The Hockey PDOcast - We’re Back, With More Saxophone Squirtle Than Ever Before

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by Sean Shapiro to discuss the good vibes in Winnipeg, the survival mode in Dallas, Andrew Brunette's influence in Nashville, and Willy Nylander's contract extension. 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 HockeyPedio cast. My name is Dimitri Filippovic and joining me for this first edition of 2024 for the Hockey-Pedio cast is my good buddy, Sean Jodbara. Sean, what's going on, man? I didn't realize I got episode one of the year. This is an honor, man. Thank you. Yeah, I've been off for two weeks now.

Got to shake off the rust post holidays. You know, whatever, I guess the league takes those three days off. around Christmas and then you always get some strange, lethargic performances coming out of the break, right, where you can tell where players have been taking a few days off, maybe eating some bigger meals than usual, enjoying a few drinks with a family, and then all of a sudden they get back out on the ice.

It doesn't really look right. And so hopefully we're going to try to avoid that here today in the PEOCast. I'm sure there's going to be a bitter rust for us to shake off, but we've got a lot of stuff to catch up on a bunch of fun topics that I've got planned for us, so I think we should get right into it. Let's turn with this as a general theme. It's going to, I'm going to lump all of these, like, central division topics together with you, right?

Because you wrote a big story kind of right around when I went off for the holidays. So I haven't had a chance to talk about on this show, but it blew up in the PDO guest discord. People were talking about it at the time. And so I wanted to get into it here now that we're back about the predators. I also want to talk about the stars, a team that is near and dear to your heart, certainly, and it has some interesting stuff going on with them. Let's start with the Jets, because they are on the top of my mind. mind. They have taken the league by storm. They are playing remarkably well right now,

winning pretty much every single time they go out on the ice. And there's a lot of fun stories here to get into as well, guided of course by our old friend Rick Bonas, but they're doing some phenomenal things. And so let's get into that and kind of talking about the run they've been on and everything surrounding that because I think that's sort of, you know, we're going to talk about the Willie Nealander contract and that's maybe the biggest story in the league today after recording, but just in terms of the past couple weeks since I went on the little hiatus, it feels like the Jets have been the talk of the league. Yeah, and the Jets, I want to, it's really interesting to see because I obviously have a unique

perspective on this, having covered Rick Bonas from the time he got the head coaching job in Dallas, unexpectedly, the mid-season kind of change up with what happened in Jim Montgomery, too. And I've always maintained throughout his time as a head coach in this iteration that I've always felt Rick Bonas was, as a head coach, always felt more kind of like the crisis manager, right? Like his best work in Dallas was coming in when everything was crazy and uneven and going through Yad and going through COVID and all of that stuff. In the rockiest times, he helped a team kind of handle crisis and get through him. Really good at that. When the world kind of normalized a bit, the stars under Rick Bonas didn't really work that well. And I think with the Jets, what he's done this year and to give him full credit and everything like that, it's to me, obviously he almost created a bit of his own crisis with his comments at the end of last, after the Vegas series last year.

But it's to kind of see the Jets rolling along. without kind of, for lack of a better word, the on-ice adversity, you'd think. It's impressive to me because this is where Rick Bonas teams typically kind of ball off. Rick bonus teams typically, they roll along really well when they're coming out of something, but when things keep going well, they kind of start finding ways to shoot themselves in the foot, and the Jets haven't done that. So obviously this is a six-game win streak in the stretch. It's like, was it a 10-game point streak now or something like that?

Something like that. Here, I'll give you the stats, because I got them. because they're all very impressive. So dating back to December 1st, when we're going on six weeks an hour or so since then, they're 14-1 and 2. They've outscore teams 60 to 30 during that stretch. You know, they're up to first in the league in both raw points and point percentage, plus 39 goal differential for the year, second best.

They've got this crazy stat right now where I believe they've gotten 29 straight games, giving up three or fewer goals against. and Connor Hellebuck after a bit of a shaky start, right? He signs the big extension of the offseason, and then he comes out and he has a few poor performances, and there's a lot of hand-wringing and people wondering, oh, how is this going to age? Well, he's rocking a 9-39 say percentage in 17 games

since November 15th and into a perspective. League average, say percentage, as we talk about, and the show is down to 903 this season. So they're doing so remarkable things, and that is a bit of a bonus staple, right, in terms of drawing good defensive results out of his team. I think part of that is you could take it glass half full or glass FMT. I think part of the reason why I've had issues with him in the past,

and he's certainly a great people person and communicator, right? And everyone that is in his orbit and kind of comes across him, whether it's players or people covering him seem to come away with good stories and liking him, right? He treats people well. Me, as an analyst, I've always been a bit frustrated because he seems to default to a more conservative approach, right, both in terms of player usage, but also tactically, I find. Now, this Jets team is built really well for him in that regard. And the defensive

results, certainly, like, the goaltending has been really good. Laurent Brousois has been awesome as well as the backup. Regardless of what they have a net, they're getting strong performances, but you look at teams defensive metrics, and they're also significantly improved as well. And you can sort of see in all these broadcasters talking about how there's been an added emphasis on playoff of the puck, right, and weak side support and all this stuff. And you're seeing that in action. And so give them credit because this isn't one of those things where, you know, they're not going to keep winning 14 out of every 17 games they play.

Part of that certainly is like a hot streak and percentage induced somewhat. But the underlying process is really strong there as well. And so I wanted to give that a shout out because it's not just one of those things where, all right, they're winning all these games, but it's going to come to an end soon. And like if they keep playing like this, I do expect them to keep hovering. around the top of the league. No, it feels like this is actually who they are. That's kind of the thing.

Sometimes with teams when we get there, we ask the great question. I was like, oh, are they, is this really who they are? And I think with the Jets, when you look at it and you ask yourself the question, you watch them play and you look at the underlying things, as you noted, this is really, okay, this is who the Jets are. This team is legitimately good. And that's something that I don't think I would have said three, four months ago. That's something where he would have, if you had told me three or four months ago, the Jets would be top league at this point, I probably would have said like, okay, well, it's probably, there's some door escape hatch that's about to open up on this from the top. And I don't see that right now. Obviously, the goal 10 needle will progress a little bit here and there, I think. In general, like, these are the Jets. They are good. And that's, I think that's something we need to be comfortable saying right now.

Well, I'm comfortable saying that, especially a five-and-five, you look, and they've been particularly dominant, right? They're surprisingly somewhat 26 on the power play. It looks a little bit different when they're on the man advantage. I expect when Kyle Connor comes back, that'll improve somewhat. There's too much talent for them to be bottom five or six in the league with an extra man. But yeah, a lot of it's there. I mean, during the streak, like, they just, they destroyed the Minnesota Wild, right? They had a bit of that resurgence with the new coach bump and that quickly got derailed by this Jets team. And since we've last spoken, there's two key trends that have emerged. And I'm going to pitch them to you both here. You can tell me how you feel about them and the sustainability of them. One, they haven't lost in regulation since they embraced Squaredo playing the saxophone. And I haven't had a chance to speak on it on this show yet. I feel like this is one of the key subplots in the league right now.

We've seen other teams try to incorporate it, but the Jets were the first adopter. And so I want to give them credit to everyone involved from, especially the game presentation staff, right, that was quick to jump on it and embrace the fun. And I think it's something we all want to see teams do more of. And I listen, that's just analytics. They haven't lost regulation since they started playing Squirtle on a saxophone. And so I think that's a pretty valid trend. I mean, this is the most important story in the league right now.

And I'm not even kidding. It is, and I think you just give yourself some creditor because I think the game ops, folks in Winnipeg only saw this because of your you're tweeting this, right? Maybe. I've got a few followers, to be fair, but I do want to give a shout out to my guy, Nick, who is a Jets fan and covers a team, and he brought this to my attention, certainly.

And then shout to, I believe his name's Quentin Robb, who's the game presentations person who jumped on it and saw us talking about it and then incorporated it on December 22nd, and they've been on this run since. The other one, though, and I think, you know, all jokes aside, this one is really... We will get to this one, but I think you need to take your victory lap. The reason the jets have not lost is because of you. This is by the transitive property of you sharing squirrel sacks all the way around, the jets have not lost.

Take your victory lap, enjoy it. Now we can have serious conversations. Well, I played a small part, and let's give credit to Squirtle, though. I think Squirtle is slaying the biggest role here. And if you haven't seen this video, on the one hand, You should feel shame and you should seek it out intentionally. On the other hand, though, I'm a bit jealous because since I watched the video, it's pretty much been just going on loop in my brain and it's all I can think about.

And it's turning my brain into just a rotting pile of mush, basically, because it's all I can think about. But no, it's been really fun. The other thing that I want to mention is this stretch kind of coincides with them promoting Nikolai Eilers to the top line, right? And this predates the injury to Kyle Connor as well because they put him up there. They were playing him with Shively and Connor. Then Connor got hurt and they bumped Volardi into that spot.

And we're going on an 18 game stretch now where you look. And Nikolai Eilers is 16 5-on-5 points in that time, which is one behind Nathan McKinnon for the league lead. And the Jets are up 19 to 4 with him on the ice in those minutes. And this isn't certainly anything new for anyone that's been following Nikola Eilers, right? We've been pounding the table wanting to see him get this type of a premium feature role. because on a permanent basis, he's been one of the most efficient and dominant 5-15 players in the league. But now he's second on this team amongst forwards and 5-15 usage, so he's doing it on a larger scale,

and he's taking it to a whole new level, right? And so this is, you know, knock on wood, hopefully health permitting he can stay playing the way he is right now because it's so fun to watch and he's so good. And it's just given this entire organization a different dynamic, right? We've spoken about this, but even at their best, they were never necessarily, I guess they were that year when they made the playoff run. But otherwise, they haven't been a 515 dominant team. It's been a lot of efficiency from a percentage's perspective, right, and on the power play. And in this case, what they call Eilers playing in this first line role, they're dominating. And I think that totally changes what the baseline and what the expectations are for this group.

And one of the things with Eilers, and I can say this, just having experienced, covering RRick bonus before. It's interesting. Like his ice time is up, right? It's like two and a half

minutes more per game or something like that. And if you like use the 20 game mark as a thing. But you go through and you look at it and he's still getting the exact same amount of shifts. It's like it's still, he's doing this like last,

against Arizona this week. He had 20 shifts. I mean, he was having 23 shifts. The first three or four games of the season when he's playing less time. One of the things that from covering Rick bonus, I know more about it with how he steals with players, is there are some guys he gives

the longer shift leash to, basically. And so he's still giving yielders about the same amount of deployment, but it feels like there's more of an understanding and in acceptance from the coaching staff that, you know what, he is that guy who can take the longer shift. And it's, it's kind of one of those interesting, like, subtle things where if you went through and you, if I put game by game shift chart. You wouldn't be able to tell which one was the bigger minute one because of how even the number of shifts are. But just it's kind of that inside of the game.

Okay, now Rick Bonas is okay with Nikola Ehlers taking the extra 10 seconds now. And that starts to add up. And then we start to see that and move on and on and on. And so it's kind of one of those things I just wanted to bring up because I looked at that before we came on the show. And it's like, it's not like all of a sudden they're like calling his name more.

Yeah, no. but I think it's kind of chicken or the egg or it's all tied together in a sense, right? Where all of a sudden now, and certainly I think last year, even when he was out there, he wasn't at full health and that was talked about a lot and probably a reason why they were really careful about managing his workload. But this is also a player who for years now with multiple coaches, we've been wanting to see this type of usage from, right? Where it's like, all right, the minutes are one thing, but also just the way the organization

and treats him from like a featuring him perspective, playing him with the best players. And he'd been blocked previously. And there'd been little stints where they would mix him in here or there, but it was never a sustained stretch like this. And now, you know, certainly when Kyle Connor comes back, we'll see what Rick Bonas and the coaching staff does and how they reintegrate him and what happens with the four groups. But assuming these three guys in Eilers, Bellardi and Schifley keep playing this way, I would have a really difficult time messing with it, right? Because they've just been so good. And it makes sense from like a skill, that perspective, they all add something to the table, but it all kind of starts with

Elyler's because he does so much from a like truck, puck transportation perspective and just watching him fly through the neutral zone is really fun. So I wanted to shod her mode and I wanted to talk about the Jets off the top because I've been thinking about them quite a bit lately. And I imagine if they keep playing this way, we will keep talking about the Jets. But let's kind of pivot here. And it's, it's, it is a copy get league. And what do we want that in every, and for game ops across the league, it's just like everyone deciding they were going to go copy Vegas's defensive approach.

And so the more the jets win, the more we will all have the wonderful performances of game operations with Squirrelsacks. I love it. Yeah, it's been so good. You know, through the stretch, though,

they've built this lead now in the Central where they're only up three points on the abs with a game in hand, but they've built this seven point margin on the stars. And after that, it feels, like you take another step to the predators and the wild and the blues and the rest of Central Division teams. But the reason why I want to bring that up is because the impact of this kind of trickle down of that is all of a sudden,

if things stayed true to this form, we're looking at the potential of this Stars, Avs, Bloodbath in round one in the Central. And you and I were speaking about this in the DMs watching the game last Thursday between the two teams. But I was just reminded of the fact that whenever the star, and the avalanche get together, they seem almost incapable of playing a normal game, right? Just all chaos ensues. There's wild swings and momentum, lead changes, outrageous goals being scored, both in terms of randomness and flukiness, but also high-level skill. And they seem to bring the most chaotic and I'd argue best out of each other. And so it's obviously a matchup that is, you know, too good, certainly for around one.

but also at the same time, it feels like we wanted it last year and we were deprived of it because the Cracken upset the Avalanche. And if we get it, I will have a tough time coupling with it, even if it is in round one. Yeah, that's the only issue is it'll be around one. But yeah, I love Starzab's is one of my favorite batchups. It's fun. I like how the two teams intention, both coaching staffs, and obviously it's been more so one coach in Colorado and multiple coaching staffs. Dallas, I like how the two T go out of their way to nibble at the little ways. Both sides cheat because they're collectively not good at it.

Like, Colorado will always, even though Colorado's terrible at faceoffs, no matter who they play against, Colorado will always point out how Dallas players drop to one knee to win the draw. And then at the same time, Colorado runs that little pick play in the offensive zone better than anyone. And that's everyone runs it, but Colorado just does it better than everyone. I love the little quibbling. I love the way it goes. I love the fact that Colorado almost went out of its way.

I'm sure Josak did this for the drama to add to those little players that stung Colorado before. Like, the only reason he added Yuel Kivirontra, right, was so Kiviront could score a big goal against Dallas. That's like, there's these other little like side stories of that add to this from both a hockey and a humid set. So yes, I love this. Well, I think the stars are in a bit of a precarious spot here, though, because heading into the season, I think, you know, their playoff spot or positioning was never really in doubt or jeopardy. So I just viewed this regular season as sort of a pathway for them to explore optimizing their team, incorporating young players, managing Jake Auditors workload, right? Just trying to get the best version of themselves for April and May because I just assumed they would be there. they'd get to go on another long run again. I didn't want to see them just exhaust everything in the

regular season when they didn't need to. But now with Murrow Hayskin and out for what I assume is going to be a couple weeks, Jake O'Doninger has been out for a while, they're all of a sudden kind of in survival mode, right, with this gap increasing and with them not only falling out of first and then now staring down the barrel of a matchup against the abs, but also not having a home ice in it as things currently stand, right? And so all of a sudden now you go from this spot where you take it for granted a little bit to all of a sudden now you're not worrying about making or missing the playoffs, but this is a pretty tough path to be going down if things keep going this way. And not that they have any other real recourse until they get healthy, but it's

just I wasn't really expecting them to be in this position, I guess 40 games into the season. Yeah. I mean, the injury is obviously a huge factor, right? And like if they're if they're in this spot right now in Mirro Hitchin, it's healthy, we're not really having. this conversation. That just kind of shows, A, how important Barrow-Hashkinen is, and that's fine. But it also shows a bit of the flaw where when it comes to the Star's defense, it's been essentially five guys in Hayshkinin and some of the other guys that could have worked on elevating and promoting are now going to get that opportunity because they frankly

have to, when you probably should have, like, you and I have message back and forth before about the Thomas Harley usage. Like the fact, Thomas Harley is now going to play 25, 26 minutes a night, right? That's going to be the reality. The fact that weeks ago, he was still getting 16, 17 minutes a night sometimes is

he shouldn't be, it shouldn't have been Thomas Harley jumping 10 minutes per game when Mirajski. Yeah, you shouldn't, yeah, you shouldn't need to lose your best defenseman to start playing your second best defenseman a normal amount. Yes. Right? Like,

that this isn't, that's not how this necessarily works. And I'm with you. So on the one hand, it's kind of, it's the soberest of sober linings, but we've seen one game, one full game now without Hayskin and the lineup, right? And Thomas Harley plays a team high 2422. He leads a team with 2130 at 5-15. In those minutes, the stars have 87% of the expected goals. Outshute the Predators 13 to 4. He has two assists. It looks great. I want to see more of it. I guess, I guess, I'm curious to see what they do in other areas of the game because, you know, they did have a lot of power of the opportunities in that time, but they did use a five forward first unit when they did have opportunities in that game. And even when Hayskenen got hurt and late in that Aves game, in overtime, they were, I noticed they were using like three forwards in the three on three. So it is interesting how all of a sudden now you lose Hayskaden and all of a sudden, Peter Boers, like exploring all of these extreme measures, which.

they probably should have been experimenting with to begin with, and I kind of forced his hand into doing so. So I'm kind of curious to see how, whether they double down in that regard and keep going in that direction or whether they try to still find some sort of happy medium and kind of try to work it out even without Hayskin in there. Yeah, it'll be interesting too. I think this week's a good week to kind of watch it too, because they play, I remember correctly, they play Minnesota tonight and Wednesday.

And so I think it'll be, it's obviously not a, oftentimes, one of the great things about playoff hockey is we get to see how coaches adjust from game to game. So I'm actually really interested to see Dallas tonight and Wednesday and how the A roll out things tonight and then B, counteract to what Minnesota does. I think it's a nice little kind of, for us analyzing the game and watching, it's a nice scheduling gift to kind of see how this stars teams reacts when you get a same opponent, You get, it's not, on Wednesday, you're going to have to adjust on Wednesday. You can't just roll out what you did tonight on Wednesday because Minnesota will have adjusted. So I think it's a nice little stretch to learn more about the stars. Probably not the happiest thing for Pete DeBore looking at the schedule that way, but for you and I, it's nice. Well, you wouldn't know I looking at him on the bench because he's going to have the exact same casual expression.

Regardless, you wouldn't know if he had just won the style like up or if he lost his number one defenseman. It will be the both same reaction either way. My favorite Pete DeBoer reaction story is this past summer I was at to that. I went to the Coaches Clinic in at Arbor and he was speaking. And he's using a borrowed laptop. And he says just in a, he's using a borrowed laptop to show clips. And he basically says in like the dry's voice. He's like, sorry, I forgot to bring my laptop.

I got knocked out of the playoffs by the team that fired me. And so I decided I wasn't going to bring my laptop and rewatch the clips of anything. So luckily someone at a laptop with clips of NHL games Here's a presentation on offensive zone execution Is that Pete? Is that Pete? We're testing out some jokes Doing a little stand-up movie? Maybe. Maybe yeah testing out on coaches that are paying to hear him talk so yeah I mean I'm not buying that Because he is he's a very prepared guy

And so I imagine he's got a law degree Yes, yeah very smart very prepared guy I love Pete I all the jokes about his facial expressions are, I promise, coming from a good place. Okay, Sean, any other notes on the stars or the jets before we go to break here? We're still going to, like, when we come back, we're going to talk about the predators, so we'll stick with that central theme. But just before we kind of put the bow on these two and go in a break, is there anything? Or do you think we cover it all?

Yeah, no, I think it's said. I think we've kind of covered it. The one thing on the stars I would bring up, it's just an interesting spot where you talk about a team living and flying so close to the sun cap-wise. and part of that is obviously by nature of what's happened in the CAP world, and you get injuries like this. And in theory, this is the time where you'd like, oh, we'd like a nice young, energetic insertion into our lineup,

and they just can't do it. Like they have, and not that they need the forwards, but they've got the two guys who are leading the AHL in scoring right now. And it's just kind of one of those, this is the reality of the CAP world, where would, not that Craig Smith's been bad, but would Maverick Bork be a better, having Maverick Bork in the lineup over Craig Smith right now. Would that allow you to play even more in a way you want, everything like that?

It's just an interesting thing. Dallas is just interesting case study because when you invest so close to the cap, which everyone has to do, and then these injuries happen, it's why hopefully as the cap goes up, things get more comfortable and we get better hockey. Yeah, you certainly like to see teams, especially in moments of crisis, have more flexibility and optionality. But at the same time, like you mentioned teams, especially teams, they're not. are competing, this is kind of a reality for them. So it isn't even playing field in that regard.

It's also something that I think you kind of have to paraphr for it to some extent, right? Like you certainly hope that you're going to have your full lineup, but you're not going to have any catastrophic injuries, but the 82 game regular season is a grind. And part of that that comes to the territory of you have guys in and out of the lineup, injuries happen. And so when teams get up to this spot and then all of a sudden their hands are tied because they didn't sort of break in the potential of needing to kind of pull that emergency switch. I don't really necessarily feel bad for them either, if you know what I mean? Like, it's kind of part of the thing.

No, I don't feel bad for the team. I just think as someone who wants to see better hockey stories and better hockey played, I think it's just kind of that element of it. Where you're like, oh, this would be really nice to see and what could happen with this. It's just, it's the reality of where we are. And just it's kind of, it's more of a commentary on everything. This is just kind of the tip of the mountain where this impacts everything. Yeah. That's where I was going with this.

No, listen, I want to see Maverick Bork and Logan's Danko and playing in that H.O. Because I don't really watch the H.O., but I know both those guys are really good. And so I want to see more of them on my TV. So anything we can do to ensure that that happens, I'm all for it. And you can, you can get my vote for that. Okay, Sean, let's take our break here. And then when we come back, we will pick things back up. You were listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.

All right, we're back here on the Hockey P.D.O. cast joined by Sean Shapiro, Sean. Sticking with the central theme. We've talked about the Jets. We've talked about the stars. Let's talk a little bit about the National Predators. A team that I've spent, I think, a northern amount of time talking about on the show this season because I've been sort of fascinated with this brewing case study or, guess tactical experiment that they're trying in terms of totally revamping the way the organization sort of feels and plays on the ice certainly with the new coach. They brought in some new players and they're getting they're getting the results out of it. But also if you look at sort of you you

pop open the hood and you look at what's going on underneath, it also just looks wildly different than it looked last season for them in a good way. And so a lot of that comes back to the coaching of Andrew Brunette and sort of what he's brought in behind the bench. And the reason why I'm so interested in it is because we often struggle so much with quantifying the impact of coaching, right? So much of it happens behind the scenes in the locker room, managing personalities, dealing with the players, all that sorts of stuff. And we don't really get, we're not really, we don't have access to it for the most part, right? And so when the teams play it well, they're getting the percentages, things are going while, the puck's going in, they're getting

saves, they're getting wins. Ah, the coaching staff's doing great. And then all of a sudden that dries up a little bit and, oh, the message has gotten stale. We got to fire the coach and bring in a new voice. And we kind of go through this endless cycle of the peaks and valleys of the shelf life of an HL coach, right? And in this case, we got this new coach in Burnett and he's come in with a different approach and gotten in a play a different way. And we're seeing the dividends paid of that, right? And so you wrote this story about kind of where he's coming from with it, how he's incorporating stuff from different sports and I think it's just such an interesting conversation for us to have here. So,

so let's dive into that and kind of talk a little bit about, um, about Andrew Brunette and what he's been getting the predators to do on the ice. Yeah. I mean, so it was the, the piece was I wrote over at the, over on my site, Shapshots, it was the, I think it was December 28th or 20. It was like the last week of the new year when I published it. And it was, we often hear to me, one of the most interesting things off the bat, was I was having this conversation with Andrew Burnett after a morning skate before Nashville played Detroit. And oftentimes when you hear about coaches borrowing something from other sports, it's like, oh, I took this football coach quote. And I like it's always motivational. It's always

like I found, I found motivation from Vince Lombardi or whatever. Like it's, it's always that. That's what coaches take from other coaches as motivational tactics. And but then when, and as I wrote about it and people should go read the piece hopefully. He looks a lot at how crow soccer has evolved and how the evolution of that sport has gone. And he's done a lot of, he watches a ton of, watched a ton of European soccer, watches, he reads about it a ton. And it's one of the first times I've ever heard a hockey coach go and talk about the influence of a Yergen Klopp or Pep Guardiola and how kind of that sport has evolved from a, has become almost positionless, like one of our non-socker listeners, right, for a quick

side note of like how soccer's evolved, the outside defender used to be a defender. And now the outside defender and soccer has effectively become what they call a wingback where that player is a vital part in moving the play. And it's very similar to how you could kind of draw parallels to in hockey now, how we've gone from four men in the rush, four men joining the rush, how the defender, the defense, what is a good defender has changed and how it's no longer one puck, one power play guy and five big bodies. And Andrew, I really like the way Andrew Burnett looks at this and was really open about discussing these ideas and even, he's also gone to the extent of right now where he's trying to look at some things they do in basketball to get guys open and

everything in a small space. So I'll let you keep me on track here because it's your show. And so, Well, no, he had a great quote in that piece where he was essentially, he asked the question of like, where do we find space and then how do we attack it? And that's sort of the guiding principle here in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. And I find that so fascinating because I've spoken about this with Jack Hott and a bunch on the show over this season. And I know he wrote about her on his substack as well, but like from a tactical perspective, which is something we don't, there isn't enough coverage of in the sport, quite frankly, right? I understand it's more difficult to sort of identify than it is in like football and and even basketball or soccer or any other sport you want to say right. It's more free flowing certainly more chaos, more randomness, more moving parts. And it all happens much more quickly and fluidly.

At the same time, though, that's not good enough from my perspective, right? And that's why I try on this show to kind of identify some of the stuff and when there are certainly noticeable changes, kind of pointing that out and then seeing whether the results reflect that. and you see with this team, they're 13th offensively, unexpected goals generated, they're fifth in the league in slot and inner slot shots, and they're nine in offensive zone possession time, right? And when you look at this group, I know that Philip Forsberg's playing phenomenally well, they brought in O'Reilly, Gustavneiquitous has been arguably like their second best

offensive player this season. They brought in different personnel over the offseason, but for the most part, you look at the names and the depth chart, and it shouldn't be a team that has those ranks, right? And so from a coaching perspective, they have to be doing something. And then you listen to Jack Conn talk about it and you watch them play. And you can see that in action where the forwards, essentially, to summarize it, are living much more in the middle of the ice, right? They're trying to kind of pack the paint and constantly move back in. And they're asking their defensemen to control the flanks and the walls and pinch down more and basically play deeper in the offensive zone and become

much more involved. And so that's certainly more taxing on defenders, but they are getting better results out of them. A guy like Roman Yossi early in the season, there was a note about how Brunette certainly wanted him to keep playing the way he had because he's been so successful over the past handful of years, but he just wanted him instead of carrying the puck always himself to try to move it up the ice more quickly to get the team in more attacking positions and then join the rush as a trailer and become more involved that way. And he's been having a much better 5-1-5 season than he had the past couple seasons, certainly. And so you're seeing all of this now, and this is a team that is dominating around the net. They're getting a ton of second chance

and third-chance opportunities off of rebounds. And I think that's a big reason for that is because of these tactical changes that Andrew Brunette has implemented, right? And so it's kind of cool. It's just satisfying from my perspective sort of see someone trying this and then getting these And this isn't. They're not, you know, taking over the league. We talked about the Jets in terms of how the way they've been playing. Like, you know, they're still middle of the pack, certainly. But I think it's been a massive step in the right direction for the predators. And in terms of what they wanted to accomplish, I think they have to be very happy internally with what they've seen through these first 40 games. Well, and to me, one of the biggest underlying parts of all of this is the fact that, um, because as I was talking to Idrabert out about this, this is not Barry Trots hockey, right? Like, we look at the way Barry Trots. Trots coach had coached in his career and how he ran teams and Barry Trots is the GM. And like, Burnett even acknowledged it to me. It's like, I'm sure Barry sits up in his box sometimes and says like, ooh, this is, this is a bit risky for my liking. But I think that's, to me, that's one of the most important things about all this is where Barry Trots easily could have been GM slash boss and

said, well, no, I kind of know how we coach hockey. I think that's another part that we need to bring up is that you have someone in the GM seat who's, A, building the roster, but that B, even with their resume, isn't coming down and second guessing that we're doing something different. And I think that's another big part I wanted to kind of highlight as we talk about it, because Barry Trots easily could go and say, well, look what I've done in Nashville, look what I've done in my career. I've won a Stanley Cup as a coach. You have to do it this way. And I think the fact that this team doesn't look like a Barry Trots team is a huge compliment to Barry Trots to G. So.

Yes. I mean, I think what we have to remember about Brunette as well is that what, he was an assistant coach for like a couple years. And then he got thrust in season into being a head coach. And he certainly got schooled by John Cooper in that playoff series. Then he goes and he spends another year as an assistant on the devils. And then now he's back in this position. And we don't typically think of coaches this way. Because like we just become, we just assume they're sort of finished products essentially. And then, and then especially we think of coaches being set in their ways and kind of curmudgeony and, and becoming very stale. And so they become known for one thing. And then that's just who they are, right? And in this

case, I think it makes sense that a guy like Andrew Burnett with how long he's been doing it, or lack thereof, like, there would be improvements and changes and developments and stuff that we would typically attribute to a young player in their fourth or fifth season. And so, you know, season in the NHL. Maybe it makes sense that a coach like this would also experience some of these changes in terms of like learning things that went well and things that didn't go well in previous stops and then try and implement them and incorporate them and tinker on the fly. Like it makes sense that that's what we'd be seeing here from them as well.

Yeah. And I like that brunette was because he got kind of, I mean, obviously Florida hired Ball Maurice and went to the Stanley Cup final last year and everything like that. But one of the things that I think Brunet got a bit of a raw deal on was, and yes, he got out-coached in that series by John Cooper. That's 100% fact. But the way that Florida team kept humming along after he took over, I know within Florida's ranks, they kept kind of giving a lot of that credit to Quinville, where it was more so, oh, well, Quinville's, even though they couldn't really say it publicly, obviously, because the way that Florida is, the reason Quinville was no longer the head coach. but they really internally gave a ton of credit to Winville for the way he just kept things humming along as opposed to as he set such a strong base that anyone who could have done it. And I think Andrew Burnett deserves more credit for what he did in the regular season in Florida. Obviously, he takes the blame and got completely outcoached by John Cooper in the Tampa series.

But it's nice to see a coach and a human, right? He took the negative from the end of the game. of his time in Florida and still kind of learned from it and it wasn't it. So it's kind of, you talk about evolution and growth and I think I'm making the exact same point as you. And it's, you're the radio host here. So you can be helping me make a viable point on this. But I think, I like what Andrew Burnett, Alba, Andrew Burnett has responded to that after you got a bit of a raw deal at the end of the time in Florida is what I'm saying. Well, because you can trace that evolution as well, right? Because, yeah, like, obviously Vaslevski was amazing and Kuturaw was phenomenal. and that's partly why they lost that series.

Like Tampa Bay superstars were better than Florida's in it. But part of the frustration was the Panthers played a certain way in the regular season and had a lot of success doing so. And then Tampa Bay essentially took that away and dared them to try anything else and they had no adjustments to it. And it makes sense that a first time coach who's never really had to do that before would struggle to do that on the fly, especially with all that adversity. And then he goes to New Jersey, and ironically enough, that's the biggest leap they made last year,

going from purely a rush team to one with much more sustained offense and ability to just keep you hemmed and really just suffocate you offensively that way. And then now he goes to Nashville. That's something they've become really good at, right? Keeping the puck deep in the offensive zone and cycling you to death and getting those second and third opportunities. And the devil's team he leaves, listen, they've had a lot of injuries, right? not having Hughes and his year for big chunks of it, it certainly hurts Staggy Hamilton as well. Like, there's many reasons why the devils aren't having the reason or the season that we expected

from them. But ironically, like, that's also something that they've massively regressed that as well after Brunette left. They've all of a sudden become much worse at that. And so, I don't know how much of that is sort of, you know, causation correlation, but I couldn't have helped. And so I wanted to give Brunette credit for that. And I've been really, enjoying watching this season from the Predators and I'm going to be curious to follow them the rest of the way. So I think it's a really cool story and I think he did an awesome job and I illustrated that and chatting with him and it was nice to see him be open as well about it, right? Because I've become very tired of like the cliched quotes from coaches and not really

getting much on them, especially during the season. And so in this case, you actually got a few sort of, I think, actionable quotes from him that made a lot of sense and enlightened us about sort of what he's trying to accomplish in Nashville. Well, and I loved how it was kind of, my buddy Prashant and I have talked about this before. I love when there's stuff where you can take one piece of intel and publicly publish it and share it and everything, and then it allows other people to go deeper on it. Like that's one of my favorite parts of that story where I'm able to take that story and write it. And then Jack is able to go and do a little bit more of, hey, let's go through this directly,

even if he was getting grilled for putting the wrong piece of meat in his picture. But I love that, I kind of love that part of this whole story, how it evolved. It was like, okay, here's the opening, let other people kind of expand on it. And I think that's kind of one of the things that is, for whatever reason, I think we used to have more of it in hockey media coverage. And for some reason, I feel like it's closed down a little bit more. So it felt kind of a little bit, it felt nice to see that happening. So, anywho, really cool. Okay, let's end today's show by talking about the Willie Nealtern contract.

We are chatting, of course, on a Monday early afternoon. And the contract came down today. It was essentially reported over the weekend by Elliott Friedman, but it became official today. Willie Neander signed an eight-year extension, 11.5 million per full no move clause, 75% of it, I believe, in signing bonuses. So essentially checked every single. I think you'd want from a player perspective. Now this contract runs age 28 through 35, I believe.

And there's many ways we can take this, right? Take it from a player perspective. We can take it from a team perspective. I think with all of these contracts, you keep coming back to it, is all right, salary cap's going up 5%. You expect that boom to keep coming. And so that certainly factors into this as well.

What do you think is the most interesting part of this piece of news, whether it's from the team or from the player angle? Well, most interesting part is Neal and I got everything you wanted, right? Like that's, that is at the end of the day. That's the player ended up, I find hard, you're looking at this deal and you try to pretend to be a fly on the wall and everything like that. You try to figure out, did he give any concessions like on this? Like, and it's, you go through and sometimes there's, the team will, like, the team didn't get anything on this. That's the most interesting thing to me on this, where,

even all the way down to the full eight years of the no move clause, right? Like even sometimes the team will at least get like, oh, well, year five through, five through seven, six through eight, we'll get the 15 team no trade or whatever. Like, that to me is the most interesting thing off the bat. And I'm not sure if that's one of those things where from how their negotiations last summer, I mean, Friedman's reported that this is the number Nealander was always pushing for. So maybe there was never going to be an opportunity to get done last summer. I don't know. But to me, that's the most interesting thing for this, where Neelander got everything he wanted on this. And I have a hard time finding where the Leafs got the concession at all, even in like a small parlance.

Well, you know what the consensual concession is? He decided to keep playing in Toronto for the Toronto Maple Leafs because that's fair. That's fair. That's fair. An unrestricted free agent to be. and if they didn't give them this contract, I know many teams that would have gladly stepped up to the plate and he given them this, right? And so I get it because we've become so conditioned to just like viewing it through the team lens of getting players to sign for less than they're worth on the open market to give you room to add elsewhere and to build a cup contender and win a Stanley Cup doing so, right? And so we often think of it through that way in certain. you look and I think other teams have done a better job for a variety of reasons of getting their players to lock in on more team-friendly deals. At the same time, though, I don't really know

what the alternative is because this is a player who in a contract year is just having an absolutely monster season and is worth every penny of this, right? So it's not a team-friendly deal in the sense that it's kind of roughly market value. I think Dom even has his market value at a around $11 to $11.5 million based on the way he's playing right now. But listen, he's on pace for 47 goals, 120 points. He's fifth in the league in shots, fourth and inner slot shots, and it's not even percentage induced. Like, he's having a contract year, quote unquote, but it's because he's playing more and shooting more, not because he's getting lucky. And so if you're telling me that a player who's in his prime now is going to keep playing this way, then he's worth

every penny of this. And I don't really know what the alternative from a least perspective was to doing this, I guess. Well, no, I agree with you on that. My point was more so, it's, it's more so, from my perspective on kind of the player getting everything is, A, it's what he deserved. I'm glad he didn't take less, right? Like, so often in this sport we talk about, like, oh, it's a team first game.

Like, we want the cap to go up. We want better players to play. We want all this. We want that, like, you need players to take deals like this. That is kind of, and so it was pleasant. from my typical I cover hockey mindset to see how guys kind of give in to the team system and, oh, I don't want to make more than this or whatever. Like, it was really nice to see from that perspective. I kind of want to clarify on that because it is, he would have gotten this money from someone else.

100% would have happened. And it's, hopefully, it's the space where other players see it. And it continues to push players to actually fight for what they're worth. because sometimes we don't see that. So I wanted to clarify that because I don't, I don't, I'm not upset with Willie. I'm not upset with the Nielander for this contract at all. I'm just more surprised from my traditional hockey mindset thinking and covering the sport that he was able to get this done without there being the like, well, yeah, we got to do this.

So if that makes sense. Yeah, the only thing that didn't really work out reliefs throughout this entire process was sort of the timing. Obviously, I guess not taking advantage and winning during it. certainly, but just in terms of like how they executed this because on the one hand, you can look at, you know, how teams were built like, let's say, you know, McKinnon's deal with the avalanche, right, coming off the ELC, not performing up to what you expected, they're able to lock him in on this team-friendly deal, which they, you know, reap the rewards of for years to come. Similarly, with Jack Hughes in New Jersey, their players, for the most part, performed up to their

max potential and then got paid accordingly, right? You could argue, I guess, that Willie, ironically, is the one who was playing for under $7 million the past couple seasons. And I know that deal was sort of criticized when it was signed and it wound up being a really favorable one for them. But for the most part, it's just that these players performed in these key leverage moments, I guess, when they were due for pay raises. And so when that happens, it's kind of you're backed into a little bit of a corner, I guess, you know, you could take it from the perspective of the future of player contracts, which I think you kind of hinted at there. And with the cap, presumably, going up year over year and also this offensive environment we're in, where everyone is starting

to put, like the baseline is increasing so much for what a productive offensive season is and how that is going to be reflected in future player contracts, I think is interesting. I don't know, do you have any sort of thoughts on that, I guess, or sort of how that's going to change? Because I think maybe our collective expectations are going to have to be recalibrated a little bit. I know we've seen that in the NBA, for example, where it's like the dynamic changes, right, and something we become expected or a condition

to expect from player contract perspective is, I think, the dynamics of it are going to change in the coming seasons. Oh, yeah, and it's like, it goes hand in hand, obviously with the cap going up, we're going to when we see a double digit,

like I saw somebody tweeted the the, or, where, after they, right after they, right after son, I think it may have been Mark Lazarus or something like that where it was like, Vegas was the first team to win the Stanley Cup with a player making more than 10 million and now Toronto has four. And to me, that's not, that's a, that's a bad kind of example just because three, four years from now with the cap going up, a team having

less than four double digit million dollar players is going to be more of the, is going to be, is going to be the uncommon part. So I think that's kind of, it's just kind of a nature to it, a reminder of where this is all going. Um, because we, our eyes like, oh, when we see double digit millions, oh, wow, that's, that's surprising. But that's, this is, that's kind of peanuts compared to what we see in the other sports. We see a guy get doubled, like, a guy has to make, for us to start having her eyes pop at an NBA contract, there's got to be at least a two in front of it, right? And it doesn't, I think this is just kind of the reminder. in a good way that the NHL hopefully is going to have players making what they're worth

and everything like that. And at the same time, it's also going to be very interesting from a team kind of perspective of how do you fill in your roster spots seven through 12 in the future? Because that's going to be a huge thing that happens right now, especially in the next three, four, first three, four years of this deal. Yeah, you're just going to have to be ruthlessly efficient, right, with finding ELC. contributors, but also just like not wasting money on players who aren't worth it. I think we need to change the totally rewire or reframe the way we think about this because you see people

get upset for when a player who's just objectively by any measure worth like $10 million, let's say, get 11.5. And people are like, oh, that's such an overpay. This is going to cripple the team. But then when a player who's worth the league minimum gets 2.5 million, It's like, oh, well, you know, whatever. It's peanuts in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't really matter. It's like, no, that is actually where you hurt your team moving forward when you sign replaceable players to money beyond that.

Whereas I never have any issue with signing your best players to every penny they're worth. Obviously, you'd like ideally to get some sort of a discount to keep them, especially if you drafted it and develop them. But that's just, that's changing. And so if you, if that's what it takes to keep Willie Nealander, I will, I will never begrudge a team for doing so. So that's kind of where I stand on it. I agree. And as a GM, you have to, as a GM and it's the way that it's tough for fan bases and hockey fans to think about is you have to be, you have to be willing to cut all emotional ties with your scrappy third liner. Right. Like too often we get the guy who's like, man, he's a, he's done a lot. lot for this team and everything like that. But you know what? You got to, you probably have a guy. 90% of the guys who you talk about like that, you probably have a guy and within playing in the

HL who can do the exact same thing. And that's just the reality of it. And so some teams are going to teams that don't have the big name guys and everything like that who they're going to end up overpaying for that scrappy third liner that everyone loves. But the good teams are going to be more and more of a revolving door. It's going to be, like, what is the, in North American sports, like, we use the Patriots are probably one of the best examples of a, other than one guy, Tom Brady, everyone else was replaceable. And that's kind of how, as a hockey GM, you're going to have to continue to move forward. Okay, I get my two, three guys. That's it. Everyone else, I can find a guy who's literally doing the same thing in the HAL right now.

Not everyone else, but in the depth spot. So, I agree. Sean. All right, we got to get out of here. Everyone go follow Sean Shapiro on on Twitter. Go read his substack, Shapshots, and read his work at EP Ringsside, where you can read my work as well. My only plug is to go join the Discord community and the Discord server. In my link is in the show notes. We will be taking mailback questions from on further. So get in there. And we'll be back tomorrow with a, we're bringing back Darryl Belfrey. We're picking back up with regular scheduled programming. We're doing David Pasternak deep dive, so looking forward to that. And yeah, it's good to be back. I hope everyone had a good holidays, happy year, looking

forward to doing this on a regular day-to-day basis again. So that's going to be it for today. And we'll be back tomorrow with plenty more of the Hockey Ocas streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.