guy who because of LA's depth of that on that side of the time was relegated to playing on his offside on the left and struggled and really wasn't able to tap into a lot of the stuff that makes him such a useful player at that position. And then obviously he's hurt now, but he goes to Arizona and now Utah at the start of the year and just looks different as a player to me than he had in the past. And so I think that was a good example of that.

I think everyone knows like either Amiro Hayskinnan or a McKenzie Wigger have historically played on their offside and seemed comfortable doing so at least, although I think in Haskinen's case, I would just love to see more of him on his strong side. But they kind of use him because of how versatile and good he is to accommodate their left shot defensemen. You got any notes on this that we haven't already covered on today's show in terms of whether it's particularly, skills or what you're looking for, how much you sort of previously in your life as a coach or as an analyst now value the distinction between handedness and how that should be kind of divvied up the lineup? I think it matters quite a bit. And I think there's this tipping point that basically every team has to deal with, which is, would you rather have a guy on his

natural or forehand side or would you rather have a better player on his off side? And that's why you'll see a lot of NHL teams do the best that they possibly can to have three lefties and three righties on the back end, even though when you kind of sort by pure talent or pure ability or

impact, maybe the best place to have four lefties and two righties, for example. And some of the really kind of important details is, first of all, is this guy comfortable on his backhand? So when you have somebody playing on their offside,

a lot of times when the puck goes low to high, it's very tricky to get this puck off the wall in your backhand. And it's especially important for defensemen because if you misplay that puck, then it's a two-on-one against. Whereas if you're forward and you're playing your offside, you misplay that puck, well, your Ds are back there to help you out. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is, generally speaking, is your footwork good. So it's not necessarily about having blistering straight-line speed, but is it like, are you able to, you know, take a few quick steps so that you can turn a backhand into a forehand catch? Because when you're able to catch pucks in your forehand on your offside, then you have a better shooting angle. And then the third thing is when you're defending the rush is how good are you at angling

and also defending skating forward? Because if you, again, if you picture this mental image of, let's say, high-skinned and defending on the right side, as a lefty, his stick is in the middle of the ice, which means that if the opposing winger tries to beat him along the boards, it's going to be difficult for Heisken to get a stick around and go stick on puck,

whereas for righty, it's extremely easy. So the solution then is for Heiskenen to come in at an angle skating forward so that now his stick is pointed toward the boards and he's able to go stick on puck. So it's like little things like that that really make a difference. All right.

Kind of on that note, the next question is, next time Jack is Jack is on, I'd love to hear him talk about what he sees as the pros versus cons of running 11 forward seven defensemen. I'm an uneducated observer, and it seems to be like all it does is scramble the lines and the deep hairs, so I need Jack to explain it to me like I'm five years old. Okay, so another small anecdote.

So about a decade ago, I coached university women's hockey, at McGill. And there was one specific year where for whatever reason, we had much more success driving play with 11 forwards and seven defensemen because it allowed us to dress a 7D who really helped us in offensive situations. And I've had a lot of conversations with, you know, our entire coaching staff throughout the season about this. And the main feedback I was getting was it's difficult.

to manage the bench when you have sort of an odd number of Ds and forwards, because then you can't roll lines like you normally could, right? Four forward lines and three D pairs. It's easy to manage. You know who's next. You can either go back to your top pair to sort of double ship them, or you can go to your third pair to give your top four break. Whereas with 70s, you're always worried about like leaving somebody on the bench too

long so that they get cold. And conversely, sometimes like with penalties and power plays, it's hard to get back into rhythm of rolling your four lines and your D pairs. And it all kind of came to head in the playoffs where we were playing a two out of three. And then in game one, we played 12 and 6 and we won. In game two, we played 12 and 6 and we lost. And we had a winner go home game. And I basically had a mini-me,

meltdown about how we needed to go 11-7. Finally, that's what we end up doing. We go 11-7, we win, we get all the way to national finals, and we lose in double overtime, but we play 11-7 the rest of the way. And again, the main thing is I think now coaches are good at realizing what line combinations work and don't, but it's just the bench management side of it becomes kind of messy when you have an odd number of forwards and Ds. And that's why coaches are resistant to it.

Yeah, I get that. I do think it's growing on me quite a bit as a concept. It obviously depends on the personnel you have. But I do think it gives you more flexibility or options from the perspective of obviously manufacturing additional shifts for your top players because you've got the one forward short so you can double shift them or kind of creatively put them out there. And I think that throws a monkey wrench at your opposition's plans as well because they're similarly trying to roll their lines and work their matchups.

And so theoretically, when you get your fourth line out there, it's like, all right, well, we're going to send out our third pair or our fourth line. And then all of a sudden, I know the lightning used to do this quite a bit when they would run 11 forward seven defensemen, including in the playoffs. It gives you a chance to opportunistically get Kutrov back out there, get him away from the opposition's shutdown pair or top defensive forward line. And he can potentially create something there. I think also the ability to maximize those shifts here or there

has improved a lot in today's game compared to the past because you look now. And obviously there's still guys who are sort of role players and do specific things in terms of just grinding and forechecking and kind of killing minutes on team's fourth lines. But everyone is so much more talented. I just said Carolina has a guy like Jackson Blake, for example, in their fourth line. And he's got legitimate top six skills offensively.

And so if your best player is out there with a guy, like that, for example, compared to previously where it was just an enforcer or a guy who really didn't have that much skill, all of a sudden, I think you can actually create something a little bit more. And then obviously, I think the value of having the extra defenseman comes up huge in case you have an in-game injury or you have a key defenseman in the box and you have to kill penalties and you have someone who's particularly useful there. I just feel like the value of having an additional defenseman available is much more important to me, in my opinion. than whoever you're told forward is because realistically,

that guy's not going to play that much of an impact over the course of a game or a playoff series or however you want to look at it. So here's a public service announcement to Sheldon Keefe, the New Jersey Devils, and all their fans. I think it's a good idea to start getting comfortable with playing 11-7 because if you're able to get Seamus Casey or Shimon Nemich into a lineup as a 7th D in the playoffs,

like that could help you out of a jam in ways that maybe, that maybe you can't even fathom right now. I completely agree with that. All right, Jack, that's all the time we have for today. I'll let you plug some stuff here on the way out. You got anything you want to tell the listeners or anything you got coming that you're particularly excited about?

So I think I've been on the pod enough times that people know where to find me, whether it's on Twitter and now on Blue Sky, J-H-A-N-H-K-Y on Blue Sky. I'm working right now on the next installment of my hockey tactics ebook series, which will come out in 2025.

If you're a casual fan, a media member, someone in the industry, you can shoot me a DM or an email. If you want me to include, you know, the answer of a specific question tactically in the ebook,

if you want to, you know, influence the development process of this next ebook, then by all means, get in touch. with me. I love to talk hockey with whoever. So yeah, so do that. All right, buddy. We'll keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to that. And my plug is the Pediocast Discord as always.

We took the questions at the end of today's show from there. Jack is in there as well. If you want to tag him and just kind of skip the middleman, which is me and the show. And you want to just talk to him directly as well. You can just tag him in there and start up a conversation. The Discord is awesome. It's just growing by day. It's so resourceful and so fun to be a part of. So please, please, please get in there. The invite link is in the show notes. If you can't find it or can't get in there for a reason,

maybe you're a boomer like myself, feel free to just message me, and I will pass along the link to you. That's the final show of the week. We're going to be back on Sunday night with our usual Sunday special with our pal Thomas strands. So we will see you back here then. Have a great weekend.

And thank you for listening to the HockeyPedio guest streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.